fictionpage Chapter 79 [The Grammar of Creation]
Chapter 79 [The Grammar of Creation]
Two days have passed.
"This is simply unsolvable!"
"Those ancient creators are just messing with us! The answer is clearly 'ice,' and we've drawn dozens of different kinds of 'ice,' so why won't they recognize it!"
A young scholar angrily threw the stone slab in his hand to the ground.
His complaints ignited a volatile emotion called anxiety.
"That's right! We're trapped here!" another scholar echoed with a hint of fear. "Food and water are being rationed. If we don't think of a way out, we'll all die here!"
Terra's hunters remained silent, but the way they gripped their weapons showed they were still somewhat nervous.
This purely intellectual challenge left them unable to use their strength, making it even more frustrating than facing the fiercest wild beast.
"Quiet down, everyone." Anya, as the tribe's mediator, knew when to intervene to best alleviate the situation.
She tore the hardened dried meat into small pieces and distributed them to everyone.
Lia sat alone in a corner of the hall, her back to everyone.
She was the center of the pressure.
The series of failures made her begin to doubt herself, doubt the stone tablets, and even doubt the knowledge that they regarded as a treasure.
"Where exactly... did things go wrong?"
Lia wanted to clear her mind, but images kept flashing through her head uncontrollably.
When she first managed to ignite a spark by the campfire outside the ruins, she wasn't thinking about fire.
It is only wholeheartedly imitating that "process" of the flame symbol.
Yes, it's the process!
The key to Lia's success was that she replicated the "steps" of creating fire, rather than imagining the result of "fire" out of thin air.
Are we putting the cart before the horse by doing what we're doing now?
Just as Lia's thoughts were sinking deeper into confusion, a rough, hoarse voice complained behind her.
He was an old hunter who had been with the group all his life, dealing with wild animals, and had long since lost patience with these convoluted symbols.
"What a hassle!" He muttered to the person next to him, scratching his thinning hair. "These ancient folks are just going around in circles. It's just about turning water into ice, isn't it? First, you have water, then you let it cool down, and it freezes, right? Why not just do it step by step?"
This sentence encapsulates the simplest wisdom of life, bringing sunshine into the fog of thought that had enveloped Lia.
Step by step...
process……
"We were wrong! We were wrong from the very beginning!" Leah suddenly stood up.
Everyone in the hall was startled and turned to look.
"Lia?" Anya walked over with concern.
"Ania! We were wrong!" Lia grabbed Anya's hand. "We've been drawing 'answers,' but they want 'solution steps'!"
She pointed to those silent, ancient creations.
"The puzzle they present to us is not what 'ice' is."
"They're asking, what happens when you add extreme cold to water?"
"The key isn't 'ice'! It's the process of 'becoming'!"
"We've been trying to create words, but what they want is a complete logical chain!"
One scholar, following this line of reasoning, concluded, "That's right! We have the nouns 'water' and 'cold,' but we lack words describing actions and words that connect them!"
My mind was opened up.
"Look at the murals on the wall!" another scholar pointed to an ancient carving on one side of the hall. "There, it depicts two rivers converging!"
They rushed over.
In that mural, the symbols of the two rivers eventually converge into a structure resembling a "+".
"I understand! This symbol represents 'encounter'!"
"And here too!" Leah pointed to another mural depicting a seed that, after several stages, eventually grew into a large tree. "Look! There's an arrow running from seed to tree!"
A simple directional symbol: →
"It represents 'pointing to,' 'evolving into,' and 'equal to'!"
"Alright." Leah had gained the confidence of a system pioneer. "Let's try again."
Eight scholars, including Lia, stood in a row.
The faint spiritual energy of the Eight-Legged Essay intertwined in mid-air.
They wrote a magical sentence with a complete logical chain in the air.
【Water】+【Extreme Cold】→【A brand new symbol with added crystalline lines inside the symbol of water】
The moment the new symbol representing "ice" was drawn at the end of the arrow.
In the center of the hall, the ancient guardians who had been silent for two days stirred.
They raised their arms, made of energy, and made an elegant gesture of approval towards these mortals.
Then, they transformed into billions of points of light, surging towards the solid wall in front of them.
"Snap—"
The wall split open in the middle, receding to both sides to reveal a long corridor of knowledge.
Ahead, the road has been opened for this!
The exploration team made rapid progress on their journey.
"Flame" + "Dry Wood" → "Burning and Ashes"!
Light passes through still water → light bends!
They made great strides and solved more than a dozen similar logic puzzles in a row.
Each time you pass a test, a higher level of "grammar" will automatically appear on the walls on both sides of the corridor ahead as a reward.
[And/or], [Greater than/less than], [Because/Therefore]...
The knowledge system of human magic is expanding at an explosive rate along this corridor.
Finally, they arrived at the core area of the ruins.
A massive, circular control room.
The energy of all the guardians converged here, forming a huge and dazzling sphere of energy that floated in mid-air.
The ultimate test has arrived.
That's a complex, super-mystery about "the formation of storms".
A complex logical chain composed of dozens of basic symbols: water vapor, rising, cooling, condensation, clouds, wind, friction, electricity...
Faced with this challenge, a slight panic once again arose within the team.
But this time, Lia acted like a true leader, calmly breaking down this massive project into smaller modules and distributing them to each scholar around her.
"You are responsible for describing water vapor evaporation."
"You are responsible for creating convection currents between warm and cold air."
"You calculate the friction of the wind."
An hour later, under Liya's unified command, a grand logical poem describing the birth of the storm was completed by everyone's joint efforts.
Lia walked alone to the center of the hall.
She stretched out her finger and, with concentrated spiritual power, wrote this magnificent magical scroll in the air.
As the final stroke was made, the giant's light flashed intensely.
It bowed deeply, its waist made of light, to Lia, this tiny girl from the mortal realm.
That is the highest respect for wisdom.
Subsequently, the sphere of light merged into the crystal in the center of the main control room, activating the core of the entire ruin.
The walls of the control room became transparent.
Behind the wall were endless, spiraling magical bookshelves, upon which floated countless tomes of light.
The tribe's true "lamplighter" was born at this moment.
Humanity's path to magic was thus fully illuminated.