490: Chapter 490 Confirmation

Su Ming could not help but extend a finger, pressing down lightly.

The stone surface was slightly cool.

When his fingertip touched it, he vaguely had the illusion of touching the texture of a living creature's skin.

"Interesting, isn't it?"

Lin Yu stood to the side, looking down at him. His tone finally returned to its usual manner, though the strange calmness in the depths of his eyes had not completely faded.

Su Ming gave a hum of acknowledgment, not rushing to infuse it with spiritual energy to test it.

He only sent a faint wisp of spiritual energy through his fingertip, gently touching the edge of those Array Patterns.

On the stone slab, those lines that were originally dull flashed brightly for a split second.

It was only for an instant.

Then, it returned to silence.

Inside the xuantian ring, Lin Yu watched Su Ming's approach—not taking risks, not rushing, and not seeking an immediate breakthrough—and suddenly, a very strange feeling arose in his heart.

This kid's methods, at least, were not entirely taught by him; they were things Su Ming had forged on his own.

This, in turn, made the feeling of "being verified" in Lin Yu's heart grow a little deeper.

Some walk fast, some walk slow; some look down from high places, some grope through the mud. Yet, in the end, what they see is ultimately the same thread.

Su Ming did not notice the change in Lin Yu's gaze.

After cleaning the stone slab again, he slowly stood up and walked a few more steps forward.

The forest was very quiet.

Except for the sound of his soles pressing against the fallen leaves, there was almost no other movement.

But not long after walking, his gaze was captivated by a tree on the side of the path.

It was an ancient tree.

The trunk was exaggeratedly thick; three or four adults probably could not wrap their arms around it. The bark was dark gray, its surface chapped, yet it did not show signs of decay; instead, it exuded a very steady vitality. The thick roots arched out of the ground like old Dragons lying on the soil, quiet, yet carrying weight.

What made Su Ming stop was not the size of the tree.

It was the Array Patterns on the bark.

Those patterns were like vines, coiling and climbing up the trunk. But after looking for a moment, one would discover that they were not vines, nor were they natural cracks.

They were Array Patterns.

And they were moving Array Patterns.

They were crawling very slowly on the bark's surface, as if alive, flowing bit by bit along a predetermined path. Every line was neither hurried nor impatient; it was as if the tree were breathing, and they were breathing along with it.

Su Ming stood before the tree, slightly holding his breath.

Shadow One on his shoulder also quieted down, tilting his head, his golden eyes staring fixedly at the bark.

Su Ming reached out his hand.

His fingertip was only an inch away from the bark.

The next instant, he finally pressed down lightly.

The moment he touched it, an indescribable sense of tranquility suddenly spread upward from his fingertip.

That feeling came very lightly.

It was not a surge of spiritual energy, nor was it a shock to his Divine Sense.

It was more like a drop of very cool water falling into a somewhat tense lake in his heart, not stirring up any waves, but simply smoothing out those fine, fragmented wrinkles layer by layer.

Su Ming originally still harbored some lingering annoyance over the White Crane destroying the fields, wariness regarding the unknown of the Secret Realm, and vigilance toward the strange stone path. But under this touch, those emotions seemed to be gently stroked by an invisible hand; they did not dissipate, but they sank down.

He did not lose his guard.

He just became inexplicably quiet.

With his fingertip pressed against the bark, he could clearly feel those slowly flowing Array Patterns. They were no longer just "looking like they were alive," but truly carrying a strange rhythm, slowly circulating between the bark, the wood, the sap, and the spiritual energy.

The longer Su Ming looked, the stranger he felt it was.

This was not the kind of Formation Plate he was familiar with.

It was not a method of breaking down runes, carving them stroke by stroke, and then activating them with Spirit Stones.

It was as if the tree itself had grown into an array.

The tree was the bone, the bark was the membrane, the sap was the flow of spiritual energy, and the tree rings were the layered vessel. The Array Patterns were not attached to it, but grew within it. Just as antlers are not wooden sticks stuck onto a deer's head, but are inherently a part of the deer.

"Good heavens..."

Lin Yu's voice was very soft, so soft it was almost a murmur.

He did not know when he had drifted to the front of the tree.

Just a moment ago, before the stone path, he had only been silent. But upon reaching this tree, even his silence seemed to have gained an extra layer of weight. His soul body hung quietly in mid-air, his gaze following the Array Patterns on the bark all the way up, until obscured by the layered canopy high above.

For a long time, he did not speak.

Su Ming tilted his head slightly.

"Master?"

"Don't make a sound."

Lin Yu did not turn his head back.

His "don't make a sound" was not the usual offhand remark meant to dismiss a talkative disciple, but rather as if he were truly afraid of startling something.

Hearing this, Su Ming did not make another sound, simply withdrawing his hand from the bark.

He stepped back half a pace and began to carefully examine the entire tree.

This tree was huge.

It was so big that standing before it, one would instinctively feel oneself shrink a size. The canopy blotted out the sky; even the sunlight that fell could only leak through the gaps in the branches and leaves in scattered rays, shining obliquely onto the trunk and onto those slowly moving Array Patterns.

As the light and shadows flickered, those patterns seemed to come alive even more clearly.

Shadow One jumped down from Su Ming's shoulder, hopping twice among the tree roots, seemingly having sensed that this place was different from elsewhere. It did not act like it did outside, wanting to pounce on anything strange; instead, it stayed very honestly on a section of gnarled old root, lifting its little head to look at the tree.

Lin Yu was still standing there.

But this time, he was not just looking.

He was recognizing.

He recognized the structure on the bark almost at a glance.

No deduction was needed.

Nor was comparison needed.

Because this structure was one he had pondered, tested, and repeatedly pieced together during countless lonely years, within fragmented memories, scattered ancient texts, and the long, silent existence of his soul body.

Five hundred years was too long.

It was long enough for many thoughts to wear thin, and for many things he once thought were flashes of inspiration to end up as just one phrase: "Perhaps I was overthinking it."

But the tree before him was telling him, "No."

It was not you overthinking.

It was not you keeping yourself warm in the dark.

Five hundred years ago, someone really had thought of this path, and had truly achieved this step.

Lin Yu's mind suddenly became terrifyingly quiet at this moment.

Looking at those patterns, only one very faint sentence floated up in his heart.

"So, I was not the only one who thought this way."

In this instant, he did not even analyze or break it down.

Because there was no need.

The veins, turns, negative space, buffers, and load-bearing structure on the bark—he understood the entire system. It was not because he was any smarter than others, but because this thing had already run through his heart too many times; it was just that, before, there was no one to respond.

Now, the response had come.

Right here on this tree.

Su Ming did not know what kind of waves had churned in Lin Yu's heart.

He only knew that this tree made him want to sit down.

This thought arose very abruptly.

In an unfamiliar Secret Realm, beside a strange stone path, under a tree that grew Array Patterns, a normal person's first reaction should be to observe more, memorize more, and be more guarded—preferably setting up two layers of warning arrays around, never sitting down to meditate casually.

Su Ming was, of course, also a normal person, and furthermore, the kind of normal person who was exceptionally protective of his own life.