Chapter 468: Analyzing the Prophecy Poem, it turns out it was Jier's doing!

"Then, Warrior Jier, could you carefully recall the Prophecy Poem that Dashu Bi'ao told you last night? Please, this is very important. We have been ignoring this point, which led the three of us to suspect this and that; not only did it waste time, but because of the suspicion, we also exhausted our trust. This is very bad."

Priest Bata'er no longer had the panic he felt when he first learned the Sacred Artifact was lost; confidence and reason had returned to him, which made Priest Feilina, who was standing to the side, feel happy.

"Hmm, let me think, everyone wait a moment." Jier used his hand to scratch his chin and began to recall carefully.

But the more he recalled, the more blurred his memory of the dream from last night became.

Seeing the troubled look on Warrior Jier's face, Priest Bata'er immediately reminded him: "Don't rush. Sometimes recalling things is just like this. Relax, Warrior; things recorded in the brain are actually very hard to forget completely. When I was a boy, it was the same for me when I memorized various Prayer Poems or Eulogy Poems."

Priest Feilina smiled: "Luosa had such a hard time back then. Every day he couldn't recite things, and he had to be punished by the teacher to go help the farmers with farm work. He actually liked helping the farmers, but the more he worked, the less he could remember the poems he was supposed to memorize, and he could only end up being punished with even more farm work."

Priest Bata'er scratched his head, gave a silly smile, and then said to Jier: "You can start by remembering some keywords. Relying on the connections between these keywords, a stanza, a line, or the entire poem can be recalled."

Afterward, he asked Priest Feilina to bring a piece of paper and a set of dip pens, signaling that Jier could copy what he remembered onto the paper. This way, with an actual medium for the memory content, it would be easier for a person to recall other related content.

If nothing else, this method of Priest Bata'er's was truly useful; Jier took the paper and pen and wrote down what he had recalled.

It started with just the key vocabulary in a line, and then, as he repeatedly recalled and confirmed, stanza after stanza of content was written out by him. Soon, the entire content of the Prophecy Poem regarding the Sacred Artifact was recalled by him and recorded on the paper.

Jier recited it once to confirm that it was roughly the same as what Dashu Bi'ao had said when he was dreaming yesterday.

Some word choices might be different from the other party's, but there was no helping that; who told him his grammar in Human Common Language was not as good as the other's.

"Surprised companions."

"Missing Sacred Artifact."

"People suspecting each other."

"Various possibilities."

"When you are restless."

"Might as well look back."

"Look into the depths of that heart."

"The answer is right there."

Jier read it aloud and showed the recorded paper to everyone.

Xueya Site glanced at it. Although he was literate, he was not proficient in writing, and what Jier wrote was a bit sloppy, so he could only identify most of the Prophecy Poem. But fortunately, Jier had recited it once, so he also knew the content of the entire Prophecy Poem.

Priest Bata'er and Priest Feilina took the paper and carefully read the Prophecy Poem on it.

Priest Bata'er didn't say anything, but Priest Feilina pointed out that the meter of the Prophecy Poem Jier recorded on the paper was not quite right, and she estimated that individual word choices had a certain discrepancy.

"However, this is not a problem, as long as the content of the entire passage is ultimately no different," Priest Feilina finally said.

Jier shrugged and analyzed the content of this Prophecy Poem together with his companions.

He hadn't paid much attention to this Prophecy Poem when he first woke up, because although this Prophecy Poem predicted the loss of the Sacred Artifact and the situation after the loss, the final solution was a bit too cliché.

Looking into the depths of one's own heart to find a solution is just like those dime-a-dozen hero stories; the heroes in the stories fall into trouble, and they are often not saved by some coincidence or aid from the outside world, but rather they figure something out, or have some kind of epiphany, and immediately their abilities greatly increase, allowing them to defeat the bad guys and escape their predicament.

It is truly cliché.

Of course, relying on coincidence to defeat enemies is essentially lazy writing. As for relying on aid, it is very easy to fall into the trope of *deus ex machina*, which is still a way for screenwriters and authors to lazily resolve a story when they cannot wrap it up. (It seems I have included myself in that, haha.)

