The ancient return was exposed by his sister's live stream.

Chen Siyao was organizing jade slips in the room. On the table in front of her was a pile of documents, jade slips, bamboo slips, and rubbings of stone tablets, stacked in more than a dozen piles, each categorized by type.

"Stargazing Observatory".

What's on the observatory?

"An astronomical array." Chen Siyao said without looking up, "The technique of using the power of stars to set up arrays in ancient cultivation civilizations. I've seen related records in the Tianji Array Sect, but there are no physical examples. The Star Observatory should have some."

Yang Wanqing jumped off the railing.

"Okay, okay. Anyway, you choose the place, I'll just go with you."

She walked to the door and then came back. "By the way, there's no live stream today, right?"

"Not open."

Chen Siyao hasn't gone live for three days in a row. The reason is simple: she's already sent most of the materials she needed to organize to the professor's team. She doesn't need them anymore.

"Won't the fans be worried?"

"An announcement has been made. It says that the live stream will be suspended while the data is being compiled, and will resume if there are any major discoveries."

"Oh." Yang Wanqing thought for a moment, "Won't your fans be pressuring you?"

"No." Chen Siyao finally looked up at her. "I showed them pictures of the Nine-Turned Silver Leaf Orchid. The comments section is full of questions about whether it can be mass-produced. Nobody's pressuring us anymore."

"ha."

The two got ready and went out.

On the evening of the fifteenth day, Chen Siyao went to the Tushita Palace again.

This time it wasn't just about delivering food. She wanted to see how her brother was doing.

When I entered the alchemy room, Chen Hao wasn't at the furnace. He was standing by the wall, which was covered with things.

Jade pieces, paper, and even lines directly carved into the wall using spiritual power.

It's all array patterns.

They were densely packed, stretching across the entire wall from left to right.

Chen Siyao walked closer to take a look. Each array pattern diagram was marked with "First Edition - Failure", "Second Edition - Failure", "Third Edition - Failure"... all the way up to "Ninth Edition - Divine Consciousness Attenuation Rate 87% - Unusable".

Nine versions. All failed.

But the one on the far right... is not labeled.

The array pattern is still being drawn. Only half of the lines are complete.

"The tenth edition?" Chen Siyao asked.

Chen Hao's voice came from behind her. "Yes."

She turned around. Chen Hao was leaning against the stove wall, holding a cup of cold tea.

"I've identified the problems with the first nine versions. The tenth version takes a different approach... Instead of single-layer spatial folding, it uses multi-layer progressive design."

Chen Siyao looked at the dense array of lines on the wall.

"Multi-layered progression... breaking down a single leap into multiple short jumps?"

"More or less." Chen Hao took a sip of his iced tea and frowned—it was too cold. "The distance of each jump is controlled within the range that the Boundary Stone can withstand. Array nodes are used as buffers between jumps."

"In that case... the more nodes there are, the greater the latency."

"Therefore, it's necessary to control the number of segments."

Chen Siyao was silent for two seconds. "Can you do it?"

Chen Hao put down the herbal tea.

"We'll test the first finished product at the end of the month."

Day 28.

Tushita Palace.

The fire in the Bagua Furnace had been burning continuously for nearly a month. Due to the prolonged high-temperature operation, the array patterns on the furnace wall had a faint dark red glow at the edges.

Chen Hao took something out of the furnace.

Palm-sized. Disc-shaped. Dark purple throughout, with extremely fine array patterns engraved on the surface.

It is almost invisible to the naked eye; one must use divine sense to discern the direction of each path.

At the center of the disc is embedded a crystal core of a Void Stone, polished into a regular octahedron. Each of the eight facets has a set of miniature array patterns, echoing the larger array patterns on the outer ring.

The scale of the virtual sea.

The first finished product.

Chen Hao held the disc in his palm and infused it with spiritual energy.

The array patterns lit up. Purple light spread outward from the center, concentric circles extending to the edges.

He closed his eyes and probed the core of the disc with his divine sense.

connection.

His divine sense extended outward along the channel constructed by the array patterns, passing through the sea of ​​clouds in the Thirty-Three Heavens, through the atmosphere of Jupiter, and into interstellar space.

one second.

two seconds.

Three seconds...

The distance is approximately 100 million kilometers.

He tried to push his divine sense further outward. Towards farther places. Towards the direction of Earth.

It has been pushed for approximately 300 million kilometers.

broken.

It wasn't a catastrophic disconnection. It was because the signal attenuated below a critical value, causing the connection to automatically break.

Chen Hao opened his eyes.

"Three hundred million."

They're almost there. But the problem isn't the distance.

The problem lies in the boundary.

The distance between Earth and Jupiter is about 800 million kilometers, so this distance is an obstacle. If divine sense wants to travel that far, it has to cross the boundary.

The first version of the scale's multi-layered progressive structure could traverse most distances, but when it came to penetrating boundary walls... the power was insufficient.

Chen Hao placed the plate on the table.

The first finished product.

It's not a failure. It's a work in progress.

The distance is sufficient. Stability—still lacking.

He walked to the wall and pasted a new blank sheet of paper next to the tenth edition of the array pattern diagram.

Start drawing the eleventh version.

-

On the same evening.

attic.

Yang Wanqing withdrew from the consciousness helmet, rubbing his temples and hissing.

"Today I was slashed four times by that sword cultivator's phantom at the Divine Realm... I dodged the third attack clearly, but the fourth came from behind! So insidious!"

Chen Siyao took off her helmet and placed it on the table.

"You shouldn't have chosen a backstabbing opponent. Your reaction time isn't fast enough."

"I just want to practice my back defense! I'm at the Golden Body Realm now, I can't be unable to block attacks from behind."

"Then lower it by one level. The Divine Treasure Realm is a whole major realm below the early Golden Body Realm."

Yang Wanqing pouted, unconvinced. "How can you train if you lower the skill level? You have to fight against strong opponents to improve."

Chen Siyao was too lazy to argue with her about this.

She went out onto the balcony.

I glanced northeast... and there was still a faint golden-red light shining in the direction of the Tushita Palace.

It's been a month.

My brother only came back once... He came back on the twentieth day, took a shower, changed his clothes, and left again in less than an hour.

Chen Siyao looked away.

The jade slips on the table were piled up to half a person's height. The results of a month's collection.

She and Yang Wanqing had already visited every inch of the Jade Void Holy Temple.

Thirty-seven palace complexes. Detailed records were kept for each one.

Eleven fragments of magical artifacts. Seventeen surviving spiritual herbs and over forty seed samples. Two hundred and thirty-six scrolls of cultivation techniques.

Ninety-two diagrams of battle formations, forty-seven prescriptions for alchemy, and countless other books on miscellaneous subjects.

It's piled up like a mountain.

It would take the cultivators of Blue Star ten years to digest.

But these things can't be taken back for now...we have to wait until my brother completes the Void Sea mission.

All I can do now is continue cultivating.

Chen Siyao picked up a bamboo scroll and sat under the lamp on the balcony to read it.

It is a high-level array technique manual from the Tianji Array Sect.

It records a defensive formation called the "Starry Sky Array". It has a nine-layered structure, nested layer by layer, with each layer capable of operating independently.

She's watched it three times already. Each time, something new comes to mind.

The ancient cultivation civilization's mastery of formations... was far beyond what she had imagined.

The second month. The third day.

Chen Hao inscribed the eleventh version of the array pattern into the new Boundary Stone core.

Infuse with spiritual power.