"You glanced at it and then fixed it," he said.
"You drew the main skeleton, I just added the joints." Snow Empress put down her pen, the cool tone of her voice softening slightly to reveal a faint weariness. "I'm going to take a nap. You go through the structure again, making sure the force flows at all the turning points are correct. After I wake up, we'll go down into the cave to test it in person."
After she finished speaking, she turned and walked to the long couch against the east wall. She took off her outer robe, folded it neatly, placed it at the foot of the couch, and lay down fully clothed. Her movements were very light and slow, like a lamp that was about to burn out being carefully lifted and laid flat. Yin Wujou stood by the wooden table and watched her close her eyes. After a moment, her breathing became even, and the rise and fall of her chest became gentle and long.
Yin Wujou turned his gaze back to the parchment. The ink had mostly dried, and the array diagrams drawn in vermilion and the funnel structures drawn in ink spread out on the parchment, the dense lines weaving together in the morning light into a complex and dazzling net. He moved a chair and sat down in front of the wooden table, tracing each line on the parchment from its beginning to its end, stopping at turning points to calculate the flow of power on the old paper beside him.
The sky outside the window brightened and then gradually darkened. The water clock in the copper ball dripped several times. Daoist Yun had brought food once, and seeing the scene in the hall— the Snow Empress asleep on the couch, and Yin Wujou sitting motionless at the desk, calculating on the parchment—he said nothing, placed the food box inside the threshold, and turned to leave. Yin Wujou didn't touch the food box; all his attention was fixed on the patterns on the parchment, his pen tip filling the old paper with dense formulas and arrows pointing in the direction of the calculations.
As dusk crept through the window, he finished calculating the final turning point. He had verified every connection point between the funnel structure and the Separation Pattern on the parchment more than three times, and the direction of the force was as clear as a relief sculpture raised from the paper. He gathered the calculations on the old paper and piled them aside, spread the parchment out and looked at it again, then stood up and walked to the couch.
Snow Empress was still asleep. Her breathing was shallower than at noon, and the bluish-gray patch on the side of her neck had spread to the center of her collarbone, the color being half a shade darker than in the morning. The hand that was clutching the jade box rested on her chest, her knuckles loosening slightly, and the jade box slipped from her palm onto the couch, revealing the faint glow of the two ice-blue crystals inside.
Yin Wujou bent down, picked up the jade box, and gently placed it back beside her pillow. Then he squatted down in front of the bed and looked at her. Twilight streamed in through the window, casting a warm golden light on half of her face, while the other half remained in shadow. He watched her for a long time, until the twilight gradually darkened into night, until the person on the bed stirred slightly, her eyelashes fluttered, and she slowly opened her eyes.
The first thing Snow Empress saw when she opened her eyes was the silhouette of him squatting in front of the bed. She blinked, her gaze shifting from his face to the window; it was already completely dark.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"It's just past 7 PM." Yin Wujou stood up. "The paperwork is finished, all the twists and turns are working. Are you hungry—" He stopped mid-sentence when he saw the food box still sitting at the foot of the couch, untouched by him.
Following his gaze, Snow Empress glanced at the food box, then propped herself up on the couch. After sitting upright, she looked down at the bluish-gray patch in the center of her collarbone, her brow furrowing slightly before relaxing. "Let's go," she said. "Let's go down and try navigating the array while the fluctuations are least at night. If we find any patterns that get stuck while we're walking, we'll have time to fix them before dawn tomorrow."
Yin Wujou didn't say much. He carefully rolled up the parchment, stuffed it into a leather tube, and carried it on his shoulder. He then took out two spare luminous pearls and a small jar of cinnabar ink from the copper box and carried them with him. When Snow Empress stood up from the couch, her feet wobbled slightly, but he didn't reach out to help her—she only stood by the couch for a moment before regaining her balance, bent down to put her outer robe back on, and put the jade box into her bosom.
The two walked out of the Wujou Hall one after the other. The night wind blew through the courtyard, carrying the scent of late autumn grass and trees that were not yet withered. Daoist Yun, who was standing at the entrance of the side hall, saw them come out, opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end he just nodded.
The underground passage was quieter at night than during the day. The faint sounds of water that could be heard during the day vanished completely at night, and the entire passage seemed to be submerged in a thick layer of silence. Yin Wujou walked ahead, holding the luminous pearl, its eerie blue light casting flowing spots of light on the passage walls. Snow Empress followed half a step behind him, her pace slower than during the day, but each step was steady.
The cave remained unchanged. Amber-colored array light spread across the ground, and the patterns radiating outwards from the center of the circular pit emitted a warm glow in the darkness. Yin Wujou squatted down beside the pit, opened the leather tube, spread the paper on the stone slab, and weighed down the corners with two pieces of gravel. He turned to look at Snow Empress, who stood behind him, looking down at the patterns around the array, her gaze following the lines.
"The main pattern hasn't changed," she said, "It's the same as when it was activated that night. When you draw the funnel structure, the first interface should be connected to the end of this arc." She squatted down and touched the end of the outermost arc pattern of the array with her finger, her fingertip glowing warmly in the amber light.
Yin Wujou took out the jar of cinnabar ink and a fine brush from the leather tube. After dipping it in the ink, he made the first stroke at the end of the arc-shaped pattern. When the cinnabar touched the light of the array, it emitted a very faint buzzing sound, like a taut string being plucked. The cinnabar extended into the array along the path deduced on the leather paper. Wherever it passed, the amber light of the array was stained with a layer of dark red, and the two colors blended together as they slowly advanced towards the center.
Snow Empress squatted beside him, and as he drew the second turn, she reached out and stopped his pen. "It's off by half an inch here," she said, her voice soft but certain. "It's flat on the parchment, but the actual direction of the diagram here has an upward curve. Follow the curve, don't use the straight lines on the parchment."
Yin Wujou's brush tip gently turned along the arc of her finger, and sure enough, he touched a faint vein in the array's light. The cinnabar slid along the vein, more than twice as smooth as before. After he finished drawing this section, he glanced at her—she was squatting beside him, head down, staring at the array, her gaze moving inch by inch along the lines, seeing the direction of the power ahead a step ahead of him, pointing it out almost before he hesitated.
And so they continued, stroke by stroke, the vermilion ink spreading little by little within the array's patterns. The rudimentary funnel structure spread from the edge of the array toward the circular pit, each turn visible under the alternating gazes of the two. By the third circle, Yin Wujou's wrist was starting to ache, and the vermilion ink was almost gone. He changed to a fresh tube and continued, while Snow Empress stood beside him, comparing the structural diagram on the parchment with the actual direction he had drawn on the array.