Unless the outside aid was hinted at in the story beforehand.

"Everyone has seen it now; tell me, have you all seen anything?"

Jier scratched his head, expressing that he really didn't see how the method to find the Sacred Artifact was hidden in the Prophecy Poem.

He couldn't help but look at Dashu Bi'ao and complain: "If you are going to give someone a Prophecy Poem next time, I hope you can give one that is more intuitive and simple. Don't be like those smart people in stories who love riddles and use all sorts of boring riddles to make things difficult for the audience."

The leaves of the big tree swayed even without wind, making a rustling sound.

Priest Feilina looked up and glanced at it, the corners of her mouth curling up slightly: "Dashu Bi'ao seems to be very happy. As long as he is happy, it's fine. I was worried before that you were so angry that you shook your leaves hard and made them all fall off; that wouldn't be good. If the pilgrims from the Nature Sect who might come in the summer saw that, they would think I didn't take good care of you."

She added in a low voice: "After all, the Church gets a lot of money from the Nature Sect every year; this really wouldn't be justifiable."

Jier had sharp ears; he heard Priest Feilina's words, and thinking of the image of Dashu Bi'ao in the spiritual world—a young, bald man without a single green hair on his head—he found it funny.

Of course, Jier didn't actually laugh out loud at this moment.

He looked at his companions with a serious face, signaling them to speak.

"Uh, if it were up to me." Xueya Site scratched his head in a dilemma; he was the one with the lowest level of education among those present, but he had one advantage: having traveled north and south for so many years, he had not only accumulated a lot of social experience in his work as a Caravan guard, but he had also been to many taverns in many places, and naturally, he had heard many folk stories from various regions.

There were quite a few riddles in folk stories, and he therefore analyzed it based on these experiences.

"Hmm, there is a line here, 'look back.' In my experience, this kind of poem with a reversal meaning often has its true meaning hidden in the layer beneath the surface."

"Meaning?" Jier took over the conversation and asked.

Xueya Site snapped his fingers: "It probably means it can be divided into the literal 'look back,' asking us to turn around, or it might have a deeper meaning of moving backward to do things. For example, we could imitate the various things from yesterday step by step, but in reverse. Maybe the problem lies in some small thing we did yesterday? Of course, this is just my own opinion; it might not be right, or it might even be completely wrong."

Jier nodded, not rushing to implement the idea of imitating yesterday's events in reverse as proposed by Xueya Site. Instead, he looked at Priest Bata'er: "What about you, Priest? Did you find anything? From this Prophecy Poem."

Priest Bata'er was, of course, the most concerned about finding the Sacred Artifact, so after seeing the complete Prophecy Poem, he racked his brain, wanting to see something in the Prophecy Poem.

"Uh, if it were up to me, this first line, 【Surprised people】, clearly refers to Dashu Bi'ao anticipating our surprised expressions this morning when we discovered the Sacred Artifact was lost."

Jier curled his lip, and Priest Bata'er continued: "【Missing Sacred Artifact】, hmm, the word choice here is very interesting, because at the time, we all thought at first that the Sacred Artifact had been stolen, not that it was missing. Dashu Bi'ao used 'missing'; compared to 'stolen' or 'robbed,' this 'missing,' in terms of the surface meaning of the word, is relatively neutral."

"Neutral?" Xueya Site was a bit confused.

Priest Feilina spoke up to explain: "It means that compared to theft, 'missing' does not contain malice. And this word also has a certain subjective initiative; perhaps the disappearance of the Sacred Artifact was partly because it chose to disappear on its own?"

"Is that possible? A Sacred Artifact, disappearing on its own?" Xueya Site felt this analysis was becoming more and more outrageous, but Priest Feilina didn't think so: "This is very normal. This is a Sacred Artifact personally bestowed by the God of Agriculture; isn't it expected that it would have some special aspects?"

At this moment, Priest Bata'er didn't know what he had thought of, and his face turned a bit pale, but he steadied his mind and continued to analyze: "【People suspecting each other】, in this line, 'suspecting each other,' we have all experienced the specific process just now, so I won't say much more."

