C55 — A Brief History of the Library

Mu Sichen looked for a long time but didn’t find any clues on the two bookmarks. It was a pity that with the replacement of his left eye, the ability he got from Big Eye disappeared, and the golden glasses were out of commission, or else he could have looked at the specifics of He Fei’s situation when he got the two bookmarks.

 

The only thing that was certain was that the contamination in He Fei’s body that belonged to Shen Jiyue and Big Eye might be the same as the origin of these two bookmarks.

 

“Did you feel anything special happen in these two books?” Mu Sichen asked.

 

“What is considered special?” He asked in confusion, “As a king, after I stole the mirror, every time I went to bed with the queen, I turned the page. Does that count as a special event?”

 

Mu Sichen: “…… doesn’t count.”

 

Bedtime fairy tales shouldn’t contain adult desires.

 

He Fei stared at Mu Sichen and said seriously and earnestly, “I realized that you’ve been asking for such a long time, but you didn’t ask about a very crucial and important thing.”

 

“Which is?”

 

He Fei stood up his chest and said, “The acquisition of points and the points mall are essential for unlimited world hopping ! Why didn’t you ask where my flying motorcycle came from? This is such an important thing!”

 

Mu Sichen rubbed his temples with a headache. “You can say it if you want to.”

 

He Fei took out a smiley face bookmark and said, “This is the pass for the main god system. You can click on the smiley face and check how many points you have earned. You can also exchange it for houses, food, flying motorcycle, and any magical props you want!”

 

“I’ve cleared ten worlds in a row, and the system tells me that if I pass ten more levels, I’ll be able to see the main god!”

 

 

“You know that the time here is fake; why do you still believe in the points system and the existence of the main god?” Mu Sichen carefully asked.

 

He said, “Then we should leave this world, right? Isn’t there no other way but to meet the main god?”

 

“What about your original system? The system that gave you the option to log in?” Mu Sichen reminded.

 

He Fei froze for a moment, then he whacked his head and said, “Yeah, that system… started out as a light screen floating in the air and disappeared after entering the library. Huh, it has appeared! It turns out that as long as I try hard to call up the system, it can appear!”

 

 

Mu Sichen could understand why He Fei confused the two systems together, because the system of Ideal Town had always been very obedient in the “pillar.”  Unless he completed some tasks or triggered some special events, it wouldn’t actively prompt anything.

 

If the player was contaminated, the system would become even more silent, as if it had disappeared.

 

However, He Fei’s words made Mu Sichen guess what exactly the pillar within the library used to absorb emotional energy and souls.

 

 

It was by the desire for knowledge and the fake system.

 

People with a desire for knowledge would be sent into the books, and these people would show great curiosity in the different stories, also providing energy for the “pillar.”.

 

When the desire for knowledge reached its peak, ordinary people would be sent to the main god by the fake system, and these people would end up no different from the patients discharged from the sanatorium or workers entering the breeding area.

 

The only question was, with Big Eye’s IQ and Tongzhi Town’s rather simple and rough rules, was the original library really such a complicated and high-tech place?

 

There were so many mysteries here that Mu Sichen felt that it was probably impossible to get close to the Pillar without taking a risk.

 

 

He took out his own bookmark and clicked on the smiley face according to He Fei’s tips.

 

As He Fei said, a system light screen popped up, which had a system mall, exchange window, book selection, and other sub-menus. It was done quite decently, but quite rudimentary.

 

Except for the book selection page, which had been made into a 3D mode, the rest were all 2D modes that looked exquisite and simple, and the graphic design gave people a feeling of not wanting to look at it again after just one glance.

 

Bookmark system: Players earn 700 points for their first book and spend 1000 points every day in the central world. Please complete the task as soon as possible; otherwise, you will be erased.

 

Mu Sichen: “What a good reason to rush me into the book.”

 

“Right, this feeling of being chased by death is too unbearable. It was only after I broke into ten books in a row and had over ten thousand points that I was in the mood to wander around the center world.” He Fei came over and said, “You said that the concept of time here is fake, and the main god system is also fake, so is this point system real? Is it true that if you don’t have 1,000 points, you will die?”

 

“I’m not sure,” Mu Sichen said. “It’s just that if one dies just like that, the ‘Pillar’ won’t have the means to drain a person’s emotional energy, and even if it absorbs the person’s soul, it won’t be able to get the curiousity that it needs the most. So I suppose it would urge the person to develop curiosity and explore the world of the book as soon as possible, rather than preferring to kill the person immediately.”

 

When a person’s curiosity was fully mobilized, he was given a large amount of points, so that this person could bring his strongest curiosity and desire for knowledge to the so-called main god, so that the “pillar” could get the energy it needed most.

 

If he wanted to get the Pillar, he couldn’t be led by the nose. Even if he followed the bookmark system’s requirements to meet the “main god,”  he may not be able to see the “pillar,”  but probably his soul would just be dissolved.

 

But it was still necessary to venture into the books.

 

The information he knew so far was still too little, and since He Fei could get two bookmarks related to god-level monsters in the books, he should be able to get clues from the books as well.

 

Which book to choose would be important.

 

Mu Sichen searched in the book management; the books he had read were all searchable, and there was an additional bookmark symbol on “After Growing Tentacles, I Can Finally Embrace Him,”  showing that the book could be found in the “My Books” section.

 

It seemed that the books here weren’t much different from the books in the library.

 

Mu Sichen flipped through the pages and found a very special book—A Brief History of the Upstring Library.

 

Generally, libraries would have a brief history of the library, from the time it was established to the number of books it owned to the list of donors. This kind of book would usually be tucked away in a corner, and it would be hard to find it without specifically looking for it.

 

Mu Sichen tried to look for it, and surprisingly, it was really there.

