Chapter 17: 17 At Midnight When No One Is Around, Whispering

17 At Midnight When No One Is Around, Whispering

Paulownia Flower... Phoenix-Attracting Art?

"What an elegant name... it doesn't sound very imposing..."

After thinking about it, Tang Zhao felt this was correct; a good cultivation technique should have profound meaning, while things like "Tathagata Palm" or "Great Might Heavenly Dragon" were too shallow.

"Let me see... hmm... uh..."

Oh no!

Tang Zhao was suddenly like someone doused with cold water.

He couldn't understand it!

He recognized all the characters on it, and could even read them aloud, but when strung together, he couldn't understand them at all.

Many common characters combined to form unfamiliar vocabulary, and many unfamiliar vocabulary words connected to form obscure, unclear sentences. Finally, the obscure sentences were strung into a chaotic article.

He stared at the passage for a moment, only feeling that the ink characters on the paper had grown wings one by one, buzzing and flying about before his eyes.

It seems... different from what the books say...

Isn't one supposed to ascend to the heavens in a single step by following a secret manual?

Which protagonist of a miraculous encounter is unable to even understand the book?

That wastes so much time! Can he still succeed?

Looking until the end, his vision blurred, and he hurriedly took off his Glasses and wiped his eyes.

This had to be wiped clean; if someone saw him, they wouldn't just say he had strained his eyes from reading, they would think he had been angered to tears because he couldn't understand it.

After wiping his eyes dry, Tang Zhao felt his vision clear up a little, and he put the Glasses back on.

Still a bit blurry...

No, it's that there are some patterns again...

It's characters!

Tang Zhao's Spirit jolted.

Previously, a line of patterns had flashed rapidly across a corner of his vision; he hadn't paid attention at the time, thinking he had seen wrong, but later he remembered the Glasses and had a guess—

Could that line of patterns have flashed across the Glasses?

But since that situation never appeared again, he had cast it to the back of his mind.

Now, on the Glasses—this time he confirmed it clearly and unmistakably—patterns had flashed again, and this time they weren't just patterns, but characters.

No, they couldn't exactly be called characters either.

Rather, it was a combination of patterns and characters.

A portion of them were characters, while another portion were block-like patterns of the same size as the characters; Tang Zhao guessed, were they also a type of writing?

"x Art, lower x..."

Tang Zhao clicked his tongue; he seemed to have had this feeling before. Chen Zong had used this type of question when testing him back in the day, called a cloze test.

Without even having options, this cloze test naturally couldn't be completed.

He couldn't understand the cultivation technique in the letter, and he couldn't understand the characters on the Glasses, Tang Zhao sighed.

"I... don't understand."

He said softly.

Although he was alone, he used a consultative tone, as if communicating with someone.

Deep in the night, in the silent room, he was the only one speaking, like a delirious mutter.

In this situation, it was somewhat terrifying.

Yet Tang Zhao was very calm; he knew he wasn't speaking to a person, but there was someone who could understand him.

The characters on the spectacle lenses stopped, just like a person who had been chattering incessantly suddenly shut their mouth.

It became even quieter. In every sense.

The surroundings were quiet, and Tang Zhao sat on the chair, holding that cultivation technique, and fell into Silence.

Deep in the night, it is most suitable for thinking.

Gradually, his train of thought became clear, and several vague ideas that had emerged from the bottom of the well strung together.

He suddenly reached out a hand and picked up the brush on the table.

This was a side room in the main courtyard of the Black Spider Villa; there were paper and a brush on the table, but no ink. He didn't force it, and just dipped it in water to write on the paper:

"Heaven and Earth are mysterious and yellow, the universe is vast and desolate.

The sun and moon wax and wane, the stars and constellations are spread out.

Cold comes and summer goes, autumn harvests and winter stores..."

As he wrote, he recited softly, just as the teacher had taught him to write stroke by stroke back then.

Halfway through the recitation, the handwriting on the Glasses changed:

"Mysterious Technique, lower grade..."

Tang Zhao was overjoyed, threw down the brush and said: "You really can understand me!"

"I just said there couldn't be such a coincidence in the world—I said there was a fairy and there was a fairy, I said coming out of the water and it came out of the water, and there were golden axes and silver axes; besides me, no one under heaven would know this story. You heard it all outside the temple, didn't you?"

As long as one casts aside the unimaginable terror and calms down to think slowly, one can always grasp a bit of logic behind the incredible.

As long as it is logic that a person can imagine, this miracle inevitably becomes a little closer to people, and thus not so terrifying.

"What kind of... existence are you? Are you inside my Glasses? You transformed into a fairy and talked about golden glasses and silver glasses, but those things don't actually exist, right? Did you fix the Glasses and move in yourself? You want to communicate with me, but you don't know the characters... ah, I was rude, that kind of pattern is a type of writing, right? It's just that I can't understand it. It's not that you don't know the characters, it's that I don't know the characters and can't understand what you're saying. So when I just recited Xue Daxia's letter, you understood some characters, and by comparing them to the writing, you were able to display them."

