In the interior of North Ufi, in Adus's capital, Addis.
On the balcony of a hotel in Addis, Dorothy, clad in a long robe, sat on a balcony chair, gazing at the distant Church of Glorious Light outside the city. She sipped a fruit juice beverage, pondering the results of her recent reconnaissance, trying to figure out how to unlock the secrets within the Church of Glorious Light.
'If I want to unlock the secrets of that temple, I must draw down a lightning strike and complete the decryption within the hall. These actions would be very difficult to conceal. If Muhetar of the Crimson Rank were inside the Church of Glorious Light, my actions could very likely lead to him catching me. Therefore, when I act, Muhetar himself must not be in the Church of Glorious Light. As long as he isn't there, others should be easy to fool.'
'Because Muhetar is of the Crimson Rank, I don't dare use small corpse puppets to monitor him, and I'm not sure of his movements. Fortunately, at this special time, there is a specific moment when he will definitely not be in the Church of Glorious Light: during the next round of negotiations.'
Dorothy thought this to herself, having already decided on the timing of her move: when Muhetar went to participate in the second round of negotiations. Only then could she ensure she avoided him.
Having confirmed the timing, Dorothy immediately determined the general steps of her operation. After everything was more or less settled, she breathed a slight sigh of relief, then turned her head to look at the tall royal palace on the other side of the city.
'The divergence between Holy Mountain and the Savior Faction is too great. I had originally hoped to help Fania achieve a peace agreement this time, but given the current situation... hope is slim.'
'It feels like Adus will become quite dangerous after the final negotiations fail. Now, I can only complete my main objective as quickly as possible, and then see about protecting Fania's safety. This time, I'm not seeking too many gains; in the end, success means getting the advancement ritual and getting out in one piece. So I need to hurry...'
Gazing at the distant royal palace, Dorothy thought this to herself. Afterwards, she began to patiently wait for the appointed time to arrive... Time flew by, and soon a day passed. The time for the second round of negotiations was quickly approaching.
Because Fania, the envoy of the Holy Mountain Church, had led her team out during the day to visit and inspect some tribes around Addis, and could not return in time, the original meeting time was postponed to the evening. As the sun set in the sky, the time for this second round of negotiations was quickly at hand.
In the dead of night, as the moon began to rise, Muhetar, the highest representative of the Church of Glorious Light and the Savior Faction in Adus, left the Church of Glorious Light, where he had been residing, with his most loyal and important subordinates. They boarded a carriage, their faces serious, and drove towards the negotiation site within the city. There was a hint of solemnity in each of their eyes, as the outcome of this negotiation would directly determine their next course of action.
After Muhetar left with his entourage, the Church of Glorious Light suddenly became quiet. As it was night, almost no citizens came to pray, and all that remained inside the entire Church of Glorious Light were a group of lower-ranking Savior Faction priests and some revolutionary army soldiers.
Minutes passed. Just as the second round of negotiations officially began in the distant royal palace, the priests and soldiers in the Church of Glorious Light were living their lives much as usual, going about their business. It was at this moment that a clap of thunder startled everyone.
Almost without warning, a brilliant white lightning bolt struck from the night sky, accompanied by a deafening roar. The celestial electricity directly hit one of the obelisks in the array in front of the Church of Glorious Light, striking the tip of one stone tablet. Then, almost simultaneously, the lightning, like dancing claws, leaped from the struck obelisk's tip, connecting between the array of obelisks. For a moment, the entire area outside the Church of Glorious Light was illuminated by the electrical light, and then both the dazzling light and the deafening thunder vanished in an instant.
After the lightning disappeared, many people inside the Church of Glorious Light came to the obelisk array and looked at the scene before them with great surprise. Since many of them had read the tourist information in front of the obelisk array and knew that it had a lightning-conducting effect, their expressions remained at surprise and did not escalate to astonishment. Instead, they began to discuss among themselves whether this sudden lightning strike was a sign that the weather was secretly changing.
