Chapter 486: Eastern Journey

Regarding Harry's little thoughts of resisting Xuanjun, Zhang Qiu seemed not to know, or even if she knew, she chose to silently support Harry's decision. After all, after witnessing and participating in a series of plots in the sixth year, she also began to wonder how many things Xuanjun was still hiding from her.

"Regarding this point, I can only say that old people just like to hide their thoughts and be riddlers," Luo En commented casually. "Dumbledore was so good at hiding when he was a hundred years old, Xuanjun must be even worse."

With Zhang Qiu's support, Harry wanting to quietly investigate this novel became easier. And corresponding to this, even if he just wanted to understand the trick behind these two books, the embassy still made a quite responsive reaction at this sensitive time point.

On Sunday, Lin Shuanghe, the Chinese diplomat who had met Harry once, came to Tang Dun with a thick document bag. She first explained Xuanjun's status quo to Harry in a very awkward way. Of course, Harry knew he was busy with a complicated magical ritual, but Lin Shuanghe was clearly trying to borrow the eyes and ears of Tang Dun to quietly convey a fake intelligence nested layer by layer to Yanayev: "Xuanjun is temporarily unable to protect China, and the Chinese are trying hard to cover it up, but this may also be because Xuanjun doesn't want to see Harry and made an excuse."

Then, she defined this visit as an official visit, fully named "Cross-Domain Security Dialogue," including emerging technology evaluation, ethical boundary discussion, national defense security memorandum, etc., trying to make people think that this was a discussion between the two countries on how to respond to the Iron Curtain technology.

Harry skipped this set of cover-up rhetoric and started flipping through the itinerary booklet directly—they might spend about fifteen days on this trip, which meant he had to find a way to ask for two weeks of leave from school. Based on this point, he felt that Luo En might not necessarily be willing to go together.

"Our first stop is still to go to Ying Tian, because this matter actually involves cultural textual research. Most of the experts in this area are concentrated in the Southern Hanlin," Zhang Qiu explained to him intimately. "We estimate spending two or three days there flipping through materials, and then if necessary, go to Chengdu, because according to preliminary investigations, that missionary later settled in Chengdu and completed the book."

"After the investigation has a conclusion, you still need to go to Shuntian," Lin Shuanghe added. "Our Prime Minister wants to chat with you, of course, he is also very interested in this novel."

Harry asked with some confusion: "Will the Prime Minister of China also be interested in a magic novel?"

"Because all signs indicate that the real author of this book might be..." Lin Shuanghe didn't say it, just pressed her lips with a finger, but she kept hinting with her eyes looking upward.

Harry and Zhang Qiu nodded silently. He and she began to look forward to the gains of this investigation.

Of course, not only them, on Wednesday, the Prime Minister also came to Hogwarts in person to express support for this visit. The reason was very clear. If a communication was formed in the Wizarding World between the two countries, then even if they were really just going to check a novel, for other countries in the world, they would all think that the two countries were preparing to discuss how to deal with the Iron Curtain system.

And the point that made the Prime Minister very excited was that China chose them as the object of discussion, which showed that in the eyes of this ancient powerful country, Britain was the true leader of the English-speaking country alliance. Even this kind of recognition that disregarded facts was enough for him to write about it in the newspapers. Especially since the Statute of Secrecy would cover up Harry's existence, the Muggle public must still think this was the Prime Minister's credit.

Of course, the high-level of China was also very supportive of this kind of thing, because this was undoubtedly another kind of clever show of weakness. If they, who had always claimed to be the Celestial Empire, began to lower their posture to the Western barbarians, this would likely constitute a performance that they felt fear and difficulty in dealing with the Iron Curtain in Yanayev's eyes.

Both high-levels were so high-spirited, Harry couldn't help but suspect whether it was another calculation. However, on the whole, he was still inclined to think that this was just a simple coincidence.

In late September, Harry and Zhang Qiu were ready to set off. And Luo En was not very interested in traveling abroad, and he didn't have that subtle fear of Xuanjun, so he chose to stay at school to enjoy the carefree seventh-year life. Naturally, Eve also stayed behind, and she swore to Harry that she would design at least three decent team tactical systems as soon as possible.

Harboring a different kind of trepidation, Harry stood into the magic circle of the embassy. He had never thought of visiting that mysterious Eastern country before, but in fact, when he was idle, it was impossible for him not to be curious about Zhang Qiu's hometown.

White light flashed, and he found himself appearing in a completely strange building complex. Everything here made him feel novel. The rotating galaxy was drawn on the towering dome, and twelve white jade pillars stood around. The dragons carved on them turned their heads to watch them from time to time. Unlike the Ministry of Magic, the one facing the visitor hall was not a front desk, but a huge screen, or rather, a huge Marauder's Map. The magical institutions of each state and county formed light points connecting the whole territory, and the pale golden dragon veins flowed slowly on the map.

