"Are these old papers enough to exchange for this?" Su Ming extended the incense cake forward.

The old man's single remaining hand shot out, snatching the incense cake as if afraid Su Ming would change his mind, stuffing it into his robe and taking a deep breath. The pain on his face visibly eased considerably.

"Take them, take them all," the old man pointed at the stall on the ground, his tone still somewhat stiff but noticeably softened. "They're just worthless scrap paper nobody wants anyway. Keeping them would just attract bugs."

Su Ming didn't stand on ceremony, pocketing the scroll of parchment notes and several rubbing fragments.

Just as he was about to stand up and leave, the old man suddenly spoke. "Those notes... they record our exploration work outside the pass about a hundred li back then. I was still young back in those days, full of pride and ambition..."

Perhaps the incense cake had taken effect, or perhaps it had been too long since anyone was willing to listen to a crippled old man speak, but a crack had opened in the old man's floodgates of memory.

"Back then, deep underground in the 'Withered Stone Valley,' we discovered a strange spiritual energy void."

Su Ming's hands, which had been packing his things, paused slightly. "A spiritual energy void?"

"That's right." The old man narrowed his eyes, seemingly lost in recollection. "In normal spiritual veins, spiritual energy flows. But there, it was as if the spiritual energy had been swallowed up by something out of thin air. Our chief elder back then used a high-grade detection disk to measure for three days and three nights, finally concluding it was an ancient remnant 'Insect Nest.'"

Su Ming's heartbeat skipped a beat.

"Insect Nest?" He tried to keep his voice sounding calm. "Then why wasn't it reported for cleanup?"

"It was reported." The old man curled his lip, revealing a mouthful of broken yellow teeth, his face full of mockery. "After the big shots above sent people to investigate, they said the insect swarm was in deep dormancy, and the rate at which it consumed the earth veins was extremely slow. The conclusion was: no cause for concern within three hundred years."

"Three hundred years..." Su Ming murmured in repetition.

A chill ran up Su Ming's spine.

"Many thanks for informing me, Elder." Su Ming cupped his hands in salute, then turned and melted into the crowd.

...

The Iron Wall Pass's logistics camp warehouse was less like a storage facility and more like a graveyard burying magical implements.

A scorched smell permeated the air year-round—the unique scent left behind after spiritual energy overload, mixed with the stale odor of blood and the cold hardness of iron.

Thousands of damaged formation plates were haphazardly piled into mountains. Some had missing corners, some were fractured, and some had their central formation hubs completely melted, resembling unblinking, dead single eyes.

Su Ming had cleared out a roughly ten-foot square space in a corner of the warehouse.

A mottled, long rectangular table stood in the middle. What lay upon it wasn't any precious artifact-forging furnace or cauldron, but rather a row of clay pots of varying sizes, several homemade wolf-hair spirit brushes, and an inkstone filled with freshly ground, specially prepared spiritual ink that shimmered with a dark blue luster.

Su Ming's left hand held a void grip. A "Heavy Earth Shield" formation plate, riddled with cracks, hovered above his palm. He didn't rush to begin repairs with the brush. Instead, his five fingers moved rhythmically, threads of dark blue spiritual energy seeping from his fingertips like a fine drizzle, permeating the cracks in the formation plate.

This was precisely the "Water Refining Method" he had devised while at the Repair Hall.

Ordinary repairs required fire refining to melt and recast the materials; the slightest deviation in heat control could damage the foundation of the formation lines. Su Ming's "Water Refining Method," drawing on the concepts of permeation and containment from the *Like Water Art*, used water spiritual energy to carry the repair materials, "flowing" them along the cracks before slowly solidifying.

While lacking the fierce intensity of fire refining, it excelled in delicacy and gentleness, not harming the foundation.

Within his Consciousness Sea, Lin Yu was lounging with his legs crossed, watching Su Ming's movements flit about like a butterfly weaving through flowers, lazily commenting, "This is what they call 'nothing but practice makes perfect.' Your current precision in spiritual energy control has improved by at least thirty percent compared to when you first arrived. However, disciple, you're repairing these too quickly. Be careful of 'the bird that sticks its head out gets shot.'"

