Chapter 967: Invaluable Rewards
Translator: Lordbluefire
Moving around was convenient with a detailed map.
Hence, Sun Mo and Murong Mingyue didn’t spend much time finding their destination.
“We’ll arrive after passing through this corridor.”
Sun Mo verified the map again.
“There are no footprints on the floor, so no one should have made it here yet.”
Murong Mingyue checked the surroundings.
There were cracks on the walls and some places even collapsed. However, this place was still very dark because a large number of plants had grown their way in from the windows, filling up the walls and blocking the light.
“The atmosphere is as if it’s the end of the world.”
Sun Mo sighed and said. There was a garden to the west of the corridor and a room to the east, over 100 meters away.
“Isn’t this place too big to be a library?”
Murong Mingyue was astonished. If the place was filled with books, then the value would be inestimable. She then started to worry.
Given that so much time had passed, the books had probably rotted away.
“We’ll know after going in.”
Sun Mo arrived at the door. “These two door guardians look quite nice. ”
There was a three-meter tall statue on each side of the metal door. From their appearances, they looked similar to the knights donned in full armor during the Middle Ages in Europe.
Each of them held a big shield with one hand and a halberd with the other. They also had a longsword at their waist.
Some plants had darted onto their bodies, leaving some green color, which made them look like they wore a big cloak woven from plants.
“Let’s go!”
Sun Mo said and then reached out his hand to push the door.
Murong Mingyue looked at these two statues and was planning to touch them. However, at the instant Sun Mo came into contact with the door, the statues’ eyes lit up with a red glow. With a swoosh, they smashed out their halberds toward Sun Mo’s head.
“Be careful!”
Murong Mingyue was very anxious. She reached out her hand to defend against a halberd without drawing her sword.
Bang!
The halberd didn’t move at all.
Sun Mo’s Retaliation Storm was activated automatically, and a great warning rose in his heart. At the same time, he performed the Indestructible Golden Body and also lowered his stance, rolling away.
Bang! Bang!
The halberds smashed onto the ground and then went slicing out after Sun Mo’s body.
“F*ck!”
Sun Mo slapped onto the ground with one hand, sending his body bouncing off several meters away. Even at a time like this, he didn’t forget to pull Murong Mingyue with him.
“Leave me be next time!”
Although Murong Mingyue said this, she was still very grateful. After all, Sun Mo had narrowly escaped death himself.
The two statues started to chase after them furiously. Their agile movements made them not look like heavy metal creations. However, the strength in which their battle boots stepped onto the ground caused all the leaves in the surroundings to rustle from the tremors. There was even dust falling off from the ceiling.
“I’ll give it a try first!”
Sun Mo drew his sword and attacked.
Ding!
When Evil Vanquisher clashed with one of their halberds, a piercing metallic sound erupted. Sun Mo’s arm also turned numb.
Swoosh!
Sun Mo shook his wrist and the longsword slashed along the halberd onto the statue’s arm. However, it didn’t even leave a scratch.
“It’s so tough!”
Sun Mo’s countenance changed. His longsword was a peerless-grade saint-tier item. Moreover, it had the amazing effect of increasing the prowess of one’s ultimate techniques in multiple folds.
If even the Evil Vanquisher couldn’t hurt the statues, then how horrifying must their defenses be?
Hu!
The halberds came smashing down again, bringing along strong winds with them.
Sun Mo quickly performed the Wind King Divine Steps to dodge, but the statues gave chase. Their agility was quite high, and they didn’t seem heavy at all.
Sun Mo activated Divine Sight but only saw a row of unimportant information.
Golem, made from unknown metal.
“I knew it!”
Sun Mo felt helpless, no longer having any hopes on his ocular technique. He had to find his own way to break out of this situation.
“Sun Mo, let’s back off first. Give me some time to observe them.”
Murong Mingyue spoke up, looking excited. “They should be some kind of puppets.”
“Right, let’s stop fighting and leave this corridor first.”
Sun Mo suggested.
He wanted to test the puppets’ attacking perimeters. If he was right, their responsibility would be to watch over this library. So, Sun Mo and Murong Mingyue should be fine once they were further away from this place.
As expected, the two of them had just backed off when the two knight statues stopped in their footsteps. After Sun Mo pulled Murong Mingyue to hide behind all the walls, they started to return to their positions.
“Leave this to me!”
Murong Mingyue volunteered. This was a subject that she liked and excelled in.
“Hold on!”
Sun Mo raised his head and looked toward the ceiling. “There’s no need to fight head-on.”
Thanks to having watched all those movies about secret agents, Sun Mo’s vision was very broad. He didn’t plan on taking those two knight statues head-on, so he crawled into a ventilation duct instead.
The ventilation duct wasn’t wide. After getting in, they couldn’t even turn around. If they wished to back off, they’d only be able to crawl backward. Moreover, it was very dirty inside, filled with accumulated dust.
