jdhmnovel Chapter 424 Breaking Through Obstacles Again
Chapter 424 Breaking Through Obstacles Again
Jiang Ye crushed the frost flowers that had formed on the ice with the tip of his boot, and the gears imprinted on the back of his neck throbbed.
Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed his wrist, and a bronze light seeped out from where their palms touched. The phantom gears that were surrounded by gray mist suddenly enlarged, projecting nine overlapping bronze door outlines onto the ice field.
A clear bell rang out from the mist, and the wind, which was carrying ice shards, suddenly warmed up.
Ye Shuli instinctively took a half step back, bumping into Jiang Ye's solid chest—they were standing on a moss-covered stone path without realizing it, with lanterns made of fire element hanging overhead, illuminating the dense star charts on the walls.
"Welcome to the Corridor of Elements." A translucent sprite emerged from the lantern, its glass-like wings shaking off tiny sparks.
It circled the yin-yang mark on Ye Shuli's forehead three times, then suddenly spoke in a husky, adult male voice: "Elemental Fusionists, prove you are worthy of the power of chaos."
Jiang Ye had just gathered spiritual power at his fingertips when an ice spike pierced the back of his hand.
The elf hovered before his nose, its pupils reflecting the illusory image of turning gears: "Elemental resonance is forbidden, including your newly acquired Yin-Yang Marks." It snapped its fingers, and the burning sensation between Ye Shuli's brows vanished instantly. "The exit holds the key to unlocking the gear puzzle—or, of course, you can choose to become the wicks inside the lantern."
The stone wall emitted a teeth-grinding scraping sound, and the originally static star chart began to slowly rotate.
Jiang Ye squatted down to examine the cracks in the ground, only to find that all the cracks were avoiding the hem of Ye Shuli's skirt.
He pulled out the mustard seed bag the old man had given him and waved it around: "How about we try using this to break down the wall?"
“If violence could solve problems, then that icicle should have pierced your throat.” The elf finished speaking and melted into the wall, causing the entire corridor to suddenly rotate ninety degrees.
Ye Shuli grabbed Jiang Ye by the back of his collar just in time, and the two of them hung precariously on the "ground" that the ceiling had turned into, watching as the original lanterns transformed into a pool of flowing lava.
When Jiang Ye bumped into the moving hidden door for the third time, cold sweat was already seeping from his forehead.
He clutched the glowing crystal he'd pried off the wall and suddenly tossed it into the air—the stone, which should have fallen straight down, instead traced a strange arc. "The gravitational field is rotating!" Before he could finish speaking, Ye Shuli grabbed him and lurched him to the right, where sharp stalagmites suddenly sprouted from where they had been standing.
Ye Shuli's nails dug deeply into her palms.
She forced herself to stare at the constantly shifting symbols on the wall, the crisscrossing patterns that resembled a subway map suddenly becoming clear in her memory. "It's topology," she murmured, her eyelashes, glistening with ice crystals, trembling. "Jiang Ye, I need you as a reference point."
When Jiang Ye's ankle was suddenly entangled by vines for the eighth time, Ye Shuli finally noticed the unusual symbol on the wall.
Whenever Jiang Ye touches the mechanism, the edge of the corresponding star chart will turn bronze.
She tore off a piece of gauze from her sleeve and covered it on the wall, using her body heat to melt the ice and reveal dark red, ancient markings—clearly the prototype of the Cartesian coordinate system in modern mathematics.
"Take seven steps toward the Qian position," Ye Shuli suddenly said.
Jiang Ye instinctively leaped to the northwest, the crack in the wall that was about to close just barely brushing past his clothes.
The girl quickly drew a constantly changing function curve on her palm with a charcoal pencil: "Each time the gravitational field changes, pay attention to whether the heat of the brand on the back of your neck changes in sync."
When Jiang Ye's gear-shaped branding became hot for the seventh time, Ye Shuli suddenly pressed down on his hand, which was about to touch the relief.
Moonlight seeped in through the cracks in the dome, casting nine spots of light on the thin bronze lines in her palm.
The rotating star chart suddenly froze into the shape of the Big Dipper, and the two extra points of light landed on the back of Jiang Ye's neck and between her eyebrows.
“Follow my shadow.” Ye Shuli untied her hair tie and tossed it into the air, watching the light gauze trace a parabolic trajectory in the turbulent airflow.
She pulled Jiang Ye forward and backward, each time turning around and precisely stepping into the gaps between the deformed symbols on the wall.
When the last star chart lit up in bronze, they finally saw half a broken gear floating at the end of the corridor.
Ye Shuli's fingertips traced the bronze symbols on the wall, and ice crystal fragments fell softly onto the moss.