More than a dozen officials wearing indigo cloud-patterned dharma robes had been waiting here for a long time. Lin Shuanghe introduced them to Harry one by one. The official titles of these people were more complicated than the other, and he didn't understand them at all. And the names and looks were highly similar. Everyone was called Xuan something Daoist Master, and everyone had a long beard and held a dharma instrument like a duster. Finally, the only one who made him remember was the leader of the four Auror bodyguards. He was called Lu Jianxing. Harry could remember his name because his name sounded like Ravenclaw.

Walking out of the Xuan Shu Jian, a group of people sat on a slender carrier that could fly. It looked like a kind of Eastern-style small boat, but there was an Undetectable Extension Charm inside, the space was very spacious, and the interior was also comfortable and luxurious.

"Are we a bit too ostentatious?" Harry asked with some unease.

"It doesn't matter, we don't have any interest relationship with the domestic factions for the things we want to investigate, so no one will obstruct," Lin Shuanghe said. "And, the domestic forces are very curious about the results."

Harry spent some time accompanying these officials to say scene words and enjoy the banquet, and then they went straight to the Academy of Arts and Sciences and held two academic conferences with several professors inside.

In fact, before Harry arrived, they had already discussed internally for several rounds. Finally, a young guy explained to Harry the conclusion they reached: the real author of "The Romance of the Seven Kingdoms of Dragon Lineage" circulating in China should be Ge Xuan himself.

Starting from vocabulary preference, sentence pattern characteristics, and customary rhetorical techniques, and comprehensively considering the publication time of the work, they deduced the ins and outs of the matter: first, Xuanjun was very keen on writing popular novels when he was young, and had used several pen names to write different stories. And in the early stage of his career, writing was mainly based on cultivation and martial arts. Because it was widely welcomed, it quickly attracted the imitation of many other authors. When novels of similar themes in the market began to tend to be saturated, Xuanjun tried to open up a new path with this book themed on Western magic. In fact, the effect at that time was very good, so that many readers still think this book is the real history of Europe.

In fact, the "A Song of Ice and Fire" that Zhang Qiu saw in Xuanjun's study might be something more similar to the original manuscript. Under the adaptation of some storytellers and local residents, the character names and place names of the whole book had long been fully localized, such as the historians of Northern Qi, the Lan family of Southern Liang, etc., which caused Zhang Qiu not to know the truth of the matter, but thought that this book had no one to read in China.

And this derived another problem: for the Chinese people who didn't know the truth, they were very willing to believe that Ge Xuan translated European history and then processed this novel. But for cultural people who knew European history, such a record that was clearly fantasy must be fabricated by man.

And the experts of Southern Hanlin were divided into two factions. One faction believed that the novel should be written in English by a missionary, and Xuanjun carried out localization translation and published it, so although there were many vocabularies commonly used by Xuanjun, its plot design had a large difference from Xuanjun's other novels; while the other faction believed that this was completely created by Xuanjun himself, just entrusted to a missionary to facilitate publicity, because the narrative rhythm in the story still contained heavy personal style, and analyzing the handling of details in the story, it could be considered that it was extremely similar to Xuanjun's other novels of the same period.

Based on this point, Harry realized that the trip to Chengdu was indeed necessary, because the divergence and key point of these two factions lay in, did the so-called missionary participate in the creation of this book back then? If it could be confirmed that the missionary did participate in the creation of the novel, then Xuanjun could be seen as a localized translator, and the existence of the missionary basically explained the plot divergence between Zhang Qiu and Luo En: perhaps it was just a different sequel written by two different writers for the same remnant.

However, such a reasonable explanation was not what Harry and Zhang Qiu wanted, and of course, it would definitely not be what the domestic forces in China wanted. They hoped more to confirm the missionary as a pretext. In this way, starting from Xuanjun's self-publication of this novel, as long as they went to investigate the English writer of that era in detail, they could get a glimpse of some secret of Xuanjun.

Harboring such a hidden expectation, Harry and Zhang Qiu came to Chengdu. After experiencing a series of completely different cultures and unique diets where even steak was poured with chili sauce, they got the conclusion they wanted: this novel was written by Xuanjun himself and published under the name of a missionary.

But... Harry couldn't help but start to suspect again, is this really the case? Or is it something deliberately done by some factions in China? He couldn't help but want to talk to that Prime Minister of China, because if he could find some strangeness of Xuanjun, it was indeed something they were all happy to see, but if this abnormality was just fabricated, it would be meaningless. ===== CHAPTER 487 =====