Chapter 108 It flew away and did not land for three days.
Yu Sui enjoyed listening to Mei Liangyu talk about his childhood; everything he said sounded interesting and helped her learn more.
Mei Liangyu unknowingly told her a lot. These things were not exactly secrets, but no one else could share them with. Seeing that Yu Sui was listening attentively and occasionally laughing, he naturally continued to tell her more.
Unable to find Yu Sui, Sheng Fei and Gu Gan sent her messages every day, inquiring about her injuries. They both tacitly avoided mentioning the fight.
Yu Sui did not return to them during her recovery period.
Sheng Fei and Gu Gan searched all over for Mei Liangyu, wanting to ask him where Yu Sui was, but Mei Liangyu dodged them every time, not giving them a chance.
After Zhong Lishan and Nian Qiuyan learned of Mei Liangyu's ordeal, Mei Liangyu was always accompanied by one or two friends wherever he went, so that he was never alone, for fear that he would be assassinated by Wen Yang's family members who suddenly rushed out.
One year, Qiu Yan helped him with a divination, and Mei Liangyu was able to evade her every time. Sheng Fei and Gu Gan had no chance of catching her.
Yu Sui hadn't forgotten that Gu Gan was going to the Upside-Down Moon Cave to retrieve the fragments of the Floating Pagoda, but now that he lacked Wen Yanghui's help and had exposed his Divine Strategist Technique, he didn't know what to do.
She replied to Gu Gan using a secondary account, asking him to send over the underwater cipher.
As darkness fell, Gu Gancai replied, "Not pretending to be dead anymore?"
He was getting a little annoyed after being ignored for so long by this business partner who suddenly showed up at his door.
Yu Sui quickly made up a story to mislead him: "Just came out of the Dragon Slayer Cave."
"I only remembered half of it, I'll send it to you for now," Gu Gan replied. "I'll send you the rest tomorrow."
Then he asked, "When can you untie it?"
Yu Sui: "I haven't even seen what the cipher text looks like, and you're already asking me about the time?"
If Gu Gan were still inside the Dragon Slayer Cave, he wouldn't be in such a hurry. He could directly enter the Upside-Down Moon Cave from inside the Dragon Slayer Cave without having to go through any roundabout ways to decipher any secret text.
You can't directly enter the Upside-Down Moon Cave from the Legalist school, so you have to take another secret passage, which increases the difficulty.
“The fifteenth has already passed, and only the end of the month remains,” Gu Gan replied. “I hope we can obtain the fragment of the Upside-Down Moon Cave this month.”
Yu Sui didn't say much, only saying, "Let's look at the secret text first."
Yu Sui had previously ignored Gu Gan's request. He had already made arrangements with Wen Yanghui to rely on the Wen family's mechanical skills to decipher the secret inscriptions on the secret passage.
Unfortunately, plans can't keep up with changes.
Wen Yanghui died suddenly, but he didn't have time to give Gu Gan the mechanism to decipher the cipher.
Now that Yu Sui has contacted Gu Gan and can help decipher the cipher, it's actually a breakthrough for Gu Gan.
After sending a portion of the ciphertext to Yu Sui, Gu Gan went to the Mingjia Xiaoyao Pool that very night, intending to explore the underwater passage again and send all the ciphertext in the passage to Yu Sui, waiting for it to be deciphered.
Today, Xun Zhiya is the one who went into the water with Gu Gan.
There are many large, protruding stones in the river in front of the stone gate of the secret passage. The water is shallow here, only up to a person's ankles, but the water flows all the way to the stone gate. If you don't want to get wet, you have to step on the stones.
Xun Zhiya stepped on the stone, looked up at the stone gate, where dense incantations and characters were changing and turning. She watched for a while before turning her gaze to Gu Gan standing to the side.
Gu Gan was diligently recording the coded messages on the door. The only sound below was the flowing water. Xun Zhiya was engrossed in reading when she suddenly heard Gu Gan say, "Am I pretty?"
Xun Zhiya looked away: "What nonsense are you talking about?"
Gu Gan then looked up at her, a hint of a smile in his eyes: "You've been looking at me for so long, have you figured something out?"
Xun Zhiya pursed her lips, then turned back to look at him, feigning composure as she said, "Thick-skinned."
After hearing this, Gu Gan smiled and shook his head slightly, tapping the crossword puzzle to continue sending the coded message, while saying, "Being too thin-skinned will prevent you from accomplishing many things."
Xun Zhiya seemed angry as she said, "Are you talking about me?"
Gu Gan said, "You haven't reached that level of thinness yet."
