Chapter 1302: Chapter 1302: There’s Sothing Inside the Stone
The clay tablet with a faint ghost energy reaction was placed on the coffee table in the middle of the living room. Half the family was gathered around, curiously observing this unimpressive object. anwhile, the fox that brought the tablet back seed indifferent, flicking her tail noisily a short distance away: she had just been ordered to take a bath, and with so much fur on her tail, it was difficult to get it dry, leaving her looking like a drenched chicken.
“Confird to have a ghost energy reaction, and traces of ghost energy crystal shards were found in the tablet material.”
Sandora scraped a tiny bit of dust from the tablet with her fingernail. Golden light shimred in her eyes as she entered high-speed analysis mode. This ancient item, buried for thousands of years, was painstakingly being deciphered under Sandora’s scan, revealing bit by bit its secrets. “I estimate there should be more ghost energy residues at the excavation site. The mixed crystal shards within might not have been intentionally added by ancient people. The strength of ghost energy crystals is extrely high, and primitive humans wouldn’t have mastered the thod of grinding crystals: besides, grinding ghost energy crystals is a downright suicidal act.”
To be honest, a few years ago, the appearance of such a tablet might have mobilized our entire family for so ti. But now, with the Empire’s expansion, there’s increasingly more for us to keep track of every day. Things like the appearance of Imperial relics on Earth or native tribes in another part of the universe fighting until their brains spill out are no longer considered “events.” Usually, we can resolve these trivial matters by sending a few agents or a task force; there’s no need for a group of Xyrin Leaders to mobilize. But this ti, we all gathered around this small unremarkable black tablet for one reason:
When Xiao Xue saw the clay tablet, she jumped nearly two ters high and then said it would reveal a colossal secret…
I think that naughty kid’s reaction was a bit over the top, but her professionalism regarding her prophet duties is quite credible. This clay tablet certainly isn’t as simple as it looks— but what on earth is written on it?
Although Sandora is knowledgeable and has out of curiosity learned about the history of Earthlings, she hasn’t seriously researched this subject. These cuneiform scripts, resembling tadpoles, seed like indecipherable gibberish to us.
“Qianqian, do you recognize this?” I nudged Qianqian’s arm, thinking that with her being an archaeologist’s kid herself, Uncle Xu studies humanity’s ancestral graves all day, claiming to be familiar with ten extinct ancient scripts from Earth— perhaps Qianqian might too…
“Is it possible?” Qianqian gave a blank look. “Do you think cuneiform is in the Xinhua Dictionary? Only a handful of people in the world can recognize this. When my dad says he understands ten ancient scripts, he’s just bragging…”
: “…Then shall we find an expert in cuneiform to help translate it, where Boundless Love can…?”
“What are you all looking at here?! Let take a look too!” Just as I was thinking about where to find an ancient text scholar to translate the clay tablet, a high-pitched girl’s voice suddenly ca from outside the circle of people. I was montarily stunned and then saw a head full of blond hair energetically squeeze between Qianqian and my sister, right in front of . It was none other than that goofy, conceited flat-chested… Lady Shining. Oh right, I’ve gotten used to calling her the nanny now.
The mont I saw this flat-chested little shorty, I was a bit dazed. Not for any particular reason, but because her presence at ho had gone unnoticed for quite a while now. Ever since she beca Little Baobao’s nanny, Lady Shining realized she couldn’t defy fate, so she decided to minimize her existence to show that she wasn’t defeated by fate but simply couldn’t be bothered. Her daily activity consisted of accompanying Little Baobao, always ready with toys, not involved in any family matters otherwise. As you know, we are a rowdy family, full of people bouncing around. In such a lively environnt, it’s easy to beco invisible if you’re a little quieter. Let alone Lady Shining, who was determined to beco the invisible person (mostly to avoid the embarrassnt?), had she not popped out today, I might have completely forgotten this troubleso young lady lived with us…
After lanting the existence of this flat expanse for a mont, I suddenly rembered sothing: cuneiform, Surian culture, Two River Regions, labor without pay…
“Jier, do you recognize these writings?” I waved to Lady Shining, calling her over and pointed to the cuneiform scripts on the clay tablet that looked like dried tadpoles.
If I rember correctly, Sister Jier’s true form is the King of the Uruk City-State from another world, and Uruk City is a pivotal part of the ancient sopotamian civilization in the Two River Regions— okay, I know we once went to a bizarre world, a world with a bizarre history, and Sister Jier was also a bizarre ancient heroic spirit, but overall, that world’s outer world and our Earth have about ninety percent similarity, considered high imitation parallel universes. I currently desperately hope the era Sister Jier lived in also used the sa cuneiform as the Surians here so that we don’t need to kidnap an archaeologist…
“You need this from the king?” Sister Jier’s eyes lit up imdiately, astutely sensing her mont to defy fate could be at hand. “Then please humbly let the king…”
“Pickles and pancakes for two weeks, or as much pocket money as Little Baobao from now on, your choice.” I gazed expressionlessly at the audacious nanny; she’s already doted upon at ho, occasionally bullied, but in the Empire, the identity of “Princess BFF” is practically half-imperial kin. Yet, this bad attitude remains unfulfilled: you can’t indulge her at this point.
