Chapter 654: Compared to This Level of Craftsmanship, It's Like a Country Bumpkin's Woodshed

The morning light had not yet fully pierced through the dense canopy of the ten-thousand-year-old luminous banyan when a streak of emerald-green light shot out from the deepest part of the main trunk, hovering steadily before the wooden door of Qingyou Residence.

Su Ming pushed open the door, his gaze falling upon that streak of flowing light.

It was a jade-green leaf shaped like a willow leaf, its surface rippling with a faint fluctuation of the laws of life. Between the leaf's veins, an ancient character for "guest" faintly emerged.

"Su Ming! This is a decree personally issued by Elder Woodheart." Ye Qing hurried over from a nearby passage, the soft tendrils atop his head twitching with excitement, his face written all over with envy. "With this jade-green leaf, your status in Greenwood Court has completely transformed from a suspicious outsider to a distinguished human race guest official."

Su Ming raised his right hand, but rather than directly receiving it, he secretly circulated the Like Water Art, condensing an extremely thin water membrane at his fingertips before pinching the leaf between them.

The leaf was warm and smooth in his hand, without the slightest sense of resistance or rejection. Instead, upon contacting the layer of life essence coat on his body's surface, it emitted a clear humming sound, as if performing some kind of identity binding.

"This leaf is not only a symbol of status, but also the highest-level pass for the outer defensive formations." Ye Qing pointed at the patterns on the leaf. "Apart from the core root vein region and the elders' council's important grounds, you can move unimpeded through all the formation nodes inside and outside Greenwood Court."

Su Ming nodded slightly, carefully tucking it into the storage pouch at his waist, then looked up at Ye Qing. "Brother Ye came so early. Is there some other arrangement?"

"Of course, I'm here to show you around!" Ye Qing patted a large vine-woven cloth bag at his waist and smiled. "Didn't you mention last night that you wanted to check out the archive tree hollows? I happen to be free today, so I'll take you on a tour."

"Then I'll have to trouble you."

The two followed a thick, spiraling vine passage upward, walking for a full incense stick's worth of time before arriving at a broad platform located at an extremely high point on the banyan's main trunk.

On the platform, there were no pavilions stacked with ancient texts as one might imagine. Instead, there were nine enormous tree hollows with depths beyond seeing. The edges of each hollow were covered in lichen that emitted a soft golden glow.

"These are the archive tree hollows?" Su Ming halted, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly. He had originally assumed that the spirit race's library would also be a stone chamber piled with jade slips or bone fragments.

Seeing his reaction, Ye Qing laughed smugly. He pointed at the leftmost hollow and made a gesture inviting him in. "Go in and take a look, then you'll understand."

Su Ming restrained his divine sense and stepped into the seemingly pitch-black tree hollow.

Passing through a layer of isolation formation lines that rippled like water, the scene before him suddenly opened up.

How was this a tree hollow? This was clearly a vast expanse of heaven and earth folded into the interior of the tree trunk!

A soft cyan light filled the entire space. Countless leaves of varying shapes floated in midair like stars in the night sky. Some leaves were as large as palm-leaf fans, displaying the withered yellow traces of age. Others were as slender as willow leaves, flickering with piercing emerald-green light. Drawn by an invisible force of the laws of life, they slowly circulated along some strange trajectory.

"Hiss..."

Inside the Xuantian ring, Lin Yu drew in a sharp breath. His soul body flickered violently, and his voice was pressed extremely low. "Good heavens, the scripture depositories of those top sects in the human realm, compared to this level of craftsmanship, are simply like a country bumpkin's woodshed!"

Su Ming's pupils also widened slightly.

He had originally been calculating in his mind, planning to use his far-above-average divine sense and computational ability to spend a few months thoroughly draining Greenwood Court's spirit race knowledge dry. But now, gazing upon this vast sea of millions of "leaf archives," that arrogant notion instantly dissipated like smoke.

"This is what our spirit race's books look like." Ye Qing walked to Su Ming's side and casually grasped at the void. A palm-sized ginkgo leaf fell into his palm. "We are not skilled at refining jade slips, so we use these spirit-communicating leaves shed by the luminous banyan, with the laws of life as ink, to imprint memories and knowledge within them."

Su Ming looked at Ye Qing and asked in a calm tone, "Brother Ye, how are these nine tree hollows categorized?"

Ye Qing placed the leaf back into the void and explained, "The leftmost three record the customs, geography, spirit beast bestiaries, and various miscellaneous anecdotes from across the spirit realm. The middle three are about the basic applications of the laws of life and low-tier formation lines. As for the rightmost three..."

