Chapter 98
Zheng Fa furrowed his brow as he looked at the results sent by Han Xiaobai, feeling a bit disappointed.
"I’ve tried all the algorithms I could," Han Xiaobai replied, sounding somewhat aggrieved. "It’s still not enough with the training set you provided."
Zheng Fa didn’t think Han Xiaobai was shirking responsibility.
Indeed, there weren’t many yin-yang and five-element talismans sorted by Senior Sister Zhang, and a portion had to be reserved to verify the accuracy of Han Xiaobai’s classification algorithm.
That left even fewer.
"How about we don’t categorize them so finely?" Zheng Fa suggested after a moment of thought.
"You’re right!" The old man Bai clapped his hands in agreement. "With so few samples, let’s just go with the broad categories!"
Zheng Fa’s idea was simple.
Since dividing them into ten categories of yin, yang, and the five elements didn’t yield any results, they could categorize them into two major classes of yin and yang, or five major classes of the five elements, to see if they could find any clues.
Clearly, the number of samples for the yin-yang classification was the largest.
"Let’s start with the yang talismans."
Over an hour later, Han Xiaobai sent back several results.
Zheng Fa stared at them for a long time but couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He turned to Old Man Bai.
Old Man Bai looked at the results for a while and shook his head.
"Let’s try the yin ones."
Zheng Fa felt a heaviness in his heart as he spoke to the other side.
"Still can’t see anything."
Looking at the results Han Xiaobai sent again, Old Man Bai sighed.
"Let’s try the five elements approach. Start with the water element talismans."
At this point, Zheng Fa had calmed down.
After all, cultivation wasn’t something that could be rushed; it truly required patience.
Senior Sister Zhang probably had a water spiritual root, as she had produced the most water element talismans.
After all this fuss, the night had grown a bit deep.
While waiting for the results, Old Man Bai couldn’t help but yawn.
Zheng Fa turned to Tang Lingwu beside him and asked, "Aren’t you going to head back?"
Tang Lingwu thought for a moment and replied, "I’ll leave once this result comes in."
"Why don’t you go back first? I don’t see much hope here," Old Man Bai said, yawning widely, a few tears escaping his eyes as he muttered, "This thing still relies on a bit of luck."
Tang Lingwu shook her head.
A new message alert chimed from the notebook, and Zheng Fa opened it to find Han Xiaobai had sent the latest results.
Frowning, Zheng Fa scrolled through the images classified by the computer as water element talismans.
"Wait! Let’s go back and take another look at those few images," Old Man Bai suddenly exclaimed.
Zheng Fa turned, surprised to see Old Man Bai’s enthusiasm.
Old Man Bai rubbed his eyes and muttered, "I yawned so hard I teared up; my eyes are a bit blurry."
"…"
"Wait!"
"Are your eyes okay again?"
"This structure appears very frequently in this category."
Old Man Bai pointed at the computer screen.
(End of this chapter)
---
**Chapter 111: The Law**
Zheng Fa looked at the pattern Old Man Bai was pointing at.
To call it a pattern wouldn’t be entirely accurate; it was part of a three-dimensional shape.
In fact, as Old Man Bai had said, it was a structure, and a partial one at that—if one were to draw a comparison, it resembled a radical of a Chinese character.
However, each of these shapes was three-dimensional, making them far more complex than flat Chinese characters.
Zheng Fa scrolled the mouse, bringing other talismans onto the screen.
Sure enough, at least in this batch of results, most of the talismans shared this structure, and there was only one.
"Water element…"
Zheng Fa pondered, as this result easily pointed to a hypothesis—
The classification of talismans into the five elements depended on whether such small structures existed.
Whether this hypothesis was correct remained to be seen, but at least it opened a path for Zheng Fa to analyze the talismans.
"Let’s check the talismans for metal, wood, fire, and earth!"
Zheng Fa sent the other five-element talismans to Han Xiaobai.
He glanced at the time and apologized, "It’s getting late; sorry for the trouble."
"Late?" Han Xiaobai quickly typed back, "You know nothing about cultivating immortality."
…Actually, I do know a bit.
Old Man Bai had stopped yawning, now full of energy, standing beside Zheng Fa as they both studied the previous water element talismans.
Some talismans that initially didn’t seem to have this structure gradually revealed similar features after topological transformations.
