The time spent copying books always seemed to fly by. In the blink of an eye, another day had passed. The bookstore was terribly quiet. Ever since Zhou Guanyu left, it had rarely been this deserted.
Ma Feifei had grown used to having people around, so the sudden silence left him feeling a little out of sorts.
He glanced at the empty street outside, closed the bookstore's front door, and returned to the courtyard.
Yang Chengzhi hadn't shown up today. Maybe he'd thought Ma Feifei was only joking. Oh, well. It was just a little disappointing—he'd been such good material.
I need to hurry up and copy the books, too.
Several days had already passed, and Ma Feifei hadn't even finished copying the first of the three books the system had rewarded him with, The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
The book was only a little over a million characters long. By rights, copying it shouldn't take all that much time. Although Ma Feifei had spent his days out and about over the past few days, he'd continued copying books in the courtyard after returning at night. He didn't have much time, but he could usually manage three to five hours.
And yet he'd only copied a third of the book.
"I don't know why, but it feels like the longer I copy this book, the slower it goes." Ma Feifei thought back to how he'd felt while copying over the past two days, puzzled.
Before this, he'd copied his first book, Andersen's Fairy Tales, which was over seven million characters long, in only two days. But Half a Mu of Flower Fields, at just over half a million characters, had taken a day and a half. Now The Legend of the Condor Heroes felt even slower.
Could the books get harder to copy as I go along?
Without realizing it, Ma Feifei had gotten into the habit of trying to figure out the mysteries the Mysterious Bookstore presented him with. Gradually, he'd managed to work out a few patterns.
For example, there was the quality of the books. The books the system provided were all Blue Quality, while the ones he wrote himself were White Quality. Following that logic, there had to be qualities higher than Blue Quality.
Then there were the benefits a book gave its readers, which he'd simply call its yield. The yield of the first books wouldn't be very high, but as the books' quality increased, so would their yield.
Another thing was that different customers could get different yields from the same book. For instance, Customer A might read a book and get nothing out of it, while Customer B might gain something from it. He could more or less tell by how long a customer spent reading. Someone who read a book quickly would surely gain little from it, while someone who read for a long time could gain a great deal.
Take Zhou Zhuling, for example. She'd spent several days reading Half a Mu of Flower Fields, several times longer than anyone else. Though Ma Feifei still didn't know exactly what she'd gained from it, her complexion had been improving lately. It seemed she'd found something in the book that helped heal her illness.
So the longer someone spent reading, the greater the yield they gained.
"Then, by the same logic, could it be that the longer it takes to copy a book, the higher its quality?" Ma Feifei pondered.
If his idea was right, then even books of the same Blue Quality could vary in quality. A Blue Quality book that took longer to copy would be better than one that took less time.
Andersen's Fairy Tales and Half a Mu of Flower Fields were good examples.
"Then Zhou Zhuling's yield was actually even greater than Zhao Xiaodao's!" Ma Feifei couldn't help clicking his tongue at the thought.
Zhao Xiaodao had advanced six stages in a row! It was like she'd had cheats enabled. Ma Feifei had thought she was the customer who'd gained the most from his bookstore, but now he'd realized there was a hidden boss among them: Zhou Zhuling!
"Honestly, what a shame that you can't talk to me, system." Ma Feifei sighed.
If the system could talk to him, he wouldn't have to figure everything out on his own. He could just ask what Zhou Zhuling had gained from the book. There'd be no need to rack his brain over it.
The days seemed to be passing faster and faster. Time really was the greatest enemy of all things. In the blink of an eye, another weekend had passed, and Ma Feifei had a few fewer days left to live.
The Legend of the Condor Heroes had been completed and had been on the bookshelf for several days. It was Blue Quality, not the higher quality Ma Feifei had imagined.
Zhou Zhuling hadn't shown up since that day. A week had passed, and Ma Feifei found himself missing her a little.
He wondered whether that girl Zhao Xiaodao had reached Zhao State safely.
Huh! Why was he thinking about Zhao Xiaodao?
Yang Chengzhi, the one Ma Feifei had been worrying about all this time, seemed to have really forgotten what he'd said. He was nowhere to be seen. Ma Feifei had gone to the tavern again over the weekend, but unfortunately hadn't run into him.
