Chapter 111: Law

Zheng Fa stared 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 forced to compare, it resembled a radical component of a Chinese character.

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

Zheng Fa scrolled the mouse, moving other glyph patterns onto the screen.

Indeed, in this batch of results, most glyph patterns shared this same structure, and only one.

"Water element…"

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

The five-element classification of glyphs depends on whether this small structure is present.

Whether this hypothesis is correct remains uncertain, but at least it gave Zheng Fa a path to decipher glyphs.

"Look at the glyphs for metal, wood, fire, and earth!"

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

He glanced at the sky and apologized: "It's late, sorry to trouble you."

"Late?" Han Xiaobai typed back swiftly: "You know nothing about cultivation."

…Actually, I do know a bit.

Bai Lao stopped yawning, his spirits lifted, standing beside Zheng Fa as they studied the earlier water-element glyphs together.

Some glyphs initially showed no trace of this structure, but after topological transformation, 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 said before that glyphs are trajectories of Qi movement?" Bai Lao suddenly said.

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

At least from the "Foundation Establishment Method of Glyph Dao," which has accelerated my cultivation, it's clear glyphs are indeed Qi.

"Different trajectories produce different effects," Bai Lao shook his head. "I just can't grasp that."

Zheng Fa nodded and posed two more questions:

"Besides this structure, what purpose do the other parts of the glyph serve?"

"Is the yin-yang attribute also a kind of structure?"

"…" Bai Lao froze, looked at Zheng Fa, and shrugged helplessly: "How would I know? I'm just an old man—I've never even seen what Qi looks like!"

But your status in the Xuanwei Realm is high!

After an unknown length of time, only after Tang Lingwu's phone rang three times did the others send over the analysis results for the remaining glyphs.

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 today is already luck," Zheng Fa comforted Tang Lingwu, who looked disappointed. "This kind of work isn't rushed—we can continue tomorrow night."

He remained optimistic.

Research requires patience.

Besides, cultivation can easily span centuries or millennia.

There's no point in rushing.

Tang Lingwu slowly nodded, checked her phone, bid them farewell, and walked downstairs.

Zheng Fa's hearing now far surpassed that of ordinary humans—he clearly heard Tang Lingwu's footsteps fade as she descended the stairs, heard the engine start as she got into her car.

What he heard even more clearly was her mother's loud scolding when Tang Lingwu reached the ground floor.

And Tang Lingwu's silent silence.

…

The next day, classroom.

After physics class, Zheng Fa collected the exam paper handed out by the teacher 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 them, he could roughly tell 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 truly limited—just 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 Jiang Nan University.

Now he wanted to attend Jingcheng University.

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

Getting into a top university might be the simplest and most feasible path.

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

"Zheng Fa?"

Wang Chen softly called from behind him.

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

"…Was your exam paper just now a perfect score?"

Wang Chen stared at Zheng Fa.

"Mm." Zheng Fa nodded lightly.

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

He now consistently 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 haven't seen you look stressed even once!"

Zheng Fa: "..."

Tang Lingwu suddenly walked over from the front row, holding a thick notebook.

"Hm?"

"I took a look during class and think I found the common structure in the Metal talisman diagrams."

Tang Lingwu placed the notebook on Zheng Fa's desk 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 talisman diagrams.

Each diagram on the page was neatly arranged in rows.

It looked extremely friendly to anyone with OCD.

Above each diagram, Tang Lingwu had drawn a small circle—and inside each, the same structure was clearly present.

He looked at the dark circles under her eyes and frowned slightly, asking quietly: "What time did you sleep last night?"

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

Tang Lingwu didn't answer. She waved at him, flicked her ponytail, and staggered back to her seat—then collapsed face-down on her desk and fell into a light nap.

"What's this?"

Wang Chen had quietly slipped over to Zheng Fa's side, pointing curiously at the talisman diagrams 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 Lingwu, and a look of sudden understanding crossed his face: "Only you two could pull this off!"

"?"

Wang Chen slapped Zheng Fa's shoulder, enviously: "Top students are top students—even their love lives are this clever!"

Zheng Fa stared at Wang Chen's beaming face and felt 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 in Zheng Fa's hands. "Are you two now using encrypted communication?"

"... You're imagining too much." Zheng Fa looked at Wang Chen, baffled by his train of thought.

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

Wang Chen turned pale. He saw Old Chen first glance at him, then shift his gaze to the notebook.

"Let me see."

Old Chen extended his hand toward Zheng Fa.

He studied the dense, neatly arranged talisman diagrams, rubbed his chin, looked down at Zheng Fa, then at Tang Lingwu—and a look of sudden understanding flashed across his face...

Zheng Fa felt certain he'd seen that exact expression before.

Old Chen said nothing to Zheng Fa. He placed the notebook back on the desk and gave him a long, meaningful look.

Watching Old Chen walk away, Wang Chen slapped Zheng Fa's shoulder and asked: "Do you think Old Chen imagined too much too?"

"..."

At Bai Lao's place.

Hearing that Tang Lingwu had discovered a structure related to Metal, Bai Lao glanced at the girl with surprise.

"It looks correct."

After verifying each Metal talisman diagram classified by Zhang Shijie, Bai Lao nodded.

Zheng Fa looked at Tang Lingwu.

Her face was still tired, but a look of relief had spread across it.

Bai Lao seemed to notice her expression. He turned and gave Zheng Fa a deep, long look.

Zheng Fa nodded lightly.

Han Xiaobai on the other end of the computer also modified the calculation method.

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

An hour later, the five structures representing Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth appeared vividly on the screen.

They tried searching for Yin-Yang structures next, but realized Yin-Yang seemed different from the Five Elements—this approach couldn't find them.

Zheng Fa randomly dragged the five patterns on the software, rotating and repositioning them, as if trying to assemble something.

"What are you doing?"

Zheng Fa didn't answer. He stared at the screen and slowly manipulated the controls.

"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.

"Hm?"

Bai Lao blinked, staring at the computer screen.

"You thought this was a single whole all along?"

"No. I got the inspiration from the talismans inside my own body."

Today he had carefully observed the upright Invisible Talisman and Frost Blade Talisman condensed in his dantian—both had been side by side since their formation.

Today he realized—the part where they touched was precisely the structures representing "Earth" and "Water," and together they formed a new pattern.

This gave him the idea that these five structures might be combinable with each other.

"Are these five things actually one and the same?" Bai Lao frowned.

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

Bai Lao stared at these words for a moment, then burst out laughing: "You're trying to write a law."

He seemed to see through Zheng Fa's hidden ambition.

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

He wrote eight characters above that line.

"Bai's Talisman Dao First Law."

"Huh?" Bai Lao pointed at himself: "You're naming it after me?"

"The greatest credit belongs 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 erase it.

"No, no—this name sounds great!" Bai Lao hurriedly stopped Zheng Fa, 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 such a law truly exists, I'd die without regret."

It sounded like he didn't take this seriously.