Hu! Hu!
The breathing sounds in the duct were heavy and piercing.
“It’d have been better to fight our way in.”
Murong Mingyue frowned. Such a narrow and suppressed place made her very uncomfortable. She felt that her heartbeat was palpitating and she was breaking out in a sweat.
“There’ll definitely not be a second time.”
Sun Mo thought to himself. (If I have to do this again, I’ll end up with claustrophobia.)
Only after climbing for a long 300 meters did Sun Mo find an entryway to the air duct. He smashed the grille with a punch and then jumped down.
This was a huge library filled with books, and there were a variety of books on the bookshelves that were covered by spider webs and dust.
They were like dead corpses, buried in this graveyard.
Murong Mingyue couldn’t wait anymore and walked straight to the closest bookshelf. She then drew out a book.
“…”
Murong Mingyue flipped through the pages carefully but got increasingly disappointed. It was because she couldn’t understand the words on it.
After switching between over ten books and finding the same outcome, Murong Mingyue was very disappointed.
Even if a divine technique was recorded in the book, it’d be useless if she couldn’t understand them.
“That’s right, I mustn’t give up. What if there are language-related books?”
Murong Mingyue’s eyes gleamed. She could learn the aboriginals’ language first.
To great teachers, under the reinforcements of various halos, as long as they had textbooks, it wouldn’t be difficult to learn a language.
Sun Mo also flipped through the books, and he felt stumped.
“What kind of scribblings are these?”
He couldn’t understand even a single punctuation mark!
This was a very big library and judging from the height they had seen from outside, it must be at least three floors or higher. Therefore, there was definitely a great collection here.
Sun Mo reckoned that there’d be books on languages. But self-learning?
Please!
Sun Mo recalled the horror of being ‘controlled’ by English back in the past.
Although his marks for English during the college entrance examinations weren’t low and he had also passed CET4 and CET6[1], they had been really difficult. After all, he had spent close to ten years learning it, starting from middle school.
Sometimes, Sun Mo would think to himself about how nice it’d be if China could become the greatest country in the world so the people from different countries would take the initiative to learn Mandarin and see it as an honor to learn the language.
“System, is this language available in the shopping store?”
Sun Mo was planning to take a lazy route.
“Yes!”
The system’s reply made Sun Mo’s eyes lit up.
“How much is it selling for?”
Sun Mo felt a little unsettled.
“200,000 favorable impression points.”
The system reported a price that made him feel very uncomfortable.
“It’s just a language. Is there a need for it to be so expensive?”
Sun Mo sneered.
“Then you can spend a few years learning it yourself.”
The system smirked, “Do you think it’s really that easy to pick up a language? If you were to travel to a place, you could just learn the commonly used terms. But if you were to settle down there, you’d need to learn more. Moreover, once you wish to learn their knowledge and culture, you’d need to excel in their language, even more so than the people from that country.”
“I’ll buy it.”
Sun Mo had no disagreement with the system’s argument. When different countries’ literature was translated into another language, they’d lose their original beauty.
“Would you like to learn it?”
The system asked.
“Learn!”
As Sun Mo’s reputation grew, it became increasingly easy for him to earn favorable impression points.
Ding!
“Congratulations, you’ve learned the Xisi language. Proficiency: Expert-level.”
Tsk!
Sun Mo’s mouth twitched.
He had spent 200,000 favorable impression points but didn’t even reach the grandmaster level. This was too much of an extortion.
However, it was already enough to let Sun Mo understand these books and reading materials. He could start to think about problems from the Xisi people’s way of thinking.
The grandmaster level would involve literature and art. To Sun Mo, this wasn’t very important.
Languages were just tools!
After Sun Mo grasped this language, the entire library was like a beautiful lady entering his arms willingly, completely opening herself up to him.
Sun Mo absorbed the knowledge here greedily.
The books on the shelves near him were all related to plants. A lot of them were what Sun Mo hadn’t heard of before. If he were to learn them, the Central Province Academy’s botany would definitely be at the top of the Nine Provinces.
Time slipped by unknowingly just like that.
Murong Mingyue went one round on the first floor and even upstairs. She only came down after over one hour. When she found Sun Mo, she saw him leaning against a shelf and was engrossed in a big book.
“Sun…”
Murong Mingyue was about to call out to him when she was suddenly stunned.
This wasn’t right!
Judging from Sun Mo’s expression, he clearly understood these books. But that shouldn’t be the case. After all, where could he learn this language from?
“Are some of them written in the Nine Provinces’ language?”
At the thought of this possibility, Murong Mingyue immediately walked over and put out her neck to take a look. She then frowned and couldn’t help but ask.
“You can understand it?”
“Yeah.”
Sun Mo answered casually. He wasn’t planning on hiding it.
“Where did you learn it from?”
