The grassland field remained the same, but now there was a big mountain ahead of us.
From the looks of it, we would need to reach the top to complete the task.
I took a step forward to test it.
Nothing happened.
I took another step… then two more… five… eight…
As I was about to take my tenth step, I noticed something strange.
The Qi in the surroundings began to fluctuate slightly — it wasn't visible to the eye, but the air around me shifted in a very subtle way.
I stopped moving and started to focus. My senses spread out carefully, scanning the ground and air around me.
After a few moments, I realized the problem.
There was a level 1 explosion array hidden under a level 1 stealth array.
The explosion array would detonate once triggered, but the stealth array's job was to hide it — making it almost impossible to notice unless you were paying extreme attention.
The higher the array's level, the more powerful and complex it became.
If this had been a level 2 array instead of level 1, I wouldn't have even noticed it before stepping into the trap.
I sighed softly. "So it begins."
I was wondering before why we hadn't seen any arrays in the previous level, especially when this inheritance belonged to an array master.
It seems that the real lessons were starting now — from this level onward.
I crouched down and examined the faint energy lines in the soil. "Well," I muttered, "looks like our first task is to break this."
To break an array, you had to reverse engineer it — trace its construction backward until you understood its logic completely. Once that was done, it would collapse on its own.
But saying it was one thing. Doing it was something else entirely.
Reverse engineering an array required precision, patience, and deep understanding.
And the higher the level of the array, the harder it became.
To do it properly, a cultivator needed to understand their own path of array — the personal foundation of how they perceived and interacted with arrays themselves.
Each person's path was unique.
Some based theirs on natural things — like rivers, stars, or flowers. Others used concepts — life, death, time, or balance.
In the end, no matter what path one followed, every array shared two truths — a beginning and an end.
Understanding this was easy in theory, but in practice, it meant fully grasping why an array was created and why it ended.
Only by understanding both sides — the cause and effect — could you reverse engineer it.
If you could find the "beginning" and "end" of an array's process, it would unravel before you like a thread.
But if you couldn't understand your own path clearly, reaching that point was nearly impossible.
For me, my path of array was Creation and Destruction.
Everything in existence was created through a series of processes — and everything would be destroyed in the same way.
My role was to find and understand those processes.
However, my current understanding of my path was far less than I had imagined.
I had lived through many things, yet when I tried to comprehend creation and destruction itself, I realized I had barely scratched the surface.
If I had to measure it, I'd say I was only about 10% of the way toward reaching the next level.
That was a problem.
Still, I had to start somewhere.
I began channeling my Qi, tracing the faint formation lines buried under the soil. Each line pulsed gently as I tried to interpret the pattern.
Feng Xinyi, beside me, was already crouched near another location, working on a separate array.
"Be careful," I said without looking up. "This one hides a chain reaction. If you break the wrong node, it might trigger all of them."
She nodded slightly. "I know. I found a similar one here."
Her tone was calm and focused.
I tried asking her, "Did you find how many are linked together?"
"Five," she said. "They're spread in a circle. Whoever made them wanted to trap anyone walking in the center."
I thought for a moment. "Smart. It's simple but efficient."
We both fell silent again, focusing on our respective arrays.
I started analyzing the array's creation process, trying to retrace the Qi's original flow. Slowly, one connection after another became clear in my mind.
My understanding of the process wasn't complete — I could only see a single layer of it.
If my understanding were deeper, I might've seen everything — the one who made the array, their intent, how the Qi was shaped before it became a symbol, even its journey through the planet before being used in this formation.
But for now, my comprehension was limited.
I could only see one process, and nothing beyond it.
Still, that was enough.
If I could trace one complete process, I could destroy it.
And by following the same logic, I could also learn to see how it would end — essentially glimpsing both its past and future.
The more I understood, the closer I'd be to grasping the path of beginning and end, which was said to surpass all others.
Fortunately, this was an array I had already studied before, so I knew its general structure. That made reverse engineering faster.
But if someone created something truly unique, something that didn't follow any known formula, then it could take days or even weeks to break it.
While I was still working, Feng Xinyi suddenly stood up.
She had already finished dismantling her array.
I looked at her, slightly surprised. "You finished before me?"
She gave a small nod and replied, "Yours seems more complex."
That was one way to put it.
It also meant that her understanding of her own path was much deeper than mine — but she didn't say anything, and I didn't ask.
I simply continued working until the final symbol dissolved and the ground around us returned to normal.
Once the array broke, I could feel the flow of Qi stabilize again. The air was calmer.
"Done," I said, standing up.
She glanced at me briefly and then looked toward the mountain ahead. "There are going to be more."
"Yeah," I replied. "Probably a lot more."
We continued walking, each of us watching our steps carefully.
Along the way, we encountered more arrays — all level 1, but each one more complicated than the last.
Some used overlapping stealth layers.
Others were disguised as natural energy fluctuations.
A few even reacted to sound or motion instead of Qi.
Despite the difficulty, it was good practice.
Every time I dismantled one, I learned a little more about the process of creation — small details that added up, expanding my understanding piece by piece.
After a while, I stopped counting how many arrays we'd found. My focus shifted completely to learning, observing, and remembering every variation I encountered.
Time passed faster than expected.
By the time we finally took a short break, it had been more than twenty hours since we arrived on the second level.
We had climbed only about one-third of the way up the mountain.
The higher we went, the thicker the Qi became — dense enough to make breathing slightly heavier.
As I looked back down the slope, I noticed several bright flashes in the distance.
A new group had arrived at the base of the mountain.
"So they finally caught up," I muttered.
Feng Xinyi followed my gaze. "Then we better move faster."
I nodded. "Let's keep going. We can rest after the next section."