Xiuxian: I studied abroad in modern times

Chapter 576 As if hearing a heavenly book, two dictionaries

Deep within the Purple Cloud Palace, the seated listeners seemed oblivious to Zheng Fa and his group of newcomers, turning their heads without looking back, their gazes fixed intently on the figure seated on the high platform.

Hongjun Daoist sat cross-legged on the platform and glanced at Zheng Fa and the others. His gaze startled Zheng Fa—it seemed as if his gaze had pierced through time and landed on him.

Is this really just a memory of the hibiscus tree...?

Zheng Fa couldn't help but feel a little doubtful, but then he saw that Hongjun Daoist had already turned his head and opened his mouth, as if he was about to start preaching.

He immediately perked up his ears. Not to mention that this time the Dao was related to the treasure of Hongmeng Purple Qi, listening to the Dao at Zixiao Palace was a great opportunity in itself. How could he not be looking forward to it?

But when Hongjun Daoist spoke, Zheng Fa felt as if he had been hit on the head with a heavy hammer, and was completely stunned.

Can't understand!
What came out of Hongjun Daoren's mouth was the supreme Dao.

When Zheng Fa heard it, he only thought it was a bunch of gibberish and incoherent nonsense.

Language barrier!
Now, Zheng Fa truly felt that the memories of his dead were attacking him—he had encountered a similar predicament when he first transmigrated to the modern world.

Fortunately, the difference between the Xuanwei Realm and modern language is not that great; now it seems that they may be of the same origin.

He was at the bottom of his class for many years in junior high school, a disgrace to compulsory education. It was only because he was hardworking and had a good memory that he gradually improved his grades.

...Now look what's happened. After wandering for half his life, he's still illiterate when he returns.

He was puzzled. He could understand what Hongjun had just said, and it was in the current Xuanwei language.

But upon glancing at the futon beneath his legs, he suddenly realized that the words he had just spoken had probably been translated by the Fusang tree.

But preaching is different; any translation will lose the true meaning of the preaching.

Fusangmu meant well, but Zheng Fa and his fourteen men were truly bewildered:
They were like international students who had never learned a foreign language, sitting in a classroom full of foreigners, with only one question on their minds—could they speak human language?

Behind Zheng Fa, the Lu Clan's Grand Elder's mouth opened and closed in sync with Hongjun Daoist's, but his mind was blank.

When he came to his senses, he became even more anxious.

Among the fourteen people who have entered the Nine Luminaries Heaven, the Lu Clan is actually the weakest. Although they don't want to admit it, Shi Nandang fought against more than ten Nascent Soul cultivators on that day. If they really fought, it's not certain who would win or lose.

The Lu Clan's reliance lies in two things: their cooperation with the Gu God and their control over the Nine Luminaries Heaven Gate.

But if they want the Primordial Purple Qi, this reliance is of little use.

He stared intently at Hongjun Daoist, but had to admit that he couldn't understand what the other was saying at all.

Just as he was feeling extremely anxious, a few golden lights suddenly appeared in the corner of his eye.

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder was stunned for a moment, then suddenly looked up.

Endless golden flowers drifted down from the dome of Zixiao Palace as Hongjun Daoist preached.

Upon closer inspection, the Grand Elder of the Lu Clan discovered that the petals of these golden flowers were covered with runes-like characters, which changed with the changes in the preaching.

Runes?

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder was suddenly enlightened, realizing where the opportunity lay.

He tried hard to decipher the patterns on the golden flowers around him, and suddenly a flash of inspiration struck him. He connected them with a talisman he had previously mastered. In an instant, the golden flowers seemed to have eyes, turned a corner, and fell down on his head.

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder felt a sudden surge of spiritual energy within his body, along with a small section of mysterious scripture flashing in his mind.

His clansmen all looked at him.

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder did not hide anything and whispered, "Ignore the sermon, just focus on comprehending the runes on this golden flower. Use the Dao of Runes to decipher its true meaning, which is very similar to how we used to perform rune magic."

The others suddenly realized what was happening and focused their attention on the golden flower. A moment later, someone exclaimed, "This flower is truly magical! My cultivation has increased!"

The Grand Elder of the Lu Clan quickly transmitted his voice, "Keep your voice down!"

"Yeah."

The Grand Elder of the Lu Clan looked ahead nervously, praying that Zheng Fa and the others would not discover the secret.

But upon closer inspection, he was greatly disappointed—almost everyone had noticed it:

The Creator's eyes gleamed with a strange light as he looked up at the golden flowers around him.

The white lotus in Leiyin Temple had its eyes closed and its lips moving, but there was a golden Buddha eye between its brows, which shone astonishingly brightly.

Golden-Winged Roc and the others were also desperately trying to comprehend the runes on the golden flower.