"You are truly clever, being able to match the characters after seeing them only once, a hundred times cleverer than me! But in the well, weren't you able to speak? Why can't you do it in the Glasses? Why don't you come out and let's talk, wouldn't it be nice to chat? I have many things I want to Ask you!"

He rattled on a whole lot, pouring out his train of thought all at once, staring at the lenses waiting for a response.

However, under the field of vision of the lenses, it was clean and clear before his eyes, with no response.

Tang Zhao felt somewhat anxious; he lowered his head and looked again at the "Paulownia Flower Draws the Phoenix Art."

A line of text flew across the lenses:

"Mysterious Technique, low grade."

Tang Zhao's heart suddenly turned cold; he steadied the lenses with his hand and whispered, "Are you truly unable to speak?"

Having been influenced by Chen Zong for many years, Tang Zhao's way of thinking was far broader than that of an ordinary person.

According to what Chen Zong had said, if something could listen, speak, and even provide feedback, it did not necessarily have to be a living person; it could be...

A piece of software?

That was how it was put, right?

Things like software only follow rules of judgment and lack independent consciousness; it can answer questions, but only within the scope of its database—to put it bluntly, it is merely a tool.

If one were to judge by interests, having only a tool at hand seemed safer, yet Tang Zhao still felt disappointed; what he longed for in the lonely night was a warm and intimate companion.

In his disappointment, he could only accept that there was no fairy in the world specifically prepared for him—one who was powerful, kind, sincere, who would open her heart to him, protect him, and absolutely never harm him.

Tang Zhao comforted himself in his heart, secretly thinking: Perhaps a fairy is just a fairy, and the Glasses are just the Glasses. The fairy gave the Glasses to me; this is just a treasure that can display some things. The other characters used before were converted later after I input the text I wrote. As for that fairy, changing into the clothes I described was perhaps just for fun.

It would be better to cherish what is before him for now; once he escapes this cage, he will go back to see that fairy in the well to thank her.

Only, what use do these Glasses actually have?

The only sentence it could understand was "Mysterious Technique, low grade"—does that mean the grade?

Tang Zhao guessed based on his memory while feeling slightly frustrated—if it is low grade, the grade should not be high; how could the technique he obtained through so much trouble not be particularly precious or rare?

Sigh, forget it; even if it were low grade, he could not understand it, and he does not know what kind of heavenly book a high grade one would be.

In other words, this thing can see the grade of a technique.

In stories, is this called appraisal?

And it is not just techniques, right?

He remembered that his lenses had displayed text once before, right when that person in the red cloak made him look at a Bead that looked like an eye. It was just that he could not understand it at all at the time and took it for a pattern.

Other than that, there really was nothing else.

He wore the Glasses and carefully examined every inch of the room; the table and chairs, the bed, the Lamp stand, the paper and brush, and all sorts of furniture and decorations no longer triggered any text to appear.

It seems that only by reaching some kind of threshold can the Glasses be triggered.

Low grade... could that be the threshold?

But what is the use of knowing it is low grade?

In his current situation, appraisal seems meaningless, but he still wrote the "Qianziewen" sentence by sentence, explaining as he wrote; this "enlightenment" had to have a beginning and an end, continuing until it finished at "Yan Zai Hu Ye." By the time he reached the end, the water stains at the beginning had already dried, leaving only a blank sheet of paper.

"Do you still have anything you don't understand? If there is anything you don't grasp, I have the Three Character Classic here as well. It's just that it isn't very good; it has many historical allusions that are hard to explain, making it less easy for learning characters..."

As he spoke, he moved the blank paper aside, revealing the obscure text of the "Paulownia Flower Draws the Phoenix Art," and naturally cast his gaze upon the first line.

Suddenly, a large expanse of subtitles flowed down like water.

What?

He was startled, and when he looked closely, this text was actually—

Annotations?!

This large expanse of text was entirely annotations, explaining only the first sentence. It explained word by word, and there were even commentaries and the like afterward. Although the text was not simple, it was already within the scope of what he could understand.

So the key lies here!

Tang Zhao felt pleasantly surprised in his heart, secretly thinking that it was indeed a treasure gifted by a fairy, capable of explaining text that was like a heavenly book. Before he could understand it word by word, he scanned down to the second sentence, and sure enough, there was another dense expanse of new text. Calculating carefully, the original text was only a few thousand characters, but with the annotations, it must be at least fifty or sixty thousand! Even though he did not dislike reading, he could not help but feel a sense of awe.

He thought to himself: Good heavens, what a vast universe is contained within this! If a low-grade Mysterious Technique is already this complex, what would a high-grade one be like?

Browsing all the way to the last sentence, just as Tang Zhao was about to start reading from the beginning, he suddenly saw a small symbol appear on the lenses at the end—a small, white, hollow circle.

"A period?"

No...

"It looks like a well, doesn't it?"

For some reason, his heart stirred, and he focused his gaze on that symbol.

Then, a certain spot in his field of vision lit up!