After the terrifying night at Cold Crow Ravine, Li Wei remained silent for several days. His scrapes and cuts healed slowly with the help of inferior wound medicine and the regenerative abilities of his young body, but the chill in his heart and the inhuman "gaze" lingered like a bone-deep ailment. He became even more cautious, working twice as diligently on his chores during the day and hiding in a corner of the communal sleeping quarters at night, no longer venturing out.
However, the flame of exploration was not extinguished, but rather shifted underground—to those neglected corners of the sect piled high with old junk.
His target was the outer sect's "Artifact Tomb"—a depression in the shady back of the mountain, a place specifically for piling up damaged, discarded, or unidentifiable magical artifacts, array plates, and miscellaneous items from past generations. The spiritual energy here was thin and mixed, teeming with mosquitoes, a place ordinary disciples avoided, but in Li Wei's eyes, it was a "treasure trove of ruins." The Cold Crow Ravine bronze mirror was destroyed; he needed new materials, and he also needed… to find possible relics of the same kind.
He patiently searched through the rusted remains of flying swords, cracked jade talismans, and piles of charred array flags. His fingertips brushed against the cold or scorching (residual abnormal energy) metal, jade, and wooden structures. The vague perception brought by his Chaotic Spiritual Root flickered, guiding him to avoid potential dangers (such as wreckage with extremely unstable internal spiritual energy structures on the verge of self-destruction), and also giving him an unusual sensitivity to some seemingly ordinary objects.
On the afternoon of the seventh day, at the bottom of a pile of debris almost completely covered by vines, he touched something unusual.
It was a jade slip, grayish in color, with broken edges, and its shape was quite different from ordinary jade slips used to record cultivation techniques—it was thicker, irregularly hexagonal, and its surface was devoid of any runes or characters, only extremely fine, seemingly naturally formed crystal growth patterns. But the moment Li Wei's fingers touched it, the chaotic vortex within his dantian trembled violently, and a weak yet clear sense of attraction came from within.
He carefully pulled out the jade slip and wiped away the surface grime. It felt cool to the touch, its texture neither gold nor jade, but more like some kind of dense crystal. Upon closer inspection, the growth lines weren't entirely random, but rather subtly formed an extremely complex, multi-layered geometric pattern. Some lines' curvature defied logic, causing a slight dizziness upon prolonged viewing.
The "Knowledge Prism" didn't trigger automatically, but the very existence of this jade slip challenged conventional understanding. Li Wei carefully concealed it close to his body.
In the following days, he found several other items that "felt special": a black pebble with a tiny hole in the center, as if pierced by an extremely precise tool; a small section of a tubular object with a texture resembling both jade and bone, its fracture revealing a precise layered structure; and several pieces of metal foil engraved with incomplete patterns, the style of which bore a striking resemblance to the mysterious symbols he had glimpsed in the bronze mirror that night.
These items were scattered in different corners of the artifact tomb, varying in age and material. Their only commonality was that they were completely out of step with the mainstream crafting and talisman-making styles of the Xuanmeng Alliance, more like… fragments of another technological approach.
A bold idea surfaced: could these be the "extraterrestrial treasures" vaguely mentioned in You Xingzi's notes? Or perhaps, creations of a lost civilization from ancient times, vastly different from the current Xuanmeng civilization?
This idea grew stronger after obtaining the hexagonal jade slip. He needed a safer, more private place to study them. The servants' quarters were too crowded and inconvenient. He thought of the abandoned mines and the makeshift dwellings hastily built and then abandoned by cultivators in the back mountains.
After careful reconnaissance, he selected an abandoned mine located in the middle of a steep cliff, its entrance half-hidden by collapsed rocks. The entrance was narrow and concealed, but the interior was surprisingly spacious, containing a long-dried underground river. The remaining ore somewhat interfered with spiritual sense detection. He spent several nights secretly moving in some basic necessities and tools, setting up a makeshift secret laboratory.
