Chapter 311 - Shared Patterns and a Dangerous Guess

Chapter 311: Chapter 311 - Shared Patterns and a Dangerous Guess

The second fragment went into the Gossiping Quenching Trough.

This time, Lu Canghai and Huo Yan were prepared.

Qi covered their ears before the dark liquid even began to move, while Su Bai stood beside the basin and watched a fragment of the cracked bronze mirror disappear beneath its surface.

A familiar brilliance erupted from the trough, followed almost immediately by the same unbearable chorus that had filled the courtyard earlier.

Thousands of overlapping voices crashed together around the two old men.

Su Bai heard none of that chaos.

The pleasant voice reached him as clearly as before.

"Item: Fragment of Blood-Return Reflection Mirror."

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Origin: Forged ten years and three months ago by a demonic artificer using spirit bronze, blood-refined silver, and a damaged reflective spirit crystal."

"Quality: High-grade defensive counterattack artifact."

"Current Condition: Severely damaged. Original artifact structure no longer functional."

The dark water rippled beneath the fragment.

"Primary Function: Receives incoming spiritual attacks through a blood-fed reflective formation, stores a portion of the force, and returns the accumulated attack with increased momentum."

Su Bai remembered the battlefield.

That description matched what they had witnessed almost perfectly.

The pleasant voice continued.

"Usage History: Constructed within a demonic faction workshop. Reflective array altered four times during forging due to repeated instability. Final core design reproduced from a formation pattern supplied to the artificer prior to construction."

Su Bai’s expression slowly hardened.

The remaining information followed. The trough identified weaknesses in the mirror’s structure, the excessive strain created by repeated reflection, and even the reason several formation lines had been reinforced before the battle.

Eventually, the voice reached the same point that had bothered him earlier.

"Core Formation Principle: Unidentified."

The light faded.

Su Bai remained silent.

Huo Yan removed the Qi around his ears as soon as the courtyard quieted.

"Well?"

"The mirror was made by another demonic artificer," Su Bai said. "Different materials, different construction history, and its formation was altered several times while it was being forged."

That matched what Huo Yan had already discovered through his own examination.

The old man’s gaze sharpened.

"And its core formation principle?"

Su Bai looked toward him.

"It couldn’t identify that either."

Huo Yan’s expression sank.

They tested another fragment.

The remains of one of the escape discs reacted even more violently when they entered the dark liquid. Once again, the trough identified its materials, its purpose, its construction history, and several failed attempts by the artificer to stabilize the spatial formation.

When the pleasant voice reached the formation’s deepest foundation, however, the answer remained the same.

The core formation principle was unidentified.

They continued until the surviving remnants had been tested.

By the time the last light faded, the atmosphere in the courtyard had changed completely.

All of the item shared the same strange flaw in the trough’s appraisal. It could trace what the demonic artificers had done. It could even determine that the unusual designs had been reproduced from formation patterns those artificers had not created themselves.

The moment it tried to trace the foundation behind those patterns, it found nothing.

Su Bai stared into the dark liquid.

There had to be a reason.

Huo Yan finally broke the silence.

"Martial Nephew, do you have any idea why the trough keeps failing at the same place?"

Su Bai hesitated before answering.

"I have a couple of guesses, Martial Uncle, but I don’t know if either of them is correct."

Lu Canghai, who had remained quiet through most of the tests, looked over from his seat.

"Say them first. We can judge whether they make sense afterward."

Su Bai nodded and turned his attention back to the fragments.

"The simpler possibility is age. Whatever formation inheritance they copied may be older than the trough, or older than whatever allows it to recognize an object’s history."

Huo Yan slowly nodded.

That explanation was reasonable.

The cultivation world had existed for far too long for every inheritance to remain traceable. Entire sects had disappeared, civilizations had been buried, and countless formation systems had vanished without leaving complete records behind.

An ancient enough principle might simply lie beyond whatever the quenching trough was capable of recognizing.

Lu Canghai stroked his beard.

"And the other possibility?"

Su Bai hesitated again.

He had considered it after the first test, but seeing the same failure appear across artifacts created by several different hands had made the thought increasingly difficult to dismiss.

"The formation principle may never have originated in this world."

The courtyard became quiet.

Huo Yan’s fingers stopped against the stone table.

Lu Canghai’s eyes narrowed.

Neither man dismissed the possibility, which only made the silence heavier.

Huo Yan eventually glanced toward the quenching trough.

"I still have no idea what that thing is actually reading."

Su Bai nodded.

Neither elder could understand what the trough said. All they heard was an unbearable mass of overlapping voices, while his Reversal turned the same effect into something clear enough to listen to comfortably.

They could judge the results it produced, but understanding exactly how it obtained those results was another matter.

Lu Canghai leaned back slightly.

"The first explanation would be easier to deal with."

Huo Yan understood immediately.

If the unknown principles merely came from some ancient inheritance buried within the cultivation world, the problem remained dangerous, but at least it belonged to something they understood.

The second possibility was far more troubling.

Su Bai understood their caution.

He also happened to possess something that could make the comparison more useful.

His attention moved toward the opened Immortal storage ring.

The things inside had not originated in the cultivation world at all.

If the quenching trough reacted to one of those objects in the same strange manner, the similarity would not prove his theory beyond all doubt, but it would make the second possibility much harder to dismiss.

Su Bai reached into his System Inventory and brought out the opened Immortal ring.

His spiritual sense passed through its contents until he found what he was looking for.

A small piece of dull metal rested among several ancient components.

Su Bai withdrew it.

The object was roughly the size of his palm, with faded formation lines covering both surfaces. From the restrictions and records he had encountered before, Su Bai suspected it had once served as some kind of identity token belonging to the Myriad-Heaven Anomaly Court.

He had never confirmed its exact name or function.

That uncertainty made it suitable for the experiment.

Huo Yan’s attention naturally settled on the unfamiliar piece of metal, but he did not ask where it had come from. After everything Su Bai had already brought back, probing into every strange object in his possession would have become exhausting for both of them.

Su Bai studied the token for several breaths.

The result would need to be interpreted carefully.

If the trough identified it normally, then the age of the demonic formation principles would remain the simpler explanation.

If the object produced the same kind of failure, however, the comparison would become much more interesting.

Su Bai crouched beside the basin with the metal token in hand. Lu Canghai and Huo Yan had already sealed their hearing with Qi after what happened during the previous tests, leaving them to watch quietly as he lowered his hand.

The token slipped from his fingers and entered the dark liquid.

The response was instantaneous.

Blinding light erupted from the Gossiping Quenching Trough, and the entire courtyard trembled beneath the sudden disturbance.