Just then, a cry of alarm came from outside the Church of Glorious Light. The people gathered in front of the obelisk array all turned their gaze towards the direction of the cry, and then they saw several oasis trees outside the Church of Glorious Light burning fiercely. This clearly indicated that the lightning strike had spread beyond the obelisk array, setting the trees on fire!
Seeing the raging fire outside, the people inside the Church of Glorious Light were suddenly startled. They then rushed to extinguish the flames. Since the fire seemed unexpectedly large, many people went, and even the priests who were praying in the hall were disturbed by the commotion outside and rushed over to help put out the fire.
For a time, all the people left in the Church of Glorious Light had their attention drawn to the spreading fire outside the church. Almost everyone gathered in that direction, and in the wide hall supported by countless tall pillars, there was suddenly no one inside.
It was at this moment, from the already open ceiling of the hall, a nimble figure leaped down directly. This figure moved by pushing off the tall stone pillars, leaping back and forth, and finally landed on the empty floor of the hall. Upon closer inspection, it was a beautiful woman dressed in a black form-fitting garment, wearing a hood and a face mask. Behind her, another petite figure was carried on her back.
"We've arrived… thank you…"
After Nefernes successfully landed, Dorothy, wearing a long robe and a face mask, slid directly off Nefernes's back and stood on the floor of the hall. It was at this moment that Nefernes, beside her, spoke softly.
"Is there anything else?"
"Not for now… You should quickly return to a safe place and hide. I'll notify you after I've finished my task. By then, I'll probably need your help to get me out."
Dorothy responded to Nefernes's words, and Nefernes, after hearing her, nodded and continued to reply.
"Okay, then I'll leave now. Good luck…"
Having said that, Nefernes immediately left, still using the two pillars to jump back and forth until she reached the roof of the hall. Dorothy, after watching Nefernes temporarily depart, also let out a slight sigh of relief.
Clearly, that lightning bolt just now was created by Dorothy. And with Dorothy's control, it would be impossible for the lightning to accidentally strike the trees. The reason why those trees were so flammable was entirely due to the actions of the corpse puppets Dorothy had arranged beforehand. Dorothy's corpse puppets had applied a pile of accelerant to the nearby trees, igniting them during the lightning strike. The fire they created was enough to keep the remaining guards busy for a while.
The Church of Glorious Light was merely a temporary stronghold in the eyes of the Savior Faction. There was nothing particularly important inside that needed protection, so the key combat forces were all concentrated around Muhetar. The remaining guards were rather casual, allowing Dorothy to easily infiltrate with a few tricks.
After Nefernes withdrew, Dorothy, in the empty hall, immediately began to act. She quickly walked to the altar where the Glorious Savior was originally worshipped, and began to precisely step on the floor tiles in front of it, stepping on the numbers written in the Common Script.
The moment the lightning strike created by Dorothy hit the obelisk array, Dorothy's bird corpse puppets, surveying from the sky, observed the pattern formed by the electric arcs leaping and connecting on the obelisks. It was a lightning-shaped character from the First Dynasty, the number nine. Thanks to Beral's research on First Dynasty mathematical works, Dorothy was able to recognize various numbers in lightning-shaped script.
Inputting the number obtained from the lightning strike into the mathematical puzzle within the hall, and having received the final condition, Dorothy quickly solved all the answers to this mathematical puzzle. She was now stepping all the answers into the solution area in front of the altar.
In just about ten seconds, Dorothy had entered all the answers. She then waited amidst the commotion outside, anticipating changes in her surroundings.
One second, two seconds... Gradually, over ten seconds passed. No changes occurred in the spacious hall. There was no sound of mechanisms activating, no secret doors or passages opening. Faced with this scene, Dorothy was slightly stunned, and she couldn't help but worry if her decryption approach was flawed. Was this truly how the temple's riddle was meant to be solved? Or had the mechanisms here broken down beyond repair after seven millennia?
With deep concern, Dorothy frowned for a moment. Just then, sudden anomalies occurred all around her.
In Dorothy's eyes, the hall before her suddenly became illusory. Everything she could see began to blur, even appearing semi-transparent.