These people are all true immortals, and their mastery of talismanic arts far surpasses that of the Lu clan.
For every golden flower that the Lu people identify and absorb, the Creator Daoist must absorb at least dozens or even hundreds of them.

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder was anxious but helpless. The other party was simply stronger. They were not even at the Dao Fruit stage, so how could they compare?

He tilted his head and couldn't help but squint – Shi Nandang, this scoundrel, was covered in flowers, practically a little golden man. The number of golden flowers he absorbed was even twice as many as those of the Creation Daoist and others!
This golden light is both dazzling and heart-wrenching!
Even the Daoist of Creation seemed to be startled by Shi Nandang, and turned his head to take a few more glances.

Zheng Fa was being watched by the Daoist of Creation and others, but his mind was not on them.

In terms of the Dao of Talismans, the Nine Mountains Sect can almost be said to be unparalleled in the profound mysteries.

Some of the patterns on the golden flower are closely related to talismans, while others are not so similar. However, Zheng Fa can recognize almost any pattern that is related to talismans at a glance.

The sharp eyesight he honed by playing the talisman matching game back then is finally coming in handy.

Zheng Faneng felt that the spiritual energy in his body was becoming more and more abundant—this was crucial for him.

He has only recently advanced to the Mahayana stage, while others who wish to achieve the Dao fruit must accumulate spiritual power for many years.

But Zheng Fa simply didn't have that much time. Now, this golden flower was causing his spiritual power to advance by leaps and bounds, relieving his immediate crisis.

But Zheng Fa was not entirely satisfied.

Identifying the symbols on the golden flower grants spiritual power, which in turn improves one's ranking within the Purple Cloud Palace.

But there was nothing new to learn.

The symbols on the golden flower were fragmented and discontinuous, and he couldn't even fully recognize them.

On the other hand, he couldn't understand the teachings of Hongjun Daoren.

If things continue like this, he will only gain a slight increase in spiritual power, and nothing more.

Zheng Fa pondered for a moment, then looked at Hongjun Daoist and listened attentively.

The preaching went on for countless years, and no one knew how much time had passed. Behind Zheng Fa, the Lu Clan's Grand Elder was both trying his best to comprehend the runes on the golden flower and secretly observing the other competitors.

The light in the eyes of the Creator grew brighter and brighter, and the speed at which he absorbed the golden flower increased even further.

But even he couldn't compare to that White Lotus Monk!

A blue seed floated between the white lotus's brows, resembling the pupil of the golden Buddha's eye.

He devoured all the golden flowers around him.

The Grand Elder of the Lu Clan stared intently, almost exclaiming, "Bodhi Seed?"

His mind trembled violently. The Bodhi Seed was the supreme secret medicine of Leiyin Temple, which could best enhance a cultivator's comprehension and was extremely precious.

This white lotus just casually took one out?
The Grand Elder of the Lu Clan felt somewhat defeated and looked at the others.

The Golden-Winged Roc was deep in thought, his expression serious, showing no sign of ferocity. The Gu God and the White Bone Demon Ancestor were also extremely focused.

Of the fourteen people who came, almost none dared to slack off; each of them used their skills to try their best to decipher the runes on the golden flower.

wrong!

He suddenly realized that he had overlooked Shi Nandang!

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder turned his head and realized that it wasn't that he had overlooked the other party, but that Shi Nandang had lost his golden light and become inconspicuous.

The Lu Clan's Grand Elder narrowed his eyes, carefully examining Shi Nandang's profile. He saw that the man had his eyes closed, his head bowed, and his expression serene.

How can someone like Shi Nandang possibly sleep!
……

"Is the corpus sufficient this time?"

In the modern nursing home, Zheng Fa projected a light screen, on which was an image of Hongjun Daoren preaching.

Besides the voice of Hongjun Daoren, the scene also shows those golden flowers, especially the talismans on them, which are clearly visible.

Zheng Fa had been listening to the Dao in the Nine Luminaries Heaven for more than half a year. At first, he was still studying the runes, but later he completely focused his attention on recording the teachings of Hongjun Daoist.

He looked at Professor Liu and the others with expectant eyes.

He had fallen asleep in Zixiao's class several times, and each time he brought back a bunch of lecture videos for Professor Liu and others to study.

Professor Liu, along with a group of linguists newly recruited by the nursing home, exchanged worried glances and began to explain:
"Writing is nothing more than form, sound, and meaning. We already have a very clear understanding of form and sound based on the sound of this sermon and the pattern on the golden flower, but the meaning..."

At this point, Professor Liu's expression became even more embarrassed: "We can still only analyze a small portion."

Zheng Fa nodded slightly, not so disappointed—he had heard this answer many times before.

