Xyrin Empire-Chapter 732: The Female Hooligan’s Library

In the architecture of the Dark Divine Race, "towers" are a very important element, such as bell towers, lighthouses, book towers, and IV type Void Nodes—the earliest Void Nodes typically only took the form of thick castles or domed palaces. Now, these high-tower Void Nodes are designed by the Supreme Dark Goddess according to her own preferences. We just happened to pass by one such node, and at first, I thought all Void Nodes were high towers.

The Dark Divine Race’s fondness for the tower structure may be related to their leader—the Supreme Dark Goddess—who has a preference for such buildings. No matter what they build, they always make it a point to incorporate one or two towers, and they always manage to place them just right, so they don’t seem out of place. These soaring and slender towers add an elegant, mystical feel to the palaces of the Dark Divine Race, and it can be said to be one of the countless artistic treasures accumulated over the endless years of the Divine Race: for a race with such an infinite history, it is not easy to maintain such a hobby for so long.

At the house of Bingdisi—well, let’s more accurately call it a palace—of course, there are high towers, which we saw initially, placed at the four corners of the palace, gigantic bell towers designed by Uncle Kuwayin, which he is most proud of. Each tower has its own significance; the first tower was designed when the uncle came of age, named the Kuwayin Bell Tower. The second tower was to commemorate his successful wooing, thus called the Aisali Tower. The third tower was to celebrate Bingdisi’s birth, naturally named Bingdisi’s Tower. The fourth tower was for symmetry.

The meanings of the four towers are so distinct, yet Bingdisi herself rarely adheres to such formal names for her own towers. Our unconventional Lady Goddess tends to randomly name these lighthouses, naming them based on whichever world she last passed through.

The last time Bingdisi returned to the Divine Realm, she named them Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Xuanwu. But just fifteen minutes ago, they had proudly received new names: East Wind, South Wind, West Wind, North Wind...

I don’t know what’s going on, but some goddess has now taken up mahjong, and at this moment, I deeply worry about the remaining scales of Lin, because in theory, the perennially dominated Dragon God Girl has no chance against the strong S-type Rogue Goddess.

Speaking of Lin, Monina and the others returned at noon; each of them has their own temple and divine duties to manage. But honestly, I can’t imagine how a cook, an idiot, a perennial victim, and a perpetual nice guy, each of whom should be able to become a majestic and widely-worshipped deity, especially Lin who tends to apologize at the slightest disturbance—can she really handle being worshipped in a temple without getting scared to tears?

Dingdang is always the odd one out, or rather, Little Thing has completely forgotten her identity. She naturally continues to hunker down in my pocket, treating it as her official palace, it seems we’d have to remind her that she still owns an apartment suite in the Divine Realm.

The Divine Realm also has a day and night cycle similar to the Mortal World, or rather, all the cyclical changes of day and night, yin and yang in the Mortal World are actually influences emanating from the Divine Realm. We arrived in the Divine Realm in the morning, and now the time was approaching evening. The spirited Bingdisi was leading our large group on a random tour through her home, acting like a big child flaunting her treasures.

"These bell towers are all treasure troves. I used to play inside them often as a child, and even got lost several times," Bingdisi first led us to the first high tower of the temple, "This place is a library. My dad folded the space inside so it could accommodate the countless books collected by my mom—my mom loves books, all kinds of texts, scriptures, scrolls, she collects them all. Look."

What appeared before us—the so-called library—if a tower grander than Karazhan entirely used for storing books can still be called a library—was of a scale beyond the ordinary. We didn’t see any light sources, yet a soft light filled every inch of space. Inside, the tremendous space within the grand tower was almost entirely filled with endless shelves of books. These ancient and heavy huge shelves had dark runes floating over their surfaces, silently drifting in the air, spreading endlessly in all directions and even filling the high reaches above where the top couldn’t be seen. Segments of floating stone steps drifted slowly among these aerial bookshelves, mostly occupied by one or two Divine Servants responsible for managing the books; areas that were more open floated with obsidian platforms, equipped with small round tables and high back chairs, seemingly prepared for readers.

