Despair was an unfamiliar emotion for Lin Fan. He had faced terrifying beasts, navigated treacherous social landscapes, and constantly battled the machinations of the Heavenly Dao, always armed with a plan, a backup plan, and a contingency for the backup plan. But the absence of the Void Crystal felt different. It wasn't an enemy he could outwit or a danger he could mitigate; it was a void, a literal missing piece dictated by the whims of cosmic chance.
He spent days staring at the empty slot in the teleportation array's core, the magnificent, almost-complete machine mocking him with its inertness. He re-read every text related to spatial arrays, dimensional physics, and exotic materials, searching desperately for a loophole, a substitute, anything that could bypass the absolute requirement for a naturally formed Void Crystal to initiate a stable, long-range spatial rupture.
There was nothing. The ancient array masters were unanimous: attempting such a teleportation without a proper stabilization core wasn't just risky; it was suicide. The array would either fail to activate, explode with catastrophic force, or tear open a chaotic rift to anywhere but their intended destination.
For the first time since embarking on his path of ultimate caution, Lin Fan felt genuinely trapped. He had schemed, stolen, and risked everything to gather the impossible, only to be stymied by something utterly beyond his control. It felt like a cruel joke orchestrated by the Heavenly Dao – leading him right to the brink of freedom, only to slam the door shut with the lock of random probability.
Yue Qingqian watched her Senior Brother with growing concern. His usual meticulous energy was gone, replaced by a brooding stillness. He barely ate. He stopped refining minor array components. He just sat, staring at the incomplete machine or the ancient scrolls, the spark of ingenious paranoia in his eyes dimmed to a dull ember. She tried to offer words of encouragement, suggesting they could search for other leads, but he would just wave her away distractedly.
One afternoon, as Lin Fan sat slumped at his workbench, staring blankly at the blueprint, a small bird, likely blown off course by the mountain winds, accidentally slammed into the outermost layer of Xiao Xiao Peak's concealment array. There was a faint thump and a brief shimmer in the air before the unfortunate creature tumbled away.
The sound, small and insignificant, seemed to jolt Lin Fan out of his stupor. He blinked, his gaze slowly refocusing. He looked towards the source of the sound, then back at the array blueprint.
An accident. An anomaly. Something unpredictable, even within the meticulously controlled environment he had created.
A tiny flicker ignited in the depths of his eyes.
The world wasn't completely deterministic. The Heavenly Dao might write the main script, but random events, minor deviations, accidents... they still happened. Luck wasn't entirely a controlled substance. Perhaps finding a Void Crystal wasn't about searching for it according to some pre-ordained plan, but about creating, or finding, the conditions under which such an anomaly might occur.
It was a desperate thought, born not of confidence but of a stubborn refusal to accept defeat.
He stood up, his posture straightening, the heavy cloak of despair lifting slightly. He walked over to the stacks of jade slips, no longer looking for substitutes, but for something else entirely.
"If the mountain won't come to Muhammad..." he muttered, pulling out scrolls related to unstable spatial phenomena, records of catastrophic array failures, and geological surveys detailing areas with high concentrations of chaotic energy. "...then Muhammad must go find a place where mountains spontaneously appear."
He began a new line of research, a path far more dangerous than any they had yet considered. He wasn't looking for a treasure; he was looking for a storm. A spatial storm. A place where the fabric of reality itself was thin and prone to rupture, a place where cosmic accidents like the formation of a Void Crystal, however improbable, might actually happen.
The library records mentioned such places only in hushed tones and dire warnings – ancient battlefields scarred by forbidden magic, dimensional rifts sealed centuries ago, deep-earth zones where ley lines converged chaotically. These were not places one visited; they were places one avoided at all costs.
Yue Qingqian watched him, sensing the shift. His exhaustion remained, but the deadness in his eyes was replaced by a familiar, dangerous glint. He had found a new, terrifying direction.
"Senior Brother?" she asked hesitantly.
Lin Fan looked up from a particularly grim-looking scroll describing the 'Sea of Chaotic Qi' far to the east. A cold, calculating smile touched his lips.
"It seems, Junior Sister," he said, his voice regaining a sliver of its old, confident irony, "that our definition of 'safe' is about to undergo a significant revision. We can't wait for luck to find us. We have to go looking for it... in the most dangerous places imaginable."
The escape plan was back on track, but the track now led directly through hell.