Her skirt brushed against Jiang Ye's calves, still bearing the marks of icicles, and she suddenly stopped at the eighth fork in the road: "Three steps to the Kan position, one step back to the Zhen position."
Just as Jiang Ye was about to lift his foot, the gear-shaped mark on the back of his neck suddenly stung like a needle.
He grabbed Ye Shuli's shawl and pulled her back. Suddenly, the stone slab in front of them cracked open, revealing boiling purple bubbles beneath. "That mark from before," he frowned, rubbing the back of his neck, "was originally a wind pattern for the Xun position, but now it's a thunder pattern for the Dui position."
The sound of glass wings fluttering came from above.
The elf's half-body was embedded in the star map, watching as the girl suddenly squatted down and used a charcoal pencil to draw a geometric projection of the topological structure on the moss.
The ice crystal pendant in her hair swept across the dark patterns on the ground, suddenly refracting three overlapping bronze light spots.
“Fibonacci spiral.” Ye Shuli bit her fingertip and drew the golden ratio line on the wall, the blood droplet meandering along the ice surface in a glowing trajectory.
The originally misaligned star chart suddenly began to rotate like a Rubik's Cube, and a new path appeared behind the collapsed wall.
The elf's wings suddenly shook off the sparks, and the temperature in the corridor dropped ten degrees.
Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed Ye Shuli and slammed her against the left stone wall. The two rolled through the water-ripple-like barrier and into the dark room.
The gear-shaped brand on the back of his neck was so bright it reflected the thin layer of sweat on the girl's nose: "That thing is altering the marking patterns, but each change causes the moss in the corresponding area to change color."
"Maintain a vibration frequency of two steps per second." Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed his wrist and pressed it against the wall, the bronze light seeping into the cracks in the stone along the lines of his palm.
As Jiang Ye's clothes were torn for the fifth time by the suddenly protruding stone cone, the girl suddenly sneered at the void: "I saw this trick of inverting and superimposing a nine-square grid with topological transformations back in high school when I participated in the math Olympiad training."
The elf's smoky voice suddenly became sharp.
The star chart in the entire corridor began to flash wildly. Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye through the alternating real and virtual walls, and the charcoal-drawn auxiliary lines were like a scalpel cutting through the folds of space.
When Jiang Ye's ankles were entangled by the vines for the eighteenth time, the girl suddenly stabbed her hairpin into the gear-shaped mark on the back of his neck.
A bronze-colored waterfall of light shot into the sky, and all the twisted spatial nodes simultaneously emitted the clicking sound of gears meshing.
Jiang Ye winced in pain but laughed out loud: "I should have brought a 'Five-Year College Entrance Examination, Three-Year Simulation' book with me."
As they crashed through the last curtain of water, the phantom emerged from the boiling lava pool.
Three phantom figures with the same appearance as Ye Shuli wielded light blades and slashed at her, but Jiang Ye suddenly flipped over and used his back to block the attack.
The phantom gears on the back of his neck swelled up, actually wedging the phantom's blade between the rotating teeth.
"Southeast corner, Ice Crack seventh turn!" Jiang Ye shouted amidst the attack of three phantoms, a piece of his clothing being sliced off his shoulder by a light blade.
Ye Shuli kicked away the oncoming phantom, her fingernails scratching bloody curves across the wall.
As the phantom of the seventh bronze gate overlapped on the ground, all the illusions suddenly froze into shattered starlight.
Elemental spirits emerged from the collapsed star chart, their glass wings cracking with fine lines.
It gazed at the broken gears suspended above the exit, its smoky voice finally turning grave: "You actually managed to find the folded ninefold mapping pattern."
Ye Shuli wiped the bloodstains from her lips and pressed the glowing crystal into the gear groove on the back of Jiang Ye's neck.
As the bronze beam of light pierced through the dome, a real stone path suddenly appeared beneath their feet.
The girl turned to look at the melting phantom of the elf, the ice crystals in her hair reflecting the fine black cracks in the sky.
Jiang Ye suddenly clutched his chest and staggered half a step.
The gear brand on the back of his neck became scorching hot, the broken gear hovering directly opposite the crack in the sky.
Suddenly, bronze-colored liquid seeped from Ye Shuli's Yin-Yang mark, drawing patterns on the ground that were perfectly symmetrical to the black cracks.
The elemental spirit's last spark vanished in the night wind, carrying with it unfinished words.
Jiang Ye reached out and caught a piece of falling glass shard, discovering that it was engraved with half a spiral pattern opposite to that of the suspended gear.
None of them noticed that the moss clinging to the hem of Ye Shuli's skirt was quietly turning blood red.