HBWnovel Chapter 374 Unexpected Joy
Chapter 374 Unexpected Joy
Two days later.
At the end of the third floor of the Scripture Pavilion.
Chen Mu picked up a silk scroll from the top shelf, activated Qi Forbidden Hundred Miles, and absorbed the dust from the crevices of the adjacent scrolls.
After cleaning, he put the scroll back in its original place.
He repeated this process until he reached the middle of the bookshelf, where five or six stacked scrolls appeared before his eyes.
Chen Mu cleaned the dust as before, but in the end, he deliberately left one of the scrolls beside him.
The next moment, Qing Lu's voice emerged.
"The third volume of 'The Mirror of Tongtian River Water' is placed in the wrong position."
Chen Mu turned around, bowed respectfully, and said, "Thank you for reminding me, Director."
Immediately, he activated the Truthful Listening Technique and, as expected, caught the familiar aura from the first floor.
"This place is the farthest from the counter on the first floor, and the entire octagonal wooden building is within the coverage of Qing Lu's Secret Technique."
Watching Qing Lu leave, Chen Mu continued his silent cleaning.
At noon, Chen Mu used having lunch as an excuse to temporarily leave the Scripture Pavilion.
After exiting the pavilion, instead of hurrying back to his bamboo building, he strolled slowly along the bluestone path outside the Scripture Pavilion.
At the same time, he silently activated Qi Forbidden Hundred Miles and absorbed the dust and loose soil from the side of the road, spreading it on the ground.
Before long, a tall and thin young man in his twenties came up the mountain path, walked along the bluestone pavement with shoes full of dust, and hurried towards the Scripture Pavilion.
As they brushed past, Chen Mu's face showed nothing, but his Truthful Listening Technique firmly locked onto the young man.
After the young man entered the doorway of the Scripture Pavilion, Chen Mu's heart couldn't help but lift.
Yet, until he left the Scripture Transmission Institute area, Qing Lu did not appear.
"That young man stepped on the loose soil. With Qing Lu's cleanliness, he would have called me to clean it up under ordinary circumstances, but now..." Chen Mu narrowed his eyes.
"Is it that he cannot or does not want to?"
"Most likely, he does not want to," Chen Mu frowned.
Old man Qing was someone who followed the rules; once Chen Mu had left the Scripture Pavilion, he wouldn't bother him.
However, this made it difficult to calculate the coverage of Qing Lu's Secret Technique.
...
After lunch.
On the second floor of the Scripture Pavilion, in the Qimen Secret Arts District.
Chen Mu stood between two rows of gray bookshelves.
From the bottom shelf on the right side, one bright yellow scroll after another floated up, queuing in front of Chen Mu.
"'Far Sight Technique,' seeing dozens of miles as if they were before one's eyes, a human-powered telescope?"
"'Smell Identification Technique,' distinguishing hundreds of scents, identifying people by smell, like a dog's nose, heh..."
"'Mirage Technique,' mist forming a mirage decoy, this is far inferior to Qing Lu's Secret Technique..."
Chen Mu skimmed through the scrolls at a glance.
Continue your saga on My Virtual Library Empire
He tried to find some clues about Qing Lu's Secret Technique and it would be even better if he came across a targeted Investigative Secret Technique.
The Scripture Pavilion was sparsely populated.
Qing Lu: "..."
This new scriptorium scholar... he doesn't have any issues, does he?
...
The next day.
Scripture Pavilion third floor.
"Don't ask me again, I can't help it. If there was a fool willing to take over, I would have quit this scriptorium scholar job long ago," a colleague in his forties said meaningfully while looking at Chen Mu.
Who the heck are you looking at!
I'm not the fool here!
Chen Mu explained earnestly, "I actually quite like the job of a scriptorium scholar."
The middle-aged colleague sneered: "Like it? With all the bizarre comings and goings in the Lower Courtyard, aren't you scared?"
"Not scared at all," Chen Mu said with an unfazed face.
"Ha!" his middle-aged colleague said with disdain.
"Don't believe me?" Chen Mu raised an eyebrow.
Then he casually took a black leather-bound book that needed sorting and archiving from the other's hand.
With a whoosh, he threw it to a random spot.
The middle-aged colleague only felt his scalp tingle, his eyes uncontrollably widening.
But before he could figure out what was going on, a voice suddenly rang out.
"'Records of the Hundred Thoughts of the Daoist Ancestor' should be placed on the fourth shelf of the fourth layer."
The middle-aged colleague immediately shuddered at the ghost-like sudden appearance of the voice.
He quickly turned around to comply and swiftly corrected the placement of the wrong book.
After watching Qing Lu leave, just as he turned to scold Chen Mu, he was met with Chen Mu's grinning face: "Exciting, isn't it?"
The middle-aged colleague: "..."
This guy... he must have some serious problem, right?!
...
Chen Mu looked on with regret as his colleague left in disarray.
He had wanted this colleague to help him test a few more times to get the hang of it.
What a pity...
Arriving on the second floor at the Qimen Secret Techniques District, Chen Mu continued flipping through the books. Meanwhile, the acupoint in the center of his brow twitched and he spread Qi Forbidden Hundred Miles around, encompassing a ten-meter radius.
"If I wasn't afraid to use Five Ghosts Possession, this range could be even greater... huh?"
"It seems like it can be a bit larger indeed!"
Thinking so, he tentatively spread Qi Forbidden Hundred Miles further outward.
The secret acupoints in his chest and abdomen pulsed simultaneously, and Qi Forbidden Hundred Miles indeed expanded outwards!
"What's going on?!"
Qi Forbidden Hundred Miles originated from the Cloud Mirage Spirit Armor Technique, and it originally could only restrict at ten meters, but with Five Ghosts Possession, it could be amplified to a hundred meters.
But now...
"This must be two or three hundred meters, right?!"