Chapter 623: The Ancestor's Gift (12)

The Name of God

Leader Zhao raised his left hand and sent it vaguely toward Luo Qi's direction; a string of complex spells appeared out of thin air.

When the first line of text emerged, Luo Qi wanted to compliment Leader Zhao's style; he had actually added a very personalized handwritten font to the spells in the air, and the bold, sweeping font of the spells fully displayed the Leader's confidence. But before Luo Qi could say anything, his attention was drawn by the three new lines of spells that had emerged, and for a moment, he forgot what he had intended to say.

Three lines after three lines, three lines after three lines...

Luo Qi didn't know how to put it; when he left school, he couldn't use spells longer than twenty lines, and those twenty lines were composed of many complete spell blocks combined together. Structurally, it was a bit like loading shipping containers onto a cargo ship; as for what was inside each container (spell block), he didn't need to know—he only needed to recite the name of the container. He knew that Du Zhengyi was, on a certain level, much more advanced than him, in that Du Zhengyi not only knew more spell blocks than he did, but also clearly understood the internal structure of many spell blocks, so Du Zhengyi could make fine adjustments to the spellcasting process. If one were to use a human analogy, he could only use automatic machinery, while Du Zhengyi was capable of full manual operation.

Right now, the spells displayed by Leader Zhao belonged to the realm of manual operation; for Luo Qi, it could be rounded up and explained as—out of his league.

However, as Luo Qi watched the spells emerge line by line, he was no longer as embarrassed as before; as long as one experienced enough, one's skin would inevitably grow thicker. Anyway, Du Zhengyi would explain it to him.

He habitually wanted to take a look at Du Zhengyi, but just then, Luo Qi suddenly realized that today's spells were not exactly heavenly scripts. His head, which had turned halfway, froze; he turned it back to read carefully, and his way of reading was also different from before. He first identified a large number of keywords from the long passage of spells; these keywords were like the skeleton of the spell structure, propping up the entire piece of Magic. Although Luo Qi couldn't fully understand the entire spell just by reading it, through the skeleton structure, he could generally see that this piece of Magic belonged to an opened Magic container. The semantic theme of the spell was "search"; Leader Zhao had not lied.

Of course, Luo Qi also knew that if even he could see the general meaning, the Qionglin Mages behind him would only read it more clearly. The vast majority of people standing here belonged to the first tier of the Magic World. Since everyone had reached the peak, things had instead become very simple; basically, both sides could only play with their cards face up, and no one would truly think they could deceive the others. Since Leader Zhao said he was helping them detect the Ancestor Mage's intent, then what he gave them must be spells used for searching.

The people here were all experts at using spells, but Luo Qi was not. In the past, he had no ability to drive Magic, and the knowledge he learned at school was all armchair strategy to him; others could apply what they learned, but he only learned for written exams, failing even the experiments, completely making up the numbers among the Mages. Later, after his ability was suddenly unlocked, he didn't think about using spells at all. The power of Magic flowed from his mind, like energy filling his body, naturally overflowing; casting Mind Magic was a matter of course for him, and he hadn't considered the issue of spells.

He didn't know what this counted as; the Qionglin Mages had always wanted to teach him to restrain and control his power through spells, but he was absent-minded and hadn't thought about discussing his specific situation with them at all, and he himself hadn't had the time to think carefully about the differences. The classes the Highland Mages set up for him focused on leading him through Meditation; he thought it was like a great monk leading him into monkhood, focusing on cultivation rather than technique. Others said Mind Mages were a special group; he only thought of the reasons why Mind Mages were guarded against and feared by others, but once truly among them, he realized that from a technical perspective, it was also completely different.

Luo Qi vaguely felt that if Mind Mages were in the inner layer of Magic. If one were to use human machinery as an analogy again, what ordinary Mages saw were the machine's operating buttons—one could view the buttons as spells—but what Mind Mages saw were the pipes, tracks, and gears inside the machine. Other Mages skillfully operated the buttons, but Mind Mages could pull the pipes, pause the tracks, and shift the gears from the inside.