Seeing his silence, Professor Liu said in a low voice, "Dean, we have some ideas that might be of some use."

Zheng Fa, however, held little hope. His initial progress in deciphering the ancient language was quite rapid, but he remained stuck there without any breakthrough.

"Zheng Fa, Ling Wu has made progress!"

The old man in white flew in the sky and shouted at Zheng Fa.

Upon hearing this, Zheng Fa perked up and beckoned to Professor Liu, signaling them to follow him to the back of the mountain.

"Dean, this is..."

"Now that the corpus is complete, we're going to try using Heluo."

The most advanced supercomputer at Heluo Nursing Home is now unparalleled in the modern world in terms of computing power.

When Tang Lingwu first started studying ancient languages, she proposed using artificial intelligence to analyze them. They tried it, but due to the incompleteness of the data, they came up with very few conclusions, and even many errors.

During this time, Zheng Fa listened to the Dao at Zixiao Palace and collected a large amount of phonetic and textual data of ancient languages.

These raw data have been studied and processed by Professor Liu and others, and can be considered a very high-quality corpus.

Tang Lingwu has recently been using artificial intelligence to process these corpora, and today it seems that she has finally achieved some results.

When the group arrived at the back mountain, Tang Lingwu was already waiting there, holding a tablet in her hand, and a huge screen on the wall in front of her.

On the screen was the figure of Hongjun Daoren, speaking:

"I am struck by the ignorance of all living beings and the profound mystery of the Great Dao..."

It's actually a modern language.

Tang Lingwu and her team not only used the Heluo script to decipher ancient characters, but they also translated them?

Zheng Fa looked at Hongjun Daoist on the screen and thought to himself, "This is great! Not only do I have a translation, but I also have video courseware. I can listen to it as many times as I want."

But Tang Lingwu's surprise for him wasn't just that.

"Heluo also provided an explanation for the texts and sounds that Professor Liu could not determine the meaning of."

"what?"

"Charm".

Upon hearing this, Zheng Fa immediately understood: "A curse?"

“Those runes are closely related to the talismans we know, and you could even say they originated from the same source, but we never knew that runes could be read.”

This is true.

From the moment he entered the Dao, the talismans of the Xuanwei Realm were all drawn, without any sound.

"That's why we can't completely decipher it. If we treat it as a spell and separate everyday language from the spell..."

Professor Liu, standing nearby, slapped his right fist against his left palm, suddenly realizing, "That's right! We always thought he was interacting with the audience during his sermons, but that's not necessarily true!"

“That’s right. According to Heluo’s analysis, only 30% of it is what we call everyday language, that is, language used to communicate with people.” Tang Lingwu nodded and said, “The other 70% is not actually language, but we can regard it as a kind of chanting.”

"Or rather, these chants are his way of speaking to the endless Dao of Heaven, which does not even conform to any grammatical rules and cannot be understood by modern linguistics."

Zheng Fa listened and nodded slightly. In this way, he could understand why modern scholars had spent so much time trying to decipher ancient languages.

Essentially, this is not a language.

Mixing incantations with everyday language doubled the difficulty of the research for Professor Liu and his team.

"Heluo has initially compiled two sets of dictionaries."

Tang Lingwu tapped on the tablet, and two files appeared on the screen in front of them.

"This is an ancient dictionary of commonly used characters. It contains more than two thousand commonly used characters used by Hongjun Daoren, and it can be supplemented in the future."

"This is a spell dictionary, which contains the pronunciations of more than six thousand spell symbols."

Zheng Fa looked at the two documents, but his gaze was fixed on the talisman dictionary. He took the tablet from Tang Lingwu, opened the talisman dictionary, and his spirits lifted.

There are many talismans on it, which are very similar to the talismans on the Qiankun Cauldron and the altar!

……

Within the Nine Mountains.

Senior Sister Zhang looked at the two dictionaries copied from the Heavenly Emperor's body, and then at the Qiankun Cauldron.

"You mean, you think the Qiankun Cauldron is a... ritual object?"

"According to the interpretation of these two dictionaries, the runes on the Qiankun Cauldron are a kind of ritual.

“Only after offering sacrifices to the Heavenly Dao can a magical artifact transform from acquired to innate.” The Heavenly Emperor pondered for a moment and then said, “The most important function of talismans should be this—to pray to the Heavenly Dao, or rather, to communicate directly with the Heavenly Dao.”

To put it simply, once he understood the existence of talismans, he realized their purpose—talismans weren't for magical battles; their greatest function was actually for performing various rituals.

The altar of the Primordial Demon Ancestor was like this, and so is the Qiankun Cauldron. Even looking back now, the oracle bone inscriptions left in the rituals of the Shang Dynasty are probably similar.

(End of this chapter)