Chapter 11

Lin Sheng was at a loss for words. He hadn't wanted to provoke the other guy, yet the jerk was still trying to feel superior to him.

"I know exactly what I'm doing and what I plan to do in the future. Brother Zhenyu, you should worry more about yourself.

"I heard from a classmate that they saw you paying a bill at the city People's Hospital with a girl. I wonder if that's true."

Lin Zhenyu froze for a moment, then his face slowly stiffened.

He'd thought he'd kept it well hidden, but Lin Sheng had found out—and had even brought it up in front of his father.

"Don't make things up!" he blurted, suddenly flustered. He was only nineteen and had little experience hiding his feelings. At those words, Second Uncle and Lin Zhounian immediately understood what was going on.

Lin Sheng shook his head inwardly. While the two older men's expressions shifted, he began questioning Lin Zhenyu, quickly laying out everything he knew. He even described the girl's appearance and clothes.

The truth was, he hadn't heard about it at all. He'd seen it with his own eyes at the hospital.

Leaving his flustered cousin Lin Zhenyu behind, Lin Sheng got up and left the living room, then quickly washed up.

He had no time to waste. Preparing for the college entrance exams and studying the Guren Script both demanded a great deal of time and effort.

There were few things that could captivate Lin Sheng this much.

Before long, a month had passed.

Lin Sheng had studied almost without stopping, and had finally managed to translate several important pages of the book.

To save time, he focused mainly on consecutive pages that contained illustrations.

He hadn't chosen those pages at random. He had carefully selected them according to the markings beneath the illustrations.

Each illustration showed a pose: a person holding a longsword and striking a particular stance.

The accompanying text mostly explained the illustrations.

After spending a long time deciphering the script, Lin Sheng had determined that most of the rest of the book was narrative. Only the pages with illustrations contained formal instruction.

That was why he had focused on translating them.

Flip.

Lin Sheng gently turned a page of notes crowded with Chinese characters.

Sitting at his desk with his brows furrowed, he remained absorbed in the translation.

"I've translated five pages in all. They're all pages with illustrations, and there isn't much text, so I was able to translate them much faster.

"I recorded everything in the Chinese characters I knew in my previous life. That way, there's no risk of the contents leaking, so it's safe enough. But the contents..."

Lin Sheng hesitated.

The illustrations he'd translated clearly showed a method for practicing swordsmanship.

He studied the simple drawings he'd copied.

The style, along with the accompanying descriptions, all focused on vital points and killing in a single strike. It was obviously no fancy showpiece, but a fighting technique meant for real combat.

"Would the swordsmanship from the book in my dream actually work? What if practicing it caused something to go wrong with my body? That would be a disaster."

In the first illustration, a person held a longsword and thrust forward with one hand. Arrows and annotations surrounded the figure.

It looked simple, but the key lay in those surrounding notes.

"More importantly, even though this world isn't as advanced with firearms as the one from my previous life, guns are still everywhere. Other than exercise, cold weapons don't have much use."

Lin Sheng frowned, then reconsidered.

"But the swordsmanship in that dream might have something special about it. The book also mentions ranks several times."

From the rest of his translation, Lin Sheng had learned a little about the ranking system mentioned by the book's author, the swordsman Ravel.

The book occasionally mentioned high-ranking warriors Ravel had encountered on the battlefield.

Those warriors had superhuman physiques, terrifying strength and speed, and wore enormous, heavy armor. They were practically walking war machines.

The descriptions of those battles overturned Lin Sheng's earlier assumptions.

He had thought the battlefields in the book belonged to an ordinary cold-weapon era. But the appearance of such extraordinary high-ranking warriors made him realize otherwise.

If the book's contents were true, then the high-ranking warriors in it might be real, too.

"Ravel mentioned that once a warrior reaches rank three, he can slowly train his body and improve his constitution."

Lin Sheng recalled.

"If... if all of this is true..." Lin Sheng swallowed.

He looked over the translated illustrations and text. No matter how he looked at it, the level of detail was beyond anything he could have imagined on his own.

The five illustrations formed a sequence showing a sword technique that Ravel the Swordsman had mastered and was especially proud of: Angry Strike.

"It's simple, but effective." Lin Sheng had never seen any comparable martial arts, but just looking at the illustrations, he could tell how fierce the move would be when performed as a fluid sequence.

The five illustrations were meant to be viewed in order, like frames of an animated sequence, together forming a single technique.

In the illustrations, the figure brought the longsword down in a diagonal slash from above. If it landed, the opponent would surely die on the spot.

Lin Sheng let out a quiet breath and closed his notebook.

"I'll try it tonight. I'll see what the other books contain, too. And maybe I should leave the manor and look around.

"If there's this much inside one manor, what's outside? What kind of place is it? Why haven't I encountered a single living thing after spending so long in the manor? It's always so dark outside the windows, too."

With all those questions on his mind, Lin Sheng washed up, changed, and went to bed.

He'd visited his grandfather at the hospital earlier that day. For some reason, seeing the old man lying in bed with a head full of white hair had stirred a feeling in Lin Sheng that he couldn't put into words.

It wasn't sadness.

His grandfather had never treated their family well, and their relationship was extremely distant. But whenever they ran into trouble, it was still his family that had been the first to offer money without hesitation.

Putting that aside, what Lin Sheng had seen then wasn't really a relative of his.

It was simply a frail old man, worn down by age and close to the end of his life.

The fragility of a life flickering like a candle in a storm had made his heart clench despite himself.

"Forget it. I won't dwell on it. I'll go into the dream tonight and see if I can leave the manor." Lin Sheng lay beneath the covers and slowly closed his bright eyes.

Within minutes, he drifted into sleep with practiced ease.

His consciousness blurred for a moment, then quickly sharpened again.

Whoosh.

Lin Sheng slowly opened his eyes and let out a long breath. Before him stood the redwood table, with the swordsmanship manuscript resting on top.

"I'm back."

He looked around.

He was still in the same study as before. There were no windows, only a single door leading to the living room. Two large bookshelves stood beside him, their red compartments packed with thick volumes.

Lin Sheng stood and examined the shelves carefully.

Last time, he'd taken a book from the upper part of the left shelf. This time, he decided to try the right one.

Without hesitation, he quickly pulled a book from the right shelf and flipped through it.

"Hm?" His brow suddenly furrowed, and his hand paused.

The cover bore a title, but it was completely blurred and unreadable. When he opened it, the writing inside was just as indistinct, with large swaths of text blurred beyond recognition.

Some of it was nothing but jumbled characters and lines.

Lin Sheng's heart sank. He quickly put the book down and pulled a large red-bound volume from the right shelf.

He opened it at once, only to find that the pages were just as blurry.