287: Repair the land beneath your feet

The door to the Formation Core Deacon Office slowly closed behind him with a dull thud, completely cutting off the warmth and tea fragrance of the room.

Su Ming stood under the corridor as the unique cold wind of the Northern Territory, mixed with snow grains, lashed against his face.

The cold sweat he had broken out in earlier inside the room was now blown by the wind, instantly sticking to his back, bone-chillingly cold.

He looked down at his hand.

In his palm, that dark-gold insect armor fragment was still there.

Just now, Wu Miao had no intention of taking it away at all; he even felt that sparing it a second glance was a waste of time.

Su Ming's fingers slowly tightened, and the sharp serrated edges of the fragment pierced the skin of his palm, oozing a trace of bright red blood, but he seemed unable to feel the pain.

“Master.”

Within his Sea of Consciousness, Lin Yu's figure emerged. He sat cross-legged, his face devoid of its usual playfulness, merely looking at the wind and snow outside and sighing softly.

“This is reality, disciple.”

Lin Yu's voice was somewhat ethereal. “At their level, they look at the big picture, the century-long plan, the allocation of resources. As for the life and death of these ‘ants’ beneath their feet, as long as it doesn't affect the overall situation, it's just a negligible number of losses.”

“Low status means one's words carry no weight; it has been thus since ancient times.”

Su Ming loosened his hand, letting the insect armor fragment fall into the accumulated snow.

He looked up at the towering Formation Tower in the distance.

The light at the top of the Formation Tower remained brilliant, enveloping the entire Iron Wall Pass under a pale gold shield. Yet, in the shadows where that light could not reach, countless low-level Cultivators like Zhao Tieji and Chen Chuan were fighting bloody battles to protect this light.

They believed this pass was impregnable.

They believed the high-level officials behind them were strategizing.

But they didn't know that beneath this seemingly grand fortress, a greedy river was silently hollowing out the ground they stood on.

“A century-long plan...” A bitter curve formed at the corner of Su Ming's mouth. “But people like us don't even know if we can survive tonight.”

A deep sense of powerlessness welled up in his heart.

He thought that with his skills and those advanced data, he could change something.

But reality was like a cold wall, leaving him battered and bruised.

Before this massive war machine, he, Su Ming, was still just a screw that could be replaced at any time.

“Go back.”

Lin Yu patted Su Ming's shoulder. Although it was a touch on the level of the Divine Soul, it allowed Su Ming to feel a trace of long-lost warmth. “Since they don't believe it, then we have to find a way ourselves. If the sky falls, the tall ones will prop it up, but if the ground sinks, we have to find ourselves a sturdy board first.”

Su Ming took a deep breath, slowly exhaling the turbid air stagnating in his chest.

His gaze gradually shifted from confusion to clarity, finally settling into an almost ruthless calm.

“Master is right.”

Su Ming tightened his leather armor and stepped into the wind and snow. “My duty is to repair Formations. Since they won't repair the foundation, I'll repair the piece under my own feet.”

...By the time he returned to the Section C camp, the sky was near dusk.

Outside the barracks of the Third Squad, Zhao Tieji was leading several brothers in wiping down their weapons.

The half-person-high giant formation pincers were wiped bright by him, the few new nicks on them looking startling.

Seeing Su Ming return, Zhao Tieji grinned, revealing a row of white teeth. The scar running across his face twisted with the smile, appearing somewhat ferocious yet inexplicably friendly.

“Brother Su, you're back?”

Zhao Tieji thudded the formation pincers onto the ground with a muffled “clang.” “What did the Deacon Office say? Is it because we repaired the Formation so well this time that the higher-ups are going to give us a reward?”

Several veterans nearby also crowded around, hope flickering in their eyes.

“Will they give out some Spirit Stones? Even a few more bottles of rejuvenation pills would do; Old Liu's leg injury has been dragging on for half a month.”

“If they could give a slip from the Internal Affairs Hall so I can exchange for a new sword, that would be great. This piece of scrap iron is almost chipped.”