 

The bookmarking system was done in a very technological way, and Mu Sichen’s hand explored it, and he actually took out the physical copy of the book from the 3D screen.

 

“It’s really amazing.” Mu Sichen sighed.

 

It was no wonder He Fei was tricked into this; its bookmarking system was much more refined than the game system.

 

“I’m going to enter this book; do you want to come with me?” Mu Sichen asked.

 

“This… book looks so boring.” He Fei looked at the book and said, “I’m not interested; I still like the books that the system pushes that have a stronger story.”

 

It seemed that the bookmarking system would strongly recommend books with more storytelling, more likely to make people fall deeper into them and not be able to distinguish between reality and story.

 

“You should be interested; the story here may be much more thrilling than the book about hanging the princess to the city wall.” Mu Sichen said.

 

He Fei came over to have a look and said, “Isn’t this the Introduction to the Library? What a huge pile of book details and donor lists; my eyes hurt just looking at it.”

 

Seemingly afraid of someone being patient enough to see the content behind, the first page of the library introduction was a long list of books, making it impossible to generate curiosity.

 

However, the more this was the case, the more curious Mu Sichen became.

 

It took him a long time to find those three bedtime story books about the evil gods with his curiosity, and he found that these three books were hidden in a very inconspicuous position on the list, and the titles of all the other books nearby weren’t far from each other.

 

 

Mu Sichen mainly checked the donors of these three books. The book donor for Big Eye was called Kongmu Tong, which was obviously Big Eye’s pseudonym.

 

The donor of ‘Two or Three Things Between Me and the Moon’ was Shen Jiyue.

 

 

The donors of ‘Embrace’ were even more peculiar, including Kongmu Tong, Mu Sichen, and Qin Zu.

 

“Huh? Why is your name on this?” Fei finally developed some curiosity about this brief history.

 

Mu Sichen glanced at him and flipped through the book to find Little Colorful Fish, only to see that there were two names for donations, one being Kongmu Tong, who donated a large number of fairy tale books as recorded in the brief history, and the other being He Fei.

 

“Huh? There’s also my name? What’s going on here?!” He Fei grabbed the book and took a look at it; he and Mu Sichen then entered the book together.

 

The two appeared in front of the library gate.

 

“I really came in,” He Fei exclaimed in shock. “I entered the central world from the library, went into the books, into my home in the central world, and once again entered ‘A Brief History of the Library’… How many layers of the world does this involve?”

 

Mu Sichen also found this experience very magical. He looked up at the plaque in the library and saw that it read “New Eye Library.”.

 

 

It seemed that this was the original incarnation of the library.

 

“Let’s go in and take a look.” Mu Sichen said.

 

“Wow, this place looks so old; it’s eerie, there’s fog everywhere, and the lighting is dim.” He Fei said, “This is nothing like the simple and clean library I saw; was it redecorated?”

 

The two of them seemed to have entered the library as ordinary visitors this time. There was an administrator in the hall who had no white eyes, only pupils. He was quite handsome, but his special eyes became more and more terrifying as one looked at him.

 

The people around him called him Simple Pupil Dependent.

 

 

“Sure enough, it’s simple Pupil dependent; are the eyes so simple that only the pupils are left?” He Fei spat out, “These eyes are too scary looking.”

 

 

Simple Pupil Dependent was only responsible for the registration list. Every day, those who came to borrow books wrote their names on it and then went to read without spending money or registering borrowing records because books couldn’t be taken away and could only be read in the library.

 

Mu Sichen observed the townspeople who borrowed the books and saw that they were mesmerized by the books, and throughout the “daytime” period they kept reading without stopping, without even blinking their eyes.

 

“Your eyes will go bad if you read like that, right?” He said.

 

As soon as his words fell, one person’s eyes “crackled” and fell off.

 

He Fei was shocked. “I didn’t do it!”

 

Mu Sichen pulled him back, “Don’t be afraid; this is the norm in this world; you have to adapt; keep looking.”

 

After noticing, the Simple Pupil Dependent calmly picked up the pair of eyes and placed them on the registration list.

 

A light suddenly appeared on the roster, and in the light there was a huge eye with the three celestial bodies of the sun, moon, and stars illuminated in the pupil, the very totem of the big eye.

 

The body of the person whose eyes had fallen out then turned into white bones, and a library janitor with an eye attached under each hair strand approached and collected the white bones into a trash can.

 

The Simple Pupil Dependent placed the pair of eyes in a glass jar and handed it to one of his followers, instructing him in a warm voice, “Go to the Bright Eyes Sanatorium and give it to the Feather Eyed Dependent.”

 

The cleaner, on the other hand, handed the garbage bag to this errand-running follower along with it: “Take it to the processing plant and give it to the heavy pupil dependent.”

 

“Yes, Simple Pupil Dependent, Hair Eye Dependent.” The follower answered.

 

Mu Sichen looked at this scene and understood why Yao Wangping and Shen Jiyue’s first choice were both the sanatorium, not the library.

 

The model of the New Eye Library was extremely simple yet very effective.

 

The ‘pillar’ was held in the hand of the simple pupil dependent, and one just needed to come and grab it directly. But if the simple pupil dependent turned to the hairy eye and the heavy pupil dependents for help, it would take at least five or six Yao Wangping to be enough, and it would be too difficult to fight.

 

If Mu Sichen hadn’t been attracted by Yao Wangping’s San value and followed him to the sanatorium but instead stumbled into the library, he probably wouldn’t have been able to escape the fate of seeing his eyes fall while reading.

 

“How did such a horrible library turn into that high-tech look now?” He Fei asked curiously.

 

As if in response to his words, the next second, the screen turned, and a person that looked exactly like Shen Jiyue walked into the library.

 

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