118: Chapter 118 Shattered Star Maze, Breaking Through the Encirclement with Wisdom

The sampan had been stopped outside the magnetic reef area for a full half-day.

They couldn't get in. The reefs outside Broken Star Reef were covered year-round by a layer of pale grey magnetic mist. The mist wasn't thick—you could see the general outline of the reefs—but as soon as the sampan approached within three zhang, the iron nails on the bottom of the boat and the sword scabbards of the rowers would emit a faint humming sound simultaneously. Magnetic force seeped out from inside the reefs, forming an invisible area of turbulence underwater. When the oars entered the water, they were clearly straight, but halfway through the stroke, the blades were deflected by the current.

Lu Hu leaned out from the stern and poked the water surface with the tip of his oar—the oar tip hadn't even entered the water two chi before the wood grain on the shaft began to tremble gently. He pulled the oar back and turned to look at Lu Changyuan at the bow.

"Young Lord—it's even harder to navigate underwater than above. Where the reefs are dense, the oars can't exert any force at all."

Lu Changyuan stood at the bow. He held a piece of array-breaking talisman paper that Su Qingli had drawn overnight—the Array Pattern on the paper glowed with a faint blue light in the mist. The talisman paper did not react violently—this meant the magnetic distribution in this magnetic reef area was dynamic; it had a pattern and was not a dead array. He tucked the talisman paper back into his sleeve.

"Turn back. Circle the outer edge of the reef area. Let's get a clear look at the full layout of this reef area before choosing an entrance."

Lu Hu acknowledged the order. The two veteran cavalrymen lifted their oars out of the water—when the blades left the water, they were covered in a layer of extremely fine grey powder. The powder dispersed in the air and smelled like burnt iron sand.

The sampan slowly circled the outer edge of the reef area. Deep within the magnetic mist, the main reef of Broken Star Reef revealed only a grey-black spire—the spire was barren, and the surface of the reef was covered with honeycomb-like pits. Embedded in each pit was a small, blackened fragment of magnetite. Sunlight shone on the fragments without reflecting—it was as if the light was swallowed by the magnetite.

When they reached the southeast side, Lu Changyuan saw a narrow crack.

The broken edges of the reef on both sides of the gap were too neat to have been eroded by seawater—it looked as if something had sliced it open with a single blade. The gap was less than two zhang wide, just enough for a small sampan to squeeze through sideways. Carved on the reef at the entrance of the gap was a string of symbols—the style of an old-fashioned label, with horizontal and vertical strokes, and right angles at every turn.

Lu Changyuan recognized four of the symbols.

It was the warehouse mark for the Outer Ring Seventh Warehouse of the Zhenhai Fortress in the East Sea—he had seen the exact same writing on the cover of Zhou Laogen's private ledger. Warehouse Chief Cui had carved his old service number on the reef.

"Enter from here."

The sampan squeezed into the narrow gap sideways. The two veteran cavalrymen retracted their long oars—the waterway inside the gap was too narrow for the oars to spread out. Lu Hu fished out two short oars from the cabin, one for each, and slowly pushed against the reef walls to move inward.

The inside of the narrow gap was much darker than the outside. The magnetic mist was thicker here, and for every zhang the sampan pushed forward, the light from the entrance behind them dimmed a little more. By the time they reached the tenth zhang, Lu Changyuan brushed the side of the boat—the water droplets on the gunwale were floating upward. The droplets were held in mid-air by the magnetic force seeping out from both sides of the reef walls, like a string of transparent beads suspended in the darkness, slowly rolling toward the top of the reef walls.

The direction of the magnetic force was changing. The waterway coming in was flat—but the magnetic flow under the water was lifting upward.

The sampan pushed forward for about the time it takes to burn an incense stick. Suddenly, the narrow gap made a right-angle turn ahead. After turning, the waterway widened—enough for two sampans to be placed side by side. A thin layer of grey mist floated on the water, and six stone pillars stood in the mist.

Each pillar was about a person's height, the shafts rough, as if chiseled directly from the reef. The surfaces were carved with symbols—the same style as the old-fashioned labels at the entrance. Each pillar top was embedded with a piece of magnetite the size of a fist, and the cold light of the magnetite illuminated the symbols on the pillar surface clearly.

Lu Hu laid the short oars across his knees and stared at the six pillars for a long time.

"Young Lord—I don't recognize a single one of the characters on these pillars."

