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Don't Cause Trouble Chapter 61: Interconnected Runes
In the previous minor secret realm, You Fushi had appeared in the stone tablet forest. Now, once again, he suddenly wandered alone into a stone tablet forest hidden by a formation. No matter how one looked at it, there seemed to be some connection between the junior brother and these stone tablet forests.
—And also the Cold Crystal Mud.
Last time, there seemed to be traces of Cold Crystal Mud on the cracks of the stone tablets in that secret realm, but Ye Su had been too focused on the patterns carved into the stone tablets to notice anything else.
Since You Fushi was there too, could it be that the Cold Crystal Mud he had on his fingers this time was scraped off the tablet in that previous secret realm?
Ye Su thought about her junior brother’s usual behavior and instinctively wanted to dismiss the idea, he was just too lazy.
His identity was a mystery, and from time to time he would casually toss out extremely rare materials. No one knew who he really was. Ye Su didn’t ask either. She knew asking wouldn’t get answers anyway, he’d just pretend not to hear.
After mentally reviewing the patterns carved on the stone tablet from her memories, Ye Su withdrew from the fragments in her sea of consciousness. But when she opened her eyes, she only saw Xu Chengyu and the others. Tu Shi, Lian Lian, and Cheng Huaian were nowhere to be seen.
"You’re awake," Xu Chengyu walked over and said. "Senior Tu went to study the formation, and Cheng Huaian and the others are deciphering the runes."
"Formation?"
"Senior Tu said this entire stone tablet forest is a formation. There were too many broken tablets before, so the formation's shape was lost, and he hadn’t realized it." Zhou Yun, who stood nearby, explained.
When Tu Shi first arrived, he was alone, his Golden Core shattered and on the verge of death. For two hundred years, he struggled to survive and rebuilt his cultivation, battling beasts on the barren land, living a life of raw survival.
Only in recent years, as spiritual energy in the realm gradually thinned and the beasts disappeared, did he turn his attention back to the tablets. He set up a protective formation around them but never realized the tablet forest itself was part of a grand formation.
You Fushi was sitting cross-legged in front of the base of the tallest stone tablet at the center of the forest, looking as if he had fallen asleep again.
"I’m going to check on him." Ye Su walked toward the center of the forest.
"You stepped on my robe," You Fushi opened his eyes just as she approached, looking up at the mortal beside him with displeasure.
Ye Su immediately lifted her foot and looked down, her shoe tip had barely touched the hem of his robe. Still, she met You Fushi’s eyes and said, "Sorry."
His eyes really were beautiful. His pupils were an inky black, sometimes appearing to flash a deep violet, like brilliant gemstones—rich and elegantly cold.
At that moment, You Fushi, leaning against the stone tablet base, suddenly reached a hand out to her.
Ye Su had been lost in thought, staring into his eyes, and hadn’t reacted yet.
This mortal was really slow. You Fushi frowned and waved his hand in front of her again.
Her gaze dropped to his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she finally took hold of it and helped him up.
You Fushi let himself be pulled up and, somewhat generously, decided to forgive her.
"Why are you sitting here?" Ye Su asked. Her junior brother had always hated dirt, he wouldn’t even sit on a bench outside without having her lay her long robe over it first.
"It’s cool here," You Fushi answered lazily.
Ye Su raised an eyebrow. So it wasn’t her imagination? | Read more at: https://sugookie.blogspot.com/2025/06/chapter-61-interconnected-runes.html
While repairing the broken tablets earlier, she had sensed a faint chill around the tallest stone tablet in the center of the forest.
After helping him to the side, Ye Su let go of his hand.
She looked up at the stone tablet. It wasn’t broken, but the patterns on its surface had been heavily eroded by time and weather. It was nearly impossible to make out what had once been inscribed there.
Ye Su stepped forward and reached out to touch a spot that seemed to be a faint remnant of a character.
There had been a stone tablet in that minor secret realm as well, with a line of characters but they were in an ancient script she didn’t recognize.
After leaving that secret realm, Ye Su had considered looking into that ancient text. But books on ancient script were rare in today’s cultivation world. The Qianji Sect was no longer a major power, and all their connections had long been severed. She had no way to start the search.
