Chapter 492: Walking
“It’s been long enough for dew to settle on your head.”
“...Master.”
“All right, I didn’t count it precisely either.” Lin Yu drawled, “This place’s sense of time is unreliable. Just know that you didn’t lose out by sitting here.”
Su Ming lowered his head to look at the tree roots, then raised his eyes to the stone path ahead.
The path was still there.
Just as it had looked yesterday: narrow, unhurried, half-covered with fallen leaves, the stone surface weathered, its end still hidden in the mist and wavering out of sight. It gave the impression that walking another half hour or so would reach the end.
But Su Ming no longer trusted his own eyes.
The path remained, the end still existed, but that “very near” feeling only made him more wary.
At that moment, the formation lines on the tree bark rippled gently.
They did not speed up, nor did they glow, they simply eased back, as if a held breath had finally been released.
Su Ming glanced at it, did not reach out to touch, but bowed slightly toward the ancient tree.
Whether the gesture had any effect or not, he did it anyway.
Lin Yu saw the scene inside the talisman but said nothing, only the faintest movement in his gaze.
Su Ming turned and stepped back onto the stone path.
This time, he walked more slowly.
Not because he was tired, nor because he was reluctant to leave the rare quiet beneath the tree, but because he had begun to pay attention to his feet.
First step down.
Hum.
A familiar, faint ripple of spiritual energy spread up from deep within the stone.
Second step.
The fluctuation remained, but it was different from the first.
Lighter.
Third step.
Different again, like the tip of a needle gently touching the sole, gone in an instant.
Su Ming's pace slowed completely.
He didn’t feel like he was walking; it felt more like treading across an enormous, complex, extremely quiet formation diagram. Each slab of stone responded; the spiritual mechanism beneath every slab was distinct. Some were settling, some were light; some gentle, some sharp; some supported like thick earth lifting beneath your feet, others brushed past like a thin stream.
Had this been another cultivator, they would have probably just felt the strange spiritual patterns and decided this place was suitable for cultivation.
But Su Ming was different.
He specialized in formations.
And he was the type who liked to grind through things step by step before proceeding.
So he began to test.
Not by recklessly probing with divine sense, nor by forcefully pouring spiritual energy into the ground, but by using the simplest, clumsiest, and most reliable method to feel.
Step.
Stop.
Remember.
Step again.
Stop again.
Same stride, different slabs; the feeling under the left foot tried again with the right; the slight variance between stepping on the left side or right side of a slab was not spared.
At first Shadow followed on his shoulder, but after realizing Su Ming walked like an old man watching his steps, it grew impatient and fluttered a few slabs ahead. When it landed, a thin sharp ripple suddenly sprang up from that slab, startling its feathers into a puff, and it hurriedly flew back.
Su Ming glanced at it, and a faint smile, rare on his face, appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“Suffered a loss?”
Shadow bristled in protest and opened its beak to cry out.
It thought for a moment and then closed it.
This lousy place didn’t play by reason.
After walking some more, Su Ming suddenly stopped, crouched at the edge of a slab, pinched a drop of water between his fingers, and let it fall.
The drop landed on the left side of the stone, rolled a little, then silently seeped into a crack as if something below had drawn it in.
The second drop fell on the right side, but instead of seeping down it slid along a whisper-thin dampness toward the edge before gradually disappearing.
Su Ming stared for a while, thoughtful.
“Any ideas?” Lin Yu this time didn’t hold back, he prodded.
Su Ming rose and answered as he walked, “The stone’s left and right are different.”
“Captain obvious.”
“...Your disciple knows.” Su Ming’s expression did not change, “I just haven’t figured out exactly how they differ. It’s not simply a difference in load, nor purely a difference of orientation. The left is deeper, the right is lighter, but that weight difference isn’t just a feeling, it’s like different things are moving underneath.”
Lin Yu made no comment.
After walking another ten steps or so, he finally spoke.
“Did you notice, the fluctuations under the left slabs and the right slabs are different?”
Su Ming’s feet paused.
The remark matched his thoughts but pointed deeper.
He stopped relying on intuition and halted on the next slab. His left foot lightly stepped on the left half, his right foot on the right half, and he closed his eyes to discern carefully.
After a moment, he opened his eyes slowly.
“They are indeed different.”
“Explain.”
“The left is heavy, like something large pressing down.” Su Ming said, “Not heavy in the sense of weight so much as stability, like a whole patch of earth or an entire water vein pressing underneath. The right is lighter, the mechanism more scattered, flowing faster and more finely.”
At this he frowned slightly.
“But why would it be like that?”
“What do you think?”
Su Ming did not answer immediately.
He thought for a while and began eliminating possibilities one by one.
“If it were a change in elevation, the slabs would be obviously tilted, but they aren’t.”
“If the tree roots were distributed unevenly, it wouldn’t hold true for tens of zhang ahead.”
“If the formation lines deliberately set a yin-yang dichotomy, they would alternate rather than maintain the same bias all the way.”
As he spoke, his steps slowed again.
Beneath his feet the stone path stretched, mist flowed ahead, and the ancient tree had long been left behind. The surrounding trees were still tall and silent, yet Su Ming felt as if he were walking along the spine of a sleeping giant.
On the left, its main bone.
On the right, its branch veins.
The thought popped up and startled him.
Too fast.
Too much like an unproven hypothesis.
But Lin Yu chuckled softly in the Consciousness Sea.
“Keep thinking.”
Su Ming pursed his lips and asked no more.
He knew now.
At least he knew his train of thought was probably on track.
Lin Yu had actually seen the cause at a glance long ago.
Under the left stone slabs lay the earth vein’s main trunk.
On the right were the offshoots branching from that trunk.
Hence the left’s weight and the right’s lightness.
Hence the left’s steadiness and the right’s liveliness.
Hence this path was not casually laid on the ground; it pressed against the earth veins and followed the terrain, combing the forest’s spiritual mechanisms bit by bit into the form of a “path.”
But he did not say it out loud.
Not to be mysterious.
He knew very clearly that if he told Su Ming, Su Ming would “know”; only by stepping on it himself, testing it, and ruling things out would he truly “understand.”
Knowing and understanding were far apart.
Just like him—no one taught him.
He had to scrutinize the formation lines alone, grind alone, make mistakes alone, and then correct them. Now that it had come to Su Ming, he didn’t want to raise a disciple who only accepted answers.
After walking a while, Su Ming suddenly looked back.
The path behind was thinned by mist, only that short section of slabs at his feet remained visible, then everything faded into haziness.
He looked ahead again.
The end was still not far.
The same distance.
The same illusion that another half hour’s walk would get there.
But Su Ming had already walked at least the length of a joss stick burning, perhaps even longer.
The path, however, seemed never to have shortened.
His eyes dimmed slightly; he finally fully understood the meaning behind Lin Yu’s earlier words.
This path is longer than you see.
Not because it keeps extending, but because distance here is not decided by the eyes.
Su Ming did not panic.
He quietly made a mental note: this place’s sense of space is anomalous, visual perception cannot be fully trusted, while foot feeling, spiritual mechanism, and rhythm are more reliable than eyesight.
On his shoulder, Shadow had at some point grown quiet again, its golden eyes fixed on the front without blinking.
No wind in the forest.
No sound from the stone slabs.
One man and one bird continued, slowly moving forward along that ancient road half-covered in leaves.