Lu Changyuan stood up from the sampan. He took out Su Qingli's array-breaking talisman paper—the blue light on the paper was a degree brighter here than outside, but it remained stable. There was no spiritual energy fluctuation from a Killing Array, no sealing aura from a Trapping Array. There was not a shred of spiritual energy flowing within the Array Patterns on these six pillars—their driving method was completely different from traditional array eyes; they relied on the logic of the arrangement of the symbols carved on the pillar surfaces themselves.

He had Lu Hu push the sampan to the nearest pillar. The symbols on the pillar surface were arranged in three rows—each row had four groups, separated by horizontal lines.

The first group in the first row: an upward arrow, with three small circles strung on the tail of the arrow, pointing to a square box. Above the arrow was marked a number—'Twelve.'

Lu Changyuan stared at this combination of symbols for a good while.

Upward arrow—warehousing. Three small circles—three batches. Square box—warehouse. Twelve—twelve days.

Three batches of goods, entering the warehouse every twelve days.

He looked to the side. The second group in the first row: a downward arrow, with two small circles strung on the tail of the arrow, with a mark below the arrow—'Eight.'

Out of the warehouse. Two batches. Eight days.

The third and fourth groups used a different kind of symbol—a row of short horizontal lines, with different numbers marked above each line. The intervals between the numbers were uneven—some were three spaces apart, some were five.

Loss. The loss rate for different materials was different—each line represented different goods.

Lu Changyuan examined all six pillars. Each pillar was carved with a deduction of material turnover—inbound cycles, outbound cycles, loss rates, and transfer intervals. But the arrangement of numbers and arrows on each pillar was different.

Six pillars, six different sets of material import and export plans.

He suddenly understood how this array worked.

There were twelve square boxes on the pillar surface—representing twelve storage locations. Next to each box, arrows marked the inbound and outbound quantities, and horizontal lines marked the loss rate. But the numbers in the boxes were empty—twelve empty square boxes. Carved on the magnetite at the bottom of the pillar was a line of text: 'Deduce the inbound and outbound, find the equilibrium point.'

The meaning of this line was: given the inbound and outbound quantities for each storage location, deduce the current inventory for each location—and write it into the boxes. Each of the six pillars had an 'imbalance' buried within it—the inbound and outbound at a certain storage location did not match. Find all the imbalances in the six pillars, and the array would be solved.

Warehouse Chief Cui had left a self-contradictory arrow on every single pillar—the inbound cycle for a certain location was marked as twelve days, and the outbound cycle was marked as eight days, but on another pillar, the inbound quantity for this location had been artificially reduced by ten percent. If you didn't compare the numbers on all six pillars and only stared at one—you would never find that reduced number.

Lu Hu watched Lu Changyuan squat in front of the pillar, gesturing in the air with his fingers for a long time, and couldn't help but speak.

"Young Lord—what did you see?"

"He is using the brain of a warehouse manager to play chess against someone trying to break the array." Lu Changyuan pointed his finger at the seventh storage location on the second pillar—the inbound quantity here was one small circle less than the inbound quantity of the same location on the first pillar. "The number at this place has been tampered with—it's marked lower. But the total inbound quantity on each pillar is the same. Where did the missing goods go?"

He stood up and walked to the fourth pillar. His finger slid down from the inbound arrow of the fourth pillar—sliding to a storage location at the very bottom. There was an extra, extremely thin lateral arrow here, pointing to a tiny square box outside the main box.

"It was transferred here—not in the main warehouse, but in a small warehouse outside."

Lu Hu's eyebrows twisted into a knot.

"He secretly moved the goods to an outside warehouse?"

"He is deducing a problem: if someone steals goods from a certain location, the amount stolen each time isn't large—but if they've been stealing for several years—where would the material balance of the entire military warehouse show a loophole first." Lu Changyuan returned to the sampan and took a piece of charcoal and a sheet of draft paper from his Storage Pouch. "The key to the deduction is not in the pillars themselves—it's in whether the numbers between the six pillars can match up."

He drew twelve empty square boxes on the draft paper—representing the twelve storage locations. Then, starting from the first pillar, he copied the inbound arrows, outbound arrows, and loss lines marked on each pillar next to the corresponding boxes. After copying each pillar, he checked it—to see if there were any discrepancies in the numbers for the same storage location across different pillars.

When he copied the third pillar, the first imbalance point appeared. The fifth storage location—the first pillar had twelve items inbound, the second pillar only had ten items inbound for the same location, and the third pillar had nine items inbound. It was short a little bit every time it was handled.

