Don't Cause Trouble Chapter 60: Cold Crystal Mud

"You know runes too?" Tu Shi looked at the large characters on Ye Su’s robe with confusion. Two hundred years had passed, had the Qianji Sect changed professions? Back then, even as a child, Zhang Fengfeng already didn’t behave properly. Now that he was the sect leader, he was probably even more unruly.

Ye Su replied casually, "I taught myself a bit."

Lian Lian and Cheng Huai’an: "…"

This was just "a bit" of self-study? They’d been learning for nearly twenty years and still didn’t understand the runes on this stone tablet.

Ye Su looked at the broken tablet. It stood a full seven feet tall, and this was only one-third of the full structure. She bent down and touched the broken edge, it was made of a very unusual material. She had never seen anything like it before, not even in books.

"What’s wrong?" Tu Shi asked.

"We need to piece the tablet back together. I’ll try to fix the crack first," Ye Su said, pointing to the fragments scattered on the ground.

She had several types of bonding clay, but due to the unusual nature of the stone, she didn’t know which one would work. She’d have to try them all one by one.

Ye Su pulled out all her bonding clay from her storage pouch and tested each type—but none of them worked at all.

"…"

None of them stuck. That could only mean one thing: this tablet required a much better bonding clay.

Ye Su even took out a tiny bit, barely the size of a fingernail of Jialan Mud and carefully applied it to the crack. She had spent a fortune in spirit stones to buy this from Huang Erqian. It was meant to be a coming-of-age gift for her Second Senior Brother, Ming Liu Sha.

This mud was one of the best materials for repairing small magical artifacts, nearly capable of bonding anything. Yet even this had no effect on the tablet.

Ye Su squatted in front of the broken stone, dazed. What kind of material was this tablet made from, if even Jialan Mud couldn’t repair it?

You Fushi was also squatting beside her, and had been using the hem of Ye Su’s robe to wipe his hands, more than once.

He had done this so many times that Ye Su didn’t even bother reacting anymore. She just let her junior use her robe like a hand towel.

"Any progress?" Xu Chengyu asked.

"The bonding clay didn’t…" Ye Su stood up, about to casually cast a cleaning spell on her robe then glanced down and froze.

Her robe’s hem was covered in several thick, milky-white handprints made of mud. That wasn’t even the worst part, the mud looked extremely familiar!

For a artifact refiner, this was number three on the list in the Hundred Treasures Handbook.

—Cold Crystal Mud, formed underground in ten-thousand-year-old frozen soil. It has a milky-white color, a clean and cold scent, and gives off heat when touched. A small amount is extremely effective, just a single drop can repair anything. It is rumored to have been the adhesive used to repair divine artifacts before the fall of the gods.

Ye Su lifted the hem of her robe and immediately caught a faint, crisp chill in the scent. She pinched a bit of the mud with her fingers and, as expected, it began to heat up.

"What’s wrong with the bonding clay?" Xu Chengyu asked. He hadn’t heard Ye Su finish her sentence earlier.

"The bonding clay is fine," Ye Su said, looking up and answering as if nothing had happened. "Could I trouble everyone to search for all the broken pieces of the tablets and place them next to the main stone bodies?"

None of the people present were artifact refiners, so they didn’t really understand the value of that bonding mud, especially the four from Sword Sect and Lu Jiu. They had already seen how You Fushi behaved, so they thought Ye Su was simply upset about the white handprints on her robe. They immediately turned to help find broken tablet pieces that matched the bases.

Ma Congqiu even took a moment to explain things to Tu Shi and the two from the Wuxing Sect.

……

Ye Su turned to look at You Fushi, who had just stood up.

"This is Cold Crystal Mud. You... don’t waste it like that next time."

She had already witnessed how ridiculously extravagant he could be, but this was still hard to accept.

You Fushi said nothing. He didn’t understand and didn’t seem to hear her either.

Earlier, when he saw Ye Su take out a pile of clay, for some unknown reason, his space suddenly connected at that moment. His mind stirred, and a lump of white clay appeared in his hand.