So, she had shelved the matter.
"Did you figure anything out?" Xu Chengyu walked over and asked.
Ye Su recounted what she remembered about the ancient characters. Then she took out paper and a brush, trying to write those characters down for everyone to see.
She remembered the characters clearly, but somehow, when she tried to write, her hand wouldn’t move like there was some kind of force suppressing her.
"What’s wrong?" Zhou Yun, who had followed her, asked when he saw her hesitate and not write anything.
It felt like those ancient characters carried a powerful suppressive force. If the person writing them had too low of a cultivation level, they wouldn't be able to overcome the restriction.
"It’s too complicated. I forgot," Ye Su made an excuse.
"Ancient characters really are hard to remember," Xu Chengyu said. "I once saw an ancient book, and to this day, I still can’t recall the title."
For now, the matter was set aside. Ye Su looked up again and continued examining the stone tablet. She could only understand the direction of the runes.
"I’ll try to see if I can restore the rune patterns first." Ye Su casually pulled out a brush from her qiankun bag. She paused when she saw the one she grabbed, and in the end, switched it for the jade-and-gold brush Lian Lian had given her.
The formation in this stone tablet forest was massive and the runes were incredibly complex. A normal brush likely wouldn’t hold up under the strain.
"Have the spirit stones ready." Xu Chengyu grabbed a handful of high-grade spirit stones from Ma Congqiu’s hand. "In case your spiritual energy runs out."
At a crucial time when everyone needed to work together, they couldn’t afford to skimp on spirit stones.
"Thanks." Ye Su accepted the spirit stones, flew up on her sword, and approached the stone tablet. Holding the jade-and-gold brush in one hand, she hovered at the top of the tallest tablet, scanned the entire forest, and then gently closed her eyes.
Using the tallest tablet at the center as the origin point, all the other stone tablets, including the broken ones that had been repaired—rose like a forest within her sea of consciousness. Every pattern and crack on every tablet she had seen or touched became vividly clear in her mind.
The fragmented runes on all the tablets gathered in her vision. With a focused thought, the runes in her sea of consciousness began to piece themselves together and adjust, bit by bit, until they were complete.
No proper rune cultivator would try this. Even if you could remember everything, restoring and deducing rune paths was an extremely intricate task.
But Ye Su’s mind worked fast, she was simultaneously analyzing and restoring. Coupled with the experience from similar tablets in the minor secret realm, she actually managed to reconstruct all the rune patterns in just three hours.
During that time, her sea of consciousness boiled like waves crashing in a storm, and her spiritual core trembled on the verge of collapse. Thankfully, the high-grade spirit stones supplied her with just enough spiritual energy to keep her going.
As she completed the final deduction for the central tablet, her last thought was: "Everything is interconnected runes and symbols are one and the same."
Then the spirit stones were depleted, her energy completely drained, and Ye Su fell straight down with her sword.
The central stone tablet was nearly ten meters tall. As she fell, You Fushi, who had been napping at its base suddenly opened his eyes, a trace of violet light flashing in his pupils. In a blur, he appeared beside her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and caught her.
He even paused midair to consider whether he should catch her sword too.
In the end, he didn’t. He let the worn-out sword fall to the ground.
In the blink of an eye, he landed on the barren ground with her in his arms.
Ye Su had burned through too much spiritual power and lost consciousness immediately.
You Fushi hesitated for a moment, then grabbed her by the collar and leaned her against the stone tablet.
When Xu Chengyu and the others returned, the first thing they saw from a distance was the two of them leaning together at the base of the tablet.
"She’s asleep?" Lian Lian crossed her arms and asked, sizing up the scene.
You Fushi ignored her. Instead, he looked toward Ma Congqiu and stretched out a hand. "Spirit stones."
Ma Congqiu froze, too surprised to think. On instinct, he handed over the pouch of spirit stones.
You Fushi took a handful and pressed them into Ye Su’s hand. With his own hand half-wrapped around hers, he helped guide the energy from the spirit stones into her body.
