I took advantage of the day to harvest the rest of the Spirit Valley. By evening, as expected, a light rain began to fall.
The village descended into chaos.
Barefoot children hurried to call their geese and ducks home, while the men gathered the grain from the threshing grounds.
Night came a little early today.
Chen Che had just finished dinner, but the sky was already dim.
The villagers worked from sunrise to sunset.
Another hour passed. Looking out, only a few scattered homes were still extravagantly burning their lamps.
A chorus of croaking frogs mingled with snores and the suppressed moans of a woman. After a few whimpers, a woman with a disgruntled look on her face walked out of her house, muttering complaints as she washed a sheep intestine.
From inside the house came a man's quiet explanations:
"Maybe I'm just tired from harvesting rice these past few days. Or maybe I didn't sleep well last night. It could also be that I got caught in the rain this evening…"
...
Following the map, Chen Che traced the river through the valley until he reached its source, where he finally found the waterfall from his memory.
It was over three thousand feet high, the waterfall cascading straight down into a deep pool, a place inaccessible to ordinary people.
He looked up.
This waterfall didn't seem particularly special, nor was there any sign of a Cave Mansion.
'I've been here so many times and never noticed a hidden Cave Mansion. To think Cyan Cloud Ancestor actually managed to find it... he must have been quite the talent.'
Still, he wasn't surprised.
Many things that sounded incredible were often just a matter of insufficient knowledge. Cultivators had many techniques at their disposal; perhaps the other party had some unique detection skill that allowed them to discover this place.
He walked across the water's surface and went behind the waterfall.
There was a sheer cliff face, polished smooth by the constant flow of water.
He gently reached out and touched it. The sensation was distinct, with no hint of anything unusual. It felt just like an ordinary rock wall.
After inspecting it for a moment and finding nothing out of the ordinary, he immediately took a few steps back.
SWOOSH!
Five Sword Pills shot out, striking the rock face directly.
A full-force attack from a Qi Refining Fourth Layer Cultivator would instantly pierce through the rock, even if it were made of solid steel.
But instead, the rock before him merely trembled, and ripples spread across its surface like a stone dropped into water. The entire cliff face shuddered as if it were about to shatter.
'It really is here!'
Chen Che could barely contain his excitement.
Although he had chosen the Alchemy Dao as his auxiliary subject, Array formation, being one of the Four Great auxiliary skills, was naturally taught at school as well.
His teacher had mentioned this exact phenomenon in class: it was what happened when an Array was hit by an external force and could no longer maintain its illusion.
But almost immediately, the Array resumed its operation, and the cliff face quickly returned to its original appearance.
If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, no one would have known a Cave Mansion was hidden here.
'This is going to be a problem.'
Seeing the Array recover so quickly, Chen Che couldn't help but frown.
During his first Array class in his freshman year, the teacher had told them about the two common methods for breaking Arrays.
The first was to break it with brute force. When you were powerful enough, you didn't need to care what kind of Array the other party had set up. You could simply overpower it, shattering it easily even without understanding how it worked.
But eventually, you would encounter an Array your strength couldn't break.
When that happened, you had to unravel it layer by layer, gradually analyzing the Array's properties, type, and characteristics to find its core. This would allow you to easily dismantle it with finesse. That was the second method.
'That was my full-powered attack just now.'
'As for dismantling it with finesse…'
'It's easier said than done. The cultivators of the Qing Family had spent generations trying and failing to break this Cave Mansion's Array. He wasn't confident he could crack it in a short amount of time either.'
'Forget it. I'll record the Array first and study it slowly.'
After a moment's thought, he took out his phone and snapped a few pictures in front of the Cave Mansion.
He even recorded a video of the ripples as they appeared.
He wasn't worried about leaks. The Immortal Sect placed extreme importance on 'privacy' and prohibited any corporate app from bypassing permissions to read user data.
Of course, it hadn't always been this way.
The real reason for the change was an incident several decades ago. A cultivator had hundreds of private photos stored on their phone. An employee of a certain app bypassed the backend, stole the photos, and even uploaded them to the internet for everyone's viewing pleasure. The scandal was so huge it could make a person die from social embarrassment a hundred times over.
If it had been an ordinary person, a bit of compensation money would have settled the matter. Who cares if you lose face?