The forms of objects became blurry and transparent, while their outlines began to appear exceptionally clear and glow faintly. The surfaces of the walls became indistinct, but their edges became remarkably distinct. The gaps between floor tiles, the structural lines of the stone pillars—all these became unusually clear in Dorothy's sight. The details of objects were ignored, while the fundamental structural forms that constituted them were clearly visible. It was like a exquisite painting being reduced to its most basic line art, or a scene from a major 3A game having its rendering removed, everything returning to a distorted, primitive state.
In this primitive and minimalist space, rows of peculiar characters materialized out of thin air, filling the vast, empty hall. However, many of these characters were blurred or incomplete, making most of them impossible to fully discern.
Before Dorothy's eyes, above the altar that originally belonged to the Savior, a peculiar symbol materialized in mid-air. Unlike the sun wheel halo of the Glorious Savior, the symbol depicted an open eye. The upper eyelid covered the upper half of the pupil, while from the lower half of the pupil, seven zigzagging lines, like electrical arcs, shot out. While filling the entire lower white of the eye, three more radiated beyond the white.
Observing this wondrous transformation, a strange expression appeared in Dorothy's eyes. Her eyes widened slightly as she curiously surveyed every part of the scene around her.
'Is this change what happens after solving the riddle? Does the temple transform into this state after the riddle is solved? No, that's not right. It's not that the temple transformed, but rather that I've entered some kind of hidden space within the temple...'
Looking at the scene before her, Dorothy thought this to herself. To prevent anyone from suddenly returning to the hall, she had several bird corpse puppets constantly monitoring the entire Church of Glorious Light. In the sight of these bird corpse puppets, the Church of Glorious Light showed no changes; only the Church of Glorious Light in Dorothy's own vision had changed.
Among Dorothy's surveillance bird corpse puppets, one was directly above the hall, overlooking the scene below. In the sight of this bird corpse puppet, Dorothy saw her own body gradually become transparent and then disappear after stepping on all the answers. Therefore, Dorothy concluded that the phenomenon before her was not a major change actually occurring in the Church of Glorious Light, but rather that she had been sent into a space that overlapped with the Church of Glorious Light... or rather, was deeper within the Church of Glorious Light.
Dorothy thought about various things in her mind, then she walked forward in this simple world full of many words, reaching the entrance of the hall, looking at the many priests and guards outside who were busy extinguishing the fire. In Dorothy's main body's eyes, they had already lost most of their details and colors, appearing like stick figures moving busily. However, in the eyes of any of Dorothy's puppets in reality, she herself was completely invisible. In Dorothy's eyes, there was a clear border line at the edge of the Church of Illumination, and she couldn't see anything beyond that border line.
'This feeling is similar to entering an inner world or something... From the current situation, in this inner world, I can see and hear images and sounds from the real world, but people in the real world cannot perceive me.'
'Is this inner world... the secret hidden within this temple? As expected of a First Dynasty legacy, to directly create such a thing. I thought that after the puzzle was solved, some secret passages or doors would appear...'
Looking at the scene before her, Dorothy sighed in her heart, then she turned around and walked back into the hall, beginning to examine the large expanse of words floating in the air and the holy emblem floating in the center of the hall.
'That eye-like holy emblem... that must be the Holy Emblem of the Judge of Heaven. As expected, this temple was originally built to worship the Judge of Heaven. The Judge of Heaven was the deity originally worshipped here.'
'And these words floating in mid-air... Tsk, although I can tell they are in the language of the First Dynasty, many of them look damaged or even blurry. Occasionally, I can see some words written in Common Script, but they are all meaningless phrases...'
Examining the scene in the hall, Dorothy thought to herself, and then a question arose in her mind.
"What exactly is this strange space used for?"
Dorothy murmured, and as soon as she finished speaking, countless floating characters around her suddenly began to change. They started to swim and transform in the air like fish, just like the sentences in Dorothy's Sea of Literature Voyage Log. After a short while, a new text appeared before Dorothy. She was somewhat surprised to find that this text was written in Common Script, and these Common Script words formed content she could understand, explaining the purpose of this space.
"The Temple of Inscriptions, so that's it... The purpose of this space is a library..."