"In the view of the Xyrin Apostle, building an archive like this might seem wasteful; you guys prefer a simple, high-speed database—just connect and download whatever information you want—but my mom doesn’t think that way. She always says that the value of a book isn’t just in the information, but also in its being a ’book’ itself."

"I agree with your mom’s view," Big Sister said gently, smiling as she looked toward the nearest bookshelf, "Can we read these books?"

Bingdisi waved her hand generously, "Feel free, just like in your own home. My mom loves books and loves for others to read them too, just don’t damage them."

Curious, I reached out and took a very thick black book from a nearby shelf, muttering, "I just hope the bit of Divine Race text I know lets me understand the index of this thing."

"It doesn’t matter, eighty percent of the books here aren’t written with text."

The words of Bingdisi made one pause, but by then I had already noticed the special feature of this "book": the cover was pitch-black with not a single distinguishable symbol, let alone a title; it looked extremely thick yet was almost weightless in my hands.

Driven by intense curiosity, I opened the title page, which was completely blank.

It was nothing like those gorgeous and elaborately decorated books filled with Divine Language that Dingdang used to cram with for remedial exams.

"What... is this?"

I flipped through the book in my hands, astonished to find no text at all. Despite seeming weightless, it made crisp, pleasing sounds of pages turning. I flipped through the large book swiftly to the end and still, not a single word was seen.

Bingdisi watched me with a mysteriously knowing smile, then suddenly asked, "Did you know, Gandogon was bitten by a Flower-tailed Fox when he was sixteen..."

"It was quite itchy," I couldn’t help but purse my lips and scratched my waist, "The wind was strong that day... Oh! What’s happening?"

It wasn’t until I involuntarily responded to Bingdisi’s question did I suddenly realize something was off. Who was Gandogon? What’s a Flower-tailed Fox? More importantly, why did I suddenly feel itchy on my waist!?

"The name of this book is Gandogon," Bingdisi took the large book from my hands, gently patted its cover, then returned it to its original place on the shelf, "This is one of the types of books in the library, a collection of memories. Gandogon was a very ordinary mortal boy, born into a family of devout followers of my father. His life was plain, born ordinarily, grew up ordinarily, learned to write his name and keep accounts from the village’s only Dark Priest. At fourteen, he dreamt of taking over his father’s land and building a new mill. At sixteen, being bitten by the Flower-tailed Fox was a small price he paid to prove his bravery to the Dark Priest... At eighteen, Gandogon died from a severe illness, during an outbreak of a plague in that world, and the village’s only Dark Priest didn’t have enough power from my father to save everyone."

I swear it was the first time I saw Bingdisi speaking with such a calm and even compassionate expression, or to put it more dramatically, I saw maternal—in fact divine—compassion on this rogue goddess’s face as she spoke of that mortal named Gandogon. She filtered out all the words that needed censorship.

"So that book just now was..."

My sister gently asked.

"Gandogon was a thoughtful mortal boy, that is all I can say. He suffered from the brevity and anonymity of his life, after all, he was only an eighteen-year-old child—not old enough to be called a youth in that world, and just one of countless ordinary peasant kids. So he knew his brief and ordinary life would leave nothing behind and soon he would be forgotten by everyone, perhaps remaining only as an eternal scar in his parent’s hearts. So he expressed his last wish before death to the priest:"

"Let me be remembered. At least remember that I once lived."

"The simple wish of a peasant kid, who could only write his name and keep accounts, was not to survive but this... honestly, everyone thought it a bit unimaginable. But that priest still fulfilled his duty, perhaps out of sympathy. The priest devoutly incorporated this wish into his prayer at the funeral. My father happened to hear this prayer and personally lowered his voice, telling the priest and Gandogon’s parents: Fine, I will remember this child."