Looking at these familiar faces, the words at the tip of Su Ming's tongue were swallowed back down.

Tell them there's an insect tide underground?

Tell them the higher-ups don't care at all?

Aside from causing panic and distracting them into losing their lives during battle, it would be meaningless.

Su Ming forced a smile onto his face—the standard professional fake smile he had practiced in the Repair Hall.

“Deacon Wu praised us for doing a good job.” Su Ming patted the Storage Pouch at his waist. “Although he didn't give Spirit Stones directly, he approved a batch of Formation Materials. With these Materials, I'm confident I can increase the strength of the Formations in our defense zone by another twenty percent.”

“Great!” Zhao Tieji slapped Su Ming's shoulder so hard that Su Ming almost stumbled. “I knew you could do it! Following Brother Su, our lives are as good as half-secured!”

The crowd let out a cheer and dispersed to their tasks.

Su Ming watched Zhao Tieji's broad back, his eyes flickering slightly.

“Master, help me deduce something.”

As Su Ming walked toward his Stone House No. 7 in Section C, he muttered in his mind, “If I want to ‘reinforce’ the secondary base under Section C without alerting the Formation Core monitoring, how many Materials do I need? What techniques are required?”

Lin Yu's voice immediately rang out, tinged with excitement: “That's the spirit! That's my good disciple. As long as your thinking doesn't falter, there are always more solutions than problems.”

“Since that Wu Miao said your duty is to repair Formations, then let's ‘repair’ them well.”

“Conventional reinforcement definitely won't work; the commotion would be too big, and there aren't enough Materials,” Lin Yu replied quickly. “We can use a ‘honeycomb structure’.”

“Beneath the foundation, use those discarded Formation Plate fragments to construct an inverted ‘stress distribution net.’ As long as those insects don't swallow the entire foundation in one go, this net can disperse the local collapse pressure to the surrounding rock layers.”

Su Ming pushed open the door of the stone house and backhandedly applied a Restriction.

He poured a large pile of damaged Formation Plates, broken dharma swords, and various messy Materials he had previously scavenged from the black market out of his Storage Pouch.

Under the dim light of the crystal lamp, the youth's shadow was cast long.

He picked up a spirit pen and drew a heavy circle on the underground structural map of Section C.

“Not just reinforcement.”

Su Ming's pen tip moved across the map, outlining obscure spiritual power circuits. “I also want to embed ‘Vibration Induction Patterns’ at these nodes.”

“Oh?” Lin Yu raised an eyebrow. “What are you planning?”

“Since the Rock Marrow Demon Earthworms like to eat rock layers rich in Spiritual Qi, I'll add some extra ‘flavoring’ for them.”

A flash of ruthlessness crossed Su Ming's eyes. “I'll mix spirit-corroding sand and a small amount of thunder fire sand into these scraps. If they dare to bite here, I'll let them taste what it's like to have their teeth shattered.”

This was an extremely dangerous operation.

Secretly planting aggressive hidden mines under the border defense Formation was a serious crime of damaging the Formation base if discovered, ranging from having one's cultivation base abolished to being killed on the spot.

But Su Ming could no longer care about that.

He picked up a piece of broken star-patterned steel, and a drop of deep blue Water Spiritual Energy condensed at his fingertip.

The Ruoshui Art operated, and the spiritual power, like silk, silently seeped into the hard steel.

Water is the softest.

But under this extreme cold and high pressure, water can also turn into the hardest ice and the sharpest blade.

“Deacon Wu is right; it will take a long time for those insects to eat their way up.”

Su Ming murmured softly, the star-patterned steel in his hand slowly changing shape under the erosion of spiritual power, turning into steel needles with barbs.

“But if they really do come, I hope this floor of mine will be even tougher than his skin.”

That night, the light in Stone House No. 7 in Section C stayed on until dawn.

And three thousand fathoms deep underground, that dark-gold “river” was emitting bursts of tooth-grating grinding sounds, like a pack of hungry beasts sharpening their fangs in the darkness, approaching the bright land filled with tempting Spiritual Qi inch by inch.