Book 5: Chapter 35: Readily Available Expert on Ancient Writing Systems
What happened last night?
Don’t ask, the answer is nothing.
When I got up this morning, the wound at the corner of my mouth became a topic of discussion. But I wouldn’t admit what happened even if I were to be beaten to death, so I insisted that I had been sleeping the entire time last night. Thus, this problem now turned into an internal conflict between the four remaining. Bai Huang convened a makeshift conference. With crossed hands right beneath her lips, she made a show of being earnest by starting off with:
“It seems that the criminal is amongst us.”
The other three individuals expressed in succession:
“It’s not me.”
“It’s not me.”
“I-it’s also not me……”
Because there wasn’t any evidence or clues, this matter became one of West-Resisting City’s unresolved cases. Many years later, it was incorporated into West-Resisting City’s ‘Seven Biggest City Legends’. This “mysterious hickey gained when asleep” turned into a tale circulated among the young men and women, and many riajuu couples scrambled to imitate it as it became a popular way to show off.
After this night, each of them busied themselves with their tasks.
At present time, there still isn’t any word from Fang Thirteen on the front line, so I assume that the situation is still deadlocked. That being the case, Moon has no choice but to start preparing for the worst; that is, if Fang Thirteen still hasn’t conquered Li Neng’s territory by next spring, then he must find a way to let those landless outsiders survive.
Laws to protect sharecroppers are essential and measures to limit land acquisition is also on the agenda.
Aleya’s still persevering in practicing her swordsmanship every day except for when she has to follow me out. If I’m staying at home, she’ll maintain the ‘leave early and return late’ situation and continuously train until she’s on the verge of exhaustion.
There was even less of a need to mention Bai Huang; after finding no traces of the assassin, she’s been bringing people out to patrol West-Resisting City and pledged to arrest the assassin who’s escaped her grasp several times now. Heji’s been following Bai Huang and doing his utmost to protect her safety.
Felita began sitting at her desk every day, holding books in her hands and reading them.
I remember that before that night of cohabitation, Felita had been delving into cryptic, difficult to understand grimoires. Just as the cohabitation ended, she’s started sleeping very late at night and getting up very early in the morning, making me a bit unable to put up with it any longer.
On this day, I made a cup of tea and handed it over to Felita’s weary self, then asked:
“What are you looking at?”
Felita regained her spirit in a heartbeat and hurriedly tried to stand up, but was pushed back into her seat by me.
She closed the book in her hands which resembled a tattered and worn out ancient text.
“I’m reading a book that I purchased recently. But because it uses ancient writing, I have no choice but to find other books to cross-reference the meaning of the text. Only then have I barely made sense of a bit of its meaning. There are many magic symbols and magic formation drawing methods that are already much different from current ones. If I can’t understand the principle, then there’s fundamentally no way to directly make use of them……”
I moved to Felita’s side and she immediately rubbed herself on my arm like a cat.
I browsed the book for a while and discovered that I also didn’t recognize anything.
In the field of ancient texts, there are very few people studying these things besides sorcerers.
That includes me. If it were something else, I might give it a try, but for something like this that I personally have no use for, I naturally won’t take the time to learn. Felita pointed at one of the magic formations and explained to me:
“To draw this magic formation now, I basically need to replace this rhombus with a triangle because triangles are easier to draw and is also a type of simplification. But in reality, I’ve been having the feeling that it’s more appropriate to draw the rhombus. But if I change it back, the corresponding chants will also have to change. This book does have a record of the original chants, but I’m not entirely clear on these words……wuuu……”
I stroked her head and said:
“Then in that case, have you made any progress?”
Felita rummaged through her book pile and spread several of them out before me, then patiently explained:
“Master, take a look. This here records magic that’s almost entirely the same as the magic in the book I’m reading, so this section of the chant should be the same as what I’ve memorized. The characters over here are the same, the meaning they represent should be ‘sun’. Then look over here……”
Felita diligently interpreted things to me. In order to make sense of a particular section of the book, she would more often than not need to flip through several dozen books as reference before she figured it out. There’s no such thing as a search engine in this world, so she can’t just “search online” for the meanings. She has no choice but to rely on her own power and hard work to understand bit by bit.
Felita held the cup with both her hands, then extended out the tip of her tongue to lap the tea.
Seeing the heavy dark circles under her eyes, I felt a bit of pain in my heart.
But I’m not able to help much, only if there’s some guy proficient in ancient writing, otherwise……
Wait a minute.
Proficient in ancient writing——
I hurriedly rushed to bid farewell to Felita, then ran all the way to the Demon Cultivation Farm. There were no guards here that didn’t know me; even though it was already nighttime, everyone energetically welcomed my surprise inspection. After nodding to send my greetings to them, I ran over to a solitary room, opened the door, and was met by the sight of the slime lying flat on the floor.
“Youngster, get up! It’s time to pay your rent!”
I stamped my feet right next to the slime and it immediately bounced up from the floor, quickly recovering its spherical shape. It rapidly turned left and right as if it were looking around and asked:
“What happened? What’s the matter? Is there an intruder? Want to run away? Q-quickly bring this king and run away!!”
I raised it up in my hand and asked with a chuckle:
“Nothing’s wrong, I just want to ask you something. Weren’t you known as some【God Era Weapon】? That means you’re from the god era, yeah? Then you recognize ancient writing?”
The slime answered:
“I recognize……don’t recognize!”
Once it finished speaking, it appeared to be struggling internally, then slowly continued:
“Aiyah……this king seems to remember~but this king~has a bit of memory loss. What to do? Speaking of which, this king only has a little fragment of memory, so it’s impossible for this king to remember everything……”
I felt amused upon hearing its words, but I still endured my temper and asked:
“Then how will you be able to remember?”
The slime formed a thin tentacle, used it to tap its glossy head, and replied:
“Well, about this……maybe if this king eats some more Demons~and becomes a little stronger~then he’ll remember. The more and more this king eats, then the higher the possibility that this king will remember things. In the end, such a trifling thing like ancient writing will naturally be a cinch.”
I pinched its body and inquired:
“And if I don’t agree?”
The slime’s body caved in, enveloping my hand, and it said:
“This king, this king will……”
It thought for a bit, then found that it was unable to do anything to me, so it turned its body and continued:
“Will feel very sad.”
After saying those words, the slime wrapped around my hand and remarked:
“Go, let’s go! You promised this king that you would bring this king out once every month, you can’t just go back on your words in the first month. Besides, there’s definitely a lot of fun and interesting things to do over at Demon Race Territory! Let’s go! Bring this king! I beg you!! Staying here every day is really boring!”
Even though I really wanted to throw it off, it kept on clinging to me without letting go, becoming quite the annoyance.