Although Feng Xue brought back many books from reality, he decided not to transcribe them but to write them from mory. This wasn’t him making trouble for himself, it was because he didn’t want to provide resources to the enemy—
Well, saying providing resources to the enemy might be putting it a bit strongly, the exact reason being he wanted to avoid trouble.
Most of the books he brought back were "reference books", which ant it was possible to generate labels and professions through learning from and playing the roles described in these books.
In other words, if these reference books were to be disseminated from Feng Xue, it could lead to two obvious outcos—
First, resource-rich gang factions could obtain these books, and on this basis, generate labels; these beneficiaries could very likely beco adversaries in the future.
If that sounded a bit anxious, then consider the second point—
Would those who purchase the books conclude that they possess a corresponding "Book"?
According to Huo Mu, the copied so-called Pseudo Books are different from ordinary Pseudo Artifacts; Feng Xue suspected this had the sa reason why his transcribed books would inevitably beco Black Balls or finished Faux Artifacts when the right elents were introduced.
Moreover, the value of a genuine book naturally would be higher than that of a copied Pseudo Book.
As such, the value of a novel, which couldn’t be used as a learning dium, was naturally starkly different from that of a reference book.
As to why he didn’t simply write fiction of his own concoction, it was mainly a probe by Feng Xue; the foundational cognitive system of Infinite City was Cognition, and a novel written offhand would obviously have no Cognition in the outside world, but it was a different concept if the work was a classic.
At this point, Feng Xue just wanted to verify the difference between the information contained in the novels he transcribed, the Secret Manuals he copied, and the things he wrote arbitrarily.
Feng Xue was very grateful that he had been a good student at school and that his teacher was obsessed with morization, requiring full-text morization when other classes only had to morize certain paragraphs. He had indeed morized a lot.
Naturally, he couldn’t morize long novels, but he had vivid mories of Lu Xun’s short stories.
The Cthulhu-styled "White Light", the suffocatingly despairing "dicine", "Kong Yiji", which was often used as a to the extent that many hadn’t thoroughly appreciated its deeper anings, and "Madman’s Diary", which seed like the ravings of a lunatic on paper but felt like it saw through the reality of the world...
Feng Xue sorted through the short but profound text in his mory; though parts of it were slightly blurred, he chose to write them down first.
As for the missing parts, he planned to fill them in from mory; obviously, with his command of writing, he couldn’t perfectly reproduce the words of the literary masters, but as long as the overall work didn’t look too incongruous, selling them shouldn’t be an issue.
Thus, he slowly recorded the text from his mory onto the fabric, suddenly discovering an unexpected joy—
His poetry and literature skills improved.
And with this improvent in poetry and literature, so of the previously blurred Chapters in his mory beca clearer. As he recollected, the craftsmanship improved likewise, as if completing a fragntary text.
After Feng Xue transcribed about ten thousand characters with handso penmanship, he put down his pen.
"It’s a pity, these four pieces are all I could morize from ’Call to Arms’. I can barely rember parts of ’My Old Ho’, but even with the improved skills, I mostly recall only young Run Tu’s part clearly. Even if I wrote it down, it likely couldn’t be completed any ti soon," Feng Xue shook his head, took out needle and thread, and ticulously bound each page, about four hundred characters per fabric sheet. Then on the blank page which served as the cover, he outlined a few big characters in a "red-outlining and black-filling" manner—
"Four Short Pieces".
When the last character "则" was completely filled in with ink, a book that sowhat seed the part was announced complete.
Because cotton cloth itself is thicker than paper, although there were only thirty-sothing pages, the thickness of the book did not appear too thin. Feng Xue scanned it with Golden Finger, but it seed no different from the Skill Books and Yu-Gi-Oh booklets he had copied before; although it could be treated as an "integrity", it was all gibberish with no elents manifesting.
Yet, he suddenly realized sothing—that the Yu-Gi-Oh booklet didn’t disappear after he had sequentially introduced the elents.
"Is it because that booklet was never considered a book?" Feng Xue mused to himself, and did not imdiately try to introduce elents into it. Instead, he copied the book again, anwhile pondering the reason—
"Is it because there is no such book in reality, or is there so condition missing to beco a true book?"
Feng Xue pondered for a while, this ti not binding the four short stories together, but individually into four volus, writing their titles separately. Nonetheless, that did not change any outcos, but the four seemingly thin booklets still remained unchanged.
"Well, maybe I could try infusing them with elents related to the content?" Feng Xue recalled the record of his successful Refinings, realizing that producing the Bu Tiange Secret Manual might just be a coincidence, but he still didn’t plan to give up. Looking at the four short stories, he activated Golden Finger and began searching for suitable elents.
The most suitable elent for the books, undoubtedly, was [Book] itself. However, regrettably, Feng Xue did not possess such an elent; so far, all the Faux Artifacts he had refined had this elent were just the Basic Swordsmanship Skill Book he had used up a while ago.
After much thought, Feng Xue found several elents that were barely appropriate: [dicine] to match "dicine", [Madness] to match "Madman’s Diary", [Light] to match "White Light", and [Happiness] to match "Kong Yiji".
Unfortunately, Feng Xue didn’t have any elents suitable for "Kong Yiji", and in the end, had to make do with whatever was at hand.
But since it was just making do, Feng Xue naturally used it as a test; when [Happiness] was integrated into "Kong Yiji", those few pages of cotton cloth indeed collapsed into a Black Ball.
"So it couldn’t possibly succeed in one go?" Feng Xue thought, and recast "White Light", but the result was still the sa, transforming into a Black Ball.
"Could it be that too little [Identity] was put in?" Feng Xue had plenty of "[Identity] with Markings", but due to the greater the input of [Identity], the higher the likelihood of mutation, he had reduced the amount of [Identity] used. Now with this idea in mind, he imdiately put it into action and introduced [dicine] elent into "dicine".
The Twisting occurred again, yet what appeared before Feng Xue was not a Black Ball, but...
A glass bottle filled with red dicine.
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