I was a mineral prospector in Chengdu, who transmigrated into the body of a mortal sword immortal.

Li Bai stood at the edge of the platform. A mountain breeze swept through, bringing a slight chill to his soaked clothes, but also invigorating his weary spirit. He met the High Priest's starry eyes, saying nothing, only slightly straightening his back. The pain and heaviness from the illusions of the Path of Inquiry still lingered, but now his heart was filled with a clarity and resolve born of purification. He knew this was only the beginning. The High Priest's figure seemed to move slightly in the halo of light, his silver-gray pupils fixed on him, as if assessing, or perhaps waiting. Silence reigned on the platform, broken only by the faint, clear cries of unknown birds and beasts echoing from the distant secret realm.

"Your temperament is still acceptable." The high priest's voice rang out, still calm and composed, but less aloof than before. "Your obsession hasn't faded, but you've already discerned your true nature and aren't misled by illusions. You've passed the test of your conscience."

Li Bai bowed slightly, the movement pulling at his taut muscles and causing a slight soreness. He didn't speak, but simply waited.

"However, to receive the inheritance, a steadfast will is not enough," the High Priest continued, raising a hand shrouded in a wide, dark sleeve and pointing towards the other side of the platform. Ripples spread across the air there, rapidly expanding to form a new portal shimmering with a pale blue light. "Wisdom is the foundation of the Great Dao. The second trial: Refining Wisdom."

She turned and stepped through the portal first. Li Bai took a deep breath and followed closely behind.

The moment I stepped through the portal, the texture beneath my feet changed from rough stone slabs to a smooth, hard stone with a slightly cool feel. Suddenly, everything opened up before me.

This was a vast open-air plaza, perfectly circular, about a hundred feet in diameter. The ground was paved with dark blue stone slabs, each polished smooth as a mirror, reflecting the soft, yet mysteriously sourced, light unique to the secret realm above. Surrounding the plaza were towering, seamless stone walls, carved with countless intricate and unfamiliar symbols and patterns. Some resembled distorted star maps, others ancient script, and still others were purely abstract geometric designs, layered upon layer, densely packed, so intricate that prolonged viewing caused a dizzying sensation.

The most striking feature of the square is the thirty-six enormous stone pillars scattered across it.

These stone pillars are about two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters) tall and require two people to encircle them. They are grayish-white in color, made of a different material than the stone slabs on the ground, with a rough surface covered with natural weathering patterns. They are not fixed to the ground, but stand on circular bases of the same material. Between the bases and the stone slabs on the ground, a shallow groove is faintly visible, seemingly allowing the pillars to move within a certain range. The orientation and position of each pillar appear random, and some are even slightly tilted.

In the very center of the square was a slightly raised circular platform, and in the center of the platform was a fist-sized, crystal-clear, colorless crystal. At this moment, the crystal was dull and lifeless, like the most ordinary quartz.

A faint, cool scent, like a mixture of metal and ore, filled the air, along with a very faint ozone smell, like the smell of an electric current passing through it. The entire square was unusually quiet; even the sound of the wind seemed to be shut out, with only Li Bai's own breathing and heartbeat echoing in his ears.

The high priestess stood at the edge of the square, her figure appearing even more aloof and mysterious against the backdrop of the empty space.

"This place is the remnant of the ancient 'Zhou Tian Yan Ling Array'." The high priest's voice echoed through the plaza, carrying a strange resonance. "The array diagram is incomplete, and its key mechanisms are scattered." She pointed to the stone pillars and the ground. "Your test is to complete the array within the time it takes for an incense stick to burn." As she finished speaking, a thin incense stick emitting blue smoke spontaneously lit up on a stone wall at the edge of the plaza. "By moving these 'array pivot pillars,' you will complete the missing lines of the array diagram on the ground, triggering the central 'Spirit Pivot Crystal' to light up. The array involves astronomy, geography, and yin-yang numerology, and its variations are extremely complex. Brute force is useless; it must be solved with wisdom."

Li Bai's gaze swept quickly across the entire plaza. On the bluestone slabs, besides the reflections, one could indeed see some extremely faint, silvery-white lines radiating outwards from the central crystal platform, but most were intermittent, disappearing or distorting completely near the bases of many stone pillars. The grooves around those pillar bases were clearly the paths of movement.

The time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

He walked to the nearest stone pillar and reached out to touch it. The pillar was cold and rough, and incredibly heavy. Even with his current early-stage Qi Condensation power, moving it would be extremely difficult and would require a considerable amount of spiritual energy. He tried to push it gently, and the pillar made a dull "rumbling" sound on its base, slowly moving an inch or so along the groove. The corresponding silver-white line on the ground seemed to light up slightly before quickly dimming.