This mortal is so irresponsible, passed out and left him here all alone.
"She’s completely drained of spiritual energy," Tu Shi said as he walked over from a distance. He glanced at Ye Su and immediately noticed the problem. "Kids these days really are daring."
Running out of spiritual energy was extremely dangerous. It left a cultivator completely defenseless. No one would risk that unless it was absolutely necessary.
After she absorbed the energy from seven high-grade spirit stones, Ye Su slowly regained consciousness. When she opened her eyes, she saw everyone staring at her.
"..."
"Are you feeling better?" Zhou Yun was the first to ask.
"I'm fine." Ye Su turned her head slightly to glance at You Fushi, then looked back at the stone tablet. "I’ve finished deducing all the rune patterns. We can try restoring them now."
Cheng Huai’an looked stunned. "All of them?"
Ye Su nodded. "All of them."
"This stone tablet forest contains a formation. I walked through the whole thing earlier," Tu Shi said. "If you're going to restore the runes, start from the north, then move on to the east, south, and west. Finally filling in the core of the array at the center."
He pointed to the central stone tablet. "Only then will the formation activate."
……
The next day, Ye Su began restoring the rune patterns on the stone tablet from the north side.
"The jade-and-gold pen moves however you will it," Lian Lian said, looking up at Ye Su above. "If you want to draw large talismans, just press down harder."
Ye Su turned to the side and tested the pressure with one stroke. Sure enough, the rune pen could draw lines as thick as those on the stone tablet.
Facing the tablet directly, she let her sword respond to her will as she began to draw with the pen, starting from the blurred edges of the stone, tracing the rune patterns she had previously deduced.
It wasn’t as easy as she had imagined. The rune patterns on the stone tablet were drawn by a great cultivator. She was merely at the Golden Core stage—imitating them stroke by stroke was no easy task. For every line she drew, she had to use several high-grade spirit stones.
"Her cultivation level..." Cheng Huai’an looked up at Ye Su from below, a thoughtful expression on his face. For some reason, when she was drawing the runes, he couldn’t see through her level of cultivation.
……
"It worked!" Zhou Yun exclaimed as a flash of light appeared on the surface of the stone tablet, and the previously blurred runes turned into a pale golden color.
Ye Su landed and sheathed her sword, steadying herself on the base of the monument to keep from collapsing.
She looked up at the tablet. The original runes had a depth of two feet, but the ones she had just drawn were only a thin layer of rune ink.
That was the difference between a great cultivator and an ordinary one.
Lian Lian and Cheng Huaian looked at the stone tablet and, at the same time, fell into a trance, completely captivated by the rune patterns on its surface, unable to move for a long while.
There were too many stone tablets for Ye Su to finish them all in just a few days. She could only stop and rest periodically to replenish her spiritual energy.
Out of the ten thousand high-grade spirit stones Ma Congqiu had given, more than half were already used up.
Ye Su completed the northern and eastern sections by herself. During that time, Lian Lian and Cheng Huaian, while observing the rune patterns on the tablets, were triggered into moments of insight multiple times.
If the spiritual energy here hadn’t been so sparse, they likely would’ve advanced in cultivation directly especially Lian Lian.
Later, Ye Su finished drawing all the rune patterns and handed them to Cheng Huaian and Lian Lian. The southern section of tablets was completed together by the three of them.
As for the west side, that was where most of the broken tablets were, nearly all had collapsed.
Ye Su looked at the nine stone tablets on the west side and continued her methodical pace, intending to restore the runes. But unexpectedly, the moment Cheng Huaian and Lian Lian lifted their brushes, it was as if they had been struck by a heavy blow—they coughed up large amounts of blood.
Xu Chengyu and Zhou Yun, who were flying with their swords nearby, instinctively grabbed the two just in time. Cheng Huaian and Lian Lian’s faces were deathly pale, as if they’d suffered backlash.
At that moment, Tu Shi, who had been studying the formation and hadn’t appeared for a while, suddenly emerged. He sealed the spiritual cores and heart meridians of the two, then looked up at Ye Su and said, "Come down for now."