Holding the bamboo slips, Professor Han felt rather embarrassed.
He had made a bold claim about the Sea, only to be proven wrong immediately afterward.
The reversal had come far too quickly.
It had caught Professor Han completely off guard.
He had never expected to encounter something like this—adding codes and obstacles to secret writings was hardly unusual. Professor Han had heard of plenty of such cases and seen a few himself.
Esoteric knowledge, after all. It was certainly possible.
Had there ever been a shortage of such things throughout history?
Many technical terms that raised barriers to understanding had been created for precisely that purpose.
Both Buddhism and Taoism had secret texts like these.
But encrypting the information directly?
To be honest, this was only the third time Professor Han had seen it.
This was proper cipher text.
He needed a cipher key to translate these writings.
Aside from information that absolutely could not be disclosed to outsiders, protecting anything else with a cipher like this seemed like overkill.
In other words, Professor Han knew they might have hooked a big fish this time.
Or they might come away empty-handed.
Of the two, coming away empty-handed seemed more likely.
So what were these Taoists hiding?
Professor Han examined the writing, clicking his tongue and frowning, a troubled look on his face.
"What's wrong?"
With a waft of cigarette smoke, Xie Shiba leaned his head over. Looking at the writing, he asked, "Is there a problem?"
Professor Han looked troubled. "There certainly is. This is cipher text. To decipher it, I'd need a key at the very least."
"That's easy."
Professor Han had thought his words would disappoint them, but something unexpected happened.
Xie Shiba, this "young man," said it was no problem.
"Fuck."
There was a bandit's roughness to