A magical journey of a sharp-tongued woman and a goofy man

The blue brick floor of the ancestral hall trembled and cracked, and Ye Shuli dug her fingertips into her palm.

In the three-dimensional star map projected onto the table by the fragments of the Kunlun Mirror, the Twenty-Eight Mansions were visibly decaying into black spots.

"The Third Elder led twenty men to reinforce the eastern granary, arranging the defensive talismans in a honeycomb structure." She suddenly grabbed a yarrow stalk used for divination from the table, dipped it in cinnabar, and drew a hexagon on the ground. "Every three nodes form a mutually supporting angle—like the stress dispersion principle of earthquake-resistant buildings."

A sneer came from the corner. A young man in a brocade robe with gold trim leaned against a pillar with his arms crossed: "Trying to fool a mystical formation with a house-building trick?"

Suddenly, the bronze lampstand burst out with blinding arcs of electricity, and the lightning talisman that Ye Shuli threw grazed the young man's ear and embedded itself in the wall.

Amidst the pervasive smell of burning, she slammed the blood-stained fragments of the Kunlun Mirror onto the center of the star map: "Three hours ago, someone arbitrarily altered the Dui position of the clan's protective array, causing the defense system to exhibit a Klein bottle topology—now the entire Ye family is like a Möbius strip, with all attacks endlessly bouncing back at us!"

The arrogant young men's expressions changed drastically.

The young man who had provoked him earlier stared at the jade pendant at his waist—it still had cinnabar stains on it from when he tampered with the array's core last night.

"Jiang Ye is cleaning up your mess at the altar on the outskirts of the city." Ye Shuli suddenly opened a hidden compartment in the ancestral hall, and a mountain of broken weapons poured out. "Why is this scrap iron, which should have been sent for smelting, at the altar of the array's core?"

The young man in the brocade robe staggered and grabbed the incense table for support.

Three days ago, he secretly replaced the black iron essence at the core of the formation with scrap iron, just to save some materials for his newly forged sword.

A muffled, thunderous tremor came from outside the ancestral hall. Outside the water curtain barrier that Ye Shuli had thrown out, everyone could clearly see the family's grand formation twisting.

The courtyard, originally made of blue bricks and gray tiles, is like a twisted Rubik's Cube, with the martial arts arena in the southeast corner and the library in the northwest corner seemingly connected end to end in the air.

"Everyone, listen up!" Ye Shuli tore off the jade pendant from her neck and smashed it against the array's core. A three-dimensional defense diagram emerged from the burst of light. "The twelve-person team will repair the topological fracture zone. Remember, each crack must be distributed in a Fibonacci sequence. Personnel—Seventh Uncle, please use your star-gazing technique to locate the spatial folding point."

The clan elders were astonished to discover that the girl had dismantled the clan's protective formation into countless dodecahedrons.

When the first repair team took their positions according to the golden ratio, the misaligned roof ridge in the air made a sound like gears meshing and slowly returned to its original position.

"Report!

A surge of spiritual energy emanated from the direction of the altar! "The blood-covered guard crashed into the water curtain barrier."

Ye Shuli pressed the Kunlun Mirror fragment onto his wound, and Jiang Ye's figure, shrouded in black mist, suddenly appeared on the mirror—that guy even had the leisure to make a "I'm not going to die for now" gesture to the camera.

The young man in the brocade robe suddenly drew his sword and cut his palm. The blood droplets formed a soul-tracing contract in the air: "Ye Mingxiu, the 36th generation direct descendant of the Ye family, is willing to go to the altar as the vanguard with his sinful body!" Seven or eight red lights of blood oaths lit up behind him one after another, and the few disciples who were the most unruly before all knelt on one knee.

When the third drumbeat of midnight sounded, the star map on the dome of the Ye Family Ancestral Hall finally stopped decaying.

Ye Shuli embedded the last array stone into the ley line node, then turned to look at her clansmen, whose bodies were covered in scorched runes: "Transform the clan's protective array into a Klein bottle before dawn."

"But won't this topological structure cause us to suffer the consequences?" the girl, her face covered in soot, asked, clutching half a peach wood sword.

Ye Shuli flicked her finger and shot out a water mirror, reflecting the surging black mist from the altar outside the city: "Since the enemy can turn our defense system into a noose, then let's connect the two ends of this noose together—when both ends of the noose tighten at the same time..." She suddenly clenched her fist, and the black mist in the water mirror began to devour itself.

Deep within the underground palace, a hundred miles away, a man wearing a bronze Nuo mask suddenly crushed a bone cup in his hand.

On the blood-mist-filled altar, the Twenty-Eight Mansions Star Chart, which was supposed to devour the Ye family's fortune, was covered with cracks, each crack precisely corresponding to a newly modified defensive node of the Ye family.

"My lord, activate the second set..." Before the black-robed priest could finish speaking, the masked man raised his hand and severed his throat.

Bloodstained fingers slowly traced the astrolabe, and the previously dissipated black mist suddenly condensed into the shape of an arrow, pointing directly towards the Ye family ancestral hall.

(Continued from above)

Before the morning dew on the bluestone slabs had dried, a piercing phoenix cry suddenly erupted outside the Ye family's gate.

A golden chariot, pulled by twelve fiery phoenixes, hovered in mid-air. The leader of the rival clan lifted the beaded curtain and sneered, "Is Clan Chief Ye truly senile? He actually lets a little girl be in charge?"

The head of the Ye family swept the corner of his black robe across the threshold and lightly tapped the ground with his cane.