Ye Qing lowered his voice, pointing at the three distant hollows that emitted a faint pressure. "Those are high-tier formations, ancient secret histories, and the elders' council's classified archives. Your guest official authority only allows you to enter the first six hollows. The last three, without Elder Woodheart's special permission, anyone who enters will be torn apart by the formations."

"The first six are already more than enough for Su to study for a long time." Su Ming smiled faintly, without the slightest greed in his eyes, only a precisely measured thirst for knowledge.

He slowly paced between the first and sixth tree hollows, seemingly taking a casual stroll, but in truth, the Observation of the Minute in his Consciousness Sea had already quietly activated. The faint law fluctuations emanating from those floating leaves formed complex spectrums before his eyes.

"Master, I'll quickly sweep through the customs and geography in these first three hollows with my divine sense later. Help me record them all as material for drawing the Tianji Pavilion's map," Su Ming transmitted through his Consciousness Sea.

"Got it." Lin Yu snorted. "This kind of dirty, exhausting work of sorting through junk, you leave it all to this old man."

For the entire rest of the morning, Su Ming immersed himself in the fifth tree hollow, leafing through over a hundred leaves.

It was only when the sun had climbed high that he rubbed his somewhat swollen temples and walked out of the archive hollow.

"Brother Ye, let's call it a day here." Su Ming cupped his hands toward Ye Qing, who had been waiting outside the hollow all along. "I still have some patrol duties for the outer defensive formations. I need to make a trip to the edge of Gloomlight Forest to gather some materials for setting up formations."

Ye Qing yawned and waved his hand. "Go ahead. With that jade-green leaf, the outer guards won't stop you. But remember, don't go too far. Those lunatics from the Dark Current Sect haven't finished clearing out their baleful formations yet."

"I'm well aware."

After bidding farewell to Ye Qing, Su Ming's form flickered and transformed into a gray-green afterimage, speeding toward Gloomlight Forest at Greenwood Court's outermost perimeter.

Ying poked its head out from his sleeve, its golden pupils warily scanning the surroundings, occasionally letting out a soft "cheep."

This Gloomlight Forest was the edge of Greenwood Court's buffer zone, where towering giant trees interwove with vines emitting a faint blue glow, forming a complex and intricate natural labyrinth.

Su Ming slowed his pace. He paid no attention to those conspicuous, thick tree trunks, instead focusing his attention on the seemingly inconspicuous glowing grasses and moss beneath his feet.

"Observation of the Minute, open."

A faint blue glow whirled in the depths of Su Ming's eyes.

In this microscopic vision, the forest before him completely changed appearance.

Those thick trees were no longer mere plants, but transformed into enormous nodes of spiritual energy intake and output. The moss, grasses, and even the minute Mycelium in the soil beneath his feet became billions of slender, glowing threads, tightly connecting all the trees together.

"Marvelous... truly marvelous to the extreme." Lin Yu's soul body leaned halfway out of the ring, gazing at the microscopic panorama before him, and let out a long sigh.

"Master, what have you seen?" Su Ming crouched down and gently prodded the moss on the ground with his finger.

"In the human realm, formation cultivators set up formations using spirit stones as formation cores, or demon blood to draw formation lines, forcibly binding the world's spiritual energy within a fixed framework." Lin Yu's voice was low and grave.

He pointed at the seemingly chaotic thicket ahead. "But look at this natural network of the spirit realm. They don't deliberately carve any formation lines. When a tree dies, its life force flows along those mosses to another tree. When hit by the Dark Current Sect's baleful aura attacks, this network doesn't resist head-on. Instead, it ripples outward like water waves, evenly distributing the pressure across every blade of grass within ten li."

Su Ming's eyes gradually brightened. He stood up, and Ruo Shui spiritual energy slowly circulated in his palm.

"So this is resonance. Not insisting on the gain or loss of a single city or pond, but merging oneself into this vast cycle of heaven and earth." Su Ming spread his palm, and the faint blue water flow transformed into translucent water lotuses at his fingertips. "Master, human formations are too rigid. Although the Like Water Art is yielding, my thinking when setting up formations still stops at blocking and strangling."

Ying suddenly spread its wings and flew up, landing on a glowing vine. It gently pecked at the vine's surface with its beak, and a faint golden light spilled from its feathers, perfectly resonating with the vine's life force fluctuations.

"Ding-"

That vine emitted a clear, trembling note, and immediately after, the glowing plants within a radius of a dozen zhang all adjusted the frequency of their breathing at the same time, synchronizing with Ying's fluctuations.

"Even this little thing can achieve the unity of heaven and man through instinct alone." Su Ming withdrew his palm, a glint of sudden understanding flashing in his eyes. "I've already polished my early Golden Core to the utmost limit. This vast, natural operation of heaven and earth's formations is like the final layer of window paper."