Chapter 4: Lie

The twilight outside the window was tranquil and gentle, dyeing the horizon a faint violet, like a soft watercolor painting spread beneath the vast firmament.

The afterglow passed through the ancient oak window lattices, shining into the Library, causing this sea of knowledge to be immersed in a unique atmosphere both dim and warm.

The golden-haired girl, exquisite as a doll, sat on the crescent-shaped seat. The youth opposite was amid scattered disorder covering the floor, the two facing each other in a subtle confrontational posture, as if both had simultaneously fallen into silence.

Stillness flowed thus, soundlessly.

This scene inexplicably appeared strange yet harmonious.

"Vivian, is it? Nice to meet you... your Chinese is very fluent, have you been to China?"

After a moment of silence, Xia Zhi seemed to finally return from distant thoughts to reality; he raised his slender finger, gently scratched his cheek, and hesitantly showed an awkward yet polite expression.

One could tell that although he very much wanted to strive to display a "nice to meet you" look, he did not succeed very well.

It wasn't that his expression management was poor, nor that his mental fortitude was lacking; mainly the impact of this development was a bit strange, no less than the previous feeling of wanting to communicate with that Transmigrator but instead scaring the other party away.

After all, it really was bizarre—

Clearly he himself was the weaker party, yet the extraordinary being opposite who could traverse worlds was scared off by a single sentence from him...

Clearly the other party was a foreign girl, golden-haired and blue-eyed, exquisite as a doll, yet not only could she understand his words, but she also spoke fluent Chinese the moment she opened her mouth...

—Alright, if it were merely this, there would be nothing much.

After all, among the foreigners Xia Zhi knew, there were plenty who spoke Chinese very well; this was not surprising at all, nothing to pay attention to.

But the problem lies in...

The time is wrong now, and the place is also wrong.

Because in Xia Zhi's view, he should have successfully passed through the "Door," which meant he should have arrived in an Other World, right? Although he forcibly hitched a ride, and boarded first without paying, he still hitched a ride in the end, didn't he?

But why...

The first person encountered in the Other World...

Would be able to converse with him in such fluent Chinese...

The moment he perceived this problem, his previously excited and elated mood rapidly turned apprehensive; he subconsciously considered several possibilities, and his heart couldn't help but sink. Because the first thought was naturally that his plan had failed—

For instance, that he had not managed to successfully escape...

Although the spatial coordinates had changed, he had not truly achieved escape, merely swapped locations on this Star...

Things of that sort.

Thinking of this, Xia Zhi felt his heart heavy; although he did not wish to become a pessimist, countless Cycles had tormented him enough, and he no longer held expectations for the future.

How could such a person possibly be optimistic?

Naturally, once a problem arose, he would subconsciously consider the worst direction.

"My Chinese is very fluent?"

The girl named Vivian raised her slender eyebrows, scrutinizing the sudden uninvited guest before her with an even stranger gaze.

Since coming to the Fairy Kingdom, she who possessed the highest-rank "Fairy Eye" had seen no few lies.

After all, in this world, in this cruel Fairy Kingdom, in order to survive, every Fairy had no choice but to abandon their former nature and instincts; lies naturally became an indispensable strategy for sustaining survival.

Not to mention anything else, even the Rain Clan that gave her shelter could not escape this established order. —Otherwise, how could they conceal her True Identity, how could they protect her Existence?

Clearly very afraid, clearly very fearful, the Rain Clan still felt pity for Vivian, so they chose the path of protecting the Paradise Fairy.

Vivian also understood this exactly; feeling the gentle intentions of the Fairies of the Rain Country, she grew up candidly.

To this day, she had learned a great deal; she would no longer be confused by the various things of Britain, and towards phenomena like lies and concealment, she had transformed from initial instinctive rejection and disgust to rationally viewing and accepting them.

For objectively existing things, one must justly acknowledge and permit them.

If she wanted to save Britain, depict the Ideal State of her dreams, Vivian believed this point was essential.

So, towards Xia Zhi's "nice to meet you," the girl did not care much; she knew this person had no Malice, at most just perfunctory. What truly surprised her was the sentence that followed immediately—

This person thinks she is speaking Chinese?

It sounds strange.

But coincidentally, in her Vision, this sentence was instead not a lie.

"Yeah, among the people I know you can totally rank first, enunciation clear, pronunciation accurate..." the uninvited guest opposite seemed to be taking the opportunity to examine the Library's environment, and hearing this nodded and said.

This sentence also seemed sincere.

The girl frowned, discovering that the other party was actually very candid at this moment, truly thinking so.

The other side—

Xia Zhi likewise secretly frowned; he could not glean more useful information from this Library's style.

