The club applications delivered to Siles formed a thick stack.
Siles roughly counted them; there were about a hundred pages. He needed to select no more than twenty students from them to join his club.
He filtered through them one by one, first looking at the names and pulling out the ones he found familiar. This allowed him to fish out Herman Grove, Angela Clayton, Annette Melvin—a student who was always active in answering questions during the specialized elective courses—as well as Kellogg and a few others.
His two apprentices had also applied for his club, so Siles naturally pulled their forms out as well.
While noticing Angela’s application form, Siles also saw that placed together with it was a form with identical handwriting, bearing the name Millicent Austin.
This name made Siles recall for a moment. He remembered that this was Angela Clayton’s companion, who always sat with her during the specialized elective classes.
So Siles took this application form out too and placed it together with Angela’s.
That made seven people already.
Siles didn’t want to choose too many; his ultimate goal was around fifteen people.
He picked and chose among the remaining application forms.
He noticed a few names that belonged to his original body’s academic juniors. A few months had passed, and the former senior student Siles Noel had transformed into a professor of the college.
Yet they were still toiling away as research scholars.
Siles took out these application forms—five in total.
This left three available spots.
Siles thought for a moment and decided to choose some students from different majors, ultimately settling on two students from the Medical School and the School of Theology, respectively.
For the final spot, Siles pondered briefly and just pulled a random sheet from the stack of papers.
He took a look: College of Literature and History, Mist Era Literature major, a student named Doreen Lucas.
Siles placed this application form together with the others and tidied them up. He copied these fifteen names into his notebook to avoid forgetting them, then placed the application forms into a folder, planning to deliver them to Professor Atlee tomorrow afternoon.
Afterward, he took out the reading notes of his two apprentices, Dorothea and Jules.
Just as he had expected, the two apprentices with entirely different personalities ultimately produced vastly different assignments.
Dorothea’s reading process was more proactive and aggressive. She took the initiative to pick out some books she deemed more useful to read first, and the content of her reading notes carried a strong personal flair.
Jules, on the other hand, followed the prescribed order, reading sequentially according to the book list Siles provided, and his reading notes were written somewhat rigidly: book title, author, reading passages, excerpts, reflections, and so on.
Siles couldn’t say he liked or disliked either approach. As a professor, his duty was to cultivate these young students.
He carefully read the reading notes of these two apprentices, made corrections and annotations, and explicitly wrote down some of his own thoughts. These contents would be discussed during their meeting next Thursday, which was still a while away, but Siles intended to finish it early.
After all, he didn’t know if he would be extremely busy in the coming week.
Next Monday, the two apprentices would probably send over more reading notes. He hoped to resolve as many as possible beforehand.
Around nearly eight o’clock in the evening, Siles finished reading the two apprentices’ reading notes.
He stood up and walked to the window to gaze into the distance and relax a bit. He cast his eyes down and saw the marionettes placed on the windowsill, inexplicably feeling a sense that he was gradually leaving his own traces in this world.
These were items he had bought; they seemed useless, but they were indeed things he liked. Such items and ornaments decorated his window and room, and seemed to, in some way, decorate his soul as well.
Siles smiled faintly and reached out to stroke the wooden box. Six ugly-cute marionettes, he thought.
He rested for twenty minutes, doing nothing, just staring blankly out the window idly. Occasionally, he lamented that it would be great if he could have a cup of iced milk tea to soothe this hot weather.
After a while, he returned to his desk, tidied up the messy papers on it, then unfolded the materials sent by Bunyan and Kellogg and began to read them carefully.
He first looked at the works of the past wandering bards and the present Eulogists of Foreign Lands that Kellogg had helped collect.
He was particularly deeply impressed by one of the poems.
“This world is empty, as silent as my soul.
“Distant graves cover cold ashes and my love.
“She must have walked alone toward distant mountains and wilds,
“She must have died in a foreign land. Died in my soul.
