allonlinenovel Chapter 425 The Wisdom of Coping
Chapter 425 The Wisdom of Coping
The bluestone path stretched out beneath her feet, casting bronze-colored light spots. Just as Ye Shuli was about to reach out and catch the falling gear fragments, the entire sky suddenly emitted a crisp sound of shattering glass.
The gear-shaped brand on the back of Jiang Ye's neck suddenly became hot, and the afterimages of the bronze doors floating in the air actually pieced together with the black cracks to form a complete geometric shape.
"Fifteen-degree angle defense array!" Ye Shuli grabbed Jiang Ye's belt and took three steps back, her heels precisely crushing three blue bricks engraved with function symbols.
The black mist formed sharp claws that grazed her hair, and the air was instantly filled with the stench of rust and rotting flesh.
Seventeen skeletal creatures emerged from the crack, their joints covered in barbs that refracted a prism spectrum under the moonlight.
Just as Jiang Ye was about to swing the short sword wrapped in star trails, his pupils were suddenly tinged with a kind of eerie blue halo.
He saw his hand holding the blade melting, and blood seeping from the winding bronze patterns on Ye Shuli's neck.
"Don't believe those lights and shadows!" Ye Shuli flung out the crystal chain wrapped around her wrist, the clanging of metal startling Jiang Ye out of his hallucination.
He then realized that the so-called melting was nothing more than visual pollution created by the black mist, and that the ghostly flames dancing in the eye sockets of those skeletal creatures could actually interfere with the curvature of space.
Jiang Ye wiped away a cold sweat, biting his tongue to stay awake: "Do their movement trajectories conform to the topological structure of a Klein bottle?" As he spoke, he had already carved three concentric circles on the blue brick with a short knife.
As the fourth skeletal creature stepped into the circle, Ye Shuli suddenly pressed the crystal into the gear groove on the back of his neck.
The moment the bronze-colored energy ripples exploded, the two simultaneously saw the Möbius strip suspended in the air.
The skeletal creatures that had been jumping around erratically suddenly froze briefly, and their bone spikes formed a symmetrical structure with the gear projection that appeared behind Jiang Ye.
"The fourth quadrant of the ninefold mapping!" Ye Shuli stepped on Jiang Ye's shoulder and soared into the air. The bronze liquid left behind where her skirt swept suddenly solidified into a dodecahedron.
As her fingertips touched the crack in the sky, Jiang Ye suddenly let out a muffled groan—the gears on the back of his neck were rotating in reverse, and the shattered bone fragments were actually reassembling along the energy ripples.
Worse still, the phosphorus dust drifting in the black fog is rewriting the laws of space.
Jiang Ye discovered that his shadow had begun to move on its own, while the yin-yang mark on Ye Shuli's wrist seeped out a bronze-colored liquid, drawing patterns on the ground that were perfectly symmetrical to the black cracks.
"Don't touch that liquid bronze!" Ye Shuli flung out a crystal chain to wrap around Jiang Ye's waist, but her sleeve was torn by the sudden materialization of spatial folds.
She saw the dark blue threads moving in Jiang Ye's pupils, a sign that the black mist was eroding his mind.
The skeletal creatures emitted high-frequency vibrations, and the gear-shaped brand on the back of Jiang Ye's neck suddenly burst into red light.
When the eighth wave of attacks came, Jiang Ye suddenly turned around and stabbed his left shoulder with a short knife.
The excruciating pain dispelled some of the hallucinations, and in his brief moment of clarity, he used his blood to draw the projection of a Klein bottle on the blue bricks. "Use the crystal resonance frequency!" he shouted, coughing up blood. At that moment, Ye Shuli had already thrown three crystals engraved with the Luoshu mathematical principles in different directions.
As the bronze beam of light pierced through the heavens and earth, the movements of those skeletal creatures suddenly experienced a 0.3-second delay.
Ye Shuli seized this fleeting opening, and the bronze liquid remaining on her fingertips suddenly solidified into a triangular pyramid, precisely piercing the center of the ghostly fire in the eye sockets of the three skeletal creatures.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jiang Ye inserted the blood-stained dagger into the crack in the ground. The red light emitted by the gear brand reacted violently with the phosphorus powder in the black mist.