By the time he realized what had happened, the space had already disconnected again. He didn’t like how sticky the white clay felt in his hand, so after squishing it a few times and getting it all over his hands, he wiped it off on Ye Su’s robe hem.

Anyway, this mortal would clean it up.

"Your hand," Ye Su said, gesturing for him to hold it out.

You Fushi didn’t comply. He even turned sideways, trying to avoid her.

"No killing the Mistflower," Ye Su paused, then added, "Wipe off all the mud from your hand."

The moment he heard that, You Fushi immediately turned around and held out his hand to her, expecting the mortal to clean it for him.

Ye Su: "…"

She tore off the part of her robe that was stained with the white clay and set it aside. Then she took hold of her junior’s hand and lowered her head, carefully using a cloth to wipe off every last bit of white mud between his fingers, even under the nails.

You Fushi calmly and naturally let her do it, fingers spread. For a moment, it was hard to tell whether it was the Cold Crystal Mud or his fingers that were whiter.

"There’s still some here," the junior shamelessly wiggled his ring finger, pointing out a bit more white mud on his fingertip.

"When we get back, you’re going to memorize the Hundred Treasures Handbook. Stop treating rare treasures like dirt." Ye Su looked up at him. "You Fushi, stop pretending you can’t hear."

"You didn’t ask me where the mud came from," You Fushi said suddenly.

"It’s Cold Crystal Mud," Ye Su corrected him. Then she added, "If you want to talk, go ahead. If not, I won’t ask."

"I’m not saying."

"…Fine. Then I’m using the Cold Crystal Mud."

Ye Su carefully gathered up all the Cold Crystal Mud, then used spiritual fire to warm and melt it. Just that process alone took more than a dozen hours—completely different from how the earlier bonding clays behaved.

Fortunately, this clay was gentle and soft in nature. With Golden Core-level spiritual fire, she could refine it with time and effort. However, since the spiritual energy here was thin, she had to use two high-grade spirit stones just to maintain the fire.

Once she finished refining the Cold Crystal Mud, she stored it in an empty box. Meanwhile, the others had finished matching all the broken tablet fragments with their corresponding bases. A few tablets had even toppled over with their pedestals, which took them some time to sort through.

Ye Su selected a few drops of the refined Cold Crystal Mud from the box and spread it across the fracture lines of the stone tablets, pulling and smoothing it out until it turned transparent.

After finishing the seam on the tablet in front of her, she looked at the others and said,

"We need to stick it back together now."

Hearing this, Tu Shi bent down, used both arms to lift the broken tablet easily, and with a leap, pressed it down against the base, standing on top of the rejoined tablet.

"How about this?" he asked.

Xu Chengyu took the initiative to fly up with Ye Su on his sword and brought her to inspect the seam.

"It’s good," Ye Su said, scraping off the extra Cold Crystal Mud that had squeezed out. Then she went on to repair the next broken tablet.

……

Five days later.

"She really doesn’t need to rest?" Cheng Huaian looked at Ye Su, who was still repairing the stone tablets, and couldn’t understand it.

Cultivators could go a long time without sleep, but they still needed to meditate and rest. The rest of them had already taken turns resting here three times.

"When Fellow Daoist Ye gets in the zone, she’s like this." Lu Jiu, who had known Ye Su the longest among them, explained with some understanding.

"There are only a few tablets left," Xu Chengyu said. "She probably wants to finish repairing them all."

Tu Shi held his staff and looked toward Ye Su: As expected of a disciple of the Qianji Sect.

To apply the refined Cold Crystal Mud effectively onto the cracks of the broken stone tablets, the refiner had to use spiritual power to smooth it and fill the gaps. Ye Su was extremely patient with such tasks but depleting her spiritual energy was unavoidable.

The sea of consciousness within her spiritual core had begun to churn and boil again. Only this time, there was a faint trace of agitation within it.

……

Ye Su took a step back, a bit tired, and said, "The stone tablets are all repaired."