Jier hesitated for a mont, pouted, and obediently held up the clay tablet, but she was quickly captivated by the familiar object in front of her, letting out a soft sigh: “My holand, and the mories of my lifeti as king… It’s truly troubling.”
I paused in silence and then stepped up to pat her hair. Although I occasionally bully this unlucky nanny, she’s beco a part of the family now. Hearing her reminisce about her holand and past life, I felt sowhat…
“As soon as I see this thing, I rember the days of learning to read and write,” Jier wiped one tear of nostalgia, “You don’t know how troubleso it was to write this. If given the choice, I’d rather never see this stuff again…”
: “…” So, all that emotion I just had was wasted?
“How’s it going, how’s it going?” Qianqian frantically bounced forward, “What’s written on it?”
“Wait a bit, haven’t got it all sorted out yet,” Lady Shining waved her hand impatiently. “These aren’t exactly the sa as the writings from my holand, seems the grammar’s a bit distorted, and many characters… seem to be an even more ancient style. But don’t worry, given ti, they can be translated slowly. For now, the first sentence is understandable, indicating that this clay tablet records a story from afar, seemingly related to mythology, and also here—”
Sister Shining said, pointing to the corner of the tablet where a few symbols were already damaged, possibly missing so text, but she could still discern sothing: “Clay tablet books can only hold a limited amount of text, so many lengthy books are composed of nurous tablets. At the end of each ‘page’, this marks the ‘page number’ and how many tablets make up the entire set. But sothing’s missing here; all it reveals is the whole clay tablet book should consist of seven parts, though you can’t tell which part this one is.”
It seems having Sister Shining help translate this thing was indeed the right choice; these chunks of clay looked like complete gibberish to us, yet Sister Shining could even discern page numbers!
However, now I’m a bit worried about one thing: the complete clay tablet book consists of seven “pages,” Heaven knows if the remaining six tablets still exist. This thing looks more fragile than Lilina’s lower limits and has been buried underground for thousands of years; having one preserved completely is already miraculous. Currently, most of the clay tablets unearthed worldwide by archaeologists are incomplete because they can easily end in total disintegration if not careful.
The most troubleso thing is the underground seepage… According to the fox’s description, she dug this thing out from a stone cave, and she didn’t see any other clay tablets nearby at that ti. Could it be that the other parts are already destroyed?
“Even I, the King, do not know what happened,” Lady Shining responded to my concern while frowning and studying the text on the clay tablet without lifting her head. “Books are precious—in my era, even this kind of clay tablet was regarded as a palace treasure because only a few nobles and copyists understood these texts, and writing a ‘book’ took a lot of ti and effort. So each such clay tablet would be stored in a ceramic book box, which was moisture-proof and sturdy. Like this… Fox, are you sure…”
Lady Shining was interrupted abruptly by the Nine-tailed Girl: “I am not a fox; I am the Fox Fairy Lord!”
I: “…” Actually, when others in the family call this Nine-tailed Girl a fox, she no longer bothers to refute, but when Lady Shining calls her that, she retorts imdiately. Indeed, it seems this silly fox can only bullies the unfortunate nanny now?
But Lady Shining isn’t one to take anything lying down either. If she was bullied by others, she might endure, but being bullied by a Nine-tailed Husky was intolerable, so she ignored the Nine-tailed Girl’s fierce deanor: “Fox, are you sure this clay tablet was just left lying around?”
“Of course,” the fox’s ears twitched as she felt a bit frustrated at not being able to even suppress a nanny. “My mory is excellent; I can still recall the situation inside that stone cave. This clump of clay was just lying flat on the ground with nothing around it, not even the kind of ceramic book box you ntioned. Plus, the stone cave looked too small to store anything…”
“It shouldn’t be,” Lady Shining raised her head and said with certainty, “this clay tablet records a story of a god, along with the nas of priests and elders, and has symbols of stars and rivers: these contents held significant importance in that era, and recording them would have been the responsibility of soone like a royal or priest, and this clay tablet should be properly stored in a lavish place, definitely not loosely scattered in a stone cave as you said. Also, there’s one more thing that concerns : I don’t recognize the god ntioned here. I traveled many places while alive, and throughout the entire world… uh, I an the entire Two River Regions, there was never a god nad ‘Sin’. The cycle of gods in that era was trendously significant. I may not have a good impression of gods, but I would certainly know about such matters. According to the customs depicted on this clay tablet, the ti when it was written doesn’t differ much from the period I rember. Who exactly is this god nad ‘Sin’?”
“You’ve forgotten one thing,” I reminded Lady Shining, “you’re from another world… Though there’s an Uruk City there too, the two worlds might have discrepancies. Maybe on this Earth, a god nad ‘Sin’ once appeared in the Two River Regions?”