But the victim was a Golden Core Great Power.
The saying "A man armed with a sharp weapon is prone to murderous thoughts" wasn't just empty words.
The enraged Golden Core Cultivator completely disregarded the laws of the Immortal Sect. He sat atop the company's headquarters and directly cast 'Bloodline Curse Killing'. Overnight, he annihilated the internet company's senior executives and all their blood relatives within four generations. The curse implicated over two thousand people.
The incident triggered the largest massacre since the 'Calamity of Heaven's Fall'.
If the Immortal Sect's Law Enforcement Team hadn't arrived in time to kill him, the scope of the disaster could have expanded several times over.
Ever since then, a cultivator's privacy has been treated with the utmost importance.
Unless you wanted to play a game of 'family-line elimination,' no one dared to touch that tiger's whisker.
"Alright!"
He moved to several different positions, capturing images of the scene.
He searched around the waterfall for another moment to ensure he hadn't missed any blind spots, then finally returned to Earth Element Star.
Suppressing his excitement, Chen Che sat at his desk, replaying the video over and over as he tried to find a way to break the Array.
But after watching it a few times, his heart sank.
'I don't get it! I can't solve it!'
Chen Che had to admit defeat.
Although the school taught an Array class, it mostly covered superficial knowledge. It was like physics or chemistry before students specialized their studies; the classes only scratched the surface to provide a basic understanding. Only if you chose it as a major subject for the college entrance exams would you delve deeper.
Even though he'd gotten full marks in his Array class, the Grand Array before him was clearly beyond his comprehension. He couldn't even identify what type of Array it was, let alone find its core.
Next, he took out his Array textbook and flipped through it several times.
But he still didn't have a clue.
Facing this Grand Array felt like finishing middle school math and suddenly opening an advanced calculus textbook. Everything looked vaguely familiar, yet he had no idea where to even begin.
Once he confirmed that the required knowledge was beyond what he had learned, Chen Che decisively opened his computer. He typed "how to break an array" into the All-Encompassing Search and pressed the 'Activate' rune.
SWISH!
The computer screen flashed with radiant light, instantly displaying forty to fifty thousand pages of search results.
There were text versions as well as video versions.
[A Step-by-Step Guide to Breaking Arrays]
[Array Breaking Techniques]
[How to Break an Array]
[Fifteen Little Tips to Improve Your Array-Breaking Ability]
...
Full of anticipation, Chen Che clicked on a video tutorial hosted by a young woman. It wasn't because she was pretty, but because her video was pinned at the very top.
After clicking, he discovered it was actually a video series, with each installment lasting three to five minutes.
"Arrays, as one of the Hundred Skills of Cultivation, are grouped with Alchemy, Artifact Casting, and Talismans as the Four Skills of Cultivation. They are incredibly useful in daily life. If you can master them, they will bring great convenience to your life."
"For example, they can make your house warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and keep out mosquitoes, insects, snakes, and rats…"
"But while they are convenient to use, how do you dismantle them? Next, please follow 'Sister Tuantuan' and enter the classroom of Array breaking."
The young woman was very pretty.
Not only was she approachable, but her voice was gentle and her clothes were quite revealing.
After watching two lessons, he casually scrolled down to the comments section. A netizen mentioned she had a collection of costume-change dance videos on her profile page. With a slip of the hand, he clicked on it and ended up watching for a full hour and a half before snapping back to reality. Only then did Chen Che remember his original goal, and he hurriedly closed the page.
'Born with seductive charm... terrifying!'
He quickly calmed his mind and scrolled down another dozen or so pages, but still came up empty.
The most crucial problem was that he didn't know anything about the Cave Mansion's Array, making a precise search impossible. Trying to find a solution among the sea of links was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
'Looks like my only option is to ask the all-powerful netizens for help!'
He logged into a local Six Continents forum called 'Array Free-for-All Discussion Zone,' uploaded the video he had taken, and casually wrote a post:
[The perfect Array I spent my entire life creating. No one can solve it. Come at me if you disagree.]
After posting, Chen Che constantly refreshed the page, waiting for an expert to reply.
The result?
After three minutes, the post was 404'd. At the same time, he was banned by the moderator for two hours on suspicion of malicious flame-baiting.