“This world is lonely and silent. Like me. Like her.”
The reason Siles was deeply impressed by this poem was that he had once flipped through that Report on the Population Strata of Kansas City in the library and had seen similar works in it—did they come from the same poet?
A dead true love, a silent foreign land, a lonely grave.
Siles could confirm that these works, or rather, these wandering bards and Eulogists of Foreign Lands, were indeed believers of Ligadia, the God of Leaving Home and Journeys. But why did their works always feature imagery… beyond just distant places and foreign lands?
Graves? Graveyards? Dead lovers?
He didn’t know Ligadia to be associated with death.
Siles felt deeply perplexed. However, in the works of those wandering bards, such imagery and related descriptions were quite common.
Yet, in the works of those… who now called themselves Eulogists of Foreign Lands, this imagery had disappeared. They began to reminisce about their homeland, miss their families, and describe the loneliness and exhaustion of being in a foreign land, but the true loves dying in foreign lands and the graves in foreign lands penned by the wandering bards were uniquely missing.
Siles thought thoughtfully: Which side is closer to Ligadia?
The elements in the works of the Eulogists of Foreign Lands looked purer and more singular, but Siles felt that the ancient wandering bards more vividly conveyed a portion of Ligadia’s power.
…Which is to say, as time passed, the believers of the gods actually gradually drifted away from the gods they worshipped.
It wasn’t just the believers of Ligadia, but others too. For example, the believers of Brancani were researching torture; would He feel gratified by this?
Probably not.
After losing their true gods, the so-called believers were only believing in themselves, or perhaps in other humans.
And their madness was, to a large extent, related to the power system of this world. Formless power and pollution from the gods permeated everywhere, transmitting to people’s surroundings through different forms.
Ordinary people might not understand these things at all—for example, Kellogg completely didn’t understand the secrets of the Eulogists of Foreign Lands.
And the Revelators, they might understand some of it, but it seemed to be of no avail. After all, they could indeed eliminate the humans affected by the pollution, but could they eliminate the sources of this pollution?
At this moment, some vague thoughts and inspirations flashed through Siles’s mind, but ultimately, they just faded into silence.
These works Kellogg helped collect were excellent supporting evidence. There had never been works by Ligadia’s believers in Age of Silence literature, but now, this gap seemed capable of being filled.
This counted as a good piece of textual research and discovery, perfectly usable to meet the College of Literature and History’s academic requirements for Siles this year. Of course, just these few works would probably not be enough.
The thesis related to literary history ultimately had to be based on literature, analyzing its origins, evolution, development, concepts, forms, and so on.
Outside of the thesis, Siles was extremely interested in this group of Ligadia’s believers, including their power and lives, but within the thesis, he could only discuss the quality of their works in a strictly businesslike manner.
This made Siles feel a subtle sense of absurdity. He felt as if he had invisibly dissolved the… arrogant status of divine power. Because, when all was said and done, it was nothing more than something that had to be dismantled, discussed, and evaluated in a thesis.
Thinking this, Siles properly put away Kellogg’s notebook.
After finishing reading the materials sent by Bunyan, and after conversing with Alfonso, Siles felt he could begin conceptualizing the title and structure of his thesis.
Although it was only August right now, the journals he wanted to be published in were all monthlies, and every December, these journals would suspend publication to organize the year’s theses and compile them into an anthology.
Therefore, he only had the three months of September, October, and November as opportunities. Thinking about it carefully, it wasn’t all that relaxing.
Everyone is rushing their work at the end of the year… Siles sighed.
This unspoken rule was something the former Professor Bright had once complained to him about. At the time, Siles Noel was still a student, and upon accidentally hearing his mentor talk about this kind of end-of-year rush, his eyes widened in surprise.
And the short, stout Professor Bright had said angrily, “What else did you think? Siles. A university professor is just a slightly more respectable job, nothing more.”