"That's why I'm holding back."

The corner of Su Ming's mouth twitched slightly, but his hands never stopped moving.

As the spiritual energy permeated, the cracks on the formation plate visibly healed at a speed discernible to the naked eye. The originally dim, earthen-yellow glow reignited.

However, he didn't repair it to a brand-new state. Instead, he deliberately left a few inconsequential scorch marks along the edges, making it look like a "repaired piece" rather than a "new product."

"This is called 'hiding clumsiness within skill,'" Su Ming said, gently placing the repaired formation plate into a wooden crate on his left. It already held twenty neatly stacked plates. "If I repaired them to look like new, the Vessel Hall would come looking for trouble. This way, they're usable yet inconspicuous."

In just two hours, he had already repaired thirty formation plates.

This speed would likely shock any ordinary assistant cultivator who saw it.

An ordinary Formation Master could repair five plates a day at most, and even that would consume immense mental effort.

Su Ming relied not just on practiced skill, but also on his unique understanding of formation structures—he didn't aim for perfect restoration, only for unblocking the spiritual energy circuits.

Just like Yu the Great taming the floods, blocking was inferior to guiding.

"That's about enough."

Su Ming rubbed his slightly sore wrist, his gaze falling on the pile of small, black discs on the other side of the table.

Those were the standard-issue "Warning Discs" issued to patrol squads. Their function was singular: they could only sense spiritual energy fluctuations within a ten-zhang radius and were extremely prone to damage.

Zhao Tiji's Third Squad was scheduled for another rotation tomorrow to the most dangerous flank position at the "Celestial Pivot Position."

Su Ming pondered for a moment, then picked up a wolf-hair spirit brush. Dipping its tip into the dark blue spiritual ink, he began swiftly sketching on the backs of those Warning Discs.

This time, he wasn't drawing repair runes, but an entirely new framework.

"You're going to inscribe the 'Minor Heavenly Cycle Water Rhythm Formation' onto these?" Lin Yu raised an eyebrow. "That's your home-protection formation. Even a simplified version far surpasses these common goods."

"Just borrowing the concept of its 'Water Rhythm.'"

Su Ming's brush danced like a dragon, spiritual energy flowing along the brush tip, leaving subtle water ripple patterns on the black formation discs. "The original Warning Discs are too rigid. They shriek at every rustle of grass, yet react sluggishly when beasts truly lie in ambush. Adding this layer of 'Water Ripple Lines' can expand the detection range by thirty percent and filter out environmental noise."

"More importantly..." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Su Ming paused, the final stroke landing. A faint layer of mist rippled across the disc's surface before vanishing. "...it can generate a faint resonance with my spiritual energy. If Brother Zhao and the others encounter danger, I can sense it immediately."

This was his "Way of Survival" philosophy—protecting his teammates meant protecting himself.

On this meat-grinder of a battlefield, Su Ming understood clearly that as a mere Qi Refining stage cultivator, no matter how high his formation attainments, once isolated, he was dead meat. Zhao Tiji and the Third Squad were his best human shields.

Reinforcing those shields was taking responsibility for his own life.

Su Ming modified all twelve portable formation discs in one go.

He picked up one and infused it with a thread of spiritual energy.

*Hum—*

The disc didn't emit a piercing shriek. Instead, it rippled out an invisible wave, like a stone dropped into a deep pool. This wave swept over the warehouse walls, clearly feeding back the texture and grain of the rock within the walls.

"Not bad." Su Ming nodded in satisfaction. "Sensitivity is increased, yet energy consumption is actually reduced."

Just then, the light at the warehouse doorway suddenly dimmed.

A faint, almost imperceptible pressure washed over the threshold like a tide.

Su Ming's heart skipped a beat. Instinctively, he flipped the disc in his hand face-down on the table and turned to bow.

"Disciple Su Ming pays his respects to Elder Mo."