Exploring the Rules Hidden in Books

Although Feng Xue brought back many books from the real world, he didn't intend to copy them. Instead, Feng Xue decided to memorize them. This wasn't because he was looking for trouble, but because he didn't want to aid the enemy.

Okay, saying it's aiding the enemy seems a bit much; the real reason is that I don't want to cause trouble.

The vast majority of the books he brought back from reality were "reference books," which means that by learning and acting out the knowledge in these books, it is possible to generate Tag and professions.

In other words, if these reference books were to leak out of Feng Xue's possession, it could lead to two obvious consequences—

First, the gangs with more resources will acquire the books and use them as a basis to create Tag, and these beneficiaries are likely to become their enemies in the future.

If this point is somewhat alarmist, then there's a second one—

Will those who buy the book conclude from this that they possess a corresponding "book" in their possession?

Judging from Hom's words, the so-called False Book that were copied were different from ordinary False Thing books. Feng Xue suspected that this was for the same reason that as long as he put elements into the copied books, they would inevitably turn into black balls or finished Phantom Object.

Conversely, a genuine book is naturally more valuable than a False Book copy.

In that case, the value of a novel that cannot serve as a learning medium is naturally quite different from that of a reference book.

As for why she didn't just write whatever she wanted, it was mainly a test by Feng Xue. The basic ability system of Infinite City is cognition, and a novel she wrote on a whim obviously has no recognition in the outside world. But if it's a classic work, it's a different concept.

At this moment, Feng Xue simply wanted to verify how the amount of information contained in the novel she copied differed from the amount of information contained in the manual she copied, and how it differed from anything she wrote randomly.

At this moment, Feng Xue was very fortunate that he was a good student when he was in school. His teacher had a strong obsession with memorization, so much so that while other classes were required to memorize a paragraph, his teacher required the entire text to be memorized. And he did indeed memorize a lot of it.

He couldn't possibly memorize all of Lu Xun's novels, but he had a vivid memory of many of Lu Xun's short stories.

The Cthulhu-esque "White Light," the suffocatingly despairing "Medicine," the frequently used memes leading many to overlook the deeper meanings of "Kong Yiji," and the seemingly insane yet profoundly insightful "Diary of a Madman"...

Feng Xue sorted through the short but profound passages in his memory. Although many of them had become somewhat blurred, he still chose to write them down first.

As for the missing parts, he plans to fill them in from memory. Although with his writing skills, it is obviously impossible to perfectly replicate the words of literary masters, as long as the overall look is not too jarring, selling them should not be a problem.

So, little by little, he recorded the words he remembered onto the cloth, and suddenly discovered an unexpected delight—

His knowledge of poetry and calligraphy increased.

As his literary skills improved, some previously vague passages in his memory became clearer. With this recollection, it was as if he was filling in the gaps in a story, and his skills improved accordingly.

After Feng Xue had copied down about 10,000 words in beautiful regular script with a pen, she stopped writing.

"It's a pity. I can only remember these four pieces from 'Call to Arms.' I can barely remember part of 'My Hometown,' but even with improved skills, I only remember the part about Runtu when he was young. Even if I copy it down, I probably can't finish it in a short time." Feng Xue shook her head, took out her needle and thread, and carefully bound the cloth with more than four hundred characters on each page. Then, on the blank page that served as the cover, she used "tracing and blackening" to outline a few large characters—

Four Short Stories

When the last word "Ze" is completely blackened with ink, a book that looks like that is completed.

Because Cotton Cloth is thicker than paper, the book doesn't look too thin even though it only has thirty-odd pages. Feng Xue scanned it with her Golden Finger and found that it was no different from the secret manual she had copied and the previous Yu-Gi-Oh!- Gi-Oh! booklet. Although it could be regarded as a "whole", it was all Garbled Code and no elements were displayed.

But then he suddenly realized something: the Yu-Gi-Oh!! booklet, which he had entered elements into one by one, had not disappeared.

"Is it because that booklet wasn't even classified as a book?" Feng Xue wondered to herself. Instead of immediately trying to add any elements, she copied the book again, pondering the reason as she went.

Is it because there isn't such a book in reality? Or is it because it lacks some condition that it should be considered a true book?

Feng Xue thought for a moment and decided not to bind the four short stories together this time, but to bind them into four separate volumes and write their names on them. However, this did not change anything. The four volumes, which looked rather thin, remained unchanged.

"Hmm, maybe I could try adding elements related to the content?" Feng Xue recalled his previous successful Smelt experience and realized that being able to master the Butian Ge Secret Manual might just be a coincidence. However, he still didn't intend to give up. Looking at the four short stories, he activated his Golden Finger and began searching for suitable elements.

The most suitable element for a book is undoubtedly the book itself. However, unfortunately, Feng Xue does not have such an element. So far, among all the Phantom Object he Smelt, the only one with this element is the basic Sword Technique skill book that he consumed not long ago.

After much deliberation, Feng Xue identified a few barely acceptable elements: the "medicine" from "Medicine," the "madness" from "Diary of Diary of a Madman," the "light" from "White Light," and the "joy" from Kong Yiji.

Unfortunately, Feng Xue didn't have any suitable elements for "Kong Yiji," so she could only find something to fill the gap.

However, since it was just to make up the numbers, Feng Xue naturally used it as a stepping stone. After [Happy] was incorporated into <Kong Yiji>, those few pages of Cotton Cloth indeed collapsed into black balls.

"So it really is impossible to succeed on the first try?" Feng Xue thought for a moment and tried to Reforge the <White Light>, but the result remained the same, turning into a black sphere as before.

"Could it be that I haven't invested enough [knowledge]?" Feng Xue had quite a few "[knowledge] with markings" in his hands, but because the more [knowledge] he invested, the easier it was to produce a sudden change, he tried to minimize the investment of [knowledge]. Now that he had this thought, he immediately put it into action and invested the [medicine] element into the <medicine>.

The distortion occurred again, but instead of the black sphere, what appeared before Feng Xue was...

A glass bottle containing Red Potion.