Looking at the content formed by the Common Script before her, Dorothy suddenly understood. She now knew the purpose of this space; it was a library.
The Temple of Inscriptions is a temple dedicated to the Judge of Heaven. Like other "Enlightenment" temples of the First Dynasty, besides serving as a place for religious worship, it also functioned as a repository of knowledge. For ordinary people, it was a common temple, but only those "Enlightenment" extraordinaries who could understand Common Script, solve the Thunder Rune puzzle, and complete the worship of the Judge of Heaven could enter this hidden space.
In mysticism, the real world is also called the Outer World, a part of the complete world, the skin of the world. If a pocket watch is used as an analogy, the real world is the dial and the moving hands that everyone can see. And places like the Netherworld, Dream Realm, and Heaven are beneath the dial, where various gears interlock and operate, providing power to the dial and determining the time on the dial. These places are called the Inner World.
The Inner World constitutes the vast majority of the complete world, countless times larger than the Outer World. It is the muscles and internal organs beneath the skin, the intrinsic factors of the Outer World's operation, and thus also the dwelling place of various deities and Inner World creatures. Dorothy's current location is like a shallow Inner World, a hidden space created using extraordinary power, beneath the Outer World but not yet reaching the level of the Inner World. In addition, this temple also serves as an examination hall and assists in urban defense against enemies.
Library, sacrificial ground, examination point... The integration of worship, research, and education is a characteristic of the Temple of the Judge of Heaven. Even after seven thousand years, this temple still has residual extraordinary functions operating, mainly due to the temple's inherent spiritual energy collection system, which is called Thunder Gathering in the introduction before Dorothy.
The obelisk array on the temple square is not only used to generate random numbers for sacrificial decryption, but more importantly, these obelisks can convert natural lightning strikes into spiritual energy, which is then transmitted to the hidden space to maintain the continuous operation of the entire extraordinary system. Over thousands of years, this lightning gathering system has received countless natural lightning strikes, and the spiritual energy converted from them has kept the temple's hidden space in a standby state for thousands of years.
More than seven thousand years ago, during the First Dynasty, this Temple of Inscriptions was once the city temple of another ancient city, different from Adis. In that now-defunct First Dynasty city, only the intelligent "Enlightenment" extraordinaries were qualified to complete the decryption and worship to enter this hidden library to acquire knowledge. This library came with a convenient query function that could easily search for any information visitors desired. Dorothy's words just now inadvertently triggered this query mechanism, and thus the introduction to this library was called up.
After realizing that she was in a First Dynasty library, Dorothy immediately became interested and began scanning the various words around her, but found that she could understand very little.
It seemed that due to thousands of years of neglect and the ravages of war, the temple's extraordinary system had suffered considerable damage. Many characters were blurred or damaged. Some undamaged characters were not written in Common Script but in Thunder Script, which Dorothy could not understand. Among the few contents recorded in Common Script, many were beyond Dorothy's reading requirements, so she also could not understand them. Dorothy speculated that these Common Script texts were for people with special statuses within the temple. The library introduction's reading requirement seemed to be merely an "Enlightenment" extraordinary, making it one of the few things Dorothy could understand at a glance.
Some content was damaged, some was in Thunder Script which Dorothy couldn't understand, and some Common Script Dorothy couldn't understand because she didn't meet the conditions. For a moment, Dorothy found that although there was a lot of content in the library, she could only read very little. This phenomenon instantly made Dorothy nervous, worrying whether the information she wanted was also problematic.
After scanning the strange space around her, Dorothy took a deep breath, then spoke to the library space.
"I want to consult the content of the promotion ritual for the Crimson Stage of the Path of Enlightenment."
Dorothy murmured like this. Although she spoke in Prittish, because the library's retrieval system seemed to use some kind of cross-language communication technology similar to Common Script, it could still understand her, so it began to help Dorothy retrieve the desired information.
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After a short while, countless characters, like tadpoles, swam from the surrounding air, gathered before Dorothy, and gradually formed an article. Dorothy let out a long sigh after glancing at the article before her.
'Thank goodness, I can understand it...'