A Genius for Languages, Preliminary Mastery of Human Common Tongue

The caravan's heartfelt shift in attitude, filled with gratitude and goodwill,

was most efficiently reflected in Cui Ciyou's astonishing progress in "otherworld language lessons."

With the active cooperation and tireless, patient instruction of the guard captain, Carl, and her son Dak,

(as well as several other guards who had suffered lighter injuries in battle and were likewise filled with deep curiosity and sincere gratitude toward Cui Ciyou,)

combined with Cui Ciyou's own decent memory, perhaps somewhat enhanced by his soul transmigration, and his exceptional ability to learn and comprehend,

his rate of mastering this world's "Human Common Tongue" could simply be described as advancing by leaps and bounds.

His progress was so swift that even those native-born "teachers" were left somewhat dumbfounded.

Not only had Cui Ciyou successfully memorized the strange pronunciations and specific meanings of a vast number of common words in a short time,

more importantly, he gradually began to keenly understand and grasp some of this new language's basic grammatical structures and internal logical rules.

By observing the order in which the otherworlders arranged different words when speaking, the subtle changes in their tones,

as well as the rich, vivid expressions on their faces and the various unconscious gestures they made to aid communication, he could relatively accurately guess and infer the true meaning of some structurally simple short sentences.

At first, he could only barely understand the simplest, most basic command words devoid of any complex emotion, such as "fire," "water," "go," and "stop."

Yet only a few days later, he could already roughly understand some short sentences with relatively simple structures that were commonly used in everyday conversation.

For example, when guard captain Carl assigned patrol duties each day, she would say to him or others, "Dak, guard, left direction,"

or, "Cui"—a somewhat comical imitation by Carl and the others based on the Chinese pronunciation of Cui Ciyou's name—"alert, rear area,"

or when handing out food each day, she would occasionally point to some food he had never seen before and ask in an inquisitive tone, "This"—pointing at some strange fruit in her hand—"tasty?"

Cui Ciyou had even begun taking the initiative to use the extremely limited otherworld vocabulary he currently possessed

to engage the caravan members in some very simple everyday exchanges that were halting but full of amusement.

For instance, whenever he needed water, he would take the initiative to point at the crude bark cup in his hand, which had long since been emptied.

Then he would look at guard captain Carl and say in a somewhat uncertain, questioning tone:

"Water (Aqua)... want (Volo)?"

(At the time, he was still not entirely certain of this word's precise pronunciation and usage as an expression of "need" or "want.")

Or whenever he occasionally saw the energetic young guard Dak using his rest time once again to diligently practice the swordsmanship of the "North God Style,"

he would imitate Carl's usual slightly authoritative tone and kindly remind him in a rather stiff voice with an obvious accent:

"Dak... slow (Lente)?"

He remembered that the word seemed to mean "slowly" or "careful."

Although the otherworld language Cui Ciyou spoke at this point still carried an absurdly strange accent that made people want to laugh,

and the many obvious grammatical errors in it were enough to drive any ordinary human of the Central Continent mad,

this visible, astonishingly rapid pace of language learning and improvement

was already enough to leave guard captain Carl and the other caravan guards utterly amazed.

Because of this, they increasingly felt that this mysterious black-haired outsider, who was always taciturn and never showed his emotions,

had an identity and background far more unfathomable—and even more... awe-inspiring—than they had previously imagined.

They believed Cui Ciyou was either the mixed-blood descendant of a human noble or a noble of another race.

Cui Ciyou, however, did not pay much attention to the complicated thoughts of awe and speculation in their hearts.

To him, the rapid improvement of his language ability

meant that his ability to obtain key information about this world and understand its basic rules and order was likewise rapidly improving in tandem.

This... was far more important and practically meaningful than gaining anyone else's awe or worship.

Like the hungriest and most focused student who had just stepped into an ocean of knowledge, he greedily seized every opportunity available to him.

From these enthusiastic otherworld "teachers," whom he regarded as "living dictionaries," he squeezed out as much basic knowledge, language, and important intelligence about this mysterious other world as possible.

Cui Ciyou mocked himself. If I'd studied this hard back then, I probably would've been Tsinghua or Peking University material. But could I even finish high school?

But I haven't touched a book in so many years. Even if I wanted to read now, there's nothing to read.

Books in this world seem pretty expensive. I haven't seen a single one with Carl.

Time quietly and swiftly passed amid this day-after-day journey full of hardship and tedium, as well as the language-learning process filled with novelty and interest.

Another three months passed.

During those three months, aside from following the caravan on its tedious daily journey,

he devoted all his spare time and energy to diligently studying and repeatedly practicing this world's Human Common Tongue.

With his extraordinarily powerful memory and logical analytical ability, along with the caravan members' enthusiastic instruction, which though far from professional was full of kindness and patience,

he finally... gained a preliminary yet relatively complete grasp of this world's most widely used official language.

Just as caravan captain Carl had told him with some pride during one casual conversation,

the language they were currently using was spoken throughout the entire Central Continent.

It was the most basic and widely used common official language for communication among all human nations and peoples: "Human Common Tongue."