494: Chapter 494 Stay

Su Ming suddenly understood.

This forest was not static. Spiritual energy was constantly flowing, but it moved so lightly and slowly that human senses could not detect it at all. Yet, the leaves had noticed.

Su Ming picked up another leaf and held it at different heights, feeling for any slight push against his fingertips—there was nothing. The flow of spiritual energy was so subtle that even a Foundation Establishment Cultivator's physical senses could not capture it, yet it truly existed.

He began to walk, dropping leaves as he went. Every few steps, he would release one, tracking its drifting trajectory with his eyes and silently noting the direction. Leaf after leaf, step after step.

After an unknown amount of time, Su Ming came to a sudden halt.

"Master. The spiritual energy is moving forward." His voice was low and fast. He turned and released another leaf. "No—not just forward. It's turning. Like water, it's turning along the path. The spiritual energy on the left side of the path is stronger than on the right; there's a main direction, but it isn't straight—it winds. It winds around every large tree and every intact stone slab, circling past and then coming back, forming a kind of..."

He trailed off.

Lin Yu's voice came from his Sea of Consciousness, carrying a faint trace of a smile. "Breathing. What you're talking about is called breathing. This path is breathing. Spiritual energy flows in, flows out, circles around, and then flows back."

Su Ming looked down at the stone path beneath his feet, suddenly feeling that something between him and this path had changed. Before, he had seen it as a puzzle, an object to be wary of. But now, he felt like he was looking at a living thing. It was breathing, it had a pulse, and it had wounds that had once hurt.

Shadow had flown back at some point and landed on his shoulder, a leaf held in its beak. Su Ming reached out to take it but did not let go, simply pinching it between his fingers as he looked up at the path ahead, still hidden in the fog.

Lin Yu quietly watched Su Ming's profile. This brat had realized it in less than three days. Back then, when he had read the sentence 'the flow of spiritual energy can be observed through objects' in a fragmented ancient text, it had taken him three full months to truly understand it. He had reconstructed it through sheer deduction, while Su Ming had walked it out with his own feet. Different paths, same destination.

Su Ming stood for a moment longer before gently setting the leaf down and stepping forward again. This time, his walking posture had changed once more. He began to look up—at the direction the fallen leaves trembled on the branches, at the arc of the fog flowing through the forest, and at the angle the beams of light refracted after passing through the canopy. The path began to reveal its breathing to him.

After walking for an unknown amount of time, the fog ahead thickened even more. Su Ming no longer measured time by 'how far he had walked'; he only knew that his breathing was slower than before, and the circulation of the Ruoshui Art within his body was much more fluid than when he first entered the Secret Realm.

Until he saw the second tree with Array Patterns.

It was much larger than the first. Its trunk was so thick that five or six people could barely encircle it, and the Array Patterns on its bark were incredibly dense. The patterns on the first tree each went their own way, distinct from one another; however, the patterns on this tree were converging—three or four merging into one, spiraling, entangling, and pushing against each other for a stretch before branching out again. Those points of convergence were moving extremely slowly, as if something were squirming and adjusting beneath the bark.

Su Ming sat down in front of the tree. This time, he did not check his surroundings first, nor did he set up any sensing Formations. He simply felt that, having reached this point, he should sit for a while.

Shadow hopped down from his shoulder, scurrying through the gaps between the tree roots until it grew tired and jumped onto his lap to curl into a ball. Time flowed by like this. The fog came and went, then came again. The light slowly moved from one side of the canopy to the other, then back again.

Lin Yu hovered in mid-air, his gaze fixed on the densely packed Array Patterns as if he were reading an ancient scroll written on bark.

"The Array Patterns on this tree are a level deeper than the first one."

Su Ming snapped out of his semi-conscious state. "What do you mean?"

"The Array Patterns on the first tree were form. Every line had a clear beginning and end, with a traceable path. This one is different. These lines are no longer just paths; they are expressing." Lin Yu's Soul Power condensed into a thin thread of light, pointing to a spot on the right side of the trunk where three patterns were about to converge. Su Ming followed his gaze—the three patterns approached at different speeds, some pausing and some slowing; one of them seemed to hesitate, its speed dropping, while the other two gently pressed against it as if nudging it, or perhaps waiting for it. Eventually, they merged into one, circled in a tiny loop, and then separated, each turning toward a new direction.

As Su Ming stared at the process, an absurd thought suddenly rose in his mind: it didn't look like Array Patterns in operation, but rather like three people discussing a matter.

"You see it?" Lin Yu said. "The Array Patterns on the first tree have a fixed structure and function. The Array Patterns on this tree are intent—they have their own judgment and will adjust themselves based on the spiritual energy environment."

Su Ming's heart jolted. Self-adjusting Array Patterns meant that the Formation on this tree didn't need someone behind it to control it; it could respond to changes on its own.

"Can I touch it?"

"Since when did you become so polite?"

Su Ming reached out and pressed his fingertips against the trunk. The feeling this time was completely different. The first tree had given him a sense of tranquility, but this tree gave him resonance. An extremely faint vibration emanated from deep within the bark, happening to meet a certain frequency of the spiritual energy circulating within his body, and the two aligned.

"Close your eyes," Lin Yu said.

Su Ming did as he was told. In the darkness, his sense of touch became clearer. The Array Patterns beneath the bark were slowly rotating in circles—not a mechanical rotation, but a rhythmic expansion and contraction, just like breathing. An intake and an exhale, a tension and a release.

"It's... alive?"

"Yes. It is alive."

Su Ming did not open his eyes. He continued to 'listen' to the tree with his palm. The longer he listened, the more layers he perceived. That squirming was not just on the surface; there was a second layer deeper down, and a third, nested like growth rings. Each layer had a different rhythm, the outer layers faster and the inner layers slower. Su Ming suddenly recalled that each ring of an ancient tree corresponds to a year of growth, while for this tree's Array Patterns—each growth ring corresponded to a superimposed layer of Array Patterns.

He snapped his eyes open. "It wasn't carved on. It grew along with the tree!"

Lin Yu watched him quietly for a moment before saying, "You are right."

Su Ming withdrew his hand. He stared at the still-slowly-drifting Array Patterns as something in his mind was being restructured. From his first day learning Formations, he had always used the method of 'carving'—carving runes, carving Formation Plates. But this tree told him something else: a Formation didn't necessarily have to be 'carved'; it could be 'planted.' Like planting a tree, one could bury the seed of Array Patterns into a medium and then let it grow, change, and adapt to the environment on its own. You didn't need to control the path of every line; you only needed to give it a direction at the very beginning. Then, time would complete the rest for you.