"I'm asking you." Yin Wujou interrupted her, taking half a step forward. The distance between them suddenly shrank to less than an arm's length, and he could see the subtle glint in the depths of her pupils. "What will you do after you're drained?"
Snow Empress tilted her head slightly to look at him. She stood very straight, her shoulders still taut and upright, but Yin Wujou noticed that her hand, tucked into her sleeve, was trembling again. When she spoke, her voice was as flat as a pool of frozen water. " Yin Wujou, you cultivate arrays. You know better than I do that once the array eye and the array diagram are aligned, the spiritual veins of living beings will be assimilated by the array's power. In the end, the person and the array diagram become one. As long as the array diagram is not destroyed, the person is just a stroke in the array diagram. As long as that thing is pulled deep inside, the array diagram must continue to operate for one day. As long as the array diagram operates for one day, I will maintain it for one day."
She paused here, then added, "You know it in your heart; you understood everything the moment you saw that side story."
The hall remained quiet for a long time. The morning light streamed in through the windows, growing brighter and brighter, casting the shadows of the two people standing before the wooden table from their feet and spreading them across the floor. Yin Wujou looked down at her shadow falling into his own, the two silhouettes overlapping and indistinguishable.
"Three days." He finally spoke again, his voice hoarse as if he had a handful of sand in his mouth.
"Three days," Snow Empress replied.
Yin Wujou suddenly turned around and walked to the bronze box on the west wall. He squatted down, lifted the lid, and rummaged through it. The bronze box was filled with various odds and ends—rolled-up old parchment, several bottles of ground cinnabar ink, a bundle of fine brushes, half a candle, and two paperweights. He moved the items aside one by one until he reached the bottom, where he pulled out a palm-sized jade box from a corner. The lid of the jade box was sealed with a thin layer of wax, the wax surface intact, as if it had never been opened.
He took the jade box and walked back to the wooden table, placing it next to the parchment. Snow Empress glanced at the jade box—the jade material was excellent bluish-white jade, semi-transparent, and one could vaguely see something flowing inside.
"What is this?" she asked.
Yin Wujou did not answer. He used his fingernail to pry open the wax seal and lifted the lid of the box. An extremely clear scent, carrying the aroma of ice and snow, wafted out of the box. When Snow Empress smelled that scent, her eyebrows twitched slightly—it was Ice Marrow, pure polar Ice Marrow that had been condensed for countless years. It shared the same origin as water spirit energy but was much harder in texture, like the difference between water and ice.
Inside the box lay three ice-blue crystals, each the size of a fingernail, as clear as a frozen sky. Yin Wujou picked one up and examined it, then closed the lid and pushed the jade box in front of Snow Empress.
"Keep this in your mouth," he said. "One will last for four hours. When the array draws away the water elemental energy in your spiritual veins, the Ice Marrow will release its own power to replenish it. Three of these together can last for a day and a half."
Snow Empress looked down at the jade box. Inside the translucent, bluish-white jade box, the luster of two ice-blue crystals shimmered, like two miniature stars falling into a jade night sky. "Where did you get this?" she asked.
"A long time ago," Yin Wujou said, "I got it during a job in the north, and I've kept it without using it. You keep it."
Snow Empress closed the jade box and clutched it in her hand. The aura of Ice Marrow seeped from the cracks, enveloping her fingertips; the crisp coolness stopped her fingers from trembling. She looked up at him, her lips moved, but before she could speak, she heard Yin Wujou say another sentence:
"A day and a half, plus the time your own water-based spiritual energy can sustain you. I've calculated it. Once the funnel is formed, you can pour the traction force in, wait for the Ice Marrow to be swallowed, and then wait for the other two to be dragged out. You'll be able to stay at the array's core for almost two more days."
"And then?" Snow Empress asked.
Yin Wujou looked at her. In the morning light, the dark pink under his eyes seemed even more pronounced than before, but his eyes shone with an astonishing brightness, like light reflecting off a blade sharpened to an extremely thin edge. "Then, over these two and a half days, I'll attach a Separation Pattern to the funnel structure. During the array's operation, it will slowly peel away the living beings and array power at the eye position. The Ice Marrow you hold provides the same source power, preventing the peeling process from triggering a backlash from the array. After the peeling is complete, you'll rise from the array eye—"
" Separation Pattern." Snow Empress repeated the three words, her voice carrying a faint hint of surprise, or something else entirely. "You can draw them?"
Yin Wujou pulled the piece of parchment from the wooden table and laid it flat. He took out a new brush, dipped it in ink, and began to write in the blank space in the lower right corner of the parchment. His strokes were fast and steady, almost without pausing, outlining a completely new pattern on the paper—the pattern circled out from the outermost layer of the funnel structure, drawing an extremely gentle spiral. Each turn of the spiral became narrower and narrower, finally converging into a small dot almost identical to the previous circle.
"The principle behind the Separation Pattern is to peel the array power away from the eye position and let it circulate independently." After drawing it, he put down his pen and pointed to the spiral pattern, saying, "The difficulty lies in ensuring that the array diagram doesn't stop operating during the peeling process. Otherwise, if the traction force deep underground is broken, that thing can take the opportunity to crash upwards. Therefore, it needs the Ice Marrow —the power of the same origin—to continuously supply the eye position. When the array diagram can't sense the loss of living beings at the eye position, the Separation Pattern has time to slowly complete its cycle."
Snow Empress looked down at the spiral pattern. The ink wasn't completely dry, and it shimmered with a damp sheen in the morning light. Her gaze slowly traced each circle of the spiral before she looked up at Yin Wujou. The corners of her eyes curved slightly, a curve less pronounced than a smile, but more genuine than the one she'd made on the couch earlier. "When did you figure out this pattern?" she asked.
"While you were lying down," Yin Wujou said, "This matter kept running through my mind after I finished tracing the array patterns. The existing array principles don't have the structure of Separation Pattern; I deduced it by working backward from a technique of Thread Severing in Puppet Technique."
Snow Empress looked at him without speaking. She clutched the jade box in her hand, the cool aura of Ice Marrow seeping out from between her fingers and enveloping her palm. That coolness traveled along her meridians, easing the stuffy heat of the Demonic Flood Dragon's remnant power within her. She stood there for a while, then suddenly reached out and picked up the still-wet ink brush from the parchment, gently drawing a semi-circle next to the small dot at the spiral's end.
Yin Wujou looked down and saw that the semi-circle connected the end point of the spiral with the center of the funnel structure. He was stunned for a moment, then understood her meaning—in this way, after the Separation Pattern was completed, the array power could automatically flow back into the funnel structure to complete the cycle. After the eye position was empty, the array diagram could maintain its operation on its own without needing to fill it with anything.