Martial Saint through Reading

Shen Yu said it’s on the innermost side, topmost shelf, far left; what Chu Ming wants to see should be the Mountain Scripture.

He looked up. The topmost layer was about the height of two adults, and the far left was at a turn in the shelf, beyond the reach of light.

The Mountain Scripture could not be casually leaked. Placed here, ordinary people would find it hard to access. Shen Yu had certainly considered everything thoroughly.

This height would be hard for a junior examinee at the academy to reach, but for Chu Ming, it was no difficulty. He flexed his legs, leaped, stepped on the shelf slot, and lightly took the hidden book from the dark corner.

Along with it, he pulled down another handwritten manuscript.

Compared to the other books on the shelf, which were dusty, the two in his hands were exceptionally clean. Clearly, Shen Yu had only recently placed them there.

By the faint light, Chu Ming lowered his gaze. The thicker blue cover bore the bold words "Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture", and the other was titled "Ancient Armor Scripture Analysis", the handwriting much rougher.

"Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture..."

Chu Ming’s eyes focused, his heart spirit stirred.

Mountain Scripture, Sea Scripture, Great Wilderness Scripture!

He opened the first page. The opening content was the same fragment as the paper page he’d found in the gallery yesterday.

Chu Ming continued to the second page, decoding it word by word.

Soon, he confirmed that this "Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture" was a strange book much like the Classic of Mountains and Seas from his previous life, recording all sorts of fantastical mountains and waters, humanities, geography, monsters, creatures, exotic races, and more.

After decoding the second page, he basically understood why Liu Sitong and Feng Yuan wanted to decipher this book.

Xirong County lay at the far west of the Great Qin Dynasty, bordering the Nine Hordes Kingdom—the country commonly referred to as the Western barbarian tribes.

This kingdom was founded by a union of nine tribes, savage and bloodthirsty, riding wild Barbarian Bulls into battle, which often raided the Great Qin Dynasty. The Tiger Armor Army in Xirong County fought these wars yearly, suffering heavy casualties.

And the Mountain Scripture offered detailed explanations about the Nine Hordes Kingdom: its geography, customs, preferences, culture, even their methods and tactics of war!

This was just a summary from reading two pages; if he could decode the entire Mountain Scripture...

Chu Ming flipped to the third page. The ancient armor script became more abstract; even with several special effects of reading, he could only barely guess half.

On the fourth and fifth pages, even decoding a short passage was increasingly strenuous.

"Ancient Armor Scripture Analysis..."

Chu Ming fixed his gaze on the handwritten manuscript.

The title alone showed this manuscript was about the ancient armor script.

He examined the cover: two bold black ancient armor characters stared back at him; beside them, entire blocks of explanatory traditional Chinese characters, and some simplified ones.

This showed Shen Yu had truly contributed to this "Ancient Armor Scripture Analysis"—otherwise, there wouldn’t be any simplified characters.

The two bold ancient armor characters he recognized at a glance—they were "Mountain Scripture", but the accompanying explanatory text made Chu Ming’s eyes shine.

"Ancient Armor Scripture Analysis" used "Mountain Scripture" as the base, and the subsidiary text explained how to understand the meaning of the characters through their shapes.

With an initial understanding, the next step was to analyze details—direction by shape, breaking the ancient armor characters down to their radicals and components, summarizing a method to decode them by mapping to traditional Chinese.

Chu Ming flipped to the second page: ancient armor script broken into radicals and components, then reassembled, and accompanied by explanations in both simplified and traditional characters.

He turned several more pages, committing a good number of ancient armor script radicals and common combinations to memory, thus grasping the manuscript’s method of decoding.

Simply put, the first step was, as before, judging the character’s meaning by its form.

Once he’d accumulated enough, the second step was to break down the common parts, arrange and combine them, and deduce the character’s construction rules.

But whether it was step one or step two, both required powerful imagination and deduction abilities; that was why Liu Sitong and Feng Yuan had set the Five Eyes Map challenge.

The ancient armor script and summarized radicals in the first pages of the manuscript were not overly complicated.

But when Chu Ming flipped into the middle parts of "Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture", the complexity of the script was unimaginably high—even with the manuscript "dictionary", accurately deducing them was tough.

Moreover, the manuscript wasn’t complete; even more characters couldn’t be decoded with the existing "dictionary".

Chu Ming scanned for a while, then sat cross-legged.

The manuscript wasn’t thick; inside were only the explanatory texts to be memorized. He flipped through page by page, soon finished, and committed them to memory.

Those radicals and components fused in his mind, forming new ancient armor script combinations.

After a moment, Chu Ming’s gaze grew ever brighter; he set the manuscript aside and took up "Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture", beginning his study.

With the ancient armor script’s character system in his mind, he looked again at the earlier pages whose meaning he couldn’t quite grasp, and those characters seemed to come alive, automatically shifting into their corresponding traditional and simplified forms before his eyes.

Third page, fourth page, fifth page...

Like water flowing downhill, in the dim room, only the regular sound of pages turning, nothing else.

Meanwhile, in Chu Ming’s mind, "Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture" characters intertwined and collided—ancient armor script, traditional, and simplified.

The characters seemed to react mystically—interlacing, colliding, where a stroke or a dot, or other radicals, separated and floated off the ancient armor script.

Below, the separated strokes regrouped into new radicals, and then into new ancient armor characters.

More and more ancient armor characters accumulated, gradually forming a clear miniature lake.

The Mountain Scripture forming a lake?

Chu Ming’s heart thought moved. All along, only cultivation techniques could form lakes, while scripture books at most formed fragments.

This Mountain Scripture, truly extraordinary!

He didn’t pause and kept reading.

The lake from "Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture·Mountain Scripture" grew larger; white fragments drifted across the lake, even making the nearby Tiger and Python Blood Refining Skill - Blood Circulation lake ripple.

"This is..."

Joy flashed in Chu Ming’s brows.

The Tiger and Python Blood Refining Skill - Blood Circulation lake started to ripple, signaling the Body Refining Technique would soon evolve, and it would be a qualitative transformation.

The two lakes echoed each other, as if an invisible bridge formed, the lake waters connecting and cycling through it.

As the pooled waters of the two lakes increased, the Body Refining lake’s surface moved from ripples to white bubbles.

In that instant, a sense of inspiration surged through him, and his panel changed.

[Mountain and Sea Tiger and Python Fierce Blood Refining Scripture - Strong Bone (Blood Activation Mastery)]

[Progress: 87/100]

"Strong Bone!"

The Body Refining Technique evolved from Blood Circulation Realm to Strong Bone Realm Technique!

Chu Ming’s eyes shone, Sword Gourd Spirit activated, inner vision turned within.

In his bloodlines, from eight Qi and Blood Power, he now had ten, and each was thicker as well.

And the eleventh Qi and Blood Power was condensing!

"Ten robust Qi and Blood Power, stronger than ordinary martial artists, total usable Qi and Blood Power about equal to twenty-five ordinary strands!"

After a round of inner vision, Chu Ming’s smile deepened.

"Mountain and Sea Great Wilderness Scripture..."

The changes weren’t over yet!