That very night, after moving all the suspicious items into the cave, he decided to first attempt to decipher the most peculiar hexagonal jade slip.
The cave was dimly lit by only a small fish oil lamp. Li Wei placed the jade slip on a flat stone platform and sat cross-legged. He didn't rashly probe it with his spiritual sense (that might trigger unknown restrictions), but instead tried the most clumsy, yet perhaps safest, method: using his own weak, strangely emanating chaotic spiritual power to very slowly and gently envelop the surface of the jade slip, especially the strange geometric patterns.
Initially, there was no reaction. Just as he thought he had made a mistake and was about to withdraw his spiritual power, a sudden change occurred.
The geometric patterns on the jade slip suddenly came alive!
Not emitting light, not vibrating, but rather, the patterns began to "flow" and "reorganize" at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye. They detached from the physical jade slip, projecting an extremely complex and constantly changing three-dimensional light pattern into the void before Li Wei! At the heart of the pattern lies an indescribably complex structure composed of countless lines and surfaces, resembling a projection of some multidimensional space, or… a visualization of an extremely precise mathematical model.
Li Wei's "Prism of Knowledge" was violently triggered at this moment! More intensely and directly than ever before!
No longer a vague feeling or a simple fragment of an equation, but a tsunami of information, accompanied by a cognitive shock so intense it almost tore his consciousness apart, forcibly flooded his mind:
"Error. Non-standard rune encoding system detected. Attempting to translate… Encoding basis identification: Conformal mapping variant of the four-dimensional Minkowski space metric on a two-dimensional surface…"
"Structural analysis in progress… Core expression: Tensor relationship describing local spacetime curvature and energy distribution… Missing key term: Conversion factor between gravitational constant G and spiritual coupling coefficient κ…"
"Redundant encryption layer detected… Encryption method: Logical lock based on Gödel's incompleteness theorems… Cracking suggestion: Introduce external observer paradox to create logical gaps…"
"Warning: Information density overload. Cognitive architecture stability decreased. Abort recommended…"
Li Wei groaned, blood trickling from his nostrils, his vision blurring, his head throbbing. He forcibly severed the spiritual connection, his body arching backward, gasping for breath. The three-dimensional light pattern in the void flickered a few times and then vanished abruptly. The jade slip returned to stillness, its surface patterns unchanged. In just a few breaths, the deluge of information nearly overwhelmed his mental defenses. He didn't understand most of the technical terms—"four-dimensional Minkowski space," "metric," "tensor," "Gödel's incompleteness theorems"—but the cold, rigorous, and profoundly complex logical beauty they conveyed, transcending all his current cognitive frameworks, deeply shocked him.
This was absolutely unlike any existing knowledge system in the Xuanmeng! This was a… Dao that directly described the essence of spacetime and energy using mathematical language! A Dao that treated the laws of the universe as analyzable and calculable objects!
And the "spiritual coupling coefficient κ" mentioned in the jade slip was even more earth-shattering—it placed this mysterious force of "spiritual power" alongside a physical constant describing the curvature of spacetime (the gravitational constant G), and attempted to find a "conversion factor" between them. What did this mean? Did it mean that spiritual power might not be an illusion, but rather, like gravity and electromagnetism, a manifestation of some fundamental force of the universe? But the Xuanmeng's cultivation system uses a different symbol system to describe and utilize it?
An even greater mystery arises: the civilization that created this jade slip has clearly reached this point. Where did they go? Why did they perish? Why is their knowledge scattered into fragments, buried here?
Li Wei wiped the blood from his nose, his eyes shining with astonishing light. Fear remained, but a stronger, almost pilgrimage-like thirst for knowledge burned fiercely. He had found the key, a key that might unlock a completely new world, though the key itself was incredibly heavy, almost crushing him.
He looked at the other "strange objects" on the stone platform, a new guess forming in his mind. Perhaps they weren't isolated fragments, but rather "fossilized civilizations" belonging to the same… or several lost civilizations.
The path of deciphering was long and dangerous, but he could not turn back.