Bolen's Advice and Choice

Lu Yuan didn't deny it.

Bolen's expression went from casual to shocked.

He slapped his notebook onto the table and leaned forward.

Then he realized. "Did you run into a Dwarf? Knocking on your door like those door-to-door salesmen on the street, dragging you along to recommend a direction?"

Lu Yuan nodded.

Bolen stared at Lu Yuan for several seconds.

Confirming he wasn't joking.

Then he glanced at Kail nearby.

Silence for two seconds.

"Followed me for so long and still hasn't even entered the threshold."

The tools in Kail's hands paused. His mouth opened as if to say something, then closed, and he pulled his head back helplessly.

Bolen withdrew his gaze, his tone returning to normal. "It's always like that. A Dwarf came to notify me when I was advancing back then, too."

He paused. "By the way, did the Dwarf give you a stone tablet? I can take a look for you."

Lu Yuan took the palm-sized stone tablet from his pocket.

Bolen took it and looked down.

Four symbols.

The old man's expression froze.

Bolen stood up with his cane, holding the stone tablet, and circled Lu Yuan twice.

"Is this for real... Aren't you a Knowledge Pathway transcendent? How can there be four paths?"

He stopped, staring at the four symbols on the stone tablet, then back at Lu Yuan. "I only had two back then."

Lu Yuan raised an eyebrow. "What is that based on?"

"Aura." Bolen tapped the surface of the stone tablet with his fingernail. "The number of directions depends on the complexity of the aura on you. The more complex it is, the more matching directions there are. Four... that means the dimensions of your aura are very rich."

He lowered his voice. "Actually, it's not quite normal."

Lu Yuan didn't respond.

Bolen looked at him for a few seconds, didn't press further, and sighed. "Fine. You've helped me a lot; if it weren't for you guys during that trip to the pipe network, I probably wouldn't have made it back. I'll analyze this for you now."

He turned to Kail. "You, out."

Kail looked aggrieved. "Teacher, I—"

"Out."

Kail stood up, patted the dust off his knees, and walked away, looking back every step.

Once the door was closed, Bolen continued. "Even though Inscription isn't your main pathway, a certain level of secrecy is still necessary. The Empire has a registration system for transcendents. Whenever you want to go public, just go to the Nightwatchers and file a record; then it won't matter. But for now, before there's a record, the fewer people who know, the less trouble there is."

Lu Yuan nodded.

"First, about the Dwarves."

Bolen placed the stone tablet on the table and leaned back in his chair. "The four options the Dwarf gave you were all judged based on the aura on you. The fact that they appear on the stone tablet means you're suitable for all of them. There's no problem there; Dwarves won't pull tricks with the options."

"But the recommendation part is different."

Bolen made a gesture. "The direction he recommends isn't necessarily the one most suitable for you. It's the one most suitable for him."

"If you choose the direction he recommends, it's equivalent to 'having him guide you through the threshold.' In the rules of the Dwarf race, guiding an outsider through the threshold earns them a very substantial reward."

"And he likely recommended his own specialty. The Dwarf population is too small; the inheritance of their craft is their lifeblood. Having an extra outsider apprentice is like having an extra insurance policy."

Lu Yuan remembered Duo Hawke's tone during the recommendation. He had indeed said quite a few good things.

"Which one did the Dwarf recommend?" Bolen asked.

"Weapon Inscription and Ancient Inscription."

Bolen scoffed. "Weapon Inscription is eighty percent likely his own direction. As for Ancient Inscription... he probably mentioned it in passing just to seem impartial."

He paused. "Speaking of directions, I follow Ancient Large-scale Inscription myself."

"The most orthodox and most difficult direction in Inscription. Of course, many people choose it; large-scale inscription arrays, city defense seals, those all fall under this path."

"I'm still at the peak of rank 2, stuck at the threshold of rank 3. I expect there's still a long way to go."

Bolen's tone was flat. "Being transferred to Bronze City was partly the Nightwatchers' arrangement and partly because of this city's walls. The system and structure of those runes are helpful for my research into Ancient Large-scale Inscription. Just the peripheral patterns on the surface of the walls are enough for me to ponder for a long time."

"But I didn't expect that after going down into the pipe network, I'd find the things on the walls are just the extremities. The real heart is underground."

Bolen glanced downward. "If the inscriptions on those copper pillars can be thoroughly researched, rank 3 isn't impossible. At rank 3, one is a true Inscription Master."

"However, there are very few Ancient Large-scale Inscription Masters in the Empire. On the contrary, there are quite a few rank 3s in other inscription pathways."

After speaking, he patted the stone tablet on the table. "Alright, let's talk about yours."

"Four directions. I'll go through them one by one."

Bolen picked up his cane and tapped the first symbol with the tip.

"Weapon Inscription. I suggest you rule it out immediately."

"Your combat power is obvious to all, but you're destined not to put much effort into Inscription. You have your own main pathway; Inscription is just something you're learning on the side."

"The watershed for Weapon Inscription is rank 4. Rank 3 is already enough to stump many people, let alone rank 4. You won't be putting your primary energy into this."

"Besides, with your skills and merits, it won't be hard at all to earn enough points to hire a rank 3 Weapon Inscriptionist through Nightwatchers channels to customize weapons for you."

