Chapter 328: White-Headed Scholars Cannot Find It

Kraft had always thought spending money on water was an exaggerated metaphor, but now he wasn’t so sure. The books here could be turned into silver coins enough to train everyone as masters of throwing money away.

His timely intervention spared the others from further damaging the items on the ground. These information carriers, made of leather and plant fibers, had warped and shriveled from repeated cycles of dampness and drying.

The poor storage conditions had already rendered most of them irreparable, reduced to mud-like masses, with insects crawling through this natural hiding place, unknowingly gnawing at the dissolved and twisted characters.

They appeared to be relics left behind in a hasty evacuation, the result of some sudden, unforeseen event that forced the original owners to abandon this vast wealth of spiritual and material knowledge here.

Yet a closer look revealed that this seemingly reasonable assumption still had unexplained inconsistencies.

The books were not randomly piled; they had been deliberately opened and laid out one by one across the center of the church, like straw spread flat on fields in winter to rot, covering vast stretches of floor and leaving only narrow pathways, as if someone needed to frequently walk back and forth to examine the pages.

Even the long benches used for prayer gatherings had been moved aside and leaned against the walls, their seats stacked high with piles of books.

“What are they trying to do?”

Everyone was puzzled by the same question. The scene before them was clearly beyond the capability of any single individual, and the abbot of the monastery had no authority to unilaterally mobilize such a vast collection of books. Normally, they were only taken out from storage in batches during the brief dry season for airing and maintenance.

Only if the majority of upper and middle management reached consensus and acted with determined resolve could such a complete evacuation of the library possibly occur.

Moreover, drying books indoors with insufficient light made no sense—it looked more like...

【Looking up information?】

Raymond had seen monks in the Mother Church’s library, heads white with age, poring over books, seated around wooden tables wide enough to accommodate several people, their volumes spread across the entire surface, eyes scanning like herons hunting for live fish beneath the water’s surface, searching for specific passages to verify obscure, incomprehensible details.

As an external operative under Green, he rarely interacted with such people; his last impression dated back to his student days, when a notoriously incomprehensible old scholar had stalled half the class’s progress toward their degrees.

They always managed to dig out the most obscure, ambiguous details from the darkest corners of books, then cite them extensively as authoritative proof.

Of course, the instructor for that course was replaced the following year.

Every moderately sized institution had such people, responsible for managing book collections and providing evidence for debates.

As the monastery once invested in most heavily in this region, its scholarly talent, even if falling short of Dunling’s standards, would not be far behind—and might even have come from Dunling University’s Shenxue Academy.

Raymond had once believed they could recite the exact volume and section where every line appeared in every book; if you gathered even a small group of them, nothing was unfindable.

While most were still awestruck by the wealth represented by the books, he quickly stepped beside Kraft to examine the only remaining cover held in the pair of leather-gloved hands.

Thanks to the widespread tendency toward excessive ornamentation—designed to facilitate carving and inlay work—the covers were made of unusually thick material, preserving far better than the contents.

The pigment patterns had mostly peeled and faded, but the gold and silver foil inlays still outlined the embossed designs and capital titles; the winged metal clasps and corner guards indicated it was an internal ecclesiastical work, not some random personal manuscript picked up somewhere.

While the professor was still stumbling over the fragmented text, Raymond had already identified it.

“It should be a ‘Collection of Admonitions.’”

“What?” A blank, bewildered look came from someone who had only ever heard of the Holy Scriptures.

Raymond suppressed the urge to teach basic knowledge: “You can think of it as commentary on the Holy Scriptures, compiled from authoritative sermons—more obscure and profound than what’s taught to ordinary believers, primarily containing doctrinal interpretations and specific scriptural exegeses, used for internal worship and study.”

“I see—it’s like a study guide.” The professor nodded in sudden understanding; he was very familiar with such things.

Raymond didn’t believe the man had truly listened, but he’d lost the desire to argue. He took a pair of gloves and began carefully handling other books at his feet.

These books had glued themselves to the floor tiles; they needed to be slowly peeled apart, gently “scraped” up, or large sections would tear off, severely damaging the surface.

“Hmm, ‘Psalms’—a common hymnal. I memorized several passages; even the first one matches mine—it’s used in rituals.”

“We don’t require memorization anymore,” added a knight who had just graduated from the academy. “It’s just an elective.”

Raymond sighed, lamenting the declining self-study ability of the younger generation; the value of degrees had truly declined year by year.

“‘Lives of the Saints’—you must have read this. Back then we treated it like a storybook, borrowing it every so often to flip through, especially the parts about the Prophet and King Pendragon drawing his sword... ah, never mind.”

Setting this book and his memories aside, he glanced briefly at a few easier-to-retrieve volumes and smoothly recited their titles.

“‘Proof of Existence,’ ‘Refutation of the Heretics,’ ‘Theological Treatise,’ ‘Summa Theologica,’ ‘Study of the Char Doctrine Reforms,’ ‘Study of Scotus’s Theology’—the works of notable figures here are surprisingly complete. Of the people I know, only Father Green may have read them all.”

Even then, only in the sense of having read them; when it came to parsing words and phrases, they couldn’t match a professional even with three mouths.

But they were professionals—yet here they’d set up such a grand display, searching within their own specialized field, even within texts they’d personally copied, and still hadn’t found what they were looking for?

“I feel something’s off. What’s your opinion, Professor?”

As someone who had personally experienced certain unusual events, Raymond felt he was becoming overly paranoid.

“That possibility cannot be ruled out,” Kraft replied evasively. He confirmed again with Yin Feng, who gave the same negative answer. The girl seemed lively, but it seemed only the local climate made her feel especially comfortable—she wandered around observing, twirling the stonecutter’s hammer in her hand, until its original owner nervously reclaimed it.

“But I really... don’t sense anything unusual.” Kraft truly felt his sinusitis had flared up—not just from the dust itching his nose, but also the persistent sensation that some smell should be present yet remained absent.

Like walking into a newly occupied secondhand kitchen and seeing a pile of unsorted dishes and an open refrigerator, instinctively sensing something rotting in the shadows, with phantom odors hovering just beyond detection, vanishing when you tried to pinpoint them.

“Damn it, the most frustrating thing is not finding something you can’t even confirm exists—it’s enough to drive an obsessive-compulsive mad.”

After a brief hesitation, Kraft gave the order: “Clear the courtyard. We’ll camp outside tonight. This place has been empty too long—who knows what safety hazards might lurk? I don’t want a chandelier crashing down on us in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t touch these books yet. Tomorrow morning we’ll first sweep the entire monastery, then slowly sort through them later.” These books, which would stump even archaeologists, showed no immediate danger; the priority was clearing the entire building.

“Stay safe. Avoid going alone. Even groups must report to Brother Raymond. You may ask Kup to accompany you. Keep fires burning brightly until sunrise tomorrow—I’ll keep watch with you.”

“Now, let’s clean our new home.”