Xun Zhiya listened in silence. After a while, she looked back at the coded message turning on the door and said softly, "Sometimes, I wish I could be more thick-skinned so that I could accomplish many things, but I'm always a little short. Perhaps that's why Father sent me to Taiyi instead of having me stay in Nanjing."
Gu Gan's gaze followed Xun Zhiya, her slightly forlorn profile reflected in his eyes, with traces of water still clinging to her slender neck.
A woman who is usually aloof and cold, with a hint of coldness in her eyes and a distant demeanor that keeps people at arm's length, is especially endearing when she reveals a vulnerable side.
“You also have your own opportunities in Taiyi,” Gu Gan said in a gentler tone. “When you return to Nanjing, what’s yours will be yours, and no one can take it away from you.”
Xun Zhiya felt a warm glow in her heart as she listened to his encouragement. She looked back at Gu Gan and asked softly, "And what about you?"
"Me?" Gu Gan raised an eyebrow.
Xun Zhiya nodded gently: "What do you plan to do after you get the fragment and return to Qingyang?"
"I have a lot to do, and I can only accomplish a portion of it in Qingyang," Gu replied with a dry laugh.
Xun Zhiya said, "That sounds dangerous."
Gu Gan glanced at her, a slightly roguish smile on his face: "Worried about me?"
Xun Zhiya pursed her lips, remaining silent for a long while. Gu Gan, however, walked over through the water, closing the distance between them. The imposing presence of the man's broad body made Xun Zhiya involuntarily straighten her back.
Yu Sui, who saw this scene through the Five Elements Light Core, slowly turned his gaze to the secret inscription on the stone gate, ignoring the two people next to him whose atmosphere had suddenly become ambiguous.
She thought she would hear Gu Gan say something about Qingyang, revealing his background or his cooperation with Nangong Ming, but who knew that he would change the subject to amuse the beauty, clearly indicating that he himself did not want to talk about these things.
Although the cipher's rotation speed isn't very fast, its variations are countless. Only by identifying the patterns of change and selecting the correct runes can the stone door be opened.
Yu Sui looked down at the Wind Listening Ruler. It wasn't just for sending and receiving messages; when necessary, it could also be used as a map based on the location coordinates entered on the Wind Listening Ruler.
The directions were marked with the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and numbers. Yu Sui pointed to the blank map on the Wind Listening Ruler and, following the cipher text on the stone gate, wrote runes and numbers on the blank wheel himself.
Yu Sui was focused and absorbed in her own world, not even glancing at the ambiguous relationship between Gu Gan and Xun Zhiya beside her. When the two left, the Five Elements Light Core remained in place, continuing to be observed by her.
Noticing someone approaching, Yu Sui put away the Wind Listening Ruler and tilted her head to look at the door.
Mei Liangyu brought her today's dose of nourishing soup.
Yu Sui moved further into the bed, letting Mei Liangyu place the food box on the edge of the bed. He took the soup bowl Mei Liangyu handed him and blew on it. Mei Liangyu said, "It's not hot."
She believed it and started gulping it down from the bowl.
He frowned after only a couple of sips and turned his gaze to Mei Liangyu.
Seeing her furrowed brows and somewhat aggrieved expression, Mei Liangyu's heart softened. She reached out and touched the soup bowl, saying, "It's definitely not hot."
Yu Sui stopped drinking: "Let it cool down for a while."
Mei Liangyu didn't pull his hand away from the soup bowl; the icy aura emanating from his fingertips circled the bowl. He said, "That's enough."
Yu Sui then lowered her head and gently pecked at him.
This time, Mei Liangyu didn't play with the Wind Listening Ruler. Instead, he looked at Yu Sui, whose lost vitality had finally been restored. The girl in front of him had a rosy and radiant complexion, and her eyes were clear and bright. She was no longer the pale-faced, weak-breathing girl who had been lying in his arms.
"Senior brother, do the mechanics family have special mechanisms to crack cipher locks?" Yu Sui asked, half-opening her eyes as she drank her soup.
"Yes." Mei Liangyu raised an eyebrow slightly. "You want it?"
Yu Sui didn't answer, then asked, "Can it crack any kind of cipher lock?"
“It depends on the level of the technique. The kind of ‘key’ you’re talking about, the higher level is called Six Harmonies, and the lower level is called Three Stars,” Mei Liangyu explained. “The difficulty of the cipher lock depends on the number of combinations and arrangements. If there are more than a thousand combinations, use Six Harmonies; if there are less than a thousand, use Three Stars.”
Yu Sui: "What is the maximum number of 'Six Harmonies' keys?"
“Three thousand,” Mei Liangyu said. “Even with mechanisms and keys, there are more than three thousand variations of the cipher text.”