Lu Changyuan wrote on the blank space above the draft paper: 'Fifth storage location—handled three times, missing four items in total. Destination: small warehouse outside the fourth pillar.'

When he copied the fifth pillar, the second imbalance point also appeared. The outbound number for the eleventh storage location was one more than the inbound number—only seven items were inbound, yet eight items were recorded as outbound. Where did that extra one come from—at the bottom of the sixth pillar was an inconspicuous transfer arrow, transferring goods from the third storage location to under the eleventh storage location.

"One item was transferred from the third warehouse to the eleventh warehouse—but the inbound record didn't note it. The inbound records were short, and the outbound records were too high. The difference in the middle was offset by someone using the transfer arrow."

Lu Hu understood the last sentence. He sat at the stern, the short oar resting on his knees, his eyes staring straight at the arrows and boxes on the pillar.

"Young Lord—the things you're talking about, it sounds just like auditing accounts."

"This array—it's just making you audit its accounts. Six pillars, six ledgers. Each ledger looks balanced when viewed individually—but when you compare all six together, the places that don't match are the array eyes."

Lu Changyuan finished copying the sixth pillar. All twelve storage locations were verified—three imbalances.

He put the charcoal back into his sleeve, walked to the first pillar, and filled in the correct inbound number in the empty box for the third storage location. The moment the number was filled in, the magnetite at the top of the pillar went out.

Then the second pillar—fill in the fifth storage location. The third pillar—fill in the eighth storage location.

By the time he reached the fifth pillar, only the last unbalanced box remained—the eleventh storage location. After Lu Changyuan corrected the number on the transfer arrow on the sixth pillar, he returned to the fifth pillar and filled in the correct outbound number in the empty box for the eleventh storage location.

The magnetite on the sixth pillar was the last to go out.

All six pillars went dark simultaneously. The layer of grey mist on the water began to retreat to both sides—a waterway lit up between the two stone pillars, and the grey mist retracted along the water surface to the sides of the waterway, being swept into the bottom of the water by an invisible suction force. The bottom of the waterway was paved with gravel, and a sliver of spiritual light was embedded in the surface of the gravel—the spiritual light extended all the way from the end of the narrow gap and stopped in front of the sampan.

A path. The magnetic mist retreated, revealing a gravel-paved waterway under the reefs, just wide enough for the sampan to pass.

Lu Hu gripped the short oar tightly.

"Young Lord—what you were scribbling on the paper just now, what exactly does that count as?"

Lu Changyuan folded the draft paper and tucked it into his bosom.

"It's not a hidden weapon—it's a ledger. He carved the worst ledger he had ever managed in his seventeen years as a warehouse chief onto these six pillars. Find the holes in this bad ledger, and the array opens."

Lu Hu was stunned for a breath—and then he laughed. It was the laugh of someone who had 'fought hard battles his whole life, only to find out in the end that his Young Lord had broken a ten-year-guarded array with a ledger.'

The sampan slowly pushed forward along the gravel waterway. The magnetic mist on both sides retreated to more than three zhang away, and the gravel at the bottom of the water shimmered with a pale white light in the spiritual radiance. The waterway made two turns ahead—at the end, at the base of the main reef of Broken Star Reef, a stone house was embedded in the reef wall. A row of old-fashioned warehouse label symbols was also carved on the lintel of the stone house—Outer Ring Seventh Warehouse.

The door was open. An old man sat on the threshold.

The old man raised his head when the sampan was less than five zhang from the shore—one eye looked at Lu Changyuan on the sampan, while the position of the other eye was just a dried-up old scar. The scar stretched from the brow bone to the cheekbone, with ragged edges—a burn mark left by some kind of Restriction backlash.

He held a pottery cup in his hand. The water in the cup had already gone cold, and there wasn't a ripple on the surface—his hand did not tremble.

"Six pillars—it took you less than one shichen." The old man's voice was hoarse, like a throat that had been dry for a long time taking in water for the first time, "I've been waiting on this reef for ten years. Waiting for the first person who could walk through my set of inbound and outbound deductions."

Lu Changyuan stood straight at the bow of the boat.

"Warehouse Chief Cui—I've brought Zhou Laogen's private ledger. I've also brought Governor Xue Zhen's residual files of approval. How much longer are you going to sit on the threshold?"

The old man lowered his head to look at the pottery cup in his hand. He lowered the cup—the water surface moved slightly, his hand was very steady.

"Come in and talk."

He placed the pottery cup on the threshold. The sound of the bottom of the pottery cup hitting the stone surface—on the Broken Star Reef at dawn, was as light as a period.