Zheng Fa sketched this structure on paper and wrote the character for water beside it.
"This thing gets more interesting the more I look at it… You mentioned before that talismans are the trajectories of spiritual energy?" Old Man Bai suddenly said.
"That’s what one of my senior sisters said," Zheng Fa shook his head. "But I think it makes sense."
At least from the "Talisman Path Foundation Method," which could accelerate his cultivation speed, it could be inferred that the essence of talismans was indeed spiritual energy.
"Different trajectories yield different effects," Old Man Bai shook his head. "I can’t wrap my head around it."
Zheng Fa nodded and posed two questions:
"Besides this structure, what do the other parts of the talisman do?"
"Is the yin-yang attribute also a kind of structure?"
"…" Old Man Bai was taken aback, glancing at Zheng Fa with a somewhat innocent expression. "How would I know? I’m just an old man; I’ve never even seen what spiritual energy looks like!"
But you have a high status in the Xuanwei Realm!
After an unknown amount of time, when Tang Lingwu’s phone had buzzed three times, the analysis results for the other talismans finally came through.
To the trio’s disappointment, it seemed that either the algorithm wasn’t precise enough or the sample sizes for the other four elements were insufficient.
They only found the corresponding structure for the earth element.
The other three elements didn’t yield the results they had hoped for.
"Having made such a discovery today is still a stroke of luck," Zheng Fa consoled the somewhat disappointed Tang Lingwu. "There’s no rush; we can continue tomorrow night."
He remained quite open-minded about it.
Research inherently requires patience.
Moreover, in the realm of cultivation, a misstep could lead to hundreds or even thousands of years.
There’s truly no need to rush.
Tang Lingwu nodded slowly. She glanced at her phone, greeted the two, and headed downstairs.
Zheng Fa, now with hearing far beyond that of an ordinary person, could clearly hear Tang Lingwu’s footsteps gradually fading as she descended the stairs, and he could hear the engine starting when she got into her car.
What he heard even more clearly was the loud scolding from her mother when she reached the bottom of the stairs.
And the silence from Tang Lingwu.
…
The next day, in the classroom.
After the physics class, Zheng Fa put away the test papers handed out by the teacher and took out a workbook to look through.
He was looking, not doing.
At this stage in high school, he had developed a confidence in his ability to tackle problems—after glancing at most questions, he could roughly understand what the examiner was trying to test and what methods could be used to solve them, then check the answers.
If there were no issues, that question was considered done.
Zheng Fa felt that his time was becoming increasingly limited.
The time he could allocate to learning high school knowledge was actually quite restricted—just the time spent in class and during breaks.
So he had chosen this relatively time-efficient method.
But this didn’t mean he had given up on the college entrance examination; on the contrary, his goals had risen even higher.
Previously, he had told Old Chen that he wanted to apply to Jiangnan University.
Now, he aimed for Jingcheng University.
To establish a cultivation laboratory, he needed to go to a place with more top talents—after all, in modern society, the opportunities to connect with top talents across various disciplines are quite limited.
Getting into a good university might be the simplest and most feasible way.
Most people wouldn’t even realize that a certain teacher they met in college could be the pinnacle of their network.
"Zheng Fa?"
Wang Chen gently called from behind him.
"Mm?" Zheng Fa turned slightly to look at Wang Chen.
"…That test you just took was a perfect score, right?"
Wang Chen looked at Zheng Fa.
"Yeah." Zheng Fa nodded lightly.
He indeed had a bit of a talent for physics, at least in high school physics.
Currently, he was usually the top scorer in physics exams.
"Then why aren’t you taking a break during recess?" Wang Chen pouted, pointing at the countdown sign by the door, complaining, "I can’t even look at that thing without feeling anxious!"
Zheng Fa: "…"
Suddenly, Tang Lingwu walked over from the front row, holding a rather thick notebook.
"Mm?"
"I was looking during class, and it seems I found a common structure in the metal element talismans."
Tang Lingwu opened the notebook in front of Zheng Fa and said softly. Zheng Fa felt a twinge of envy at her privilege of not paying attention in class.
He flipped through the notebook she handed over, filled with densely packed talisman drawings.
Each talisman was neatly arranged in rows.
It looked very friendly for those with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
Each talisman had a small circle drawn by Tang Lingwu, indicating that they indeed shared a similar structure.
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