"Gandogon thus became one of my mother’s books in her collection, his soul had already returned to peace, but his short and ordinary life was completely recorded here, in minute detail, even including every breath he took. The memories of mortals are too fleeting, so we take it upon ourselves to remember this child for them. Every time you flip through this book, his life becomes something in your memory, just as if you had watched him grow up, but you yourself wouldn’t realize it."

"Uh, a... somewhat uncomfortable story." Lin Xue stuck out her tongue and slightly lowered her head to look around at the surrounding bookshelves from under her bangs, "Are all these books like that?"

"Pretty much, the books in the library are categorized, and most here are of this type of information," Bingdisi led us wandering amidst the countless bookshelves, "Of course, not every book tells such a tale, for instance, this one: Laguna, a cheerful Dark Elf who was a comic performer, whose wish was to let the happiness she brought people endure forever. This book records all her joyful emotions, reading it you can immerse yourself in happiness, though it doesn’t contain a single word. This book is You Lin’s journal, a rather fascinating alchemist who invented three hundred cheap toys for civilian children, ultimately desiring his soul to remain after his death, a tricky wish that gave the local Dark Priest a headache, so my mother just turned his alchemical inspirations into this journal, allowing even the most inept alchemists to come up with fanciful yet feasible ideas, although only for inventing small toys. Little Baobao, stop biting, what you’re holding is not edible, it’s the Sulei Scroll, a culinary relic of a temple chef; he recorded all the delicious dishes of his life, yes, that scroll is comprised of flavors... Hey! Sandora! You can’t eat that!"

We walked among the bookshelves with amazed expressions, occasionally uttering low exclamations of wonder following Bingdisi’s descriptions. Except for Sandora who seemed somewhat familiar with the place, we were all astounded by this magical spot. Every book, every scroll here recorded things that we thought impossible to be encapsulated in books and are easily forgotten: a life journey, an epiphany, a moment of joyous thrill, a sincere emotion... All these things had quietly transformed into "books," according to the desires of their original owners, becoming perpetual records.

"Memories, epiphanies, everything," Bingdisi’s voice came from behind the front bookshelf, "My mom loves collecting these, and dad always hustles about finding these worthy collections. Every book here varies in size and weight, their size depends on the first impression of the book by its owner, while the weight represents the ’weight of information—a peasant kid’s plain life weighs next to nothing, whereas a philosopher’s lifelong wisdom weighs much more."

"Thunk—"

A loud crash, Lilina was flattened on the ground by a large gold-covered book, struggling to get up, while nearby, a Mercury Lamp hovered in the air, giggling mischievously, obviously the book was pushed down by some little doll, and it precisely toppled over her life’s nemesis.

"Turham’s memoirs," Bingdisi said somewhat sentimentally as a Divine Servant swiftly flew over to lift the heavy book from a Fake Lolita Priestess’s back, "Turham was a world, a nascent yet doomed world, one of the worlds I personally created. Just as it began to breed civilization and world consciousness, it encountered a devastating Abyss outbreak. I couldn’t salvage that disaster, but Turham’s all life forms and the world consciousness itself strove to survive, so my parents helped me turn them into this book. Obviously, it’s very heavy."

I remembered my own first handcraft class when I made a paper ash machine, which later was destroyed in a catastrophic fire: caused by Qianqian playing with fireworks. Now the paper ash machine still remains in my memory; in many ways, I think it shares the same nature as Bingdisi’s memories, only too terrible was the outcome of her first handcraft class.

"How many books are there really here?" ƒrēenovelkiss.com

Unable to contain her curiosity, Qianqian asked.

Bingdisi shrugged, "Who knows, as I have mentioned, concepts in the Divine Realm are vague, and many things can be done with vague concepts, like this library. There is no specific number for its collection; theoretically, it has infinite capacity, and my mother has an unlimited passion for collecting books, so its final scale will be infinitely large. I even suspect that if continued expansion goes on, it will become as extravagant as the Book Tower in the Brilliant Divine Court: that’s my Father God’s library."

