Chapter 111: Law

Zheng Fa looked at the pattern pointed to by the old man.

It wasn’t quite accurate to call it a pattern—it was part of a three-dimensional shape.

As the old man had said, it was indeed a structure, and only a partial one—if an analogy were needed, it resembled a radical component of a Chinese character.

But each of these shapes was three-dimensional, far more complex than flat Chinese characters.

Zheng Fa scrolled the mouse, moving other rune diagrams onto the screen.

Indeed, in this batch of results, most rune diagrams shared this same structure, and only one.

“Water element…”

Zheng Fa pondered; this result immediately pointed to a hypothesis—

The five-element classification of runes depended on whether this small structure was present.

Whether this hypothesis was correct remained uncertain, but at least it gave Zheng Fa a path to decipher runes.

“Look at the runes for metal, wood, fire, and earth!”

Zheng Fa sent the other five-element runes to Han Xiaobai.

He glanced at the sky and apologized: “It’s late. Sorry to trouble you.”

“Late?” Han Xiaobai typed back instantly: “You know nothing about cultivation.”

…Actually, I do know a bit.

The old man stopped yawning, perked up, and stood beside Zheng Fa, studying the water-element runes together.

Some rune diagrams initially showed no trace of this structure, but after topological transformations, they gradually revealed the same familiar form.

Zheng Fa drew this structure on paper and wrote the character for “water” beside it.

“The more I look at this, the more interesting it becomes… You mentioned earlier that runes are trajectories of spiritual energy?” the old man suddenly said.

“My senior sister said that,” Zheng Fa shook his head. “But I think it makes sense.”

At least the fact that the “Foundation Establishment Method of Rune Dao” accelerated his cultivation proved runes were indeed spiritual energy.

“Different trajectories produce different effects,” the old man shook his head. “I can’t comprehend that.”

Zheng Fa nodded and posed two more questions:

“Besides this structure, what purpose do the other parts of the rune serve?”

Is the yin-yang property also a kind of structure?

“… ” The old man froze, looked at Zheng Fa, and seemed genuinely baffled: “How would I know? I’m just an old man—I’ve never even seen what spiritual energy looks like!”

But your status in Xuanwei Realm is high!

After an indeterminate amount of time, only after Tang Lingwumin’s phone rang three times did the others send the analysis results for the remaining runes.

To the three’s disappointment—likely due to insufficient algorithm precision or too few samples for the other four elements—

They found only the structure corresponding to earth.

The other three elements showed none of the expected results.

“Finding this much today is already lucky,” Zheng Fa comforted the slightly disappointed Tang Lingwumin. “This isn’t urgent. We can continue tomorrow night.”

He remained remarkably calm.

Research requires patience.

Besides, cultivation can easily span centuries.

There’s no rushing it.

Tang Lingwumin slowly nodded, checked her phone, greeted the two, and walked downstairs.

Zheng Fa’s hearing now far surpassed that of ordinary humans—he clearly heard Tang Lingwumin’s footsteps fading as she descended the stairs, the engine starting as she got into her car.

What he heard even more clearly was her mother’s loud scolding when she reached the ground floor.

And Tang Lingwumin’s silent silence.

…

The next day, classroom.

After physics class, Zheng Fa collected his test paper and pulled out a problem set to read.

Reading—not solving.

At this high school stage, he now had the confidence to avoid writing—most problems, after reading, he could guess what the examiner intended to test and which method would solve it, then just check the answer.

If nothing seemed off, he moved on.

Zheng Fa felt his time dwindled day by day.

The time available to learn high school knowledge was extremely limited—only class hours and breaks.

So he chose this relatively time-efficient method.

But this wasn’t him giving up on the college entrance exam; on the contrary, his goal had grown higher than before.

Previously, he told Old Chen he wanted to attend Jiangnan University.

Now he aimed for Jingcheng University.

To establish a cultivation laboratory, he needed to go where more top-tier talents gathered—in modern society, opportunities to meet experts in any field were few.

Getting into a top university might be the simplest path.

Most people never realize that a professor you meet in university might be the peak of your network.

“Zheng Fa?”

Wang Chen softly called from behind him.

“Hmm?” Zheng Fa turned slightly, looking at Wang Chen.

“…Was your test paper perfect?”

Wang Chen stared at Zheng Fa.

“Mm.” Zheng Fa nodded slightly.

He did have some talent in physics—at least in high school physics.

He now ranked first in most physics exams.

“Then why don’t you rest during breaks?” Wang Chen smirked, pointing at the countdown sign by the door. “I don’t even see you looking anxious at that thing!”

Zheng Fa: “…”

Tang Lingwumin suddenly walked up from the front row, holding a thick notebook.

“Hmm?”

“I glanced through class and think I found the common structure in metal-element runes.”

Tang Lingwumin placed the notebook before Zheng Fa and opened it softly.

Zheng Fa remembered her privilege of not paying attention in class, and felt a pang of envy.