Yu Sui asked curiously, "Is it because no one dares to make it, or because they can't make a more powerful mechanism key?"
"You know about communication arrays, right?" Mei Liangyu helped her organize the food box, speaking slowly and deliberately. "The character incantation of a small array has at least 30,000 combinations. If you can decipher these 30,000 combinations, you can find out all the information that the array sends and receives, including the inscription on the Wind Listening Ruler, its location, time, and the content or sound of the message."
Yu Sui nodded, indicating that he was listening attentively.
She knew better than Mei Liangyu how much the mountains had changed.
“If someone keeps researching the key to the mechanism, then the upper limit of the Six Harmonies will go from three thousand to thirty thousand, from cracking one small number mountain to cracking three large number mountains.” Mei Liangyu took out two plates of pastries and handed them to her. “The three companies in the Communications Institute will not allow this to happen, so the key to unlocking the ciphertext cannot be developed, nor is it allowed to progress.”
After finishing the nourishing soup, Yu Sui licked her lips lightly: "So the mechanical experts have the ability to do it, but they don't dare to?"
"Not necessarily." Mei Liangyu pondered for a moment and then said, "I heard that thousands of years ago, the art of mechanical engineering was extremely popular. 'Gongshu Zi carved bamboo and wood into a magpie, which flew for three days without landing.' This describes the glory days when the founder of the art of mechanical engineering was still alive. The wooden bird he made could fly in the sky for three days without landing. Even the carriages we have today were his creations. Taiyi's Cloud Chariot Flying Dragon was also made based on the draft left by the founder of the art of mechanical engineering, and it was only through cooperation with several other schools that it was completed."
"Judging from the grandeur of that time, the Mechanists were omnipotent and could create anything. If they could have built the Cloud Chariot Flying Dragon back then, it would have spanned the entire six kingdoms and ignored their borders. Although it is possible now, back then, the Mechanists posed a greater threat than they brought to the six kingdoms. They could create weapons of unimaginable size."
"A thousand years ago, a monarch of the Yan Kingdom ordered the Yan Kingdom's mechanical sorcerers to build a weapon that could attack the other five kingdoms without losing a single soldier of the Yan Kingdom."
Holding the empty bowl, Yu Sui listened attentively: "Was it successfully built?"
"This news was learned by spies hidden in Yan and spread back to the other five states. As a result, the King of Yan wanted to attack the five states, so the other five states united against Yan. At that time, the mechanical sorcerers of Yan were indeed more powerful than those of the other five states."
Mei Liangyu asked her to hand over the empty bowl and then added another bowl for her: "Because the majority of the mechanical masters in Yan State are skilled in mechanical arts, and they have many followers, it is said that they are going to build weapons that can attack the other five states without firing a single shot. Ambitious mechanical sorcerers are all flocking to Yan State to join them."
"So the other five states killed all the sorcerers who went to Yan, and announced the ambitions of the Yan ruler to the world, denouncing him for disregarding the oath of non-war between the six states and for wanting to put the people in the midst of war. They also spread rumors within Yan, making the people believe that the world was about to fall into chaos and that the King of Yan wanted to abandon them in exchange for more territory."
Mei Liangyu handed the bowl to Yu Sui, gesturing for her to continue drinking, and said, "The Yan state is in turmoil, and the King of Yan is in dire straits. The Mechanical School is considered to be a school that wants to provoke war and has been expelled by the six states. Before being expelled, they were surrounded and killed in large numbers."
"The once-powerful School of Mechanics has declined as a result. While other schools of thought have progressed, the School of Mechanics has regressed. It is already remarkable that they have maintained their current level. Only four of the most powerful Schools of Mechanics remain, namely Taiyi. If they were to get involved in the conflict between the six kingdoms, even these four schools would not survive."
Yu Sui rolled his eyes and laughed, "Senior brother, you haven't left Taiyi, but you know more about the affairs of the six kingdoms than I, who live outside."
Mei Liangyu said lazily, "Someone told me that."
Yu Sui casually asked, "Are you from the mechanical family?"
“No,” Mei Liangyu raised an eyebrow and said, “It’s Instructor Mu.”
Yu Sui was stunned. It was a name she had never heard before. Seeing Yu Sui's blank expression, Mei Liangyu added, "Yan Xiaochuan's master."
[Author's Note]
"Gongshu Ban carved bamboo and wood into a magpie, which, once completed, flew for three days without landing." This is from the Mozi.
I finished writing and went out, only to find that there had been no update by 9 PM. Puzzled, I checked the backend and realized I'd forgotten to set the update time QAQ
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