The Long Journey to Immortality

Han Lu smiled awkwardly, knowing that Hao Cuixing had seen through her thoughts. "Yes, I will follow Senior Cuixing's arrangements."

Cui Xing nodded in satisfaction and immediately immersed herself in the complex divination, calculation, and deduction.

Keeping her distance, Han Lu strolled over to the nearly forty bookshelves surrounding the top of the spire.

The bookshelf was filled with a lot of books and jade plaques, a very mixed collection.

All of Hao Cuixing's books and celestial records were placed on these bookshelves.

In addition, on that day, there was also a copy of the "Tongtian Technique" that Hao Cuixing taught Han Lu.

"Since this technique exists, are there also books or jade tablets on how to interpret the celestial motion patterns observed during astrology?"

Han Lu then understood Hao Cuixing's intention in inviting her to read.

After searching the bookshelf for a while, Han Lu found the jade tablet she wanted to read.

The moment Han Lu took the jade pendant into her hand, Hao Cuixing raised an eyebrow, her heart filled with mixed emotions.

"If Han Lu could learn my astrology and become my apprentice, that would be wonderful."

"Perhaps I am just not destined to have such a talented, intelligent, and well-connected apprentice."

With a sigh of regret, Hao Cuixing continued to immerse herself in the deduction.

Han Lu took the jade token, sat down on the ground, and began to read its contents.

Relying on her divine sense to read the messages in the jade tablet, Han Lu was very fast. In just ten breaths, she had read through all the contents and memorized them.

The jade tablet not only records a language that Hao Cuixing calls "Star Language," but also records many of her experiences and insights on divination.

Hao Cuixing has been studying divination for over two thousand years and astrology for nearly four hundred years.

As a polymath and expert in divination, Hao Cuixing can be considered the most proficient divination cultivator in the world.

She claimed to be second, and others only dared to claim to be tied for second.

Even disregarding the "star language," the information recorded on this jade tablet would be worth at least ten thousand spirit stones in the eyes of cultivators who practice divination.

Such a wonderful thing, Han Lu held it in her hands and read it with her divine sense. Naturally, she quickly became immersed in it, wholeheartedly comprehending and understanding the profound truths recorded within.

Chapter 1011 Examination

In the blink of an eye, three hours had passed.

Just as Hao Cuixing stood up from her seat after deducing the final result, Han Lu nimbly got up from the ground.

Stepping closer, Han Lu asked, "Senior Cui Xing, has the result been released?"

Hao Cuixing nodded and said, "Of course, I keep my word. I said I could deduce it clearly in three hours, and now I naturally have the answer."

“Based on the results of astrology…” Hao Cuixing drawled out the words, then suddenly had an idea.

"The result is in the crumpled paper in my hand, but I'd like to take this opportunity to give you a question," Hao Cuixing still had the idea of ​​teaching Han Lu astrology. "Just now, you should have seen 'Star Language' and know how to interpret the stars, right?"

Han Lu nodded, immediately guessing Hao Cuixing's idea. "Senior Cuixing, do you want me to try to calculate it myself? Based on the information and data we just observed together?"

“That’s right, you got it right away,” Hao Cuixing laughed. “I’ve given you the answer, and you already know the general range. The difficulty of this question should be just right.”

"What, if you don't want to do the questions, you can just open this crumpled paper and find out the final answer."

Han Lu understood that Hao Cuixing was playing such tricks because she still had expectations of her.

Without hesitation, she said, "Since Senior Cuixing trusts me and thinks I am capable of answering this question, then I will give it a try."

"There are nearly 45,000 star languages. Although I have memorized them all, I still don't know if I can use them freely in practice."

"This is also a good opportunity to practice."

Upon hearing Han Lu's statement, Hao Cuixing replied, "Okay."

After handing over the jade tablet that had recorded the celestial anomalies and the crumpled paper in his hand to Han Lu, Hao Cuixing put his hands behind his back and left the top of the spire on his own.

Standing there, holding the "exam question" and "answer," Han Lu hesitated for a while before finally deciding to return to her room to work through the question written in "star language."

Because of her experience in divination, and because she felt that her divination skills were worthy of being called those of a "Golden Core cultivator," Han Lu was quite confident in solving this problem.

"At most, it will take three days to solve this problem."

Based on Hao Cuixing's three hours in deciphering this three-hundred-sentence star language, Han Lu felt that spending twelve times that amount of time should allow her to gain something.

However, while she could think about it, the timing and execution proved to be far more difficult than Han Lu had anticipated.

The reason is that Hao Cuixing derived his star language based on his own experience.

If we say that there were at least five million monks who used tea leaves for divination over the past 100,000 years.