Xueya Site thought this referred to Jier and him repeatedly suspecting Mao Mao and the children, but Jier knew that Priest Bata'er seemed to have even suspected Priest Feilina at the time, and until he meditated, he had even suspected it was Dashu Bi'ao who did it.

Because there were only so many people, the suspects were limited; suspecting one by one and excluding them one by one, although the method was simple and direct, Jier felt it was barely acceptable.

"Next is the line 【Various possibilities】, which clearly corresponds to the previous line, because the suspicion was directed at different objects, so different objects have different possibilities. But because there is a reversal later in the Prophecy Poem, I boldly guess that all our previous guesses were actually wrong; we didn't find the key point, so all the directions were wrong."

Jier sighed, also feeling that everything before had been wrong, wasting time and exhausting their mutual trust; he should have been more cautious.

It was mainly because he had thought that the loss of the Sacred Artifact was not a very difficult problem to solve, but who would have thought that after all the guesses failed, they would actually have to rely on a Prophecy Poem to find the answer.

He looked at Dashu Bi'ao with dissatisfaction once again, feeling that if the other party wanted to help, it would be best not to engage in this kind of riddle-like Prophecy Poem next time.

But how could Jier understand that many times, if Dashu Bi'ao stated things too clearly, some small matters would often evolve into troublesome big matters. And some big matters would turn into some particularly terrible things.

Between people, and between events, there is a need for some buffer. Whether it is a good buffer or a bad buffer, once there is room for a buffer, things often have the possibility of being resolved, and they will not evolve in a terrible direction. Because in many cases, the truth is not important; it is only when the result is good that it is a solution that is good for everyone.

Dashu Bi'ao is not a detective, and it has no necessity or obligation to clarify all the things around it, allowing all things to be clearly and plainly displayed before everyone's eyes. If everyone had no secrets and everyone took off their masks of disguise, that would be truly terrifying.

"Following this is the phrase 'When you are irritable,' oh, I estimate the original word should not be irritable, but troubled. It just so happens that everyone was very troubled before, which fits the content of the Prophecy Poem perfectly, haha." Bata'er Jiaoshi gave a wry smile, and Jier and Xueya Site both shrugged along with him.

Feilina Jiaoshi felt that Jier and the other two had truly done too many unnecessary things before; if they had just trusted Dashu Bi'ao more, then if they had analyzed the Prophecy Poem like this from the beginning, they would likely have found the location of the Sacred Artifact long ago, and the group would already be in the carriage and on their way.

But there was no help for it; she could see that the one in charge among the three was not the oldest, Xueya Site, nor was it Luosa, who served as the Priest of the Agriculture God, but the youngest, the Agriculture God warrior Jier. One could even say that the other two trusted Jier too much. Even though Jier was the youngest, looking no more than seventeen or eighteen, having only been an adult for a year or two, the other two both believed in him and trusted the judgments he made.

"The next line is 'Better to look back.' Here, I feel the key point is not in looking back, but in the 'better to.' This point happens to confirm in reverse that the previous guess was incorrect, so it must be 'better to,' which also indicates that the following suggestion, the suggestion in the Prophecy Poem from Dashu Bi'ao, is the truly correct one."

"It is this line, 'See into the depths of the soul.' The depths of the soul? What does that mean? I think if we can figure this point out, we will be able to find the Sacred Artifact." Bata'er Jiaoshi ended here, because the following line, 'The answer is right there,' was something anyone could understand, so he did not explain or analyze it further.

Xueya Site touched his own chest and muttered, "The depths of the soul, what could be in there? Isn't it just the heart? All bloody and messy; if you see a heart during a battle, it can only mean that a life is finished."

Feilina Jiaoshi corrected the simple-minded thoughts of this brute, Xueya Site: "No, this 'soul' does not mean the heart, because our human soul actually refers to the brain consciousness inside the head; we humans rely on the brain to think and to live. It is not the physical heart, but the spiritual heart. Using the root word 'heart' to connect it, it refers to the meaning of importance and a central position. If analyzed, it actually means: 'a spiritual perception or soul as important as the heart.'"

"So that's how it is. So we have to look for the Sacred Artifact in this invisible, intangible spiritual perception or soul?"