He flipped through the notebook she handed him—it was filled with dense, intricate rune diagrams.

Each rune was neatly arranged in rows.

It looked extremely friendly to anyone with OCD.

Above each rune, Tang Lingwumin had drawn a small circle—and inside, the same structure was unmistakable.

He noticed the dark circles under her eyes and frowned slightly, whispering: “What time did you sleep last night?”

He suspected she’d stayed up all night working on this.

Tang Lingwumin didn’t answer, waved at him, flicked her ponytail, and swayed to her seat—then collapsed face-down on the desk and fell asleep.

“What’s this?”

Wang Chen had quietly sidled up beside Zheng Fa, pointing curiously at the runes in the notebook.

“…It’s hard to explain to you.”

Zheng Fa thought for a moment and said to Wang Chen.

“…” Wang Chen rubbed his chin, glanced at Zheng Fa, then at Tang Lingwumin, and his face lit up with sudden understanding: “Only you two could pull this off!”

“?”

Wang Chen slapped Zheng Fa’s shoulder, enviously: “Top students are top students—even dating is this clever!”

Zheng Fa stared at Wang Chen’s beaming face, certain he’d imagined something outrageous: “What exactly are you talking about?”

“I’ve watched too many spy dramas! Is this a codebook?” Wang Chen pointed at the notebook. “Are you two using encrypted communication now?”

“…” Zheng Fa looked at Wang Chen, baffled by his train of thought.

At that moment, a head with built-in spotlight effect popped up from behind Wang Chen.

Wang Chen paled, seeing Old Chen first glance at him, then turn his gaze to the notebook.

“Let me see.”

Old Chen extended his hand toward Zheng Fa.

He studied the dense, neatly arranged runes, rubbed his chin, looked from Zheng Fa to Tang Lingwumin, and his face showed a flash of sudden understanding…

Zheng Fa felt he’d seen this exact expression before.

Old Chen said nothing to Zheng Fa, simply placed the notebook before him, and gave him a meaningful look.

Watching Old Chen walk away, Wang Chen patted Zheng Fa’s shoulder and asked: “Do you think Old Chen imagined something too?”

“…”

At the old man’s house.

Hearing that Tang Lingwumin had discovered the structure related to metal, the old man glanced at the girl with surprise.

“Looks correct.”

After verifying each metal-element rune classified by Zhang Shijie, the old man nodded.

Zheng Fa glanced at Tang Lingwumin.

The girl still looked exhausted, but a look of relief had spread across her face.

The old white-haired man seemed to notice her expression and turned to give Zheng Fa a long look.

Zheng Fa nodded slightly.

Han Xiaobai on the other end of the computer also modified the algorithm.

Once you knew what to look for, some things became much simpler.

An hour later, the five structures symbolizing earth, metal, water, fire, and wood appeared on the screen.

The group tried searching for yin-yang structures next, only to realize yin-yang seemed different from the five elements—this approach couldn’t find them at all.

Zheng Fa randomly dragged the five patterns on the software, changing their positions and orientations, as if assembling something.

“What are you doing?”

Zheng Fa said nothing, only stared at the screen and operated slowly.

“Got it!”

On the computer screen, the five structures suddenly formed a single whole.

Earth connected to metal, metal to water, water to wood, wood to fire, fire to earth.

“Huh?”

The old white-haired man blinked, staring at the screen.

“You thought this was a single whole all along?”

“No, I got the inspiration from the talisman patterns inside my body.”

Today he had carefully observed the upright Invisible Talisman and Frost Blade Talisman crystallized in his dantian—since their formation, they had always been side by side.

Only today did he realize—their touching parts corresponded to the structures symbolizing “earth” and “water,” and together they formed a new pattern.

This gave him the idea that perhaps these five structures could combine with each other.

“These five things are actually one whole?” the old white-haired man frowned.

Zheng Fa nodded, opened his notebook, and wrote a simple sentence: The five-element nature of a talisman is determined by a specific structure, which can be called a Five-Element Sub-Talisman; these Sub-Talismans can combine independently into a single whole.

The old white-haired man stared at the line, then burst out laughing: “You’re trying to write a law.”

He had seen through Zheng Fa’s hidden ambition.

Zheng Fa shook his head: “It still needs verification, but if proven, I want to name it this.”

He wrote eight characters above the line.

“White’s First Law of Talisman Dao.”

“Huh?” The old white-haired man pointed at himself: “Named after me?”

“The greatest credit goes to you,” Zheng Fa smiled.

“Cough, cough—this is the collective wisdom of all three of us, collective wisdom.”

“Then I’ll change the name?” Zheng Fa pretended to edit it.

“No, no—this name sounds great!” The old white-haired man quickly stopped him, staring at the line and grinning foolishly for a long while, then suddenly sighed: “I spent my whole life doing math and left no name behind—if this law really exists, I’d die without regrets.”

It sounded like he didn’t take it seriously.