The current Siles deeply agreed.
He then took out the materials sent by Knight Commander Bunyan.
The scribe Bunyan found had neat and elegant handwriting, which was pleasing to the eye. Siles sorted them out a bit and first read the contents that were recorded somewhat messily.
They mentioned quite a few things similar to the contents in the Kansas City investigation report.
For example, the wandering bards of the past were highly xenophobic; apart from drinking in taverns, they hardly interacted with the city’s residents. Of course, singing loudly when drunk and dancing with the residents was a different matter.
Another example was that indeed no one had ever seen a wandering bard establish a stable, intimate relationship with the opposite sex; they were always completely alone, or mixed together with other wandering bards.
Of course, some suspected whether they were homosexuals or had other eccentric aesthetic fetishes, but from the occasional remarks revealed by the wandering bards and their works, they were simply infatuated with a bizarre, solitary state.
Furthermore, the destitution of the wandering bards was known to all, yet they still loved to drink. After drinking, they would either quietly leave the tavern or make a huge racket, muttering about their poetry and their motherland.
Their attitude towards the gods exhibited a subtle polarization. On one hand, toward those gods who had already fallen or had no news anymore, they showed an extremely disdainful attitude, similar to the residents of the Sardinian Empire at the time.
But on the other hand, toward some gods who were still in the world at the time, and toward divine power, they held immense reverence, as if terrified that saying something disrespectful would offend Them.
This attitude earned the wandering bards the title of “mad poets.” But they seemed not to care much about this matter.
In one of the excerpts, Siles saw a record regarding the ultimate fate of the wandering bards.
In that report from Kansas City, the person writing the report had simply and contemptuously believed that this group of thirty or so wandering bards would ultimately die in starvation and poverty.
And the truth was exactly that.
This batch of wandering bards arrived in different regions of the Sardinian Empire roughly two hundred years after its establishment. And a hundred years later, they vanished without a trace from the Sardinian Empire once again.
The Age of Silence lasted for a total of six hundred years. The Sardinian Empire was established in the hundredth year of the Age of Silence and collapsed with a crash at the end of the Age of Silence. The life of this empire lasted for nearly five hundred years.
In other words, in the three hundredth year of the Age of Silence, the wandering bards successively appeared in the Sardinian Empire; in the four hundredth year, the wandering bards disappeared.
It wasn’t until the arrival of the Era of Mist, two hundred years after the wandering bards vanished, that different wanderers arrived in the newly established nation of Kansas. Some of them seemed to follow the traditions of the wandering bards and took over their roles.
But by this time, they had already begun calling themselves Eulogists of Foreign Lands, rather than the original title of “wandering bards.”
Siles pondered over this process.
He recalled that in some rumors, Ligadia had once sheltered a tribe gathered with foreigners and wanderers. Were those wandering bards who initially appeared in the Sardinian Empire the descendants of this tribe?
However, he didn’t know exactly when Ligadia had fallen. By the time the Age of Silence arrived, Ligadia was already silent and traceless. If Ligadia had fallen in the even earlier Shadow Era, then related records would probably be extremely scarce.
Siles shook his head, not continuing to ponder matters related to Ligadia. He stacked these material papers neatly, then picked up another stack of materials.
These were excerpts from Karacoc’s diary.
“…
“March 20th.
“Went drinking at Jon’s Tavern today. The landlady wanted to kick me out. Stinking bitch, so what if I don’t have a few stinking coins? Luckily some poet helped me out.
“He said he was a poet himself, and even asked me what the date was today. I figure he drank too much and even forgot the days. I know these poets are all like this. I drank with him.
“Life is the same as always.
“…
“March 25th.
“These poets are really boring; after drinking, they just mutter about their poems. If you ask me, a rotten person like me wouldn’t be interested in their poetry; they should go find those rich young ladies or madams. Yet they always mix with people like me.
“…
“March 27th.
