My experience of grinding in another world

Chapter 502 Calculation
Thick gray clouds covered the sky, and the light was dim inside Black Wind Pass.

On the porch of the wooden house, Chen Mu lay in a rocking chair with his eyes half-closed, his left hand tucked into his wide sleeve, while his right hand, resting on the armrest, kept fidgeting.

At one point, a crystalline white dot caught his eye, and Chen Mu's hand movements involuntarily slowed down.

"It's snowing."

He got up and went to the edge of the corridor, gazing absently at the increasingly dense snowflakes. Unbeknownst to him, he had already spent two months in Black Wind Pass.

Coming to my senses, the gray wall came into view.

Five Dragons Scripture: 3117/10000/Fourth Rank;

Nine Cups Arithmetic: 43/10000/Second Rank;

Over the past month, the progress of the Five Dragons Sutra has been acceptable, but the progress of the Calculation Sutra has been extremely slow, and it only entered the second stage yesterday.

"Fortunately, all that effort wasn't in vain." Chen Mu couldn't help but reach out and catch a snowflake.

He calculated the weather yesterday and guessed that there would be heavy snow today, and sure enough, it came.

"People with rich life experience can generally estimate weather changes."

"The efficacy of the arithmetic scripture still needs to be tested."

"Hmm, we can try to find the nearest gathering place of evil spirits."

……

three days later.

The sky remained overcast, and the entire Black Wind Pass was covered in snow, a vast expanse of white as far as the eye could see.

The burdock tree, as tall as a person, was covered with snowflakes, its fiery red leaves curled up together, motionless as if asleep.

Chen Mu stepped out of the wooden house, turned around, and disappeared into the breeze.

Following the directions given by the divination text, he continued his journey without stopping, carried by the cold, damp wind, drifting directly southeast. He traveled over three hundred li away from Black Wind Pass before reappearing at the foot of a small hill.

Chen Mu stood at the foot of the almost vertical, steep cliff, looking around with some disappointment.

Even though it was covered by heavy snow, he could still easily tell that there were no traces of spirits living there.

"Tsk... It's only at the first level of perfection after all. I really shouldn't have too high expectations for the Mathematical Scripture."

"Go back and keep working on it?"

Thinking this to himself, Chen Mu couldn't help but grin.

The Nine Cups Arithmetic Manual is difficult to fathom; it can only be practiced through repeated calculations, and progress is slow. Reaching the third level would likely take at least a year and a half.

Moreover, the feedback during practice was so poor that he really didn't want to practice.

Just as I was about to turn and leave, a strange sound reached my ears.

Chen Mu's heart stirred, and he immediately activated the Listening Technique. He then raised an eyebrow and looked at the ground with great interest.

Thousands of meters below, there was a space the size of two classrooms. A burly man over two meters tall was currently inside… cooking?!

"A fellow traveler!"

Chen Mu couldn't help but smile.

……

The following day, on the eastern slope of Black Wind Pass, inside a wooden house.

"Feng'an City?" Across the square tea table, a burly man with small, honest eyes looked puzzled. "There's actually a city in this desolate wilderness?"

This……

Upon hearing this, Chen Mu was speechless for a moment.

The people in Black Wind Valley had at least heard rumors about the city, but this burly man in front of them had never even heard of them.

The burly man was the spirit he had discovered yesterday. He possessed the ability to burrow underground and lived in a cave to avoid dangers on the surface.

The other party had dug that hole too deep; if Chen Mu hadn't had such sharp ears, he would have almost missed this person yesterday.

He possessed the ability to burrow underground, greatly enhancing his safety when venturing out, and his range of movement far exceeded that of the evil spirits of Black Wind Valley. Yet, even so, the other party remained unaware of the city's existence, which was enough to demonstrate that the surrounding area was indeed quite desolate.

"Have you encountered any other gathering places of evil spirits?" Chen Mu continued to ask.

"I did come across one a few years ago, but unfortunately, before I could even move in, the village suddenly vanished overnight," the burly man said, a hint of apprehension on his face.

That's why he dug the tunnel so deep.

"Where is that village?" Chen Mu asked, intrigued.

