Chapter 613: Reconstructing the World Gate

"Bang."

As the mechanism above the Hall of Return to Ruins shut with a dull, muffled click, the entire Realm Gate Bureau plunged back into absolute silence.

Only at this moment did Su Ming's spine, which had been ramrod straight the entire time, finally slump just a fraction. He let out a long, weary breath, as if shedding a thousand-pound burden from his shoulders, and leaned against a greenstone pillar at the edge of the stargazing platform, utterly drained.

"Cheep."

Ying, who had been playing dumb the whole time, finally hopped down from Su Ming's shoulder. She tilted her pitch-black little head, her golden-ringed pupils fixed on Su Ming, then spread her wings and gently rubbed her fluffy head against the back of his hand dangling at his side, as if to say, "I'm still here."

"With acting skills like yours, it's a real waste not to serve in the sect's External Affairs Hall."

Lin Yu's teasing voice suddenly rang out across the empty stargazing platform. His ethereal blue soul body drifted out from the Xuantian ring, tracing a faint, illusory shadow through the air as he looked down at Su Ming from above.

"You even managed to swindle that dumb kid out of his life-saving Soul-Stabilizing Talisman. But..." Lin Yu's tone gradually turned cold. "You sent everyone away. Surely you don't actually intend to charge into this mess of a spirit realm with your half-baked skills?"

Su Ming didn't answer right away.

He sat down cross-legged on the greenstone floor and pulled a handful of grayish-white stone powder from his storage pouch. This was the precious Void Stone Powder, an excellent medium for laying out void-attribute formations.

He spread the Void Stone Powder evenly across his palm, a faint glimmer of Ruo Shui spiritual energy flickering at his fingertips as he began tracing the duplicate formation structure that Luo Feng hadn't finished decoding, stroke by stroke on the ground before him.

"Master, I have no other choice."

Su Ming's voice was calm, so calm it was like he was discussing what to have for dinner.

"You have the spirit races' incomplete scroll of the Spirit Nourishing True Explanation, and you just copied Qingyan's soul power memories. Combined with the Border Defense True Seal's natural affinity for the underlying logic of this national destiny formation..." Su Ming's finger traced a perfect nested arc on the ground. "Across the entire Cloud Hidden Sect, or even the entire Great Xing nation, I am the most likely—and the only—person who can safely pass through this World Gate without triggering a law collision between the two realms."

Su Ming finished his final stroke, looked up, and met Lin Yu's illusory eyes directly.

"If the secrets behind this World Gate are tied to your past, tied to the origins of this Xuantian ring... then I have to find out. The Way of Survival is about surviving, not about living as a blind fool forever. Some karmic threads, if not cut early, will become inner demons at the Nascent Soul stage, and that means certain death."

A long silence.

Lin Yu floated motionlessly in midair, his ethereal blue glow flickering unsteadily.

He looked at the young man before him—clear-eyed on the surface, yet with thoughts as deep as an abyss—and felt a swirl of mixed emotions.

That menial disciple who once trembled over a few low-grade spirit stones in the Accounting Office of Qingshi Town had now grown into someone bold enough to scheme over ancient formations, even daring to pry into the secrets of two realms.

"Fine, then."

Lin Yu let out a long sigh. His soul body drifted down slowly, hovering above the incomplete formation diagram Su Ming had drawn.

"You've got plenty of your own ideas now, huh." There was a hint of helplessness in Lin Yu's tone, mixed with a trace of pride he didn't even recognize in himself. "I'll gamble on this with you. It's not like this rotten life of mine isn't already on the same stolen boat as yours."

Lin Yu's voice suddenly sharpened, returning to that stern, mentor-like tone.

"But you listen to me! Once you're in that godforsaken spirit realm, survival comes first! Those engineering-style approaches that work well in the sect might not be worth a damn on the lawless turf of alien races. Keep your skin tight—look more, think more, act less!"

"Disciple understands." Su Ming nodded respectfully.

Ying let out a crisp "cheep" from the side, flapped her wings, and hopped onto Su Ming's knee, gently pecking the back of his hand with her pitch-black beak. Her golden pupils burned with eager, ready-for-action fighting spirit.

At the center of the stargazing platform, the massive Great Yan Earth Vein Map emitted a faint, dim golden glow.

Su Ming sat cross-legged before the stone carving marked "Spirit Court Boundary Route," eyes half-closed, divine sense churning wildly within his Consciousness Sea.

Inside his Consciousness Sea, the one thousand and eighty basic runes floated like a vast river of stars, slowly revolving around the Reflection Lonely Lamp. And at the center of that starry river, the three-dimensional "Jie" character he had forcibly imprinted stood like an unclimbable mountain, radiating a suffocating spatial pressure.

"Hoo—"

Su Ming expelled a long breath of turbid air and opened his eyes.

"Three hundred and twelve gaps." Su Ming's fingertip tapped lightly on the greenstone floor. "One hundred and twenty-eight belong to spatial law stabilization, eighty-six to spiritual energy filtration, and the rest are all soul protection circuits."

He rose to his feet and walked over to the four ancient spirit-race seal script characters.

"Master, I'm about to begin." Su Ming said in his mind, his voice solemn.

"Take it easy. Don't blow up this great formation." Lin Yu's soul body coiled above the Xuantian ring, warning him in a low, ghostly tone.

Su Ming didn't reply. His hands suddenly formed a seal in front of his chest, and the liquid Ruo Shui spiritual energy within his body surged forth like a floodgate being thrown open.

But he didn't inject the spiritual energy directly into the stone carving. Instead, he let the pure water spiritual energy converge in midair, condensing into a slowly swirling orb of ethereal blue liquid.

"Step one, fill the core gaps."

Su Ming's gaze sharpened. His divine sense acted like a blade, drawing out hundreds of ultra-fine threads of water spiritual energy from the orb. These threads wove together at blinding speed in midair, forcibly tracing the missing spatial runes according to the structure he had deduced in his Consciousness Sea.

"Water Spiritual Energy Buffer Spatial Anchoring Method!"

Su Ming let out a low shout and slammed both hands downward.

The complex rune cluster woven from hundreds of water spiritual threads struck the core gap of the three thousand six hundred miniature runes on the stone carving with a gentle yet tenacious force.

"Hum!"

The moment the runes made contact, a terrifying backlash erupted from deep within the stone carving!

"Crack!"

The rune cluster Su Ming had just woven couldn't even hold for a single breath before shattering into a sky full of blue light specks under the violent rejection of those laws.

And then, the backlash force, undiminished, surged back along Su Ming's divine sense!