You Aren't Wrong in Thinking That...

"There seems to be something wrong with your array!" At the center of the array diagram, Ji Liuli looked up and snapped angrily, "What's wrong with it? What gives you the right to question my array?" Standing on the diagram, Feng Tingyu scanned the entire layout thoroughly before saying, "According to your array's prediction, an enemy should have delivered himself into my hands just now, yet none appeared." Ji Liuli frowned. "Could you have made a mistake?" "No way! I even sensed what the fellow looks like. It should be a little white thing, fairly durable too—if I took my time playing with it, I could beat it for days," Feng Tingyu said, gesturing as she spoke. Ji Liuli frowned slightly. "That shouldn't happen! Although the structure of this array is extraordinarily complex, I'm already intimately familiar with its fundamental framework. I tested it just a moment ago. Look..." Ji Liuli projected a gleaming streak of Dao power into the array diagram. Instantly, it transformed into hundreds of streaming lights flowing along the array's lines, crossing, dodging, merging, and branching according to immensely intricate rules. After a dazzling sequence of shifts and turns, they reconverged into a single point of radiant glow at the array core, possessing a wondrous, intricate beauty. "See? There's nothing wrong with the Heavenly Mystery array itself. Could it be due to a factor outside the array?" The array's intricate shifts had occurred within the span of a single breath. Yet Feng Tingyu pointed to a section of the array and said, "The structure here is too complex. While it filters out erroneous karmic interference, that very complexity might make the Heavenly Mystery array overly sensitive, causing it to be affected or even suppressed by higher-order karma." Ji Liuli pondered as she replied, "But if the array isn't sensitive enough, it will miss those faint yet meaningful threads of karma, and thus fail to make predictions." "What if we account for both? Higher-order forces are nothing more than immortal power. We can first set up a subarray to exclude the known types of immortal power. For example, like this..." Countless specks of light shot forth from various parts of Feng Tingyu's body, assembling in midair into all kinds of numbers and formulas. They swirled ceaselessly, some even turning somersaults. Ji Liuli hurriedly shouted, "Stop! You're making me dizzy. I already told you not to cast things in such a scattered, multi-point mess! Other people don't think the way you do..." "Uh... sometimes I can't keep them under control either..." Feng Tingyu adjusted them with some effort, but many formulas and numbers still dashed about like runaway horses. Only she knew that the symbols hovering above her head and behind her back were actually part of a single whole, while the two rows of symbols across her chest had nothing to do with each other whatsoever. That Ji Liuli could take in all several thousand floating symbols and numbers at a glance, then spontaneously reassemble them into meaningful equations according to their underlying rules, was already quite incredible. Just as Feng Tingyu was struggling to make adjustments, a sudden smack sounded as a large hand slapped her on the rear, followed by Wei Yuan's voice from behind: "Did you miss me?" That single slap instantly extinguished nearly half the drifting symbols and numbers! Feng Tingyu spun around and snapped, "You broke my train of thought!" "Ah, I..." Wei Yuan was momentarily at a loss. Feng Tingyu reached out, pulled Wei Yuan over, and buried his head straight into her chest. Then she said, "Forget it, let's leave it at that. We missed you too..." Feng Tingyu looked petite, but she possessed immense strength. Given the current state of Wei Yuan's dharma body and his complete lack of guard, he was easily seized and smothered by her. Naturally, he did not put up much of a struggle anyway. At that moment, Ji Liuli spoke in a faint, cool voice: "Are you two pretending I don't exist?" Wei Yuan gasped in genuine shock. He truly had not noticed Ji Liuli just now, simply because she had merged with the array; without deliberately looking for her, she was impossible to spot. Moreover, Wei Yuan was quite weak at the moment, his senses dulled, so he hadn't detected her presence. Feng Tingyu, however, was not one to indulge Ji Liuli. "Shoo, child! Go play somewhere else!" Ji Liuli bristled with anger. "Who are you calling a child? What