A dark golden light flashed in the seemingly murky eyes, and the fire phoenix that had been roaring in mid-air suddenly fell to the ground with a mournful cry. The flames on its feathers were extinguished into wisps of smoke by an invisible pressure.

"Old Li, the beauty you sent to cast the spell is still sweeping incense ash in the ancestral hall." The clan chief's withered fingers traced the jade pendant at his waist, the image of the woman using the beauty trap, her face contorted with grief, wiping the ancestral tablets. "If you're going to bring her back, remember to bring thirty cartloads of spirit stones—she broke a sandalwood tablet carved by the first clan head himself."

The golden chariot exploded into pieces, and the enemy leader retreated more than ten feet to avoid the flying metal fragments.

The poisonous insect that was about to spring from his sleeve was suddenly shredded into a pulp by a silver thread that had somehow wrapped around his wrist—the silver thread was clearly a scrap of material discarded by Ye Shuli when she improved the clan's protective formation yesterday.

"If you don't leave within three breaths, I'll turn you into a guard puppet." The tip of the clan leader's cane lit up with starlight, and the phantom of the Twenty-Eight Mansions Dragon-Trapping Formation appeared on the ground.

The enemy leader, his face ashen, tore open the teleportation talisman, and the two remaining followers hurriedly picked up the burnt-out phoenix tail and chased after him.

A series of gasps immediately filled the training ground.

Several arrogant young men who had once questioned the patriarch's advanced age stared at the three-inch-deep footprints on the bluestone slab—marks left by the enemy leader when he retreated in a rout.

"Enough watching, let's train." Ye Shuli tossed seven copper coins into the wooden stake, the holes forming the Big Dipper constellation. "Whoever can pierce all the coins simultaneously with sword energy will be rewarded with ten high-grade spirit stones."

Ye Mingxiu, the young man in brocade robes, stepped forward first, and sparks flew as soon as the tip of his sword touched the copper coin.

He was astonished to discover that the surface of the coin was covered with liquid metal, and that the point of force would change with each strike.

"Will the enemy stand still and let you chop them down on the battlefield?" Ye Shuli traced her fingers across the wooden stake, and seven copper coins suddenly floated and spun rapidly. "Jiang Ye spent three months figuring out the application of fluid mechanics in defensive formations; you have three days."

She suddenly spun around and kicked at the wooden stake.

When her toes were half an inch from the coin, seven ice spikes shot out from different angles, but were shattered into dust the moment they touched her skirt.

Only then did everyone realize that each copper coin was vibrating at a different frequency, forming a miniature force field around it.

"When the energy field frequency is in sync with the attacker's spiritual power..." Ye Shuli flicked her fingertips, and Ye Mingxiu's sword suddenly flew out of his hand and towards the wooden stake.

The moment the sword pierced through the copper coins, all seven coins melted into liquid gold, only to solidify back into whole coins before hitting the ground.

The most unruly girl in purple suddenly knelt down: "Please teach me the vibration frequency control method, young master!" The communication jade pendant at her waist was still playing the footage from last night on a loop—the scene of Jiang Ye using a similar method to dismantle the curse at the altar.

Three days later, at Shenshi (3-5 PM), the tournament referee, accompanied by six inspectors, suddenly stormed into the training ground.

The white-bearded elder at the head of the group stared at the disciples practicing upside down in the arena, then flicked his sleeve, shattering three array spheres that were simulating a gravity field: "Unorthodox methods!"

Ye Shuli held down the clansmen who wanted to argue, and the lingering resonance of her palm shone through.

The referee's expression suddenly changed drastically. The jade pendant at his waist resonated with a certain array sphere, and a scene of cheating from a major competition ten years ago appeared.

"Oh my, isn't this the Thousand-Machine Jade that Chief Judge Wang loves to play with the most?" Jiang Ye's voice came from the locust tree.

He swung upside down in front of the referee, half a piece of osmanthus cake dangling from his mouth. "I heard this treasure can record all spiritual energy fluctuations it encounters—guess how many fragments of the same jade pendant I found in the Li family's junkyard?"

Suddenly, someone in the inspectorate exclaimed in surprise.

The spirit-testing discs in their hands flew uncontrollably toward the edge of the training ground, where three hundred improved spirit-gathering arrays were simultaneously activated.

The spiritual energy, ten times more concentrated than that of a regular formation, formed a tornado, but upon touching the eaves, it automatically split into a fine rain that nourished the medicinal fields.

"According to Article 200 of the 'General Rules of the Mysterious Gate,' improving an array requires supporting evidence from ancient texts dating back a thousand years." The referee's confidence was clearly lacking; powder from the jade tablet being shattered by the resonance wave was still falling from his sleeve.

Jiang Ye flipped himself onto the ground and pulled out a roll of oil paper that looked like a ramen noodle packaging bag from his pocket: "Is this what you're looking for?" On the unfolded fragment of "Tiangong Kaiwu" (The Exploitation of the Works of Nature), there was a three-dimensional array diagram that was exactly the same as the training ground, and the signature was that of a certain ascended great power from ten thousand years ago.

As night fell, Ye Shuli stood alone atop the repaired clan protective array.

Her fingertips traced the newly appeared cracks in the Kunlun Mirror, and the reflection in the mirror suddenly distorted into an unfamiliar star map—a cursed black mist that should have been trapped by the Klein bottle structure had torn open a tiny gap in the southeast.

Deep within a mass grave a hundred miles away, a blood-stained Nuo mask is absorbing moonlight.

Countless bronze beetles covered in decaying leaves crawled out of the rubble, their backs engraved with the same topological patterns as the Ye family's protective formation.