“A poet died. I helped them carry the coffin. They couldn’t find anyone else. It’s said several of them have fallen ill and are waiting to die. I asked them why they don’t go find a doctor; they said dying in a foreign land is their destined fate.
“Hah, I don’t understand the whiny nonsense they’re spouting. Anyway, I carried the coffin, and I can take this money to go drinking!
“Dying in a foreign land. This place is my foreign land too.
“My home is far away to the east of Kansas City. I can’t go back even until I die anyway. I am the waste and garbage left behind by life. That statement must carry a bit of what those poets mean.
“I’ve seen a lot of the world, met many fools and rotten people, argued and fought with so many men and women, and watched many men and women argue, fight, or do less-than-respectable things.
“None of these things mean anything to me. I was like an ant, thinking how beautiful my homeland was, but in truth, a cruel child could crush it with a single stomp.
“…I am that sole surviving ant.
“…
“April 9th.
“Gotten a bit familiar with a poet recently. Familiar means I can righteously ask him to buy me a drink. He’s quite a wealthy guy; I don’t know how he has money.
“(Note from April 20th) Damn it, I finally found out! This guy actually tells his love story to little girls! There’s actually this kind of way to scam money! He really is a fucking poet!
“…
“April 14th.
“That poet, the guy I said I got familiar with a few days ago. He’s a bit different from the other poets when he gets drunk; he’s always blabbering about his love story.
“I find it annoying after hearing it so much.
“He said his… well, to use his word, true love. He and his true love fell in love at first sight, but the woman’s parents disagreed. So they planned to elope. In the end, his true love (this word is really disgusting) fell ill while wandering and just died like that.
“The poet said he also wanted to die along with his true love, but he still had to bury his true love to let her soul rest in peace.
“I asked him, are wanderers still this pretentious? Since she’s dead, she’s dead, what’s there to bury? Just burn her to ashes on the spot and scatter them, wouldn’t that do?
“What I said was quite rude, I know that of course. But I had been drinking then and wasn’t very clear-headed. Sigh, writing one’s own thoughts in a diary is really not easy. I feel like I’ve been assimilated by them.
“And the poet replied to me that it was their custom.
“Custom? I really can’t understand. Anyway, the poet said he had already buried his true love properly. But I haven’t seen him earn any money, how did he have the money to buy a cemetery plot? A grave costs a fortune these days.
“If I die, I’ll definitely have someone just scatter my ashes. That’s just how it is.
“…
“April 28th.
“This place hasn’t been peaceful recently.
“But it has nothing to do with rotten people like us. We’ll rot no matter where we go anyway. Who knows, maybe the other side doesn’t want us rotting there either.
“The poet said my attitude is too harsh.
“What’s harsh about it? That’s just how the world is. If you don’t rot here, you rot there. People, well, they always rot after they die; I just started getting rotten a bit earlier!
“…
“May 29th.
“The poets’ situation doesn’t look too good. There weren’t many of them to begin with, and they don’t really interact with others. I’m only relatively familiar with one of the poets.
“Right, his name is Aldous Gershwin.
“I said this name sounds quite respectable, how did he end up like this?
“Then he started blabbering about his true love again. Bah, bad luck. Chatting with this guy means you can only drink with your head down; any single word can make him think of his true love.
“But he’s the one treating me to drinks anyway.
“…
“November 3rd.
“The weather is getting colder.
“The poet said he’s going to sweep his true love’s grave; he’ll be gone for several months at a time, making drinking less enjoyable recently. Charities have started distributing winter supplies.
“If you ask me, those gentlemen in the charities should take a look at the bridge arches we live under. What’s the use of a thin quilt? You need something thicker so the wind doesn’t leak through. But the places they sleep are different from ours. They even have women lying in their beds.
“Still have to dig out last year’s quilt, but who knows how many bites rats took out of it, or how many eggs bugs laid in it. I understand all this, but there’s no other way. The gentlemen hug soft women, I can only hug bugs. And the bugs even bite me.