Even Experimental Mages were only people willing to touch as many buttons as possible; they kept experimenting with the effects produced after pressing each button, tirelessly experimenting with different parameters. Liu Ziyi had said many times that she also couldn't truly understand the principles of how Magic operated; she could only observe the phenomena produced by various spellcasting, and at times, Luo Qi even thought she was carrying out reverse engineering on the Magic left behind by the Ancestor Mages, re-summarizing the methods of using Magic.

Mages, in fact, might not truly understand Magic; they were just the heaven-chosen people who used Magic.

However, Luo Qi didn't want to say such rebellious words out loud again; he pulled his attention back to the spells.

Someone, of course, was reading much faster than him; Liu Ziyi's Magic lashed out and circled a line of text in the air, "Zhao Mage, what is this?"

Luo Qi could read from the keywords earlier that this line of text was the object of the search.

"Of course, it is the mark of the Ancestor Mage. The spell doesn't count for much; I believe some of you will know this spell. What is important is the Ancestor Mage's mark; I think this is something few people in the world know. Without the Ancestor Mage's mark, it is equivalent to having the search method, but you don't know what to look for. I think this can be considered a bit of sincerity I am showing to you, and also to this human," Leader Zhao said.

Luo Qi turned his head to look at Du Zhengyi inquiringly. Du Zhengyi explained to him simply and clearly, "The Ancestor's name."

Luo Qi understood; many people knew that ancient legend circulating in the Magic World: you must never let an enemy know your true name, otherwise the other party will cast a wicked curse upon you. Liu Ziyi looked as if she didn't know how to express her stance; this was indeed a gift of sincerity that could neither be verified nor falsified. He looked at the line of text Liu Ziyi had circled, "The Ancestor's name is a bit long."

Ancient languages were generally modern spells; although there would be great changes after evolving for thousands or tens of thousands of years, they wouldn't change that much. "Looking at this length, the Ancestor Mage's name is a bit like a screen name. Could it be that his name is something like 'Do You Know What a Real Mage Is'?" Luo Qi said, hearing several Mages let out deep breaths in his ears, "So, is this a Mage's name?"

"It is... that female Mage." Leader Zhao gave Luo Qi a meaningful smile.

A flash of disgust crossed Luo Qi's heart. When the Clownfish helped Du Zhengyi save him, Du Zhengyi made quite a few concessions as a condition of the exchange. The Clownfish wouldn't let go of the opportunity to obtain information on Progenitor Magic, but he didn't expect that he had even extracted the Ancestor Mage's name. Did that mean the Clownfish had surpassed the Ancestor Mage's copy? Not only was he unable to catch up to him, but perhaps he wasn't far from Pei Shu either.

"Among all the Ancestor Mages, the female Ancestor is the most likely to have left behind a copy. So I think using her name as the search target is feasible, although I don't know the names of the other Ancestors at all," Leader Zhao said very candidly. "Luo Qi, I suggest you try."

Luo Qi couldn't make up his mind; he really wasn't good at restoration. Restoration and healing seemed to be at odds with his personality; he rarely lacked confidence in using Mind Magic.

Unexpectedly, Liu Ziyi made a decision on the side, "Luo Qi, you might as well try."

Luo Qi was startled, "Are you going to use the Lotus Burner's Magic on a human?"

"I can be certain that this spell is only for searching and has no other functions. If you can find it, you will feel the existence of 'that', and the Magic itself will not touch Xinyue in any way," Liu Ziyi said firmly, "We have to be responsible for Xinyue, don't we?"

For the first time, Luo Qi felt a bit of panic and turned to look at Du Zhengyi; this scene was like a specialist consultation. The pathologist had already spoken, but the lead surgeon, Luo Qi, was a first-year medical student. No, no, no, he thought, he didn't even count as a first-year medical student; he could only count as someone who had watched ten seasons of medical dramas.

Unexpectedly, he also saw hesitation on Du Zhengyi's face, and that hesitation even carried a sense of self-loathing. Luo Qi didn't understand what was wrong with Du Zhengyi; Leader Zhao was still smiling and waiting for him, and he even felt that the faceless Clownfish was also watching them.