The armies of Great Qin and Great Chu had been at a standoff for almost half a month, but they still hadn't fought. As more and more people joined the two sides, though, the atmosphere grew increasingly oppressive—so much so that even Old Man Wang's dog, Ah Huang, had been stifled to death.
Although the two countries hadn't gone to war, they were both showing off their strength.
Three hundred students from Great Chu's Zhenguan Academy, led by Xiaoyaozi, entered the fourth level of Nine Heavens Mountain and hunted four Level Six Spirit Beasts, shaking the region.
Great Qin's Mingdao Academy was unwilling to fall behind. Led by Qin Wudao, ranked first on the Dao Ranking, three hundred students entered Nine Heavens Mountain and hunted a Level Seven Spirit Beast, answering the challenge in kind.
Word was that the two groups later ran into each other in Nine Heavens Mountain, and Xiaoyaozi and Qin Wudao even fought. Neither could claim victory. But according to someone who'd been there, Xiaoyaozi's hands had been trembling behind his back after the fight, and he'd even spat up blood after returning. He must have been no match for Qin Wudao.
Though the two countries hadn't officially gone to war, clashes between their people were becoming more frequent. War could break out at any moment.
"The weather seems a little strange today!"
Ma Feifei opened the shop door and looked up at the sky. The sun was nowhere to be seen; dark clouds stretched as far as the eye could see.
Ma Feifei was now a Spirit Master at the ninth stage. From time to time, he practiced using his cultivation. He'd never taken part in a battle, but he'd truly felt the difference between cultivating and not cultivating.
Take the sky, for example. Before he started cultivating, Ma Feifei could only see what was on the surface. But now, he could see spiritual energy churning violently within the dark, cloud-filled sky.
Spiritual energy was the element of heaven and earth, the foundation of cultivation in this world. Without spiritual energy, there was no way to cultivate. It was said that in ancient times, when spiritual energy had been abundant, immortals had walked all over the Azure Dragon Continent, and Spirit Saints had been as common as dogs.
Sadly, spiritual energy on the Azure Dragon Continent had now been severely depleted. Historical records said that no one had ascended to immortality there for tens of thousands of years.
After establishing the Chu Kingdom, Emperor Chu the Conqueror had secluded himself to cultivate for five thousand years, hoping to break through the Spirit Saint realm and enter the Immortal Realm. Five thousand years had passed. Although there'd been no word that Emperor Chu the Conqueror had died in seclusion, in the eyes of the world, one of the three Hermits had surely perished.
That was because the Spirit Saint realm only granted a lifespan of about four thousand years, and Emperor Chu the Conqueror had already been over six hundred when he established the Chu Kingdom. Five thousand years had passed since then. If he was still alive, he had either become an immortal or a ghost.
If he'd become an immortal, the whole Azure Dragon Continent would have been in an uproar by now. After all, no immortal had appeared on the Azure Dragon Continent for more than ten thousand years.
So in this era, cultivators who reached the Spirit Saint realm were practically the same as immortals.
Normally, spiritual energy was gentle as it drifted through the air. There was only one possible explanation for why it was churning like this today: someone was controlling it.
Who could command the spiritual energy across ten thousand miles? Only a Spirit Saint could manage something like that.
"Could Saint Chu and Qin Sage be fighting?" Ma Feifei thought that was the only possibility. At once, he hurried back to the bookstore and obediently resumed copying books.
Out there, he was afraid he'd be crushed to dust before he even had time to react. After all, this was a battle between Spirit Saints, mighty beings capable of changing the color of the heavens and earth.
He'd finished copying The Legend of the Condor Heroes, and was now copying My Fair Princess Part One. The first part of My Fair Princess was only a little over two hundred thousand characters long, far shorter than The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
He'd be done copying it soon.
Ma Feifei had roughly calculated how long it took to copy My Fair Princess. It was about a quarter of the time it had taken to copy The Legend of the Condor Heroes, which meant their qualities should be more or less the same.
That was to be expected. In his previous life, Jin Yong's The Legend of the Condor Heroes had become a massive franchise, but Aunt Qiong Yao's My Fair Princess was every bit as popular. It made sense to place them in the same tier.
Just then, the long-awaited Yang Chengzhi finally arrived.
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