"Timer, begin." The high priest's voice rang out, calm and even.

Li Bai immediately stepped back, forcing himself to calm down. He stopped looking at the burning incense stick and instead took in the entire layout of the plaza. The thirty-six stone pillars, seemingly chaotic, could be arranged in a coordinate system with the central crystal as the origin…

He closed his eyes, recalling the description of the spiritual energy's trajectory in the "Basic Guidance Chapter," and the seemingly chaotic yet systematic lines carved on the stone tablet. At the same time, his instincts as a geological engineer from his previous life began to awaken—analyzing the structure, finding nodes, and determining the optimal path for stress distribution and energy flow.

When he opened his eyes again, his gaze was completely different.

Those silvery-white broken lines on the ground were no longer meaningless decorations in his eyes. They resembled fractured strata after a major earthquake, or channels blocked by mineral energy. And the positions of the stone pillars seemed like artificially set "valve" or "fulcrum" to regulate energy nodes.

He strode towards the edge of the plaza, walking quickly along the stone wall, his gaze scanning the strange symbols on it like a scanner. The curvature of some symbols reminded him of contour lines on geological maps; some complex patterns of intersections subtly corresponded to topological relationships in geometry; and some star-map-like arrangements vaguely corresponded to the positions of certain stars in the sky—although the "sky" in the secret realm was not the real starry sky, the mathematical laws reflected in this correspondence were universal.

Time passed quietly, and a third of the incense stick had burned down, the smoke rising straight up.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on Li Bai's forehead. The information was overwhelming and complex: astronomy, geography, numerology… and that mysterious "spiritual energy circulation." He tried to construct a model in his mind, viewing the broken lines on the ground as "energy channels," the stone pillars as "regulators," and the central crystal as an "energy convergence point." But how to move the stone pillars, connect the broken lines, and form a complete and efficient energy loop?

He decided to start with the easier tasks first. His gaze focused on the three pillars closest to the central crystal. The position of these three pillars perfectly blocked three relatively complete silver-white main lines extending from the crystal platform. According to the principle of least path energy and the characteristic that spiritual energy prefers smooth and cyclical flow, these three main lines were likely part of the critical loop.

He walked to the first stone pillar, sat down, channeled his spiritual energy into his arms, gave a low shout, and pushed hard.

"Rumble..."

The stone pillar moved slowly on its base, sliding along the grooved path in a direction calculated by Li Bai. The corresponding silver-white lines on the ground, as the pillar moved, began to emit a faint, firefly-like white light at their breaks, extending little by little, attempting to connect with the distant lines. But when the pillar reached its intended position, the white light stopped a foot or so from the connection point, flickered a few times, and then dimmed again.

failure.

Li Bai frowned, but he was not discouraged. He carefully observed the stagnant break, and then looked at the current position and orientation of the stone pillar. The stone pillar was cylindrical, so perhaps its orientation also had an effect? ​​Like a sluice gate regulating the direction of water flow.

He adjusted his breathing and exerted his strength again, this time not only moving the stone pillar's position but also attempting to rotate its orientation. The pillar was incredibly heavy; rotating it was far more strenuous than moving it horizontally, and it consumed his spiritual energy much faster. When he aligned a naturally formed, arrow-like weathered pattern on the pillar with another direction—

"Buzz..."

The white light emitted from the broken silver line on the ground suddenly jumped and extended forward several inches. Although it was not completely connected yet, the distance was obviously shortened!

efficient!

Li Bai's spirits lifted. He quickly jotted down this discovery: the stone pillars were not only nodes, but their "orientation" also participated in regulating the flow of energy (spiritual energy).

He repeated the process on the other two nearby pillars. This time, he was more cautious, carefully observing the changes in the light on the lines of light on the ground as he rotated them, like adjusting a precision instrument. After several fine adjustments, he successfully reconnected the broken lines on one of the pillars, and a steady silvery-white light shone forth, like a luminous stream winding from the pillar's base to the central platform. Although the crystal still hadn't lit up, the atmosphere in the plaza seemed to subtly shift.

However, the third stone pillar encountered a problem. No matter how Li Bai moved or rotated it, the corresponding broken line of light always flickered erratically, unable to connect stably, and even occasionally caused the light of another broken line next to it to go out erratically.

"No...it's not a simple point-to-point connection." Li Bai stopped what he was doing and wiped the sweat from his brow. The incense sticks were already half-burned, and time was running out. He stepped back a few paces and reassessed the situation.

