450: Chapter 460 Rune Enlightenment

Su Ming rubbed his numbing wrists, but his eyes showed no sign of discouragement; instead, they shone with the light of excitement.

Elder Qingquan's words echoed in his ears: "You can try to comprehend the Formations; it will be beneficial for your current stage."

Since he couldn't enter through the door, he would strip the knowledge right off of it!

Su Ming stopped trying to test the stone door. Instead, he walked to a flat, massive rock about thirty feet away, flicked his long robe, and sat down cross-legged.

He fully released his Divine Sense, no longer paying attention to the Ancient Seal Script characters that served as a facade. Instead, he looked through the characters to observe the trajectories and nodes of the dark-gold spiritual energy moving inside the stone door.

A quarter of an hour later.

A faint smile played on the corners of Su Ming's mouth.

Su Ming stared intently at the stone door. "On the surface, these Ancient Seal Scripts are chaotic and disorganized. But if you strip them away and look only at the skeleton of spiritual energy flow... this is an extremely ancient composite Formation, the 'Nine-Lock Interlocking Formation'."

This was a terrifying structure that nested nine independent lock-type Formations together through extremely subtle nodes. A single move would affect the whole; if one were to forcibly break one part, the other eight Formations would reflect the destructive force back manifold.

"Although I can't get in, the structure of this Formation itself is essentially the most perfect textbook."

Without hesitation, Su Ming untied his Storage Pouch. With a flick of his wrist, two Jade Slips landed in his palm.

These were two core texts from the long list of books gifted by his Revered Master, Master Xuan Heng—'analysis of ancient runes' and 'three thousand questions on the dao of formations'.

Su Ming pressed the Jade Slips to his forehead, and a vast stream of information quickly unfolded within his Sea of Consciousness.

He looked up, comparing the obscure Formation theories in the Jade Slips with the flowing Formation patterns on the massive stone door before him.

...

In the world of cultivation, time has no meaning; one sitting can last until autumn.

This rift deep within the Lantai Secret Garden seemed completely isolated from the world. Only the occasional falling of withered leaves bore witness to the passage of time.

Su Ming sat cross-legged on the giant rock for five whole days without moving an inch.

Aside from his daily intake of two fasting pills and a small leaf of 'silver-spotted heart-clearing orchid' to restore his Divine Sense, his entire mind was fully immersed in the massive 'Nine-Lock Interlocking Formation' before him.

His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was somewhat pale from the prolonged excessive consumption of Divine Sense, but the light burning in those eyes was brighter and more crazed than ever before.

In his current knowledge system of the Dao of Formations, he had fully mastered approximately two hundred basic runes.

However, the vast majority of these two hundred runes were focused on categories such as 'Gather', 'Defend', 'Solidify', 'Flow', and 'Conceal'. The characteristics of these runes were gentle and supportive, much like the Ruoshui Art he cultivated, emphasizing the inclusion of all things and the way water benefits everything without conflict.

They could be used for defense, concealment, or to channel ley lines, but they lacked a certain absolute 'control'.

The core runes contained within this great stone door Formation left behind by the Great Yan Dynasty were all high-level control runes: 'Lock', 'Seal', 'Restrict', and 'Suppress'.

They were two completely opposite extremes.

On the first day, Su Ming tried to dismantle these control runes using the 'channeling' concepts he was familiar with, but he failed miserably. Those dark-gold nodes containing the 'Suppress' mantra were like stones in a latrine—hard and stubborn—refusing to accept any external spiritual energy probes and simply repelling them arrogantly.

On the second day, Su Ming fell into a deep state of confusion.

He flipped through 'analysis of ancient runes' in his Sea of Consciousness. The book stated: 'Suppression is to use weight to control lightness, to use the solid to press the void, and to sever the flow between internal and external.'

A bolt of lightning seemed to flash through Su Ming's mind.

"Water cannot be compressed, but when pressure reaches the extreme..."

"When water pressure reaches the extreme, it can not only penetrate steel plates but also form the most absolute blockade! A 'Lock' doesn't necessarily need iron chains; an extremely dense water barrier is also a lock! A 'Seal' doesn't necessarily need earth; a vacuum water belt that isolates the exchange of internal and external Spiritual Qi is also a seal!"

Su Ming closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the cold air in the rift.

The third day.

Su Ming stopped trying to imitate the overbearing trajectory of the dark-gold spiritual energy on the stone door.

He raised his right hand, pressing his index and middle fingers together, and a drop of deep-blue liquid spiritual energy seeped from his fingertip.

This time, he didn't use spiritual energy to forcibly carve the high-level rune representing 'Lock'. Instead, he used his intent to compress and stretch this drop of water-attribute spiritual energy to its limit, turning it into a water line so thin it was barely perceptible yet taut to the extreme.

He used the water line as ink and the Void Realm as his talisman paper.

His fingertip moved extremely slowly through the air.

As each stroke was drawn, the Spiritual Qi in the surrounding space seemed to be forcibly extracted by an invisible force, forming a tiny vacuum zone of Spiritual Qi.

*Sizzle—*

The moment the final stroke was completed, a deep-blue 'Lock' character, only the size of a fingernail, floated quietly in front of Su Ming.

It didn't have the overbearing and flamboyant dark-gold light of the runes on the stone door; it was quiet and restrained. However, the extreme tension contained within it caused a slight ripple to appear in the surrounding space.

Success!

Su Ming did not stop. He was like an extremely dry sponge suddenly thrown into a vast ocean of knowledge. He cross-referenced the once-obscure theories in 'three thousand questions on the dao of formations' with the living Formation structure on the stone door before him.

On the fourth day, he deciphered eight derivative variations of the 'Seal' character.

On the fifth day, he fully understood the essential difference between 'Restrict' and 'Suppress' regarding Law repulsion.

The ink marks that were once merely memorized by rote in his mind now all transformed into vital spiritual energy trajectories, deeply imprinted into his muscle memory and the depths of his Divine Sense.

When the sunset of the fifth day cast the last bit of orange-red afterglow into the rift...

The number of basic and high-level runes Su Ming had fully mastered exploded from the initial two hundred and twenty-something to three hundred and twelve!

He had added nearly a hundred profound high-level runes!

This kind of leap, if placed in the Formation Peak of the Cloud Hidden Sect, would be enough to make those old Array Masters who had studied hard for over a decade spit blood in envy.

Su Ming slowly opened his eyes.

The bloodshot veins in his eyes had completely receded, replaced by a clarity and depth that came from seeing through the essence of things.

He raised his hand and made a grasping motion in the air.

No spiritual energy fluctuations leaked out, but three inches from his palm, a sphere of absolute stillness appeared in the air. Even if a speck of dust drifted into it, it would be instantly 'suppressed', suspended in mid-air, unable to move an inch.

True understanding, rather than rigid carving.

Su Ming stood up and let out a long breath of turbid air. He brushed the dust off his gray robe and put the two Jade Slips back into his Storage Pouch.

He looked up once more at the stone door that concealed countless treasures of the former dynasty.

"Thank you."

Su Ming said silently in his heart.

Then, he turned around decisively.

He didn't spare another glance at the stone door that held such immense temptation.

He walked with steady steps back the way he came, out of the deep rift. His silhouette disappeared into the twilight, leaving only the thousand-year-old stone door standing quietly in the cold wind.