“…
“March 21st.
“Winter had fully passed before the poet returned. I really don’t know where he went. When he came back, he looked quite energetic, as if his true love had resurrected.
“The poet said he was also going to welcome his destiny.
“It took me a while to understand what he meant by destiny. Their group of poets is destined to die in a foreign land.
“I really… I was so shocked I couldn’t speak. The poet gave me a portion of his money, telling me to go treat the frostbite on my hands and legs. This really is a kind-hearted poet. Yet he is going to die.
“I hope this won’t be the last time I see him. Come to think of it, we’ve actually known each other for two years.
“He is also my only… friend. Aldous. Aldous Gershwin.
“He died on a day when spring was warm and flowers were blooming.”
This was the last mention of the wandering bards in Karacoc’s diary.
Siles held his breath, only exhaling softly when he saw the last line of text, feeling a wave of complex emotions spreading in his heart.
Aldous Gershwin. It seemed highly likely that this was the author of those two poems mentioning the dead true love.
A kind-hearted poet but destined to die in a foreign land.
Siles allowed his thoughts to immerse themselves in that poet and his friend and his true love for a moment, then gathered his thoughts and began pondering the matters revealed in this diary.
In the materials Bunyan sent over, some pages specifically provided introductions to the excerpted books, including The Karacoc Diary.
The content of this diary covered the last ten years of Karacoc’s life spent in the Sardinian Empire. He stayed in Kansas City for about three years; during these three years, he met some wandering bards, though the vast majority remained at the level of drinking buddies.
Except for Aldous Gershwin.
The image and descriptions of Aldous Gershwin in Karacoc’s diary also provided Siles with a great deal of information, as well as dubious points.
First was, why were the wandering bards destined to die in a foreign land? Why was this their… “destiny”?
Siles brooded over this point.
He realized this might be the result of their faith in Ligadia.
However, in the conversations between Aldous and Karacoc, they did not leak their faith in the slightest.
On the contrary, some descriptions in Karacoc’s diary gave the impression that this behavior was a custom of Aldous’s hometown, including his actions of burying and sweeping the grave for his true love.
…So, do they really come from that rumored tribe sheltered by Ligadia?
This matter was also very hard to verify.
Secondly, it was about Aldous’s true love. Siles did not doubt Aldous’s love. After his lover died, it was also very normal for Aldous to bury her.
However, if those two poems Siles knew of were truly written by Aldous, it seemed a bit strange.
Why were graves, cemeteries, and graveyards mentioned so frequently in the poems?
Perhaps it was because Aldous constantly missed his deceased lover, perhaps that cold grave represented the despair of being separated by life and death, perhaps…
But Aldous’s description of the grave was: empty, distant. This seemed to not quite fit his emotional tone.
Siles pondered for a while, finding it hard to accurately describe this strange feeling.
At the end of their lives, they even solemnly hired someone to carry the coffins. Just as Karacoc said, they were already so destitute; why did they still maintain this custom and habit?
Dying in a foreign land, dying in a foreign land… Siles thought, it’s as if death is their ultimate destination.
…But isn’t the God they believe in Ligadia, the God of Leaving Home and Journeys? Could it be that what they truly believe in is Thaddeus, the God of Death and Calamity?
Siles shook his head, turning his thoughts to the final dubious point.
Karacoc said he was the last surviving ant.
What happened to Karacoc’s hometown? Did he encounter a catastrophe, which was why he left his hometown to travel far away?
From Karacoc’s diary, it could be seen that he was a well-educated person, even possessing some cultural background. Some of his laments carried a cynical, deeply disillusioned undertone.
What had he experienced?
He seemed to be a person of the Sardinian Empire, and his home was far to the east of Kansas City…
The reason Siles cared about this point was that Kellogg had once told him that the Duchy of Kansas was to the far west of the Duchy of Konst.
