Chapter 672: The Rigid Easily Breaks; This Damping Layer of Water Vapor Is Brilliantly Used!

Su Ming had no energy left to respond to Lin Yu.

His entire body looked as if it had been pulled out of water, his gray-green robe long since soaked through with sweat. He silently endured the intense soreness and numbness from vitality reshaping his flesh, focusing his entire will into his dantian.

Under his guidance, the water-attribute spiritual energy, like a tireless millstone, circulated through his body for a full thirty-six Greater Circulations. With each circulation, it locked a portion of the divine sap's medicinal power deep within his Golden Core, not allowing the slightest dissipation.

During this process, the Profound Shadow Crow "Shadow," perched on the windowsill keeping watch, seemed to sense the faint traces of residual medicinal power escaping into the air.

Its originally alert, bristled feathers slowly smoothed down, and it narrowed its purple-gold eyes in comfort. Its ink-blue feathers quivered faintly in the night, and with each breath, the dark purple-gold patterns along its edges flickered with a mysterious faint glow, as if greedily devouring those drifting green light motes.

As time passed, Su Ming's rough, rapid breathing gradually steadied.

A faint layer of green fluorescence began to surface on his body. This glow was not the aggressive, piercing kind, but rather appeared extremely natural and gentle, even achieving a perfect resonance with the pulsing rhythm of the wooden walls surrounding Qingyou Residence.

When the last trace of the overbearing medicinal power was completely absorbed by the now round and flawless Golden Core, the Minor Void Spirit Attraction Formation arranged around the stone bed, its spiritual energy drained by the Void Condensation Sand, emitted a faint cracking sound and slowly extinguished.

Su Ming's tightly closed eyes finally opened slowly.

Two streams of deep blue sharp light flashed briefly in the dim tree hollow, even leaving short trails of light in the air.

He did not rise immediately. Instead, he slowly raised his right hand and made a loose fist in midair.

"Crack."

Without using any spiritual energy, merely the pure compression of his physical muscles, he actually crushed a ball of air in his palm, producing a crisp popping sound.

Su Ming looked down at his palm, feeling the vast, surging, inexhaustible spiritual energy within his body. His late-stage Golden Core cultivation had been thoroughly stabilized to its absolute peak under the nourishment of one-third of the Divine Sap of the Sacred Tree.

What delighted him even more was that his physical body's strength had increased by more than several times compared to before. The circulation speed of spiritual energy through his meridians no longer had that faint, lingering sluggishness.

The flaws in his Dao foundation left from his forced breakthrough had been completely smoothed away. A broad, unobstructed path leading directly to a higher realm had already spread out beneath his feet.

"The first step, done." Su Ming stood up, lightly exhaled a breath of turbid air, and a sharp gleam flashed in the depths of his eyes.

Shadow gave an extremely human-like satisfied burp, a lazy glint flickering in its purple-gold pupils. It flapped its wings a couple of times, flying from the windowsill to Su Ming's shoulder, gently nuzzling his cheek with its golden-tipped beak.

Su Ming reached out and stroked Shadow's satin-smooth back feathers, feeling the restrained yet extremely powerful force of the stars transmitted through his fingertips, and his heart settled a bit more.

"The potency of this divine sap truly combines the overbearing and the gentle." Lin Yu's Soul Body circled around Su Ming in midair, sizing him up from top to bottom, then said with satisfaction, "Not only did it repair your Dao foundation, but even this little one got a share of the benefits. If you refine the remaining two-thirds, I'm afraid this body of yours could directly withstand a full-power strike from a body cultivator of the same tier."

Su Ming nodded slightly, casually returning the sealing spirit jade box to the deepest part of his storage pouch, his gaze gradually becoming profound.

"The divine sap is good, but to survive that calamity ten days from now, relying on cultivation improvement alone is far from enough." Su Ming communicated with Lin Yu in his Consciousness Sea, his tone exceptionally calm. "That old tree, Elder Woodheart, may have given an immense benefit, but what trump card he actually holds, we have no idea. Staking our lives entirely on those few old branches of his is by no means the act of a wise man."