As the tenth skeletal creature dissipated into wisps of blue smoke, he suddenly knelt on one knee—the gears on the back of his neck were devouring the energy left by the black mist, and the ghostly blue threads that wandered in his pupils were gradually covered by bronze.
Ye Shuli flung out a chain that wrapped around his wrist, and the bronze liquid seeping from the Yin-Yang mark drew a three-dimensional unfolding diagram of the Klein bottle on the ground. "Maintain your breathing rhythm and resonate with the crystal!" She slapped the last crystal engraved with the Bagua diagram into Jiang Ye's palm, but her cheek was scratched by a suddenly materialized spatial fold.
As the last three skeletal creatures were shredded by the bronze pillar of light, the crack in the sky suddenly shrank to the thickness of a hair.
Jiang Ye stood up unsteadily and discovered that the shards of glass in his palm were quantum entangled with the blood-red moss on the hem of Ye Shuli's skirt.
The black mist that was about to dissipate suddenly condensed into thin lines, which burrowed into the gear-shaped mark on the back of his neck along the bronze pattern.
"Don't look at the reflection on the ground!" Ye Shuli suddenly covered his eyes, but it was too late.
In his final moments, Jiang Ye saw a spiral pattern, completely opposite to the suspended gear, appear deep within his pupils, while the yin-yang mark on Ye Shuli's wrist was oozing bronze blood mixed with stardust.
When the moonlight illuminated the bluestone path again, the gears on the back of Jiang Ye's neck stopped rotating in reverse.
He reached out and caught a strand of Ye Shuli's loose hair, discovering that the ice crystals that had formed on it sealed an unfinished function curve.
The shattered bone fragments were reassembling under the moonlight, but this time their arrangement formed a perfect mirror image of the gear projection floating behind Jiang Ye.
Jiang Ye was awakened by the stinging pain of the blood beads on his palm. The faint blue lines remaining on his retina were fading away in a pattern resembling the Fibonacci sequence.
The moment Ye Shuli flung the crystal chain around his ankle, three bone spurs grazed his Adam's apple and embedded themselves in the blue brick, the corroded bronze liquid creeping along the brick seams in the shape of a trigonometric function diagram.
"Fifteen steps to the southwest!" Ye Shuli's rebuke was accompanied by the metallic vibration of metal.
As Jiang Ye flipped and leaped up, he snapped two chains. Blood droplets gushed from his tiger's mouth, arcing through the air before landing precisely in the center of the ghostly fire in the skeletal creature's eye socket.
The burning phosphorescent flames suddenly twisted into the shape of a Klein bottle, and the gear brand on the back of his neck emitted a high-frequency buzzing sound.
The seven skeletal creatures simultaneously opened their jaws, and the sound waves formed from the black mist shattered three blue bricks engraved with calculus formulas.
Ye Shuli leaped into the air, stepping on the folds of space. The mechanical gears exposed from the tear in her skirt created interference stripes with the moonlight.
As her crystal chain wrapped around Jiang Ye's right wrist, the two suddenly leaned back in a synchronized motion, as if quantum entangled—three poisoned bone spurs grazed their noses, corroding Riemannian geometric patterns into the ground.
"Their spatial refractive index is in the seventh solution of the Helmholtz equation!" Ye Shuli bit her blood-stained hair between her teeth, and the yin-yang mark seeped out of the bronze liquid, drawing a four-dimensional projection on the ground.
Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed the gear ornament on her left shoulder, and as he flipped in the air, he threw out twelve star-track darts.
The spinning metal pieces sliced through the black mist, revealing the Klein bottle cores pulsating in the eye sockets of the skeletal creatures.
When the bone spikes of the fifth skeletal creature pierced Jiang Ye's left arm, Ye Shuli suddenly noticed something was wrong.
The interval between each flash of those ghostly fire cores was exactly the reciprocal of the angular velocity of the gears rotating behind Jiang Ye's neck.
She tore off the bronze pendant from her neck, and the fragments embedded themselves in the ground, forming a Fibonacci spiral that caused a 0.7-second delay in the movements of the nearest skeletal creature.
"Klein bottle structure attacking the eye socket!" Ye Shuli flung out a chain that wrapped around Jiang Ye's waist, using the force to throw him into the air.
Liquid bronze gushed from the yin-yang mark on her wrist, condensing on the ground into a non-Euclidean geometric mirror.
