Master of Kaidan
Chapter 114 Exploring the Rules Hidden in the Book

Chapter 114: Chapter 114 Exploring the Rules Hidden in the Book

Although Feng Xue brought back many books from reality, he decided not to transcribe them but to write them from memory. This wasn’t him making trouble for himself, it was because he didn’t want to provide resources to the enemy—

Well, saying providing resources to the enemy might be putting it a bit strongly, the exact reason being he wanted to avoid trouble.

Most of the books he brought back were "reference books", which meant it was possible to generate labels and professions through learning from and playing the roles described in these books.

In other words, if these reference books were to be disseminated from Feng Xue, it could lead to two obvious outcomes—

First, resource-rich gang factions could obtain these books, and on this basis, generate labels; these beneficiaries could very likely become adversaries in the future.

If that sounded a bit anxious, then consider the second point—

Would those who purchase the books conclude that they possess a corresponding "Book"?

According to Huo Mu, the copied so-called Pseudo Books are different from ordinary Pseudo Artifacts; Feng Xue suspected this had the same reason why his transcribed books would inevitably become Black Balls or finished Faux Artifacts when the right elements were introduced.

Moreover, the value of a genuine book naturally would be higher than that of a copied Pseudo Book.

As such, the value of a novel, which couldn’t be used as a learning medium, was naturally starkly different from that of a reference book.

As to why he didn’t simply write fiction of his own concoction, it was mainly a probe by Feng Xue; the foundational cognitive system of Infinite City was Cognition, and a novel written offhand would obviously have no Cognition in the outside world, but it was a different concept if the work was a classic.

At this point, Feng Xue just wanted to verify the difference between the information contained in the novels he transcribed, the Secret Manuals he copied, and the things he wrote arbitrarily.

Feng Xue was very grateful that he had been a good student at school and that his teacher was obsessed with memorization, requiring full-text memorization when other classes only had to memorize certain paragraphs. He had indeed memorized a lot.

Naturally, he couldn’t memorize long novels, but he had vivid memories of Lu Xun’s short stories.

The Cthulhu-styled "White Light", the suffocatingly despairing "Medicine", "Kong Yiji", which was often used as a meme to the extent that many hadn’t thoroughly appreciated its deeper meanings, and "Madman’s Diary", which seemed like the ravings of a lunatic on paper but felt like it saw through the reality of the world...

Feng Xue sorted through the short but profound text in his memory; though parts of it were slightly blurred, he chose to write them down first.

As for the missing parts, he planned to fill them in from memory; obviously, with his command of writing, he couldn’t perfectly reproduce the words of the literary masters, but as long as the overall work didn’t look too incongruous, selling them shouldn’t be an issue.

Thus, he slowly recorded the text from his memory onto the fabric, suddenly discovering an unexpected joy—

His poetry and literature skills improved.

And with this improvement in poetry and literature, some of the previously blurred Chapters in his memory became clearer. As he recollected, the craftsmanship improved likewise, as if completing a fragmentary text.

After Feng Xue transcribed about ten thousand characters with handsome penmanship, he put down his pen.

"It’s a pity, these four pieces are all I could memorize from ’Call to Arms’. I can barely remember parts of ’My Old Home’, but even with the improved skills, I mostly recall only young Run Tu’s part clearly. Even if I wrote it down, it likely couldn’t be completed any time soon," Feng Xue shook his head, took out needle and thread, and meticulously bound each page, about four hundred characters per fabric sheet. Then on the blank page which served as the cover, he outlined a few big characters in a "red-outlining and black-filling" manner—

"Four Short Pieces".

When the last character "则" was completely filled in with ink, a book that somewhat seemed the part was announced complete.

Because cotton cloth itself is thicker than paper, although there were only thirty-something pages, the thickness of the book did not appear too thin. Feng Xue scanned it with Golden Finger, but it seemed no different from the Skill Books and Yu-Gi-Oh booklets he had copied before; although it could be treated as an "integrity", it was all gibberish with no elements manifesting.

Yet, he suddenly realized something—that the Yu-Gi-Oh booklet didn’t disappear after he had sequentially introduced the elements.

"Is it because that booklet was never considered a book?" Feng Xue mused to himself, and did not immediately try to introduce elements into it. Instead, he copied the book again, meanwhile pondering the reason—

"Is it because there is no such book in reality, or is there some condition missing to become a true book?"

Feng Xue pondered for a while, this time not binding the four short stories together, but individually into four volumes, writing their titles separately. Nonetheless, that did not change any outcomes, but the four seemingly thin booklets still remained unchanged.

"Well, maybe I could try infusing them with elements related to the content?" Feng Xue recalled the record of his successful Refinings, realizing that producing the Bu Tiange Secret Manual might just be a coincidence, but he still didn’t plan to give up. Looking at the four short stories, he activated Golden Finger and began searching for suitable elements.

The most suitable element for the books, undoubtedly, was [Book] itself. However, regrettably, Feng Xue did not possess such an element; so far, all the Faux Artifacts he had refined had this element were just the Basic Swordsmanship Skill Book he had used up a while ago.

After much thought, Feng Xue found several elements that were barely appropriate: [Medicine] to match "Medicine", [Madness] to match "Madman’s Diary", [Light] to match "White Light", and [Happiness] to match "Kong Yiji".

Unfortunately, Feng Xue didn’t have any elements suitable for "Kong Yiji", and in the end, had to make do with whatever was at hand.

But since it was just making do, Feng Xue naturally used it as a test; when [Happiness] was integrated into "Kong Yiji", those few pages of cotton cloth indeed collapsed into a Black Ball.

"So it couldn’t possibly succeed in one go?" Feng Xue thought, and recast "White Light", but the result was still the same, transforming into a Black Ball.

"Could it be that too little [Identity] was put in?" Feng Xue had plenty of "[Identity] with Markings", but due to the greater the input of [Identity], the higher the likelihood of mutation, he had reduced the amount of [Identity] used. Now with this idea in mind, he immediately put it into action and introduced [Medicine] element into "Medicine".

The Twisting occurred again, yet what appeared before Feng Xue was not a Black Ball, but...

A glass bottle filled with red Medicine.