In other words, during the Age of Silence, wouldn’t the east of Kansas City, Karacoc’s hometown, be the past appearance of the land of the Duchy of Konst today?
How did Karacoc’s diary eventually spread to the capital of the Duchy of Konst? And when was this book published?
The first Archduke of Const was enfeoffed with this land due to his merits; that was at the end of the Age of Silence. A few years later, the Sardinian Empire collapsed with a crash, and the Era of Mist arrived when everyone was caught off guard.
…No, wait. Siles suddenly realized he seemed to have overlooked a piece of information he had known before but had carelessly brushed past.
When Brewer Darrow was describing his family archives to him, he mentioned the beginning and end of his family’s migration to Const. That was precisely the moment the Era of Mist had just arrived.
He said that at the time, the fog dissipated, and the land of the Duchy of Konst was unexpectedly exposed to the eyes of other nations, suffering a siege.
During the Age of Silence, the fog had already appeared in the Fisher World, gradually spreading and covering different lands. Even a unified country like the Sardinian Empire would occasionally have territories within its borders covered by the fog, forcing them to abandon such territories.
Now, no one knew why the fog appeared.
In short, working backward according to Brewer’s account, the former land of the Duchy of Konst, or at least a large portion of it, had been covered by fog. Precisely because of this, when the fog dissipated, the Duchy of Konst was unexpectedly attacked by other countries.
Two neighboring countries, because the fog separated their borders, didn’t even know of each other’s existence!
Since that’s the case…
Siles thought, Could it be that Karacoc’s hometown encountered the sudden fog?
This was a deduction with a bit of a speculative element.
Because Karacoc’s hometown was to the east of Kansas, and Const, which was also located to the east of Kansas, was once covered by fog, Siles speculated that the fate of Karacoc’s hometown was exactly being covered by the fog.
Aside from a hint of probing and curiosity, Siles also felt an indescribable sympathy. Faced with the fog, people seemed completely powerless to resist.
Once the fog descended, it would be like a child stomping on an anthill, instantly destroying human homes and peaceful lives.
Rumor had it that inside the fog, it was so dark you couldn’t see your own fingers. Moreover, the fog also seemed to harbor a… “hallucinogenic” component.
Those who entered the fog would either go mad or become demented, and there was no cure for such symptoms.
…If Karacoc really escaped from the fog, then he was indeed extremely lucky. However, if his family and friends all perished within, then it’s hard to say whether this counts as luck.
Siles sighed.
Subsequently, he closed his eyes and leaned back. In the darkness, he pondered the help these pieces of information brought. For his thesis, the information he had collected so far was still far from enough.
Of course, this wasn’t just about his thesis topic, but also referred to the fact that he hadn’t yet looked into other scholars’ research on this aspect. He could slowly follow up on this later.
As for himself, the research into the wandering bards had already sparked endless reveries in him.
[Knowledge +2.]
A prompt rang out in his mind.
Siles suddenly opened his eyes.
It increased by two points? He couldn’t help but wonder. Why two points? He thought one point was normal.
He had learned about matters related to the wandering bards, and indirectly learned about some situations in the Sardinian Empire and Kansas City back then; this counted as increasing his historical knowledge, which justified one point.
What about the other point?
Siles thought with some surprise, Did I accidentally guess something right?
He pondered for a moment and felt an unquestionable fact: he needed to borrow The Karacoc Diary from the Church of the Past; there might be many secrets hidden within it.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t rely on the power of the dice.
However, Siles now also had some epiphanies. He realized that when he triggered a dice check—that is, if he wanted to trigger a check using his identity as university professor Siles Noel—it had to be content related to Revelators.
For instance, the first time a check was triggered, it was discovering Grenfield’s bookstore; the last time a check was triggered, it was because he found the marionettes at the trading fair—but he failed to uncover the secret behind the marionettes; the required attribute value seemed very high.