"What do you plan to do?" Lin Yu's speech slowed, clearly weighing the deeper meaning in Su Ming's words.

"A clever rabbit has three burrows, let alone us." Su Ming walked to the workbench, his fingers lightly tapping the tabletop. "If Greenwood Court falls, the Dark Current Sect will surely massacre the city; if Greenwood Court wins a pyrrhic victory, those slumbering old monsters of the Qiming Sect awaken, and I, a human guest official, am equally an unstable variable. Therefore, I must, within these few days, pave my own escape route."

......

The next morning.

In the air of Greenwood Court, that suffocating sense of oppression grew even heavier. The spirit-race guards on the streets and alleys had doubled in number; everyone hurried along with anxious expressions, their eyes revealing an unmistakable terror.

Su Ming changed into a brand-new gray-green robe and walked out of Qingyou Residence with a calm expression.

He went straight to Elder Genxu's dwelling and presented his suggestion.

"Pre-battle calibration?" Elder Genxu, leaning on his wooden staff, a flicker of confusion passing across his deeply wrinkled face. "Guest Official Su, weren't the defensive nodes on the outskirts just repaired yesterday? Could there still be oversights?"

Su Ming's expression remained unchanged as he slightly bowed and said, "Elder, you may not be aware. The previous repairs only removed the hidden dangers left by Dry Leaf; that was 'plugging the leak.' But facing a powerful enemy like the Lord of the Nether Abyss, plugging leaks alone is insufficient. Human formations emphasize that 'one trigger moves the whole body.' I wish to take advantage of the remaining days to perform a unified calibration of the spiritual energy frequency bands across all three hundred-plus outer nodes. That way, when enduring a heavy blow, the damage can be distributed across the entire earth vein network, raising the defensive power by at least another twenty percent."

Elder Genxu listened, momentarily dumbfounded. Although he was also a Grandmaster of Formations, the spirit race's formations leaned more toward instinctive life resonance. He was utterly bewildered by the human race's theory of "frequency band calibration," refined to the extreme.

But the phrase "raising the defensive power by another twenty percent" truly struck his weak spot.

"Good! Since Guest Official Su has such confidence, this old one shall personally accompany you!" Elder Genxu decided on the spot, agreeing without the slightest doubt.

The two, along with a squad of elite guards, soon arrived at the first core node on the outskirts of Greenwood Court.

This was a low-lying valley, the formation core's center being a massive fluorescent grass three people could barely encircle, surrounded by densely packed, intricate life circuits.

Su Ming wasted no words, stepping forward directly. Threads of Ruo Shui spiritual energy seeped from his fingertips as he began modifying those already extremely complex life circuits.

His movements were extremely swift; on the surface, he appeared to be adjusting the node's pressure-resistant structure, but in reality, beneath those circuits, he was silently embedding an extremely concealed drainage channel.

"Guest Official Su, why must this circuit be forcibly redirected toward the northeast?" Elder Genxu, having watched for a long while, finally could not help but ask. "That direction leads to a dead end toward the underground river, with no life force to speak of."

Su Ming's hand movements did not pause in the slightest as he answered without turning his head, "Drawing water vapor from the underground river to nourish these wood-attribute formation lines not only provides a cooling and buffering effect but also adds thirty percent flexibility out of thin air. The rigid easily breaks; when encountering an overwhelmingly powerful external force, this water vapor is the best damping layer."

This explanation sounded perfectly justified, impossible to find fault with.

Elder Genxu nodded repeatedly in sudden realization, the admiration in his eyes growing even stronger.

How could he know that this secret circuit leading to the underground river, once reverse-activated by Su Ming's lifebound formation plate, would instantly form an extremely powerful suction vortex. In the chaos of the formation shattering, this vortex would be enough to draw Su Ming and Shadow directly into the underground river, instantly escaping the center of the battlefield.

This was the first escape route Su Ming had prepared, the underground river water escape.