As Jiang Ye fell, he saw the topological structure of the cores of the ghostly flames. Suddenly, the short knife pierced his right shoulder—the adrenaline triggered by the intense pain allowed him to break through the black mist's confinement, and the blade refracted four fractal light spots under the moonlight.
The moment the three skeletal creatures pounced at the same time, Jiang Ye suddenly shifted to the side in a trajectory that violated the law of inertia.
His bloodied fingertips brushed against the crystal Ye Shuli had thrown, tracing a trail of light in the air, resembling Maxwell's equations.
When the sixth wave of attacks came, the bronze energy field formed by the two back to back caused the ghostly fire in the skeletal creature's eye sockets to exhibit a quantum tunneling effect.
"Now!" Ye Shuli slammed the last three crystals, each engraved with the mathematical principles of the Luoshu, into the ground.
Jiang Ye's short knife pierced the eye socket of the nearest skeletal creature, the blade colliding with the core of the Klein bottle and sparking bronze-colored sparks.
The ghostly flames suddenly collapsed into a singularity, and the bone spikes formed by the black mist oxidized into Fibonacci ash the moment they came into contact with the air.
When the ninth skeletal creature turned into bronze dust, the remaining three suddenly merged into a giant Möbius strip.
Ye Shuli was thrown to the ground by the spatial folds, and the stardust seeping from the Yin-Yang mark drew a three-dimensional unfolded diagram of the Klein bottle on the ground.
The gears on the back of Jiang Ye's neck suddenly rotated in reverse, and a dark blue spiral pattern, originating from the same source as the black mist, appeared deep in his pupils.
"Maintain the crystal resonance frequency!" Ye Shuli flung out the chain to wrap around Jiang Ye's ankle, but her own calf was cut by the suddenly materialized spatial folds.
With a heavy heart, she smeared the blood-stained bronze liquid onto the surface of the crystal. The light refracted by the dodecahedron actually burned the symbols of Gödel's incompleteness theorems onto the surface of the skeletal creature.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jiang Ye rushed to the knot of the Möbius strip. The moment his short knife pierced the core of the ghost fire, the entire space suddenly collapsed at the level of a cantor set.
The skeletal fragments that attempted to reassemble underwent fractal iterations within the bronze energy field, eventually reducing to the ashes of the Sierpinski triangle.
As the moonlight illuminated the bluestone path once more, twelve crystals, each engraved with a different mathematical formula, shattered simultaneously.
Jiang Ye knelt on one knee, panting, and discovered that the shards of glass in his palm were becoming quantum entangled with the bloodstains on Ye Shuli's skirt.
The black mist that should have dissipated suddenly condensed into hair-thin lines, which drilled into the gear grooves on the back of his neck along the bronze patterns.
The onlookers emerged from behind the broken bronze door, and their magical artifacts detected energy fluctuations, emitting alarm-like beeps.
An elderly man at the Spirit Venerable level stared at the projection of the Klein bottle remaining on the ground, and suddenly his compass burst out with bronze sparks.
Ye Shuli leaned against the broken bronze pillar as she stood up, the stardust seeping from the Yin-Yang mark drawing dangerous double twisted lines on the ground.
Just as she was about to remind Jiang Ye to be aware of the spatial aftershocks, she suddenly noticed that beneath a blue brick engraved with group theory formulas, dark red runes were growing in a Hopf branching pattern.
The topological structure of those patterns perfectly matched the reverse rotation trajectory of the gear on Jiang Ye's neck.
"Don't touch those..." Before the warning could be finished, Jiang Ye had already unconsciously pressed his blood-stained fingertip against the center of the rune.
The bronze-colored energy ripples suddenly stopped, and the entire space fell into a state of absolute vacuum.
Ye Shuli saw her scattered strands of hair floating in mid-air, each hair tip condensing an unfinished solution to a partial differential equation.
When time began to flow again, the dark red rune had disappeared.
Only on the edge of the gear on the back of Jiang Ye's neck was there a bloodstain that was topologically isomorphic to the rune.
Exclamations of surprise came from the distance; the magical artifacts they carried were detecting residual energy that surpassed the existing level system.
Ye Shuli bent down and picked up a crystal fragment, discovering that the broken surface contained dark red crystals of the same origin as the runes.
Under the moonlight, these tiny crystals underwent a Penrose mosaic-like reorganization, with each change in shape precisely corresponding to the frequency of Jiang Ye's breathing.