This time, he no longer viewed each stone pillar and each broken wire in isolation. He envisioned the entire plaza as a giant, broken circuit board, or a disrupted geological energy field. The stone pillars were variable resistors or transformers, and the broken wires were conductors or energy channels. The goal was not only to allow the current (spiritual energy) to flow to the center (the crystal), but also to bring the entire circuit to a state of balance, stability, and efficiency.

He thought of symmetry. Many natural structures and physical laws strive for symmetry or a certain beautiful proportion.

His gaze swept across the plaza, searching for potential axes of symmetry or centers of symmetry. The central crystal platform was undoubtedly a center. Shouldn't the distribution of the stone pillars revolve around this center, forming a symmetrical or regular arrangement?

He carefully observed the haphazardly placed, unmoved stone pillars, quickly mentally mapping out their spatial composition and calculating distances. Soon, he noticed a clue—if certain pillars were moved to specific positions, their distances from the central crystal, and the angles between them, would exhibit a pattern approximating the division of a circle. The direction of the broken lines on the ground also seemed to suggest this fractal or radial structure.

"Give it a try!"

Li Bai rushed towards a stone pillar located at a "potential point of symmetry." Before pushing it, he estimated the distance to move and the angle of rotation based on the symmetry model he had envisioned. With a surge of spiritual energy, the stone pillar rumbled as it slid along the groove to its intended position, and was finally twisted at a specific angle by his strenuous effort.

"Buzz—!"

This time, the response was completely different. Not only did the broken line corresponding to the stone pillar light up instantly and connect stably, but three other broken lines in different directions on the plaza, which had previously been dim, also began to glow faintly at the same time, as if activated by the movement of the stone pillar, creating a chain reaction!

Several more silver-white lines lit up the entire square, crisscrossing and forming a network that, though not yet complete, was beginning to take shape. The faint smell of ozone in the air seemed to have intensified, and a very subtle, static-like crackling sound drifted past my ears.

The high priest remained standing quietly at the edge, his silver-gray eyes reflecting the shimmering silver light on the ground, his emotions still unreadable.

Li Bai had no time to catch his breath; his mind was racing. The symmetrical model worked, but it wasn't enough. As more lines were activated, new interference and conflicts arose between them, and several points of light began to flicker erratically, like an overloaded or short-circuited circuit.

"Energy distribution...circuit balance..." Li Bai murmured to himself. His experience in dealing with complex geological data models and engineering problems in his previous life was colliding and merging with the characteristics of spiritual energy circulation that he was now perceiving.

He realized that this formation not only required "connectivity" but also "optimization." Just like designing a water supply network, it not only had to ensure that every household had access to water, but also had to consider water pressure balance and minimizing pipe losses.

He began selectively moving the pillars located on the "critical path" or "energy convergence point." Before each movement, he performed a complex simulation—predicting the impact on other paths after this path was connected. Would it strengthen or weaken them? How should the orientation of the pillars be adjusted to precisely regulate the "spiritual energy flow" to different branches, like a valve?

This was an extremely mentally taxing process. He needed to simultaneously handle multiple variables, including spatial geometry, energy transfer, and dynamic equilibrium. Sweat had already soaked through his back, stray hairs clung to his skin, his breathing became heavy, and most of his spiritual energy was depleted. But his eyes remained sharp as swords, completely focused.

Only a short stub of incense remained, wisps of smoke rising as it was about to burn out.

The plaza floor was covered by a silvery-white net of light, which shimmered and moved like a living thing. But the central crystal remained dim. The most crucial nodes seemed to be missing something.

Li Bai's gaze was fixed on the last three stone pillars. Their positions were extremely tricky, situated at the intersection or end of several important loops. Moving any one of them could trigger a violent tremor in the entire light network, or even ruin everything.

There was no time to hesitate.

He rushed towards one of the pillars, but this time he didn't push blindly. Instead, he first placed his palm close to the surface of the pillar, closed his eyes, and slowly poured in the little spiritual power he had left. At the same time, he focused all his attention on sensing the extremely subtle energy fluctuations coming from the connection between the pillar's base and the ground. It was like a geologist using instruments to detect the direction of an underground mineral vein.

A vague sense came through—the "node" where this stone pillar was located was clogged with energy, and the flow was chaotic.

He suddenly opened his eyes and, based on the "blockage point" and "turbulence direction" he sensed, combined with the overall model in his mind, made a judgment in an instant. It wasn't a simple translation or a simple rotation, but a complex motion—first move it three feet and seven inches in a certain direction, then rotate it counterclockwise by about forty-five degrees, and then slightly adjust it back half an inch!

"drink!"

Li Bai roared, unleashing his full power and releasing his spiritual energy without regard for cost. The stone pillar creaked under the strain, precisely executing the commands in his mind along the grooved path.