She looked at the final tablet she had fixed. In the box she held, there was still a thin layer of Cold Crystal Mud left.

Everyone looked around at the forest of stone tablets and immediately noticed that the thin spiritual energy in the air had slowly started to flow again.

"The spiritual energy is dissipating more slowly now," Tu Shi was the first to notice, being the highest in cultivation and most familiar with this place.

"You should rest for a while," Xu Chengyu said. "We’ll keep watch here."

"Alright." Ye Su didn’t refuse. She found an open spot, sat down, and entered meditation to rest.

Tu Shi stood in the middle of the stone tablets, glancing around, and suddenly shook his head. "No… no, something’s not right."

Like someone possessed, he ran around all the repaired tablets, circle after circle. Then he stopped, knelt on the ground, and started drawing and writing with his finger on the barren earth, recording the positions of each stone tablet until he connected them into a formation.

"Hahahahaha!" Tu Shi’s eyes filled with tears. "A formation! It’s actually a formation!"

Xu Chengyu and the others frowned, looking toward the former monk. Doubt rose in all their hearts.

"Two hundred years! Two whole centuries!" Tu Shi clutched his staff tightly. "And I never realized this place was a formation!"

Though spell cultivators and formation cultivators are not exactly the same path, they share many similarities. Cheng Huaian could somewhat understand Tu Shi’s feelings—these tablets were actually part of a massive formation, and as a formation cultivator who had spent 200 years here, he hadn’t realized it. No one would accept that easily.

Tu Shi remained kneeling, suddenly coughing up several mouthfuls of blood, startling everyone.

"Senior!" Zhou Yun rushed forward, trying to support him. "Are you alright?"

Tu Shi waved his hand and stood up by himself. "I’m fine. The formation’s power is so immense that just memorizing its structure damaged my spirit."

"If it’s a formation, there must be a core," Lian Lian stepped forward and said. "Senior, do you have a way to break it?"

After calming his mind, Tu Shi shook his head. "Putting aside whether I can find the core, this formation cannot be broken."

"Why not?" Lian Lian asked.

"This formation is vast and mighty, it wasn’t built by an ordinary person," Tu Shi said rationally. "It suppresses something at its center, with all gates of life and death sealed. This formation is holding something down."

In the cultivation world, there had once been countless great powers, even gods descending before the Godfall Era. There were always places where evil beings or demonic beasts were sealed.

From what Tu Shi could tell, whatever was sealed beneath this formation was extraordinary.

"The drop in spiritual energy across the realm is likely due to damage to the formation," he said. "Rather than breaking it, we need to repair it."

No one objected.

"Although the two of us are spell cultivators, we’ve never seen these kinds of runes before. We’ll need some time to study them," Cheng Huaian said. "Let’s wait until Fellow Daoist Ye finishes resting before making any decisions."

"Stay here and keep watch," Tu Shi said, slamming his staff heavily into the ground. "There must be more than just runes on these stone tablets. For such a vast formation, there have to be smaller linked formations. I’ll go investigate."

Tu Shi picked a point within the formation and began searching for signs.

……

Ye Su held a top-grade spirit stone in each hand, given to her by Ma Congqiu, then entered meditation and turned her focus inward to examine her spiritual domain.

Her sea of consciousness was dim and starless. She kept moving closer to the "surface" of the sea until she fully sank into it.

In an instant, the sea of consciousness enveloped her, and countless memories drifted past.

Ye Su concentrated, watching the memories brush past her. When she saw the one she was looking for, she immediately selected it.

—It was the stone tablet forest inside the first minor secret realm.

Strangely, a few of the stone tablets were also damaged, but none had fallen. They were still standing on their bases.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ye Su caught a glimpse of something. That was…

The sea of consciousness could only recreate things she had seen before, so even if she wanted a closer look, she could only view it from that same angle.

But she was now extremely familiar with that substance—it was Cold Crystal Mud, clinging to the damaged parts of the stone tablet.

In that instant, Ye Su immediately thought of You Fushi.