Before Ye Ling, a line of large words appeared—
Fill the characters using Mental Force.
What?
Testing my Mental Force?
This is my specialty!
Although Ye Ling's Void Spirit Body came from the System, ever since he learned to use Mental Force to capture Spiritual Qi, his Mental Force had undergone a qualitative leap.
If an ordinary cultivator's Mental Force were a couch potato, then his would be an athlete. The difference between trained and untrained Mental Force was obvious at a glance.
Yet even with his level of Mental Force, the moment he seriously focused on the floating characters, a wave of dizziness swept over him.
Something's wrong!
Realizing there was a problem with the characters, Ye Ling immediately pulled his gaze back.
Just looking at these characters was enough to make one lose their sanity, let alone trying to fill them with Mental Force.
So this is what "getting injured" meant?
Ye Ling licked his slightly dry lips, finally grasping the true difficulty of Ai Yueli's trial.
If the trial was really designed this way, then it would be impossible for anyone to pass. Could it be that she truly believed he was a Void Spirit Body and had cranked the difficulty straight to the maximum?
Ye Ling didn't know whether a true Void Spirit Body could pass Ai Yueli's test, but if he tried to brute-force it, he definitely wouldn't make it.
Forget filling all the floating characters around him. Even a single character made him feel powerless. This was simply not something someone at his realm could accomplish.
It had to be said, this was the first real predicament he'd encountered since transmigrating.
But would she really set up an impossible hurdle like this as a test?
Ye Ling crossed his arms, one hand supporting his chin, his mind racing as he tried to recall every detail of his earlier conversation with Ai Yueli.
Unlikely. She absolutely wouldn't create a purely Mental Force–based trial just to make things difficult.
After reevaluating Ai Yueli in his mind, Ye Ling concluded that she wasn't the type to rely on brute force.
If the test were simply about the amount of Mental Force one possessed, she could have examined him directly. There was no need to set up something like this.
Which meant there had to be a simpler way to solve the puzzle in front of him.
As his thoughts deepened, Ye Ling felt himself gradually touching upon the key to the trial.
"...The talisman from earlier was linked to the laws of space, so once activated, it would draw you into this space."
Suddenly, Ai Yueli's explanation from when she sent him here surfaced in his mind.
Ai Yueli was a focused person. She never said anything unnecessary.
That meant this sentence was the key to solving the problem.
So that's how it is.
The puzzle was cracked.
Ye Ling's deep eyes lit up, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. His whole demeanor became noticeably more confident.
Words themselves possess power.
Just like the character "正 (correct / well-behaved)" written on a thigh can stir desire. Those who understand will understand. Those who don't can't have it explained to them.
The characters floating in the air each carried their own power. Behind them, they were linked to the laws and concepts of this world.
Once he understood the principle, Ye Ling closed his eyes. His Mental Force extended like invisible tendrils, wrapping around the surrounding characters one by one, trying to analyze the deeper meaning within them.
With the help of Deconstruct Difficulty, he couldn't fully comprehend what these characters represented, but he could sense the power they contained.
Some were scorching hot, some icy cold. Some carried utter stillness, others brimmed with vitality…
Each character embodied its own force. That was precisely why Ye Ling couldn't fill them with Mental Force.
He didn't know whether cultivators at higher realms could directly fill characters imbued with laws and concepts. But even if there were thousands more of him, it would still be impossible. These characters would drain him dry long before that.
Trying to fill a single character directly was hopeless.
However, once the characters were arranged and combined, their respective laws would cancel each other out or fuse together. When only one character remained, he could at least attempt to satisfy it.
Of course, at that point, wouldn't the trial just turn into a matching game?
Because of that, Ye Ling didn't rush to cancel or fuse the characters. Instead, he prioritized rearranging them.
Moving the characters was difficult, but it was still far easier than pouring Mental Force directly into them.
First, he placed the characters representing vitality at the very front, and those symbolizing deathly stillness at the very end. Then, relying on his Spiritual Awareness, he arranged the remaining characters one by one according to their differing meanings.
This was only possible because his Mental Force far exceeded that of cultivators at the same realm. Otherwise, accomplishing something like this would have been completely impossible.
Even so, by the time he finished placing the last character, he was so exhausted that he collapsed onto the ground.
Yet the miracle he had imagined never came. The characters continued to float where they were, without the slightest change.
Was my deduction wrong?
Lying there, Ye Ling simply crossed his legs and sat up, resting his right hand against his cheek as he pondered where the problem lay.
Was something wrong with the middle section?
No. This was the only possible arrangement. Any other order would have caused characters to fuse or cancel each other out.
Then was the problem at the beginning or the end?
That didn't seem right either. Even if those two were swapped, it wouldn't make any fundamental difference.
So did that mean the only way to break the impasse was to cancel and fuse the characters, then forcibly pour everything into a single remaining character?
According to Ye Ling's calculations, if only one character remained, he really could fill it completely.
But instinctively, he felt that Ai Yueli wasn't someone who relied on brute force to solve problems. His entire process so far had been about thinking things through, yet that final step would still come down to raw power. That completely went against the spirit of the trial.
Which meant there had to be something he was missing.
But what exactly was it?
Ye Ling scratched his head, feeling completely lost.
This time, no matter how thoroughly he replayed his conversation with Ai Yueli, he couldn't find even a hint of how to break through.
Yet as he kept thinking, the characters before him began to give him an increasingly strong sense of déjà vu.
Isn't this just coding?
With the help of Deconstruct Difficulty, it didn't take Ye Ling long to recall where that sense of familiarity came from.
Vitality represented a beginning.
Deathly stillness represented an end.
If these characters were treated as operational symbols, Ye Ling suddenly found the "code" in front of him becoming much clearer.
The differences were still huge, but once he understood their meanings, it became apparent that these characters corresponded to the steps that made up an entire world.
Beginning and end represented time. Cold and heat represented temperature. The remaining characters were also essential components of a world.
If that was the case…
Ye Ling stood up, completely enlightened.
"So the final step was this!"
Under the guidance of Ye Ling's Mental Force, the long chain of characters rearranged itself into a circle.
And the moment deathly stillness connected with vitality, the previously blank space underwent a drastic, earth-shaking transformation.