"Buzz! Buzz buzz buzz—!"

The instant the stone pillar came to a stop, more than a third of the silver-white lines on the plaza simultaneously shone brightly! Several previously stalled key loops were instantly opened up, and the light surged towards the central platform like a flood bursting its banks!

Two more needed!

The embers of the incense stick are about to reach the end.

Li Bai felt a strong wave of dizziness, his spiritual energy was almost depleted, and the muscles in his arms ached so much that he was about to lose all feeling. But he gritted his teeth and rushed toward the second-to-last stone pillar. This time, he didn't even have time to carefully perceive the energy flow; he relied entirely on his previous experience, his instantaneous intuition, and the almost complete energy flow diagram in his mind to make his deductions.

Push! Rotate! Fine-tune!

"Boom!"

The stone pillars were put back in place.

Another area of ​​lines was lit up, the network of light became denser, and only one step away from the central crystal! The entire plaza began to tremble slightly, and the sparse spiritual energy in the air was drawn towards the center, emitting a low whistling sound.

The last stone pillar!

It stood alone at the end of a seemingly remote loop, but Li Bai knew that, according to his model, this was the "convergence point" and "stabilizing valve" of the entire formation, like the last capacitor in a circuit or the final voltage regulator in a water conservancy project.

The incense stick flickered briefly before the smoke died down.

Time is up!

For the first time, the high priest's gaze showed a noticeable shift, looking at the burnt-out incense stick and then at Li Bai, who was struggling to reach the last stone pillar.

Li Bai's eyes were fixed solely on the stone pillar. He drained the last ounce of spiritual energy from his meridians, even feeling a metallic taste rise in his throat. He lunged towards the pillar, pressing his hands against its rough surface, not pushing forcefully, but rather gently pushing it forward at a delicate angle, combining the power of rotation—

"Click".

A very faint, crisp sound, like a mechanism closing.

The stone pillar moved less than a foot and rotated less than ten degrees before coming to a steady stop.

In an instant—

All thirty-six stone pillars in the square simultaneously emitted a soft, milky-white glow from their bases upwards!

On the ground, all the silver-white lines, whether they were lit or dim before, burst forth with a dazzling and steady light at this moment! They crisscrossed, connecting the base of each stone pillar, and finally all converged towards the center of the square!

An incredibly complex, incredibly precise, and incredibly beautiful luminous network is now fully revealed before your eyes!

"Buzz—!!!"

The colorless crystal on the central platform seemed to be awakened from its slumber. First, a tiny white dot, no bigger than a pinhead, lit up at its core. Then, the light spread out like an explosion, instantly filling the entire crystal! A soft, pure, and stable white light emanated from it, not dazzling, but carrying an indescribable spirituality and majesty, illuminating the entire square and even revealing the ancient symbols on the surrounding stone walls in minute detail!

The faint smell of ozone in the air was replaced by a fresh, vibrant scent, like a mountain forest after a rain shower. The subtle, flowing sound of energy transformed into a melodious, wind-chime-like tinkling.

The formation is now complete.

The Spirit Pivot Crystal lit up.

Li Bai staggered, nearly collapsing to the ground, barely managing to stay upright by leaning on the newly repositioned stone pillar. He gasped for breath, his chest heaving, sweat dripping from his chin onto the gleaming stone slab, instantly evaporating into wisps of white vapor. Extreme exhaustion washed over him like a tidal wave, but gazing at the magnificent and wondrous scene before him, an indescribable sense of accomplishment, mixed with the excitement of a clash of wits, overcame his physical weakness.

He raised his head and looked towards the edge of the square.

The high priestess had already taken a few steps forward and stood at the edge of the network of light. Her silver-gray eyes, which were always shrouded in tranquility, now clearly reflected the shimmering light flowing across the square, and also reflected Li Bai's tired yet bright eyes.

In those starry eyes, surprise could no longer be concealed, rippling out like a clear circle of waves when a pebble is thrown into a deep pool.

She watched Li Bai quietly for a moment, her gaze moving from his sweaty face to his slightly trembling hand holding the stone pillar, and then to the perfectly functioning array of light on the ground.

After a long silence, she spoke slowly, her voice still calm, but beneath that calmness, there seemed to be something new that she had never heard of before.

"With the wisdom of another world, you unravel the ancient formations. With the knowledge of the mortal realm, you glimpse the secrets of heaven and earth." She paused, her silver-gray eyes fixed intently on Li Bai. "Your wisdom is indeed extraordinary. You have passed this test."

Her gaze was no longer one of mere scrutiny and evaluation, but rather one of genuine concern, and even a faint hint of inquisitive curiosity.