New Skills

The afternoon breeze brushed Xia Lun's face. The fresh air swept away the discomfort of reading the Evil Flesh Codex like a soft brush.

Xia Lun took a deep breath, feeling oxygen fill his lungs, seep into his blood, and rush to his brain. After a long while, he exhaled and shook off the fog in his head.

His gaze shifted to the Secret Art skill he had just acquired.

[Text Sense: Use the power of a Secret Art to sense the intended meaning of written characters. With this skill, you can accurately understand a certain number of characters through telepathy. If a passage has multiple meanings, this skill will also help you grasp what lies hidden beneath the words. The number of symbols it can translate depends on your Perception attribute and your Specialization level in Symptom Reading.]

[Daily uses: 1/1]

[Note: We do not exist in the real world. Rather, through the medium of symbols, we exist in an imagined world. —The ramblings of a metaphysician]

"This skill came at just the right time. It solves my most pressing problem. Now I won't have to worry about not understanding what I read." Xia Lun paused, then added, "From this day on, I'm no longer illiterate!"

His gaze moved to the black touchscreen phone, the thick leather-bound book, and An Introduction to Soul Curses, Manifestation, and Salinization on the wooden table.

His inability to understand the writing of this other world had troubled him for a long time.

First, he had gone to great lengths to obtain the fragmentary Prayerbook of the Drowned, only to find he couldn't read it. Then, after finding the Black Notebook at Camp No. 2, he had needed Gunner to translate it before he could understand its contents. The problem had never