But clearly, the marionettes were very exquisite and archaic. They were time traces, but only Siles didn’t know what their corresponding ritual was.
From this perspective, the copy of The Karacoc Diary in front of him was just a transcript, not a time trace itself, so naturally, it was impossible to trigger a check.
Siles sighed with slight regret.
Afterward, he spent some time writing a reply to Bunyan, thanking him for the materials he collected, and asking if the Church could lend out The Karacoc Diary. He planned to mail this letter tomorrow.
After writing the letter, Siles opened his pocket watch to check the time and found it was already past ten o’clock. These materials were complex and messy, taking up a long time for him to sort and read, but fortunately, it was worth it.
It was getting late, and Siles had other plans for tomorrow morning. He packed everything up, got up to wash in the bathroom, and went to bed early.
Before sleeping, he specifically went to look out the window, noticing that on this mid-August night, the weather had already become cool, and occasionally a strong wind would blow. The wind brushed past the treetops, bringing a rustling sound.
On Friday morning, Siles didn’t get up very early. He woke up around eight o’clock, stayed in bed for a while, and then got up.
He went to the cafeteria to eat brunch and dropped off his letter to Bunyan at the carriage station along the way. Around past nine, he returned to the dormitory. On the way, Siles conveniently gathered a handful of leaves blown down by last night’s strong wind.
These leaves were exactly what he wanted to do this morning—practice [Flowing Wind].
Tomorrow was Saturday, and he was going to the History Society on Saturday afternoon. According to Carol, this time would be an outdoor practical.
This was, of course, a good thing; Siles could observe some of the Revelators’ habits outside and learn about some precautions. He had never known this before, which was why he dared not show his Revelator identity outside.
However, one problem brought by the timing of this outing was that Lamifa City was not peaceful right now. What if they encountered some accident when they were all out?
Siles’s caution led him to decide to make some preparations in advance.
And among the several rituals he knew, the only one where he could easily gather Time Traces was [Flowing Wind]. He actually hoped to get a piece of a shield fragment from Knight Commander Bunyan, but he had no reason to ask Bunyan and felt too embarrassed.
So, he decided to gather some leaves and make an attempt.
The [Flowing Wind] ritual recreated a harmless gust of wind from the past. Usually, it was a gentle breeze, but this also depended on exactly how strong the wind the leaf had encountered was back then.
Siles took the 1% purity potion, with the ritual duration lasting 2 hours. He spent some effort trying different leaves—only someone like him who could see the blue radiance could make such attempts.
He wanted to find a leaf among them that could produce a strong wind.
When other Revelators performed rituals, their own compatibility wasn’t stable enough, varying high and low. For instance, with a ritual like [Flowing Wind], the intensity of the wind recreated every time they performed it was different.
But Siles was different from them. He could stably output wind of the same intensity; the only difference depended entirely on what kind of leaf he held in his hand.
So Siles relied on his (cheating) trait to try and find a gust of wind that met his desires.
Finally, he selected one of them. It was a tender green, vibrant leaf; the freshness of its color made it impossible for anyone to imagine that it would actually fall off at this time.
And the result was about right—Siles fanned lightly in front of the leaf, and in the next second, a violent, strong wind suddenly blew fiercely indoors, blowing so hard that Siles’s eyes couldn’t help but squint.
A wind of this intensity was enough to blind an enemy’s eyes when they were caught off guard.
…Siles didn’t think there was anything wrong with a sneak attack. A successful sneak attack is a successful attack, there is absolutely no problem with that.
He carefully tucked this leaf into his pocket, thought about it, and selected two other leaves from the pile—a slightly medium-strength leaf, which could be used as an electric fan; and a relatively stronger one, just in case.
These three leaves—Number One, Number Two, Number Three—were his self-defense items.
Actually, he also wanted to buy some other self-defense items, like a knife or a gun. Unfortunately, while he knew where to buy something like a knife, a gun was truly beyond his capabilities.