Xueya Site looked helpless and powerless: "I'll state this in advance, I really can't help with this part. But I can give you two verbal encouragement. You can do it, Jier! Bata'er! You are already close to the answer, work a little harder, you will definitely be able to find the Sacred Artifact!"

Bata'er Jiaoshi looked helpless, and he felt a faint suspicion that the disappearance of the Sacred Artifact might really be related to his misuse of the Sacred Artifact last night?

If that was the case, then he truly deserved it and really should be punished. The fact that the Sacred Artifact merely disappeared on its own was already the great Agriculture God giving him some face, not letting him make a fool of himself in front of the Priest Feilina, whom he admired, or suffer a direct and severe punishment.

'I should pray to the Agriculture God to admit my mistake right now; this is likely the true meaning of Dashu Bi'ao's Prophecy Poem!' Bata'er Jiaoshi thought to himself: 'When it saw me and the warrior Jier drinking the wine provided by the Sacred Artifact yesterday, it likely already understood what would happen. That is why it could compile the Prophecy Poem in advance, and when the Sacred Artifact hid itself after the warrior Jier fell into a deep sleep, it gave the warrior Jier a reminder in his dream. It was all so that we could understand the meaning ourselves and not let things become ugly.'

Thinking of this, Bata'er Jiaoshi stroked the Agricultural God Wooden Statue in the leather bag on his belt, and looked at Dashu Bi'ao with gratitude, realizing that both He and it were powerful and gentle existences that could consider the dignity and future of a small priest like him.

Thinking of this, the priest spoke up: "Since it is the depths of the soul, why don't I try using Prayer? Perhaps the Sacred Artifact will respond to me?"

Xueya Site nodded: "Might as well try, there aren't any other ways now anyway."

Feilina Jiaoshi also agreed with this point: "You should have tried the method of Prayer to communicate with the Sacred Artifact long ago. The Sacred Object has a Spirit; although you said it was only bestowed upon you by the great Agriculture God less than ten days ago, since it is a Sacred Artifact, it must have extraordinary qualities."

Jier, at this moment, had no expression on his face. He placed his palm on his lower abdomen, then a look of deliberate embarrassment appeared on his face, and he said: "Sorry, I drank quite a bit of wine yesterday, and I haven't washed up or relieved myself since I got up this morning. I'll be right back, sorry, sorry."

Xueya Site didn't even look at Jier. Peeing, that was too normal. Having drunk too much the night before and being able to hold it until the next morning to go pee already showed that Jier's body was stronger than his.

And Bata'er Jiaoshi had already taken out the Agricultural God Wooden Statue once again, placed it in front of him, and knelt to pray. The difference was that this time, Bata'er Jiaoshi's prayer was to confess his sins to the Agriculture God, sincerely begging the Agriculture God to forgive him for misusing the Sacred Artifact last night and getting drunk, which led to the Sacred Artifact hiding itself.

Feilina Jiaoshi felt that relying on Bata'er Jiaoshi's small wooden statue wouldn't be very effective, so she took out a key, intending to take out the Bronze Statue of the Agriculture God used for gathering the Faith of believers in the Church, to lend it to Bata'er Jiaoshi to use.

"Warrior Jier, wait a moment, help me take out a larger bronze statue of the Agriculture God; that statue might be of some help to Luosa's prayer."

Feilina Jiaoshi said this, and Jier had no choice but to take a detour before going to the toilet. He lightly lifted the Bronze Statue of the Agriculture God, which would have taken Feilina Jiaoshi quite a bit of effort, with both hands, walked over in a few steps, and set it down with a thud in front of Bata'er Jiaoshi.

"That should be no problem now," Feilina Jiaoshi said with satisfaction.

And Jier, with a strange expression on his face, hurried toward the Church's toilet, but the moment he entered the toilet, his entire person disappeared.

Dashu Bi'ao shook its leaves, as if it had seen something interesting.

?? Welcome everyone to subscribe to this book, give this book recommendation tickets, monthly tickets, and tips to support it, thank you everyone. Finally, I wish everyone finds their ideal other half.

? (End of this chapter)