Chapter 11

Lin Sheng was speechless. He had no desire to provoke the other party, yet this guy was still trying to find a sense of superiority at his expense.

"I know exactly what I'm doing and what I plan to do in the future. Brother Lin Zhenyu should worry more about himself. I heard from a classmate that they saw you paying bills for a girl at the City People's Hospital. I wonder if that's true?"

Lin Zhenyu's expression froze, and then, in a flash, he slowly stiffened. He had assumed his actions were well-hidden, never expecting Lin Sheng to find out—and to bring it up right in front of his father.

"Don't talk nonsense!" He grew anxious. Being only nineteen and lacking composure, his outburst immediately tipped off his second uncle and Lin Zhounian.

Lin Sheng shook his head internally. Taking advantage of the two elders' shifting expressions as they began to interrogate Lin Zhenyu, he spilled everything he knew, even down to the girl's appearance and how she was dressed. To be blunt, he hadn't just heard it; he had seen it with his own eyes at the hospital.

Leaving his cousin Lin Zhenyu in a chaotic mess, Lin Sheng rose and left the living room to quickly wash up. He had no time to waste; his college entrance exam review materials and the study of the Guren Script required a massive amount of time and energy.

Rarely was there anything that could fascinate Lin Sheng to this degree.

Soon, as time passed, a month went by. Lin Sheng had studied almost without pause, finally managing to translate the important pages of that book. To save time, he had primarily selected pages that contained continuous sequences of illustrations. These sections weren't chosen at random; he had carefully screened them according to the markings beneath the diagrams.

Each illustration depicted a posture: a person holding a longsword, striking a pose. The corresponding text served primarily as an explanation for the diagrams. After a long period of identification, Lin Sheng determined that most of the book was narrative, and only the pages with illustrations contained formal, instructional text. This was the key reason he focused his translation efforts on those pages.

Rustle.

Lin Sheng gently flipped past his notebook, which was crammed with various Chinese characters. He sat at his desk, brows furrowed, still immersed in the translated content.

"I've finished translating five pages in total. They are all pages with illustrations; there isn't much text, so the translation speed was much faster. I used the Chinese characters from my past life to record them, so there's absolutely no risk of a leak. It's safe enough, but this content..."

Lin Sheng felt a flicker of hesitation. The translated diagrams were clearly a method for practicing swordsmanship. He stared at the simple patterns he had copied. The style, the form, and the accompanying text all described vital points and killing blows. One look was enough to tell that these weren't just for show; they were combat techniques meant for life-or-death struggles.

Could the swordsmanship from the book in my dream actually be real? If I practice it and something goes wrong with my body, that would be a disaster.

In the first diagram, a person held a longsword and thrust forward with one hand. There were many arrows and text annotations around the edges of the figure. It looked simple, but the core lay in those surrounding notes.

"More importantly, in this society, although it's not as advanced in thermal weapons as my past life, firearms are rampant. Aside from exercising the body, cold weapons don't really have much use." Lin Sheng frowned, then had a change of thought. "However, this swordsmanship from the dream might have some unique properties. And there's the matter of the 'levels' mentioned repeatedly in the book."

From his subsequent translations, Lin Sheng had learned a little about the ranking system mentioned by the author, the swordsman Ravel. The book occasionally mentioned high-level warriors Ravel had encountered on the battlefield. Those high-level warriors possessed strong, superhuman physiques, terrifying strength and speed, and wore heavy, massive armor—they were essentially war machines.

Those descriptions of the battlefield completely overturned Lin Sheng's previous assumptions. He had originally guessed that the battlefield in the book was just a standard era of cold weapons, but the appearance of such exaggerated high-level warriors made him realize the truth. If the content of that book was real, then those high-level warriors might be real as well.

"Ravel mentioned that when a warrior reaches level three or higher, they can slowly temper their physique and improve their constitution," Lin Sheng recalled. "If... if all of this is true..." Lin Sheng swallowed hard.

He flipped through the illustrated text he had translated. The level of detail, no matter how he looked at it, didn't seem like something he could have imagined. There were five diagrams in total, which, when connected, formed the most prized sword technique of the swordsman Ravel: Angry Strike.

"A simple, yet very effective move." Although Lin Sheng had never seen martial arts before, looking at the diagrams, he could feel how fierce the move would be when executed in sequence. The five diagrams were like a moving picture; together, they formed a single technique. In the illustrations, the figure swung the longsword from top to bottom in a diagonal slash toward the opponent. If it landed, the result would undoubtedly be instant death.

Lin Sheng let out a soft breath and closed the notebook in front of him. "I'll try it out tonight to see what the other books contain. Besides, perhaps I should leave the manor and go out to take a look."

If a single manor held so many things, then what about the outside? What kind of place was the outside, really? Why hadn't he encountered a single living thing despite being in the manor for so long? And why was it always so gloomy outside the window?

Carrying a heap of questions, Lin Sheng washed up, took off his clothes, and went to bed to rest.

He had visited his grandfather at the hospital earlier that day. For some reason, seeing his grandfather lying on the hospital bed with a head full of white hair left Lin Sheng with an indescribable feeling in his heart.

It wasn't sadness.

His grandfather had actually treated their family very poorly, and the bond between them was extremely thin. Yet, whenever real trouble arose, his family was still the first to pay without hesitation.

Setting that aside, what Lin Sheng had seen at that moment wasn't really his own relative.

It was merely a broken, elderly man nearing the end of his days.

The fragility of that life, flickering like a candle in the wind, made his heart tighten involuntarily.

Forget it, don't think so much. I'll go into my dream today and see if I can try to leave that manor. Lin Sheng lay under the covers, his bright eyes slowly closing.

Within a few short minutes, he entered the dreamscape with practiced ease.

After a brief blur, his consciousness quickly sharpened once more.

Hoo.

Lin Sheng slowly opened his eyes and let out a long breath. He looked at the mahogany low table in front of him and the sword manual resting upon it.

I'm back in.

He looked left and right.

He was still in the same study as before; there were no windows, only a single door leading to the living room. Beside him stood two large bookshelves, their red compartments filled with thick, heavy volumes.

Lin Sheng stood up and examined the bookshelves carefully.

He had pulled a book from the upper part of the left shelf before; this time, he intended to try the right one.

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

"Hm?" His brows suddenly furrowed, and his movements paused.

The cover of the book in his hand had writing on it, but it was completely blurred and illegible. When he opened it, all the text inside was also a vast, blurry mess.

Some pages were nothing more than chaotic 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 flipped through it rapidly, only to find that the pages inside were, surprisingly, just as blurry.