—To create my very own false tome.
Annan was indeed moved.
After coming to this world for so long, Annan had been going through books written by others. He did gain a lot of mystical knowledge from them. In the process, he acquired important inspiration from the books and was sometimes deceived because of them.
That excluded Annan’s experience in his first playthrough.
Even the knowledge that Annan had reacquired now carried a certain degree of “weight”. Some knowledge was “source” knowledge Annan had fully grasped and could be written down.
Of course, the majority of Annan’s knowledge was one-timed used, which was used to create shortcuts. The knowledge in this category could only be recorded in books, becoming a “false tome” when Annan’s soul was dyed.
The source and remnant tome had mystical powers. As one delved into the pages, influence would spawn. Some might endanger the reader’s well-being. If the reader could read and comprehend it, they would attain a piece of knowledge that could only be used once.
The system resembled downloading a shortcut file that accessed the content. However, the knowledge remained in the book.
This logic also made up the principle of the [Page Lock] spell.
The primary way to distinguish between a remnant tome and a source tome was by examining their titles.
For example, “The Birth and Initial Circulation of Silver Coins” was a source tome. “The Enigma of Fate and Dice: A Discourse” and “The Eighth Analects On the Sunray” were remnant tomes. Generally speaking, unless it were a wicked person surnamed Austere-Winter when writing remnant tome, everyone would not make the book title too “complete”, so as not to mislead people.
Usually, they were the discourse on details or knowledge that wasn’t quite comprehensive.
Anyone who could craft a source tome would refrain from resorting to a remnant tome.
Usually, it was the failed ritualists who created the remnant tome solely to provide a “data backup” after failing to develop the source tome. It was filled with encrypted language that only they could understand… much like the handwriting that rivaled a pharmacist’s lecture notes.
The difference between the source tome and the remnant tome was that the knowledge obtained from the remnant tome would consume more time and energy when trying to complete this knowledge.
After all, when there were conflicting records between the two books, one had to seek deeper accounts to determine who was correct.
The learning process of ritualists involved reading various books, summoning ancient beings through rituals, exchanging offerings, and seeking secrets. Through this process, they gradually supplemented imperfect, one-sided, extreme, and false knowledge.
When knowledge was completed, the “source tome” about this occult knowledge could be made.
Remnant tome was the game guides that “the creator didn’t understand much, but he still wrote it out”.
There were naturally many problems and many omissions. However, there was no guide available. Having them was better than nothing. However, to master the knowledge, learning from remnant tome was never enough.
The reader simply wouldn’t know which part was accurate and which part was wrong. It created more hassle than having zero knowledge in a blank slate.
Only the transcender with a dyed could create a remnant tome by imprinting the knowledge on the pages with their soul. Even though the pre-requisite was Gold Rank, its price was much cheaper than the original. Copying this book did not require a Gold Rank, nor did it require real knowledge.
The reader only had to read once, and he could copy them like copying homework.
To replicate a source tome, one must completely understand its content. The thoughts and insights must align with those of the author, reaching the same level of comprehension.
Otherwise, the reader would be hurt by the knowledge.
The mild symptom would be excessive fatigue and mental exhaustion. If the person insisted on copying the source tome, he would go crazy. Whatever was copied later on was false knowledge.
In the beginning, neither Annan nor the players were comfortable with this strange logic. Why could knowledge not be replicated?
Later, Annan gradually understood.
In this world, the “secret” was protected. There was no need to go through any intellectual property lawsuit or worry about others stealing the technology. As long as the creator deemed it should remain a secret, the Mysterious Lady would safeguard it. It would not be easily replicated.
That was why the Soul Snatch Wizard could see the memories in other people’s brains but couldn’t “project” them to others to prove what they saw.
The knowledge was considered a “true secret” in a verdict.
The knowledge encompassed what he saw and heard.
What he had expressed in his language was no longer considered a secret. The ability of language to describe and summarize was imperfect—this was common knowledge among ritualists.
So when using different types of rituals and styles of mystical knowledge, they would employ other languages.
For example, discussing secrets about elves would require using the Elven language – otherwise, many things simply couldn’t be translated. Whether it was transliteration or interpretation, there would have been misunderstandings.
Just like when poetry was translated across languages and cultural boundaries, the rhythm was often lost. During translation, references the translator didn’t understand naturally weren’t translated according to the intended meaning but rather the surface meaning. This applied to idioms and colloquial expressions as well.
So there would also be some remnant tome “with personal interpretation”. It was like the game of word passing, where the outcome always resulted in a completely different meaning. “The remnant tome of a remnant tome” existed, but the accuracy would be terrible.
In this world, occult knowledge required concise accuracy.
It would have completely lost its power if the information had been lost too severely during translation. This was also a core principle in the creation theory of many false tomes.
Annan didn’t quite understand why someone would create a false tome.
However, Annan gave it some thought. Even gossip between individuals was passed around. As for the secrets of deities or ancient kings, it was like “celebrity gossip level” or even higher in terms of mysterious knowledge. It didn’t seem strange to treat them as stories when telling them.
Of course, celebrities who had gossip written about them wouldn’t come after anyone. However, deities with erroneous knowledge written about them would come after people.
The Bloodhand Brothers in the underground world were probably killed because of this.
“Then, I should be able to create at least one source tome.” Annan murmured.
Annan had fully grasped the secret of the “grail”. However, to turn it into a source tome, he must use the “dead language”, which was a language that anyone no longer spoke.
This required Annan to first conduct a ritual to the Mysterious Lady and learn a dead language. Only then could he record the secret about the grail.
As for the rest, Annan didn’t have a Gold Rank yet. He could not create a remnant tome. Thus, his only option left was a false tome.
There were generally three types of false tome. Either they concealed the mystical knowledge within fables, fairy tales, scripts, or novels, hid it within specialized knowledge, or were completely nonsensical and baseless.
The novel “Red Rose and White Rose” recorded that Rotten Man poisoned the queen’s mother and seized power from the king. It was just that Rotten Man’s real name was not mentioned, but another word was used to refer to him.
In the aesthetics study of sculpture [The Beauty of Solidification], a few remarks about the deities themselves were subtly inserted by evaluating numerous deity statues. It seemingly discussed the sculptures, but the book was referring to the deities.
A classic example of the third example was Grinznuha Austere-Winter’s “masterpiece”, Dangerous Faith and Deities.
Speaking of which, it had been quite a while since Annan returned to Austere-Winter, and he still hadn’t asked Ivan about this person.
Logically speaking, to be expelled from the Austere-Winter family with their name removed, the sin was quite severe.
Thinking of this, Annan suddenly remembered something.
“Austere-Winter bloodline…” Annan murmured.
If Grinznuha Austere-Winter did not die alone but gave birth to a child with the “Winter Heart” curse?
Does that mean…
Annan narrowed his eyes slightly.
It was quite possible.
But no matter what… After Annan wrote the false tome, he had to go to the north.
Before that, let’s give Lin Yi and the others a main quest to search for trading records. After all, the Bloodhand Brothers are out of the picture. They probably didn’t destroy all the evidence before leaving, so there’s a chance they might find intact records of their transactions with the Northern Alliance.
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