Bolen spread his hands. "Doing it yourself versus paying someone to do it—the latter is more cost-effective for you. Unless you want to play with siege weapons—that level of rank 3 Weapon Inscriptionist is truly powerful. But you clearly aren't going that route."

Lu Yuan didn't object.

The tip of the cane moved to the second symbol.

"Large-scale Inscription."

"There's nothing wrong with this direction itself. The arrays on the walls, city defense structures, and large-scale seals all belong to this path."

"But the problem is that as you go deeper into Large-scale Inscription, you'll eventually hit the realm of Ancient Large-scale Inscription. That's the path I'm on."

He glanced at Lu Yuan. "Ancient Large-scale Inscription has a knowledge curse. The Dwarf told you?"

Lu Yuan nodded.

"Good then, I won't repeat it. In short, it's fine for me to walk this path because I only walk the path of Inscription anyway. But you're different. You have your own Knowledge Pathway."

"Entering Large-scale Inscription is fine in the early stages. But once you touch the boundaries of Ancient Large-scale Inscription, the knowledge curse will lock your progress in any other direction. All experience, insights, and accumulation... everything will be forcibly directed toward Inscription itself."

"It's not a matter of whether to choose it or not. It's a matter of how deep you go. Dabbling is fine, but that's no different from not choosing it at all."

Lu Yuan was silent for a while. "Understood."

The tip of the cane moved to the third symbol and stopped.

He didn't speak immediately.

"Ancient Inscription."

Bolen weighed his words for a few seconds before speaking. "The Dwarf told you this stuff is 'lost and no one knows what it does,' right?"

Lu Yuan nodded. "His exact words were 'gone'."

Bolen shook his head. "The Dwarf saying it's 'lost' is from their perspective; it's indeed no longer in their inheritance system. But the Empire is different."

"The Nightwatchers have internal statistics. Although the materials on Ancient Inscription left by our predecessors are scattered, piecing them together is enough to support reaching rank 3. The Empire's current rank 3 Ancient Inscriptionists rely on these accumulations."

"It's just that currently, the Empire has no rank 4 Ancient Inscriptionists. The existing rank 3 Ancient Inscriptionists mainly focus their energy on researching the Empire's historical relics."

"The specialty of Ancient Inscription..."

Bolen thought about his phrasing. "It allows inscriptions to be engraved on carriers that possess knowledge density."

"What does that mean?"

"Ordinary inscriptions are engraved on metal, stone, or leather. But Ancient Inscription can be engraved on... more special things. The mental cores of eerie entities, knowledge-based creations, the knowledge structure layers of ancient relics."

"The effects lean toward sealing and suppression."

Something flashed through Lu Yuan's mind.

Mental core.

In the sampling bottle at the bottom of his toolbox—that consciousness crystal where greyish-green and dark gold were interwoven.

Did that count?

He didn't ask.

Bolen continued. "The copper pillars currently under Bronze City are considered the latest discovered ancient relics. If you choose this path, you can bind yourself to researching them."

"But there's a price."

"First, it consumes a vast amount of time. Second, you cannot leave Bronze City for a short period. Researching Ancient Inscription requires repeated contact with physical objects; it's not something you can just look at once and take with you."

Lu Yuan noted this condition in his heart.

Not being able to leave Bronze City. This was a significant restriction.

The tip of the cane finally moved to the last symbol.

Then he fell silent.

The silence was even longer than the last.

"Are these two very rare?" Lu Yuan asked.

"Ancient Inscription is rare but alright; people in the Empire are doing it."

Bolen's expression was a bit awkward. "Eerie Inscription... how should I put it... it's not even considered orthodox Inscription. Within the Empire's Inscription system, it's a branch of a branch."

"This type mainly utilizes body materials from eerie entities, or even live eerie entities, to engrave inscriptions and achieve some small-scale or extremely large-scale chain effects."

"But as you know, eerie entities come with their own pollution. Dead materials are hard enough to deal with, let alone that individual ones don't form a system and you can't withstand multiple ones."

"Not to mention live ones. A rank 3 Knowledge transcendent would have a hard time handling a live eerie entity alone."

"Rank 4s have that kind of strength, but rank 4s are pillar-like existences in the Empire; how much time do they have to research Eerie Inscription?"

"So, currently, Eerie Inscriptionists in the Empire basically make a living by creating small amulets and trinkets."

Bolen stopped here.

Lu Yuan thought he was going to say "so I don't recommend it."

But Bolen didn't.

The old man was silent for a few seconds. "However, I believe you, of all people, can choose it."

Lu Yuan looked at him.

Bolen's tone became serious. "I noticed the aura on you back in the pipe network. It's very 'dark,' and the concentration is very high. The Dwarf must have smelled it too. The fact that Eerie Inscription appeared among the four options on the stone tablet he gave you means your aura has a certain affinity with the eerie."

"What is the biggest threshold for Eerie Inscription? It's that the materials will lash back. When an ordinary Inscriptionist touches eerie materials, they get polluted themselves before they're halfway through engraving."

"But if your own aura already has an affinity with the eerie, the rejection reaction will be significantly reduced."