Wandering through the sea of books, the long, endless night passed in the blink of an eye.
Ye Qin had no time to worry about anything else. He hurriedly crawled through the gap in the window, and before leaving, he did not forget to hook the window handle with his tail and restore it to its original position.
But the books scattered across the floor could no longer be returned to where they had been.
After all, to be honest, as a snake, Ye Qin had no trouble pushing those books onto the floor, but putting them back exactly as they had been was indeed asking too much.
The librarian opened the doors and began tidying and cleaning. Most people were well-mannered and would not leave any rubbish in the library, so he only needed to clear away the dust. After that came sorting and organizing a few books.
When he reached the end of the bookshelves and saw the pile of books on the floor, the librarian was dumbfounded. "What happened?"
He clearly remembered that these books had all been put away, and no one had borrowed them. How could they have suddenly collapsed onto the floor?
"Could they have been blown down by the wind?"
The librarian looked at the windows around him. They were all closed, so it was impossible for wind to have blown in.
"How strange."
The librarian scratched his head, completely unable to make sense of it. After putting the books away, he simply assumed that someone had accidentally knocked them over and did not give it another thought.
As night fell and the library was locked up, Ye Qin slipped inside again with practiced ease.
During the day, he had found a place beneath the shade of a tree beside the library and closed his eyes to rest, returning here at night.
After the first time, and then the second, he quickly found his position. He was like a huge sponge, frantically absorbing and drawing in the knowledge around him.
Ye Qin was the only cultivator, and these ancient books contained no definite cultivation methods. They offered only a line of thought and a general idea, so everything depended on his own comprehension and constant exploration.
That meant he had to pool the wisdom of many sources. Only by constantly enriching and strengthening himself, with sufficient knowledge and insight, could he forge a cultivation path best suited to him.
Of course, not every ancient book was useful to him. After all, many of the thoughts of ancient sages were complete nonsense. They were not true cultivators, after all. Some of their ideas made perfect sense and originated from their insights, but in Ye Qin's eyes, now that he was an "insider," some of their other ideas were nothing more than wild guesses.
So he still had to sift through them, discarding the dross and taking the essence.
Ye Qin raced against time. It was no exaggeration to say that he could read ten lines at a glance. His gaze paused slightly, and he was soon drawn to an ancient book.
"Therefore, when divine things are born from Heaven, the sages follow their example; when Heaven and Earth undergo change, the sages model themselves upon it; when Heaven displays signs revealing good fortune and calamity, the sages take those signs as their model; when the Yellow River produces the 'Diagram' and the Luo produces the 'Scroll,' the sages follow their example."
"This is—'River Diagram and Luo Scroll'!"
Ye Qin immediately became interested and used his tail to turn the pages.
"The River Diagram emphasizes overlap, while the Luo Scroll emphasizes division; square and circle conceal one another, yin and yang embrace one another, and each serves the other."
According to legend, in ancient times, a dragon-horse emerged from the Yellow River in Mengjin County northeast of Luoyang, carrying the "River Diagram" on its back and presenting it to Fuxi. Fuxi used it to derive the Eight Trigrams, which became the source of the "Book of Changes."
In the time of Yu the Great, a divine tortoise emerged from the Luo River in Luoning County, west of Luoyang, carrying the "Luo Scroll" upon its back and presenting it to Yu the Great. Yu the Great used it to control the floods and subsequently divided the realm into the Nine Provinces.
The dragon-horse bore it upon its body, and the divine tortoise arranged it upon its back. Thus did the "River Diagram and Luo Scroll" come into being.
The circumstances of their appearance and the records concerning them were steeped in myth, bringing an indescribable mystery to the diagrams themselves. Even now, people continued to argue over them without end.
Some said they originated from Daoist alchemy and methods of nourishing life, while others said they were observations of celestial phenomena. It could be said that opinions abounded, with everyone having their own explanation.
The "River Diagram and Luo Scroll" had appeared extremely early, entirely out of step with the development of the time. Some even believed that the book was an object from beyond the heavens, a product of another spatial dimension.
Later generations also discovered that the Luo Scroll used the North Star as its fixed point, with the brightest stars in the nine directions indicated by the Big Dipper's handle serving as its markers. The numbers and positions matched those of the Luo Scroll exactly.
There was no denying that its origins remained a mystery. To this day, there was still no accurate explanation, unlike the ancient books Ye Qin had read before, such as the "Dao De Jing" and the "Yi Jin Jing," whose origins could all be traced.
The contents of the book appeared disorderly, yet seemed to contain endless transformations. The origins of Chinese culture, yin-yang and the Five Elements, and the arts of numerology were all encompassed within it.
Unlike other ancient books, the "River Diagram and Luo Scroll" was not recorded solely in words. It also contained many diagrams that held the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth, as well as the Eight Trigrams and the Book of Changes. Ye Qin found it even more difficult to read.
That was because he also had to comprehend the meanings contained within those diagrams. Neither could be missing, and the effort made his head swim and his vision blur.
Fortunately, Ye Qin had plenty of patience, as well as an entire night to carefully ponder the contents.
In modern times, the "River Diagram and Luo Scroll" was hailed as the universe's Rubik's Cube. It was said that if one could unravel the mysteries contained within it, one would also come to understand the universe's ultimate secrets.
There was certainly some exaggeration in that claim, but it was not entirely groundless.
The wisdom of the ancients was extremely extraordinary. They might not have understood modern physics, but take the astronomical masterpiece of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, the "Ganshi Star Classics," for example. It had perfectly recorded the arrangements of stellar regions light-years away. The stellar regions detected by modern astronomers' space telescopes were not even as accurate or detailed as the standards recorded in the "Ganshi Star Classics." They even had to consult the ancient "Ganshi Star Classics" for study and reference.
What kind of wisdom was that?
Therefore, Ye Qin had never dared to underestimate the ancients and had benefited greatly from their works.
"No wonder this is called a wondrous book. It truly lives up to its reputation. The Book of Changes originating from the River Diagram and Luo Scroll is not without reason, and it also has close connections with the Twenty-Eight Mansions and the Twelve Zodiac Signs."
"The path of cultivation is also closely connected with the Taiji, the Eight Trigrams, the Book of Changes, the Six Jia, the Nine Stars, Feng Shui, and so on. The origins of all these can be traced back to the River Diagram and Luo Scroll."
Before he knew it, another night had passed, and Ye Qin left with a heart full of emotion.
He had pushed those books down from the shelves with his head, but he could not push them back up, so he could only leave them piled on the floor as before.
Ye Qin could only silently apologize in his heart.
That morning, after the library administrator came to work and once again saw the pile of books on the floor, he was utterly bewildered.
The librarian stared wide-eyed, dumbfounded. "What in the world is going on!"
Although the books scattered this time were not exactly the same, they were mostly in the same places as before, as if they were particularly fond of this spot.
If someone had really knocked them over by accident, how could they have made the same mistake again and again? Moreover, after the incident the previous day, he had paid special attention to the area. No one had come here at all.
Then what on earth was the reason these books had been spread across this place?!
The first time could be called a coincidence, but the second time was already impossible to explain.
Could there be a thief?
The librarian checked the inventory. Aside from the books that had been loaned out, every book was recorded in the register, and none were missing.
Moreover, he took a rough look and found that the books scattered on the floor yesterday and today were all ancient books written in classical Chinese—obscure and difficult to understand. Even if someone wanted to steal books, they would not steal these.
Besides, they were all later reproductions rather than the originals. Although they looked ancient and elegant, they had all been artificially aged and were not worth much money at all.
Surely the perfectly ordinary library had not suddenly become haunted.
(End of chapter)