Even though he joined the History Society, his identity wasn’t that of a member of an official violent agency who could use firearms.
So, he’d better stick to blowing wind with little leaves.
After finishing all this, Siles finally breathed a sigh of relief.
For tomorrow’s outing, with Carol present, he wasn’t worried about any major problems, but he still felt a very hard-to-describe premonition of danger. He knew it was related to his experience at the Ernestine trading fair.
The underground gangs in the West City seemed to be going mad. Siles harbored deep anxiety over this.
He sighed, gazed quietly at the main castle of Lamifa University outside the window, then shook his head, ceasing to think about those things. He stood up, cleaned up those messy leaves, threw them into the trash can, and tied the trash bag securely.
He took the other things he needed for going out and left the dormitory.
He threw the trash into the bin at the corner of the street, then went to the fourth floor of the main castle and handed the club student list to Professor Atlee.
Professor Atlee counted them and then confirmed, “15 people?”
“Yes,” Siles said.
Professor Atlee didn’t ask further, nodded, and said, “That works.” He thought for a moment, then added, “The quota for your two teaching assistants has been approved; I will contact them from my end.”
“Alright, thank you,” Siles said, and then bid him farewell.
He made a trip to his office to drop off the corrected reading notes of the two apprentices, avoiding piling too many things in the small study in his dormitory.
He sat in the office for a while, pondering his schedule for the upcoming period.
On Lamifa University’s side: courses, apprentices, thesis, club, and societies. These were all on track. The latter two wouldn’t formally start until September.
Regarding his side hustle: for the novel, he was counting on starting with Lanmere, but he still had to wait until the translation of the travelogue was complete and his novel was finished; as for Revelator matters… that was much more complicated.
For the coming period, he would have three regular meetings at the History Society: Grenfield, the study group, and the research department.
He was unwilling to give up the power of a Revelator, but this mysterious, powerful, and also dangerous power required long-term effort and research. Grenfield was a very good teacher.
The study group counted as an unexpected harvest. Siles had originally thought he only had a nodding acquaintance with these Revelators, but they gradually developed friendships, and not solely because of Brewer’s incident.
Siles was also extremely interested in the History Society’s research department. He was curious about what they were researching, but he hoped the affairs over there wouldn’t be too busy; after all, he was already extremely busy right now.
In addition, there were three mysteries waiting for him to explore: Professor Cabel’s disappearance, the whereabouts of the archives stolen by the apostate, and the annihilation of the Darrow family. And he had a premonition that none of these matters would be easy to resolve.
All these various matters mixed together, making Siles involuntarily fall into silence.
I haven’t experienced the joyful life in another world, yet the wage-slave life in another world is unexpectedly continuing. How sad.
When it came to twelve o’clock, Siles went to the cafeteria to eat a little something, then went to the library. He didn’t know when Alfonso Carte would arrive, so he decided to wait for him at the library in advance.
He greeted Mrs. Longman: “Good afternoon, Mrs. Longman.”
“Good afternoon, Professor Noel,” Mrs. Longman said with a smile. “I’ve heard quite a few kids mention your name when they come to the library.”
Siles said with slight surprise, “For what?”
“For the assignments and book lists you assigned,” Mrs. Longman said. “Hearing that I know you, the kids even asked me to plead for leniency for them. You are a very strict professor, aren’t you?”
Siles thought for a moment and finally said, “I just think they should be more serious about their studies.”
“They are already very serious,” Mrs. Longman said. Thinking about it, she added, “It’s just that they might be more serious about things other than their studies.”
Siles laughed involuntarily, just shaking his head.
Mrs. Longman asked, “Do you need to look for any books today?”
“No, I came to wait for someone,” Siles said. “Professor Alfonso Carte, do you know him?”
Mrs. Longman revealed a slightly surprised expression and asked subconsciously, “How do you know him?”