It wasn't that the style didn't match, but that too many matching styles existed; the devil hides in the details. The more he looked, the stranger he felt; this Library seemed like a hodgepodge, from architecture to furnishings, to those tables, chairs, and utensils, even decorative patterns...

All seemed like products of some arbitrary mash-up.

As if the craftsmen who made them didn't consider other issues at all, just purely copy-pasted from everywhere and mixed them together.

Some produced good chemical reactions, ingenious and unique; but more appeared nondescript, inexplicable.

Xia Zhi pulled the corner of his mouth, glanced at the floor again, and simply quite naturally began to tidy up; he picked up the books on the floor one by one, as if very seriously and consciously cleaning up the mess he had made earlier.

Although he wasn't too sure of the girl's attitude either, currently she seemed quite calm.

After the initial shock, she had just sat there quietly the whole time, looking neither afraid nor worried; her emerald-green eyes held only curiosity and exploration.

Whatever the case, as long as the other party doesn't summon help, dragging out time is definitely advantageous to him... Xia Zhi perceived this, so naturally he decisively utilized it, and shamelessly pretended to be very natural.

The books scattered across the floor emitted the scholarly aura precipitated by time.

Taking the opportunity of picking them up, Xia Zhi quickly inspected those books, then slightly narrowed his eyes.

Don't recognize them!

Completely unrecognizable characters.

In his vast language and font libraries, he couldn't find any related retrieval records; undoubtedly they belonged entirely to another system of writing.

This was undoubtedly good news, but combined with so many clues at present, it also successfully made Xia Zhi's thoughts somewhat chaotic. He quickly sorted them out, and an idea suddenly burst forth in his mind — could this be a parallel world?

Blinking his eyes, Xia Zhi raised his head and looked at the girl across from him who was frowning in thought, and asked, "Right, Miss Vivian, where did you learn your Chinese?"

"..."

"..."

"Why are you asking this?" The girl tilted her head, not answering directly right away.

"Just... purely a bit curious." The young man across from her, for some reason, revealed a hard-to-detect change on his face in an instant, and his tone also carried a trace of subtle strangeness. He stared straight at the girl with both eyes.

"I just learned it in China."

Vivian pursed her lips and said softly. The other party seemed to care a lot about this; since that was the case, she would try entering from this point and see.

She pretended to lower her eyes indifferently, flipped a few pages of the book in her hand, her heartbeat quietly accelerating.

Although she could already treat lies objectively, this was still the first time she herself had told a lie.

A very strange experience, a bit nervous.

This was an unexpected choice, but she wanted to try it, and it was not on a whim.

Because this person was obviously not a resident of this world. Although she didn't know what he could bring, he was undoubtedly an "Extraterrestrial Lifeform." This was in her cognition that touched upon such heterogeneous existences, seemingly directly sourced from planetary origin Memory and inherited Knowledge.

This was very important.

If she wanted to save Britain, wanted to protect this Fairy Kingdom...

Perhaps she would need this assistance.

"..."

"..."

Silence spread soundlessly.

The girl raised her eyes again and discovered the young man across from her was still staring at her. That weird expression on his face was very subtle.

After a moment, he sighed: "So it wasn't ah..."

In an instant, Vivian instinctively perceived a keen tacit understanding. Her cheeks instantly flushed red, and her whole person became stuttering: "You... you... I... I didn't..."

Could it be she really had no talent for lying?

Could it be her flaw was so obvious?

A first attempt at lying was already no easy feat, yet she was actually seen through face-to-face. This fact made her inner heart filled with shame and anger.

Xia Zhi pulled at the corner of his mouth and kindly explained: "I can read lips..."

This was also one of the Skills he had maxed out under extreme boredom. Usually there were very few places to use it, and it would even unintentionally bring some small troubles. For example, when watching dubbed movies, he would always subconsciously capture and analyze the subtle lip movement information of the characters.

Then he would cross-reference and verify the content he understood through lip-reading with the actual dialogue he heard.

Later he spent some time before correcting this somewhat troublesome little habit.

So until now, he only suddenly discovered a clue unintentionally, and after confirming again, he also abruptly understood a bizarre fact — the other party actually wasn't speaking Chinese at all!

"..."

The girl gently bit her lower lip, a bit unwilling.

However, before she could say anything more, footsteps came from outside, from far to near, seeming to be quite a few people.

Terrible!

Xia Zhi's inner heart tightened. How could it be at this critical moment!

He glanced at the shame and anger on Vivian's face and suddenly felt that next he might be dismembered.

(PS: Signed contract...)

(PS: Finally released it... rushed to delete and revise, delete and revise...)

(PS: Couldn't even tell where there were problems anymore, where to delete or where to revise. Went to find the editor before it got released... Editor said the review has been acting up recently, lots of this situation)

(Chapter End)