"It's about two hundred li north of the small hill where I live, nestled in the middle of a valley," the burly man said without hiding anything. Two hundred li to the north, a valley?
This location... could it be the same mountain stronghold where Old Yang used to stay?

Chen Mu quickly asked and verified the information carefully, and after a few words, he couldn't help but sigh.

Although there were still some differences, he was basically certain that the valley was probably the ruins he had found.

What a waste of your joy!

"By the way, do you still remember where the River of Oblivion you climbed out of was?" After a while, Chen Mu finally composed himself and asked.

“Gone.” The burly man looked puzzled. “I even went back to look for some of my companions. But such a big river has completely disappeared, and I found nothing.”

"I remember that location very clearly." The burly man looked puzzled, unable to comprehend this strange phenomenon.

Chen Mu narrowed his eyes.

He guessed that the River of Oblivion in this area might not be fixed; it would sometimes disappear and sometimes appear, without a fixed section.

After killing the demon, the phantom image of the River of Oblivion that suddenly appeared and disappeared aroused Chen Mu's interest.

He specifically inquired about relevant information within Black Wind Pass, intending to find the River of Oblivion and then follow it upstream to search for traces of the city. However, he discovered that the directions given by everyone were all different, and after checking each one, he found nothing, only seeing traces of a dried-up riverbed in a few isolated places.

Just as the burly man in front of them said, the spirit will disappear into thin air soon after it crawls out of the River of Oblivion.

"But why doesn't the River of Oblivion near Jigu City and Feng'an City change?"

"I don't understand..." Chen Mu scratched his head.

"Forget it, there's no point in thinking so much."

"Now that we are in a remote and desolate region, whether we continue to search for information from the spirits or set off directly to find Feng'an City, we will need the Nine Cups Calculation Scripture to predict our location."

Instead of letting your mind wander, you should spend more time practicing the Nine Cups Arithmetic Manual.

……

For a period of time afterward, Chen Mu devoted more energy to the arithmetic.

Instead of rushing to find Feng'an City, he continued to search for the spirits living in the surrounding area, gaining experience while also verifying the accuracy of the divination scriptures.

After a busy two weeks, he successfully located two more places where spirits gathered.
The first gathering place was more than 400 miles southwest of Heifeng'ao, with 70 or 80 people. He found it after calculating it 19 times in a row.

The second gathering point was located in an underground cave, 600 miles north of Black Wind Pass. It was a safer place, where nearly 300 people had gathered. He calculated the location 35 times before finally finding it.

"Does the accuracy decrease with distance?"

"This is a bit troublesome..."

He wasn't sure where Feng'an City was, but it was at least several thousand miles away from Heifeng'ao.

"The only way to improve accuracy is to try multiple calculations."

Having made up his mind, he stopped going out to search for evil spirits.

Because the newly discovered spirits, like the people in Black Wind Valley, had never known any major cities or prefectures. Their understanding was mostly based on hearsay and speculation, which was of no reference value in the search for Feng'an City.

As a result, he gained a clearer understanding of the remoteness of his location, and realized that it was almost impossible to find Feng'an City through messages from spirits.

"We still have to rely on the Nine Cups Calculation Sutra."

……

That day, snowflakes began to fall again from the gray sky, and the biting cold wind howled.

Inside the wooden house, a clay stove stood under the window, its bright yellow flames, as large as a human head, igniting spontaneously without firewood, warming the entire room.

Chen Mu sat cross-legged on a soft couch next to the stove, his gray and white clothes loosely draped over his body, and his long hair casually draped over his shoulders.

He was squinting, staring at a row of knotted thatch on the low table in front of him. Tiny specks of silvery light flickered in his eyes, and as his fingers moved, strings of numbers appeared in his mind.

After a long while, Chen Mu opened his eyes.

"Southeast again?" He couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

For the past two weeks, he has been constantly calculating with Feng'an City as his target.

Of the more than 1,600 calculations, 223 pointed to the southeast.

Moreover, as one's experience in divination improves, the result of the southeast direction appears more and more frequently.

"That's it, isn't it?"

Chen Mu couldn't help but smile.

(End of this chapter)