There may be no more than a hundred cultivators who use astrology for divination in the past 100,000 years.

This directly resulted in the Star Language "dictionary" being rather chaotic and redundant, with many passages containing multiple meanings for a single word.

The "dictionary" for analyzing tea leaf shapes is clear and comprehensive.

The strength of one person can never compare to the strength of hundreds or thousands.

That's already pretty good.

The problem-solving tools were rather rudimentary, which naturally made Han Lu's problem-solving process extremely difficult.

First, she needed to use her limited experience to add punctuation marks to the nearly three hundred star messages, dividing them into paragraphs that could be read coherently.

Here's where the problem arises.

During the observation, Han Lu did not know where the beginning or the end was.

The star symbols recorded on the jade tablet were in a completely scrambled order.

To divide a text into paragraphs, you must first sort them, and then divide them.

Following the methods summarized by Hao Cuixing in the jade tablet, Han Lu quickly got a general idea.

However, having some clues is one thing.

Knowing how to calculate pi is having a clue, but calculating pi to thousands or tens of thousands of digits using the human brain is another matter entirely.

Han Lu is currently doing this kind of work.

Fortunately, Han Lu is a Golden Core cultivator with exceptional intelligence.

Otherwise, this first step could cause a splitting headache, leaving one in a dilemma, caught between a rock and a hard place.

Han Lu worked for nearly an hour and barely managed to complete one-tenth of it.

She rubbed her temples and sighed inwardly.

"No wonder Senior Cui Xing looked like she was afraid I would disturb her when she was doing her calculations."

"When dealing with such troublesome matters, if someone keeps nagging you, you'd probably have to explode to vent your frustration."

With a long sigh, Han Lu exhaled some of the turbid air from her chest and continued to bury herself in her work.

The first step took Han Lu a full twenty hours to complete.

Seeing that the progress was so slow, Han Lu immediately changed her goal.

"We aim to solve this problem within ten days."

Han Lu, who was both the client and the construction unit, decisively extended the construction period to avoid being exhausted by the seemingly endless work.

After completing the first step, Han Lu was finally able to punctuate and translate the sentences based on their possible meanings.

This step is no simpler than the previous one.

The difficulty lies mainly in punctuating the sentences and determining the true meaning of each sentence.

Hao Cuixing explained in the jade tablet that a complete sentence of star language is generally composed of seven to twenty segments, which makes the punctuation more varied.

They need to be eliminated one by one.

Sitting at her desk, Han Lu spent another three days barely managing to complete this second step.

Why do we say it was barely completed?

Because Han Lu came up with three ambiguous answers.

Han Lu was not very satisfied with this.

Lacking experience and "real-world" skills, it's already quite impressive that she's achieved this much. If Hao Cuixing knew about this, she would definitely offer Han Lu a half-affirming and half-encouraging compliment, saying, "She has talent."

Following the three barely completed second steps, Han Lu, who was not yet a skilled worker, had to complete three times the work to finish the final step.

Fortunately, she has "a thousand years later" as a reference.

She realized the discrepancies between the first two answers halfway through, so she cut them off, saving time.

Thus, she finally managed to complete the project before the set deadline.

On the ninth day, as the sun was about to set, Han Lu carefully wrote down her final results on a piece of paper.

"Nine hundred and seventy-three years and fifty-four days." After writing down the answer, Han Lu couldn't wait to open the crumpled paper that had been lying in her storage bag for nine days.

With her hands trembling slightly, Han Lu quickly unfolded the crumpled paper.

Seeing that the numbers inside matched the numbers she had deduced, she felt all the fatigue in her body vanish in an instant, leaving only joy and satisfaction.

"Now another nine days have passed. According to this calculation, the Eastern World will collide with our world in 973 years and 45 days."

Faced with this result, Han Lu simply commented, "There's still time."

Chapter 1012 From Luoxia Mountain to Fengqi Forest

The result, which matched that of Hao Cuixing, greatly encouraged Han Lu, making her realize that she was not without talent in astrology.

She brought this good news back to Hao Cuixing, and praised Han Lu highly.

"If you can't communicate with the stars, maybe you can become a theorist and help me enrich and perfect this art."

"I believe you have the ability in this area."

Having collaborated twice and spent nearly half a month together, Hao Cuixing had high expectations for Han Lu, whom she had already heard of.

Although Han Lu still felt that she might be able to make a breakthrough in the "Tongtian Technique", she also agreed with Hao Cuixing's statement.

"Senior Cuixing, I will study the matter of communicating with the stars and the sun and moon some more. If there is a breakthrough, I will definitely send a message to report the good news."