The booklet Zhang Yu picked up at this moment was precisely the one he had read in his youth, the first book he had encountered when he began learning the natives' language.
He turned to a certain page and saw an ink-dot mark he had made back then.
Lined up beside this book were several similar volumes, all explaining how to translate the natives' writing. It was clear that the assistant instructor who had arranged these books had understood a little of it as well.
Apart from these, the rest were numerous thick books made of bark. Yet it was impossible to understand them merely by relying on the translation booklets on the shelves.
Though the bark books appeared to contain nothing but pictures, what they conveyed included not only meaning and pronunciation, but also all manner of corresponding allusions and contexts. The same expression could mean something entirely different in another setting.
For an ordinary person to read them, they would need meticulous, long-term training and a suitable language environment before they could learn them.
Even then, one could not call it mastery. After all, these books had been recorded by supernatural priests for the purpose of communicating with gods. The written language they used was not the same as that used in everyday conversation, making it all the more intricate and obscure.
After leafing through a few more volumes, he swept his gaze around. The enormous bookshelves were stuffed to the brim with books, and going through them one by one would not be easy.
For someone at his level, he could take everything in with a single glance. Yet he had no intention of doing so.
His adoptive father had likely stood at a very high level. Unless he personally turned through some things, even he could