Chapter 9

Under the lamplight, Lin Sheng's expression grew grave as he lowered his head and carefully examined the words he had just translated once more.

Then he repeatedly flipped through the dictionary to check whether he had made any mistakes.

Amid the rustling of pages, he checked three times in a row and confirmed each time that his translation was correct.

"If this really is a swordsmanship manual, then the book I saw in my dream..." Lin Sheng felt a stir in his heart.

He still remembered the book's pages, densely covered in clear writing, with almost no repetition.

If all of that was real—

A deep curiosity suddenly welled up inside him.

"That was clearly a dream. How could it be...? How is that possible?!" Lin Sheng pressed his lips together, lowered his head, and quickly continued translating the next passage.

The words he had memorized came in two sections: the first was the cover, and the second was a small passage in the lower-right corner. He had no idea what it was for.

Before long, with the dictionary as a reference, he managed to puzzle out the meaning of the remaining text.

Fortunately, the Guren Script wasn't especially difficult, and there were plenty of domestic experts studying it. Lin Sheng felt lucky that he had been able to buy a dictionary so easily.

When he finished translating, he picked up the paper and gave it a shake, then laid it flat on the desk. His expression shifted in a way he couldn't quite explain.

"What exactly is this..."

Lin Sheng's expression was complicated.

By now, he was one hundred percent certain that something was wrong with his dreams.

The white paper spread across the desk, with black characters written clearly on it, read:

"Level 2 Swordsman, handwritten by Ravel."

"Level 2 Swordsman. What exactly does that mean...?" Lin Sheng felt as if his worldview had been overturned like never before.

He fell silent for a moment, then quickly crumpled all the translated pages into a ball and got up, striding to the door.

The living room was pitch-black. His parents still hadn't come home.

He took a deep breath, hurried into the kitchen, and wet the paper ball under the tap.

Over the rushing water, Lin Sheng watched the writing on the paper ball blur rapidly as it soaked through, until it became a faint black mass that was impossible to read.

Only then did he toss the soggy paper into the trash, dry his hands, leave the kitchen, and return to his bedroom.

Without washing up, Lin Sheng took off his clothes and socks and climbed into bed.

He was eager to test it, to return to the dream from the previous night and memorize a little more, to see whether that book really was readable.

And would the nightmare from before continue tonight?

"I hope I can get back into that dream." Lin Sheng felt a little anticipation.

His earlier fear was completely gone. He closed his eyes, regulated his breathing, and emptied his mind.

Time passed, one moment at a time.

Lin Sheng's consciousness gradually grew hazy. In his half-dreaming state, he seemed to hear someone unlocking the front door with a key and coming inside.

There was no talking, no other sound at all.

Soon, footsteps sounded in the hallway, followed by his bedroom door opening.

Someone stood in the doorway and watched him for a while. He could clearly sense that the person was standing there, gazing at him with an inscrutable look.

"Mom and Dad?" Lin Sheng wondered, his thoughts muddled.

But before long, he didn't even know when the other person had left. His consciousness sank into sleep.

The gloomy manor.

Lin Sheng stood quietly in the hall, beside a fireplace with a half-length bust on its mantel. In front of him stood a rectangular dining table covered with an old tablecloth.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked around.

"I actually came back again?"

Lin Sheng found it hard to believe.

He had thought he would have the same nightmare as before. He had even prepared himself to fight back against it.

But unexpectedly, he had returned here once more.

"What is this place...?" Lin Sheng racked his memory, but couldn't find anything about the manor before his eyes.

"Dreams are supposed to be made up of places I've seen before.

"Most dreams are woven together from scenery, people, and things I've encountered in the past. But this place doesn't feel familiar to me at all..." Lin Sheng furrowed his brow.

He looked down at himself.

He was still wearing a gray long-sleeved undershirt. It was what he had been wearing when he went to sleep.

"Even the loose thread is here?" Lin Sheng raised his right hand. A loose thread had been caught at the elbow of his shirt, and it was perfectly reproduced here, too.

He paused, then immediately strode toward the study.

He had already explored the rest of the manor. What interested him most now was the study, especially the book lying open on the desk.

He quickly twisted open the wooden door and soon returned to the study he had left last time.

The study was arranged just as it had been before.

Two redwood bookshelves were packed with books. A stack of books sat on a low wooden table, along with a candlestick and a thick volume lying open.

Lin Sheng walked over, sat in front of the low table, and leaned down to examine the book closely.

The densely packed words and illustrations were all perfectly clear.

"So real... It's almost as if I'm not dreaming." Lin Sheng felt a chill in his heart.

To find out whether he was dreaming, he reached out and pinched the corner of the wooden table again.

The sensation was the same as before, as if his hands were wrapped in thick cotton. He couldn't feel the sharpness of the corner at all.

But to his surprise, the sensation this time was much more vivid and lifelike than it had been in his previous dreams.

"..."

He withdrew his hand and refocused his attention on the book in front of him.

The great swaths of Guren Script gave him a headache.

"My memory isn't that good. I can only memorize a little at a time. At this rate, how long will it take me to read one page?" Lin Sheng thought helplessly.

After considering it, he decided to ignore everything else and translate it bit by bit. Maybe he'd get the hang of it as he went along.

"Looks like I'll have to go back to my old line of work." In his previous life, he had worked translating ancient texts.

Fortunately, the Guren Script held a position in this world similar to that of ancient English on Earth. Though it was rather obscure, he could still translate the general meaning without too much difficulty.

Lin Sheng was quite practiced at this sort of work.

"I'll just treat it as learning another foreign language. If this book really is readable..."

Anticipation and curiosity surged through Lin Sheng, pressing on him like a spring.

He was incredibly curious.

What exactly did this ancient book in his dream record?

Could it really be about ancient swordsmanship, just as the cover said?

And if he could read this book, could he also translate and read the many books on the shelves, one by one?

Lin Sheng felt as though countless ants were crawling over his heart, making it tingle and itch.

Once he'd made up his mind, he began memorizing the first page of the open book once again.

It was the same book whose contents he had memorized last time. Now, he had opened it to the first page and was examining what was inside.

Time passed little by little.

By the light of some unknown source, Lin Sheng repeatedly recited and memorized a short passage from the first page.

Trying to memorize an entire passage of ancient text by rote without knowing what it meant was extremely difficult.

But Lin Sheng had done this kind of work in his previous life and had plenty of experience. Before long, using his own techniques, he had committed the entire passage on the first page to memory.