501: Chapter 501 Cultivation

Su Ming sat on the stone for two days.

In those two days, he did one thing: listen.

He listened to the breathing of the hollow.

A cycle lasted one hundred breaths; when inhaling, Spiritual Qi gathered and the stone trembled slightly; when exhaling, Spiritual Qi entered the water and the stone sank slightly.

Eventually, he didn't even need to count; his body naturally followed that rhythm, rising and falling slightly.

On the second day, he finally opened his eyes, his gaze falling back to the bottom of the lake.

Those concentric Array Patterns were still rotating slowly.

Su Ming stared at the outermost ring for a long time, then gradually drew his gaze inward.

What he was silently tracing in his heart was not the patterns themselves, but the momentum—

He watched for a long time.

Long enough that Ying woke up, jumped down from his knees, and ran to the water's edge to catch things—those phantom images condensed from Spiritual Qi swam back and forth under the water's surface, like fish, yet not quite fish.

Ying stuck its claws into the water and pounced, but the phantom images dispersed, only to condense elsewhere a moment later.

Ying would not give up; it changed position and pounced again.

After pouncing seven or eight times, it hadn't caught a single one.

Lin Yu had been hovering above the lake surface, watching the bottom of the lake just like Su Ming.

But the level at which he was observing was completely different from Su Ming's.

Su Ming was watching the "momentum."

He was watching the "logic."

He was comparing every structure of the incomplete array with the Spirit Gathering Array in his ring.

This process was not like flipping through a book, but more like a jigsaw puzzle—picking up a piece from here, placing it there to compare, changing the angle to compare again, and confirming that they truly belonged to the same picture.

The incomplete parts were too blurry to see clearly, but precisely because they were incomplete, they were easier to understand.

Lin Yu's soul body flickered slightly above the water.

Su Ming happened to look up at this moment and saw Lin Yu's expression—the space between his brows had smoothed out a little, and the corners of his eyes had softened a little.

It was not a smile, but something deeper than a smile, like a person who had walked a long night road finally seeing a light ahead.

The third day.

Su Ming began to move.

He did not go into the water, nor did he use Spiritual Qi to probe the bottom of the lake.

He did something even clumsier—he crouched on the muddy ground at the edge of the hollow and used his fingertips to draw the Array Patterns of the lake bottom.

He drew that "momentum": an arc, a circle, an arrow indicating the direction.

He drew and erased, erased and drew.

He did not seek to "understand" first, but to "remember."

He wanted to commit that momentum to memory, to imprint it on his hands and in his mind.

Lin Yu floated beside him, watching him crouch on the muddy ground, drawing stroke by stroke.

He noticed the discrepancies in Su Ming's drawing—the rotation direction of the third ring was remembered backwards, and the position of that critical intersection between the fifth and sixth rings was off by a finger's width.

But he did not say anything.

Su Ming would discover it himself.

He would trace it once, look at the lake bottom, then compare it again, and naturally, he would know where it didn't match.

This process might take a long time, but no matter how long it took, it was more useful than telling him the answer directly.

Lin Yu sighed in his heart—the hardest part about being a Master was never "I know," but watching the disciple struggle there, when a single word from himself could save him three days of effort, yet having to force himself to bite his tongue and not speak.

Su Ming was completely unaware, still crouching on the muddy ground, burying his head in his drawing.

Ying must have found it extremely boring.

It flew down from Su Ming's shoulder, circled the edge of the hollow, and then ran to the water's edge to catch "fish."

This time it had learned to be smart; it didn't stick its claws directly into the water to pounce, but crouched at the water's edge, tilting its head to stare at the phantom images swimming under the water's surface, waiting for quite a while.

A "fish" condensed from Spiritual Qi swam to its feet.

Ying lunged down suddenly—

Its beak pecked into the water—

Water splashed everywhere—

Ying raised its head.

Its mouth was empty.

That "fish" dispersed into a cluster of blue mist by its mouth, drifted for a moment, and then condensed again elsewhere.

Ying stood blankly at the water's edge, its whole body exuding the feeling that this was impossible.

Su Ming caught a glimpse of this scene from the corner of his eye, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.

Then he lowered his head again and continued drawing.

The fifth day.

Su Ming's mud graffiti had reached its seventeenth version.

The previous sixteen versions had all been erased and redone by him.

But halfway through the seventeenth version, he suddenly stopped, stood up, walked to the edge of the hollow, and crouched down again to look at the lake bottom.

This time, his gaze did not shrink inward ring by ring, but looked directly at the center—the central point where all the rotating patterns converged.

There was a speck of light there, flickering on and off.

He watched for a long time, then stood up and walked back to the mud, pressing his finger heavily on the very center of the seventeenth version of his drawing.

The mud caved in, leaving a round fingerprint.

"Master."

"Mm."

"The point in the center is not the end point."

Su Ming's speaking speed increased slightly.

"Spiritual Qi is absorbed in from the outer rings and finally reaches the center—but it is not 'released' at the center.

It is 'repelled' out by the center.

Like a well.

Spiritual Qi gathers at the mouth of the well from all directions, and then is pushed up from the well mouth by a force."

Su Ming himself might not have fully realized what an important statement he had just made.

But Lin Yu realized it.

This kid was starting to touch upon the "core" of the Spirit Gathering Array.

Lin Yu did not reveal any emotion, just gave a faint "Mm," and then said: "Since you know that the thing here is not simple, don't be in a rush to fully grasp it.

It has been here for who knows how many years; it won't run away.

Go back and sit.

You sat for two days just now, and the circulation of your Ruoshui Art is thirty percent faster than usual.

Have you felt it yourself?"

Su Ming was stunned, and lowered his head to look inward at his Dantian.

Sure enough, the fluctuation frequency of his lake of Spiritual Qi was faster than before entering the Secret Realm.

It wasn't an acceleration; it was smoother.

It was like a riverbed that had been silted up for a long time had been cleared of silt; the speed of the water flow hadn't changed, but the volume had increased.

"Cultivating in a place like this, the concentration of Spiritual Qi is enough for you to polish every turn of the Ruoshui Art to be as smooth as possible.

Don't worry about the Array Patterns for now; Cultivate first."

Su Ming did not refute, walked back to the stone, and sat cross-legged again.

Ying saw him return, flew back from the water's edge, jumped onto his lap, and curled into a ball.

Su Ming closed his eyes and began to circulate the Ruoshui Art.

The Spiritual Qi around him—the Spiritual Qi gathered by the Spirit Gathering Array in the hollow, with a concentration so high it was almost liquefied—gently seeped into his body from all directions.

There was no need for deliberate guidance; the Spiritual Qi naturally drilled inward along the path of his Meridians.

He only needed to do one thing: keep the circulation of the Ruoshui Art in rhythm, neither fast nor slow, neither hurried nor hesitant.

This was something he had learned on the Ancient Path—not to push with force, but to wait for it to move to where it was supposed to go on its own.

The Array Patterns at the bottom of the lake were still rotating slowly.

Lin Yu, hovering above the water surface, also closed his eyes.

The surroundings of the hollow were as quiet as a painting that had had the pause button pressed on it.

Only that pool of deep blue water flickered on and off, on and off—like a heart that had not forgotten to beat even in its slumber.