part of me is small?" "Well, I certainly wasn't talking about your age..." Feng Tingyu said, eyeing Ji Liuli's figure. This truly infuriated Ji Liuli. In a chilled voice, she said, "It seems I haven't taught you a lesson in too long. You've forgotten that on the immortal path, the strong reign supreme..." Feng Tingyu immediately waved a plume of black mist, engulfing both herself and Wei Yuan within it. "I'll spar with you tomorrow..." Ji Liuli was well-acquainted with Feng Tingyu's dharma idol. With a cold sneer, she said, "Others might be helpless against your Obstruction of Knowledge, but did you think I'd fear it? Watch how I break it! I..." Ji Liuli's voice abruptly faltered! Feng Tingyu's dharma idol mist could cut off the five senses and divine sense, but it was not absolute; ways to overcome it existed, and Ji Liuli knew several arrays capable of doing so. Yet the moment she attempted to deploy an array, she discovered that the surrounding spiritual qi had all been locked down by Feng Tingyu. Without unlocking them, setting up an array was entirely impossible. In truth, each lock was exceedingly simple—akin to calculating eighteen divided by seven—but the problem was that Feng Tingyu had laid down a full ten thousand of them! Ji Liuli's eyes practically shot flames of fury. This was a classic case of competing purely on raw computing power rather than algorithmic elegance—precisely the kind of contest she loathed the most. Yet the two were currently matched in cultivation realm, and Feng Tingyu had seized the initiative. Ji Liuli had no choice but to painstakingly unlock the locks and lay her array. After three breaths, blue light beamed from her eyes, completely clearing away Feng Tingyu's black mist. As expected, the mist was empty; the two had long since vanished. Ji Liuli stared blankly for a moment, then huffed. Without another word, she sat back down where she was, throwing herself into calculating the array. The sun set and rose. In the blink of an eye, it was the same time the following day. A patch of black mist suddenly billowed in the same spot, and Wei Yuan stepped out from it. Seeing Ji Liuli sitting in the exact same posture as before, not having moved an inch, a chill ran through Wei Yuan's heart. He knew trouble was brewing. Without even raising her head, Ji Liuli asked flatly, "So I've been relegated to last place, have I?" "How could that be? Earlier, I truly didn't know you were there..." Ji Liuli cut in coldly, "I don't want to hear your excuses. Follow me!" Wei Yuan started to speak, then hesitated, ultimately having no choice but to follow. In a secluded, peculiar space, Ji Liuli's voice echoed: "Did you two leave me for last because you assumed you could squeeze something out of me no matter what? Well, if that's what you were thinking, congratulations—you're not wrong in thinking that..." ... Wei Yuan sat in the study of his immortal manor, sipping nourishing medicinal tea while looking through official documents that had just been brought in. In truth, the vast majority of official business did not require physical paper at all; it was handled through Splendor of the Many Realms. Therefore, anything that still reached his desk on paper was either a special matter or an issue of exceptional gravity. What Wei Yuan held in his hands right now was an invitation specially dispatched by Yu Zhizhuo, inviting Wei Yuan to attend the completion ceremony of a new type of weaving machine. According to Yu Zhizhuo, this loom was an epoch-making creation, a watershed demarcating the old era from the new, and the morning star heralding the dawn of a spiritual qi industry. Hearing Yu Zhizhuo speak of it in such mystical, grand terms, Wei Yuan's interest was piqued. If memory served, back when the first brocade workshop was built, within a little over a year Wei Yuan had shattered Ningxi's brocade industry to pieces, ultimately tearing it up by the roots. Many of the original brocade artisans had either relocated to Qingming to continue in their trade, or had remained behind with no choice but to work as tavern hands or drive rental carriages on the streets. Why develop another weaving machine now? In Wei Yuan's recollection, Qingming already possessed multiple weaving workshops, and fabric was just like grain—there was so much of it that there was nowhere left to store it, nowhere left to sell it, so much that it could practically pave the roads. So how could a single loom hold such immense significance?