Another astonishing piece of news, but in just half a day’s time in the Divine Realm, we were almost becoming accustomed to all the abnormalities here.

Bingdisi began leading us toward the upper levels of the library, riding on those platforms floating in mid-air. The library’s collection was divided into myriad zones; besides the incredible "memory" zone we just saw, there were also records of world history, records of race propagation, records of Genesis processes, reference books describing various uses of Divine Artifacts, and the Divine Race’s family encyclopedias, such as how to create "light" with higher efficiency. As we ascended, the books’ reading difficulty increased, ranging from being able to read by touch to needing mastery of the corresponding Laws to browse. We certainly had no clue about those professional books; the Divine Race’s technical system wasn’t compatible with Xyrin at all, but comically, Dingdang was basically in the same confused state as us... Little Thing couldn’t understand anything in the family encyclopedia upwards.

"To be honest, I really wonder how you managed to pass elementary school, and how you obtained all this Divine Power."

Bingdis was very sincere in explaining her doubts to Little Thing.

"Divine Power is innate, during elementary school exams Dingdang threw dice," Little Thing cheerfully responded.

Students who throw dice during their elementary school entrance exams, you really can’t be underestimated!

The library in Bingdis’s home was an eye-opener, but as the Lady Boss led the way and eloquently introduced the books, I grew more and more puzzled until I couldn’t help interrupting Bingdis’s introduction—though my question might have seemed a bit rude.

"So, Bingdis, how come you seem like a different person once you’re in the library?"

The Goddess Sister Bao X looked curiously at me, apparently not quite understanding what I meant, but Qianqian was more straightforward than I was, and she hit the nail on the head, "It feels like you suddenly became knowledgeable and reasonable, not at all like a hooligan!"

Not just not like a hooligan; when discussing a specific book, she was as gentle and polite as a dignified lady! She even managed to say the words "Father God," and usually, the best she would call Uncle Kuwayin was just "old dad."

Faced with Qianqian’s blunt question, Bingdis instantly rolled her eyes, "Nonsense, this is a special place, I still know some manners, and making a racket in the library would get me scolded by mom, I had enough of that when I was a kid!"

I didn’t know whether it was respect for the "library" or childhood psychological trauma that calmed Bingdis down, but this quiet version of the Rogue Goddess indeed brightened the eyes; at least I knew that some female hooligans aren’t always riddled with censorship, they can also have their moments of being girly—only now I had another question, "Bingdis, after hearing so much, have you read all the ’books’ here?!"

"Of course not," Bingdis immediately shook her head, "Mom’s books are endless, but I have read the shelves we just passed by. Hey, Chen, don’t give me that look, next to fighting, my favorite thing is reading!"

At that moment, I was shocked.

Bingdis’s second hobby is reading? Isn’t it extorting protection fees?

Noticing that everyone wore a look of disbelief, even Sandora was giggling slyly, the Rogue Goddess felt extremely embarrassed and huffily said, "Hey hey hey, what do you mean? Have you forgotten I was once a high-level technician? I came from the Dark Divine Race and advanced directly to a High Order Light Goddess, a genuine knowledgeable talent!"

Well, I did indeed forget that, but a Bingdis who enjoys holding a book against the sunset during quiet times really doesn’t fit the usual impression she gives, right?

"Tsk, if you won’t believe it, never mind," Bingdis annoyed, waved her hand, and then stared dreamily at the countless tomes on the nearby shelves, "Truly disappointing, books are such great things, opening one can touch the soul, closing one can hit an enemy’s head, such an item that can both expand horizons and act as a brick, why on earth can’t I like it..."

Ding dang it, why didn’t you say so earlier! Now we believe you! (To be continued. If you like this work, please vote and support it on qidian.com, your support is my greatest motivation.)

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