Lady Shining responded with an “oh”, seemingly agreeing it’s possible. Then she pointed at the clay tablet: “Anyway, the content here is incomplete. I’ll slowly translate it. If you can manage to find the other clay tablets, that would be even better. With additional context, I should soon figure out the origins of the god ntioned.”
I patted the Nine-tailed Girl playing with her tail next to on the head, “Fox, you can still find that place, right?”
“Yes!” the fox replied confidently, continuing to shake her wet tail, leaving water everywhere in the living room: dealing with long-haired creatures after a bath is indeed troubleso. My sister finally couldn’t help it as she watched the water marks on the floor. She pulled out nine hair dryers from her Personal Space and handed them to the fox, who then had an epiphany, coiled her tail around each hairdryer, and began drying herself like a jet fighter…
“Tomorrow, take a few Imperial Agents and go back there,” I said casually, “and rember not to shake off water in the living room after bathing; use a hairdryer instead…”
The fox nodded amidst the hot whirlwind she caused, not knowing what on earth she heard…
The next day, after breakfast, the fox led over a dozen Imperial Agents and set off. These agents had been active on Earth in the past and had excavated all the Xyrin Relics found on Earth, so they were experienced. I estimated that by the latest that afternoon, the excavation team would have new information to report. In the anti, Lady Shining continued to bury her head in studying that black clay lump. It seed that although the clay tablet looked susceptible to erosion due to the humid underground environnt of thousands of years, eighty to ninety percent of the characters remained clear and distinguishable, possibly due to the Ghost Energy Crystal Dust mixed into the tablet. However, Lady Shining’s translation work was still challenging: the clay tablet indeed used cuneiform writing from the Surian Civilization, but ultimately, two worlds are two worlds. Even if information disturbances caused them to almost perfectly overlap in a certain historical period, there were still many discrepancies at the overlapping points. Specifically, those cuneiform letters differed slightly from those in Sister Jier’s mory, with differences in grammar and certain characters. She needed to reorganize and hypothesize for quite so ti to figure out the anings.
I suspect her reading those clay tablets is like the ti when I used to read physics books: I recognize basically every character, but didn’t know what they were talking about…
While waiting for the fox to send a letter back, I first received an urgent call from Shadow City.
The ssage was from Sivis, who found “sothing astonishing” among the Feiyali people’s pile of broken stones.
Imdiately, I brought along Sandora and Xiao Xue to the Command Center. I brought Xiao Xue because I thought her Prediction Ability might be useful—these days Miss Lin stayed ho to accompany her parents, explaining why she frequently took leaves saying she went to the Antarctic Circle to catch penguins (using random excuses like these), so I could only drag along Xiao Xue, the sowhat unreliable daughter, to run about. From experience, whenever we find sothing nobody knows the use of, bringing along the Prophet always seems to help.
The strange big stones unloaded from the Feiyali rchant ship were stored in a small Gnaku behind the Command Center. Having a warehouse next to the Command Center seed odd, but there was a reason: for a long ti, every ti we went out, we’d bring back so strange thing—sotis it would be a research sample, sotis an unknown substance, sotis confiscated equipnt from the Fallen Apostles. Over ti, Taville and Sivis simply built a bunch of temporary warehouses in and outside Shadow Fortress to store this junk—well, treasure. The warehouse behind the Command Center was used as a temporary workstation, where the stones unloaded from the Feiyali rchant ship were sorted and scanned on-site, with Sivis personally overseeing the work.
When we arrived, Sivis, a group of Assistant Technicians, and who knows which number Taville’s Mass Projection were waiting. The inner space of the Gnaku had been trendously expanded, with nurous Anti-gravity Platforms suspending various ore samples, and Sivis and her assistants were pointing at the largest one, with a circle of scanning equipnt spread around it.
“Is it this thing?”
Seeing the massive teorite sample before , I couldn’t discern anything special about it. It looked like an unimpressive iron-grey color, with a rough, pitted surface, and presented an irregular spindle shape, with an overall height of about five or six ters: looking like a small house in size.
I’ve seen more than my fair share of stones like this; there’s no shortage of them in the Asteroid Belt, typically rich in iron elents and other valuable space minerals. Inside, there might be ice crystals or a “core” ford from heavy tals. At first glance, I couldn’t see what could leave even the normally composed Sivis “astonished”.
“Inside the teorite.” Taville’s Mass Projection pointed to a half-man-tall fixed data terminal beside us. On the projection displayed in front of the terminal, I saw what seed like a dense core inside the teorite: this core appeared completely different in color and texture from the surrounding rock material, seemingly an encapsulated external substance.
“What’s this?” I curiously raised an eyebrow.
Taville and Sivis spoke in unison: “It’s sothing from… ho!” (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welco to co to Qidian (qidian) to vote for recomndations and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please go to m.qidian to read.)
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