Seven days after the Biluo Spring incident, beneath the surface of bustling activity, a palpable sense of unease permeated Qingming Mountain. The sect's Contribution Hall issued dozens of urgent tasks: reinforcing the protective arrays of the remaining spiritual vein nodes, exploring alternative small spiritual sources, inventorying and reducing the spirit stone rations of each peak and courtyard… The air was thick with whispers, like mycelium spreading in a damp jungle.
Li Wei's assigned task was to assist in maintaining the basic spirit-gathering array of the outer sect's "Hundred Herbs Garden." This gave him a legitimate reason to linger in an area where spiritual energy hadn't completely dissipated and where the state of plant growth directly reflected changes in spiritual pressure. Besides his tools, he also kept a newly created artifact close to his body.
Using a magnetic pointer salvaged from a pile of discarded magical artifacts, a finely diluted "star-patterned steel" filament that could still weakly guide spiritual energy, and an extremely thin crystal plate, he cobbled together a rudimentary device—a palm-sized disc with graduations and a rotating outer ring. At its center was the pointer, and the crystal plate was etched with extremely fine concentric circles and radiating lines. He called it the "Two-Element Spirit Measuring Instrument," its outer casing made from the bottom of an old, discarded wooden bowl from the dining hall.
On the surface, it was a crude tool used to assist in calibrating the orientation and angle of the spirit-gathering array. In reality, when Li Wei injected a wisp of his own weak and strangely perceptible chaotic spiritual energy into the star-patterned steel filament, the central magnetic pointer would deflect extremely slightly under the influence of the surrounding spiritual energy field. The markings on the crystal plate were secretly labeled by him as his own defined "units of spiritual pressure gradient" and "direction of field strength."
In a corner of the Hundred Herbs Garden, in the cultivation nursery of Jade Marrow Fungus. The once lush and verdant edge of the mushroom cap was now tinged with an ominous yellow. The outer disciple in charge of this area frowned, futilely increasing the output of the array plate in his hand.
Li Wei squatted by the garden, feigning to check the earth vein channel, while the spirit measuring instrument in his sleeve quietly activated.
A faint sensation came from his fingertips—the pointer was moving. Not randomly, but with his slow arm movements, tracing a clear deflection path on the engraving plate. He closed one eye, using the other to "observe" through the crystal plate. He didn't actually see the spiritual energy, but rather rapidly constructed a connection in his mind between the pointer's deflection angle, the distance he moved, and the degree of yellowing in different parts of the jade marrow mushroom.
Data, cold data, began to flood in. A 15-degree deflection to the east, the spiritual pressure reading was about 0.3 self-defined units lower than to the west; near the main root, the field strength direction showed a faint vortex-like disorder…
He took out a charcoal pencil and a small piece of hard bark (parchment was too precious), and quickly recorded it. Instead of words, it was dots, lines, arrows, and numbers. A rough "spiritual pressure distribution sketch" gradually took shape. Next to the sketch, he wrote several keywords: "Non-uniform attenuation, gradient distribution. Local vortices exist (source? sink?). Low correlation with soil moisture distribution, correlation with the direction of the old sesame root… to be calculated."
"Hey! You janitor! What are you daydreaming about? The spiritual channel here is blocked, come and clear it!" The shout of the supervising disciple interrupted his thoughts.
Li Wei quickly put away the bark and instruments, picked up the spiritual shovel beside him, and walked towards the blockage. When the shovel touched the accumulated spiritual slag at the bottom of the channel, he slightly lowered his wrist, deliberately letting a wisp of chaotic spiritual energy seep into the slag along the shovel handle. He didn't use any clearing techniques, simply letting that wisp of foreign spiritual energy "scan" through the slag.
In an instant, a fleeting illusion flashed: the internal structure of the clogged spiritual slag seemed to be outlined by an invisible light, revealing where it was dense, where it was loose, and even the differences in the "resistance coefficients" of different components of the spiritual slag for the passage of spiritual energy—all presented in a vague yet clearly identifiable way. Almost instinctively, he gently poked at the points of least resistance with the tip of his shovel.
"Plop—" With a soft sound, the accumulated spiritual slag loosened, and the dim stream of spiritual energy began to slowly ripple again.
The supervising disciple paused, looked at the unblocked spiritual channel, then at Li Wei's calm face, and finally just muttered, "Consider yourself lucky, it was a coincidence," before turning and leaving.
Li Wei looked down at his hand. Luck? No. It was the "structural diagram" and "resistance distribution" that appeared in that instant. His chaotic spiritual root's ability to "translate" certain phenomena into near-intuitive structural relationships seemed... to extend beyond the starry sky and macroscopic spiritual fields.
It was beginning to touch upon a more microscopic level. That night, as the servants' quarters resumed their snoring, Li Wei didn't immediately observe the starry sky. Using the dim starlight from the window, he spread several sheets of bark on the innermost side of his bed. On them were spiritual pressure data and sketches recorded over the past few days at different locations, as well as the updated coordinates and brightness of the gamma star from the previous night.
He bit his fingertip—having no cinnabar, he could only use his raw blood. Fine lines of blood traced patterns on the bark, connecting the different points. A larger "distribution map of abnormal spiritual pressure points," covering a localized area of Qingming Mountain, gradually emerged. On another sheet of bark, he attempted to draw a curve showing the brightness fluctuations of the gamma star and compare it to a timeline of changes in readings from several key spiritual pressure monitoring points.
As the two curves slowly drew closer under the pull of the blood lines, he held his breath.
The peak… was misaligned. But not entirely unrelated. About three hours after a specific brightness peak of the gamma star, the decay rate of a small spiritual spring on the southern slope of Qingming Mountain would experience a slight "accelerated slope." The spiritual fields on the northern slopes seemed to correspond to a periodic trough in the luminosity of the gamma star.
Correlated, but not causal? Or perhaps… there's a delay and spatial modulation in the transmission?
The idea of a much larger, more sophisticated monitoring network was growing wildly in his mind. He needed more points, more continuous data, more precise timing tools… and a safe place to calculate and deduce.
He looked at the coarse cloth bundle containing the bronze mirror and log hidden under the bed, his gaze deep.
The gears of knowledge, once they begin to turn, are difficult to stop. And the first faint sound of meshing had already echoed in a corner unseen by anyone.