Elder Mo led Su Ming through two stone doors covered in restrictive arrays, arriving at a meditation room located at the very top of the Spiritual Hub Hall.

There was no underfloor heating here, making the temperature much lower than outside. The walls were all made of bluish-grey basalt, and aside from a star chart and a Go board placed on a low table, there was nothing else.

"Sit."

Elder Mo wasted no words, sitting directly on one side of the Go board. With a wave of his large sleeve, the scattered black and white stones on the board seemed to come alive, returning to their positions on their own.

Su Ming sat down as instructed, his gaze falling on the board. This was not ordinary Go. The board had nineteen intersecting lines in each direction, each line faintly glowing with spiritual light. The intersections were not solid points but slightly depressed holes, like miniature formation cores.

"This is the 'Ingenious Go' board." Elder Mo picked up a black stone. "It does not test combat, only demonstrates formation principles. For this game, I will set up the 'Trapped Dragon Formation.' You break it."

*Click.*

The black stone landed, and a murderous aura instantly rose from the board.

Su Ming felt his vision blur. The board seemed to transform into a towering cage, countless black chains materializing out of thin air, twisting and tightening toward his position.

"Master?" Su Ming called out in his Consciousness Sea.

"Don't look at me, that old man is testing your fundamentals." Lin Yu's voice sounded lazily. "The black stones on this board are nodes of murderous aura, the white stones are spiritual energy hubs. What you need to do is not capture his stones, but let your own energy survive within his encirclement."

Su Ming took a deep breath and picked up a white stone.

The moment his fingertip touched the stone, the cool sensation instantly calmed his heated mind.

*Click.*

The white stone landed, driving a wedge into the gap where the black chains were about to close.

Elder Mo's expression remained unchanged as he immediately placed a second stone.

The two of them placed stones rapidly. At first, Su Ming could barely keep up, relying on the rigid patterns from the *True Meaning of Basic Rune Deconstruction*, meeting each move with a counter, using white stones to build defensive lines, stubbornly resisting the erosion of the black stones.

But by the thirtieth move, fine beads of sweat had appeared on Su Ming's forehead.

Elder Mo's playing style was too bizarre.

That black murderous aura did not just attack head-on, but flowed like quicksilver, seeping into every crack.

The moment Su Ming built up a defensive line, one of Elder Mo's black stones would land on the weakest connection point of that line. With a gentle pry, the entire line would collapse.

"You can't block it."

Su Ming's finger hovered in mid-air, unable to land for a long time.

On the board, the black stones had already formed an encircling formation. The white stones were cut into scattered fragments, like the shattered remnants of a dike washed away by a flood.

"What are you thinking about?" Elder Mo did not urge him, only asked calmly. "Still thinking about how to repair that wall?"

Su Ming's heart jolted.

Earlier in the scrap warehouse, facing that piece of Curse Bone, Elder Mo had said: "Blocking is not as good as guiding."

"Master, if a dike is destined to collapse, where does the water flow?" Su Ming asked in his heart.

"Nonsense, water of course flows to lower ground." Lin Yu snorted with laughter. "Since you can't block it, then dig a ditch for it, let it flow to where you want it to go."

The confusion in Su Ming's eyes faded, replaced by a trace of deep blue in the depths of his pupils.

He did not place the white stone on that obvious defensive gap. Instead, his wrist turned, and he placed the stone on an empty spot outside the black stone encirclement that seemed completely unrelated.

Elder Mo raised an eyebrow, his pace of placing stones slowing slightly.

Su Ming no longer defended.

The placement of the white stones in his hand became increasingly scattered, seemingly without any pattern, hitting here and there. But under the "observation micro state" vision, extremely faint threads of water-attribute spiritual energy were quietly connecting these scattered white stones.

He no longer tried to build a solid city wall, but laid out a porous net.

The black murderous aura charged over, passing through the mesh of the net, but did not break the net's ropes. On the contrary, as that murderous aura passed through the mesh, it was split, guided, and ultimately flowed along the trajectory Su Ming had preset, toward the edge of the board, dissipating into nothingness.

"Interesting."

Elder Mo leaned forward slightly in his seat, the force behind his placed stones growing heavier.

The situation on the board changed.

The originally ferocious black dragon seemed to be stuck in a quagmire. No matter how it charged left and right, that seemingly weak white stone defensive line could always deform with its attacks, yet never break.

Water has no constant form.

Su Ming played more and more smoothly, the *Like Water Art* within him circulating on its own. He felt he was no longer playing Go, but dredging a silted-up river.

When the hundredth stone was placed.

The interwoven black and white on the board actually formed a balanced pattern resembling the Taiji symbol.

Though the black stones were numerous, they could not devour the white stones; though the white stones were few, they were tenacious, firmly occupying half the board.

"A draw."

Elder Mo tossed the stone in his hand back into the stone box, producing a crisp sound.

Only then did Su Ming snap back to reality, feeling his back soaked with cold sweat, the fatigue from extreme mental tension washing over him like a tide.

"This disciple... took a shortcut." Su Ming stood up and bowed.

Elder Mo did not look at him, but stared at the board for a long time before slowly speaking. "Those skilled at defense hide beneath the deepest earth; those skilled at attack move above the highest heavens. Your earlier playing style was rigid defense, the mark of a craftsman. Your later playing style finally touched the threshold of the path of formations."

Elder Mo reached into his sleeve and took out a jade slip glowing with an ancient yellow hue, placing it on the low table.

"Most formation masters within the pass come from the Vessel Hall or are battle cultivators. Their actions are overly rigid and forceful, lacking in spiritual flexibility. When facing beast tide impacts, they only know to reinforce the light barrier, meeting force with force."

Elder Mo raised his head, a flash of sharp light passing through his somewhat cloudy old eyes. "But formations are, by nature, about borrowing the power of heaven and earth. Since you are borrowing power, you must follow the momentum. Blocking is not as good as guiding, and guiding is not as good as channeling. Since you cultivate a water-attribute method, you should understand this principle."

Su Ming received the jade slip with both hands. A sweep with his divine sense revealed four ancient seal script characters carved on it — *Thesis on Formation Hub Management*.

"This is not some profound secret manual, just some insights I've gained over the years repairing formations at Iron Wall Pass." Elder Mo waved his hand. "Take it back and study it."

"Yes, this disciple takes his leave."

Su Ming carefully stored the jade slip close to his body and respectfully withdrew from the meditation room.

Only after walking out of the Spiritual Hub Hall and being hit by the cold wind outside did he finally let out a long sigh.

"Master, did that old man see through something?" Su Ming rubbed his nose.

"He saw that you're a slippery character." Lin Yu turned over in the Consciousness Sea. "But this jade slip is a good thing. What it talks about isn't how to set up formations, but how to 'modify' them. For someone like you who started halfway with an unstable foundation, it perfectly patches up your weak points."

Su Ming glanced back at that towering stone pagoda, then turned and disappeared into the wind and snow.