Murong Mingyue didn’t know if she should be asking this, but she couldn’t help it.
“If I were to say from the blessing of the heavens, could you accept that?”
Sun Mo smiled awkwardly.
He didn’t wish to deceive Murong Mingyue, but the matters regarding the system were something he mustn’t share with others.
“I believe that!”
Murong Mingyue nodded seriously.
Sun Mo was stunned but then accepted things.
This world was the Nine Provinces, a place where the feudal era was at its peak. Even some great teachers would believe in Daoism or Buddhism, let alone the barbarians.
They believed in their god.
“What are the books here about?”
Murong Mingyue asked.
She was a very smart girl but was also very scared of trouble. Therefore, she didn’t wish to probe into Sun Mo’s background. Life was short and it was better to use the time on meaningful things.
“The books in this area are about botany. I haven’t looked at the others yet.”
Sun Mo realized that a lot of time had passed.
“Are there any books on mechanical puppets?”
Murong Mingyue asked.
“Do you plan to decipher the two knight statues outside?”
Sun Mo reacted very quickly. “Come, let’s go and take a look.”
Slightly over 15 minutes later, Sun Mo found books relating to puppetry on the second floor. He then started to browse through them and explained the content to Murong Mingyue while he was at it.
“You seem to be well-learned in puppetry?”
Murong Mingyue was surprised.
Sun Mo’s introduction wasn’t just plainly reading out from the book. He also included his own interpretations on the subject. If he didn’t have any background in puppetry, he wouldn’t be able to do this.
“It’s fine!”
Sun Mo replied humbly. He had grandmaster-level puppetry knowledge but hadn’t put in any effort on this subject.
After all, even if one were to master this knowledge to an extremity, they would still be unable to create a Transformer.
Because Sun Mo had learned the language, his Divine Sight could be applied to the books, and a pop-up would appear each time he glanced toward a bookshelf.
“[Golem Manufacturing Techniques].”
“[720 mechanic tricks].”
“[Unraveling Secrets of Androids].”
…
Sun Mo looked around before eventually drawing out a book.
“I feel that it’s this book!”
Sun Mo flipped through it.
The Xisi people referred to puppetry as golem technology. It was a subject that involved weaponsmith, bionics, smelting, communication, and other areas.
“There’s a lot of content!”
Sun Mo explained the contents for half an hour until his mouth felt tired.
“There!”
Murong Mingyue handed Sun Mo a water bottle, gesturing for him to continue after taking a drink.
There was no helping it. Sun Mo then applied Encyclopedic Knowledge on both of them before he continued to introduce the book’s content. The two of them would also discuss the information occasionally.
“To think that it is solar-powered. This explains why they can still move despite so many years have passed.”
Murong Mingyue felt very emotional.
“That’s right!”
Sun Mo nodded.
The Xisi people’s golem technology took a completely different route from puppetry. It was more systematic and industrialized.
These golems could be mass-produced. Not only could they be used as guards, but they could also be deployed for mining, cleaning, surveillance, and many others.
The Nine Provinces’ puppets were basically the byproduct of human’s wisdom. Therefore, there’d be all kinds of unbelievable creations, but they couldn’t be mass-produced.
“Why don’t we take care of the two golems outside first?”
Murong Mingyue proposed.
“Alright!”
It was rare for Murong Mingyue to make a request, so Sun Mo couldn’t get himself to refuse her.
These two golems hadn’t been maintained for so long. Therefore, even though they could move, their structures had aged and their efficiency of using solar energy had plunged greatly.
Therefore, the way to deal with them was to wear them out.
“Let me do it!”
Murong Mingyue wanted to do it herself in order to understand them.
15 minutes later, the two golems depleted their energy and stopped.
Although there weren’t suitable tools at hand, Murong Mingyue still took them apart. At the instant she took down the metal plate, she gasped in surprise.
There were all sorts of gears lined up densely in the golems. Ordinary people might get dizzy from looking at them. But to Murong Mingyue, this was the most beautiful painting.
“Sun Mo, can you give it to me?”
Murong Mingyue pleaded.
“What kind of relationship are we in? Why do we need to cut things up so clearly between us?”
Sun Mo smiled. “And you’re free to read those books!”
“I hope that you can teach me this language!”
Murong Mingyue looked at Sun Mo with her big and beautiful eyes. Although she had given up on committing suicide and had left the plains to come to the Central Province Academy, to speak the truth, she no longer felt that there was any meaning to life.
But now, she had found a new goal.
(Turns out that other than the puppetry I know of, there’s a wider world out there.)
“Alright!”
Sun Mo had planned on translating these books into the Nine Provinces’ language, making them accessible to the great teachers in the school.
Murong Mingyue was about to thank him but was interrupted by a voice.
“I want to learn this language too!”
[1] The College English Test, better known as CET, is a national English as a foreign language test in China.. It includes two levels: CET4 and CET6.