Start with the Readers - CH 1

Arrival in the Loen Kingdom, the capital of all capitals, Backlund.

The city is divided by the Tussock River, which flows southeast towards the estuary, and is connected by the Backlund Bridge and a ferry. With a population of over five million, it is one of the most prosperous cities on the continent.

At that time, in a dark alley in the bridge area of the metropolis, a young man was crouching in the shadows of a corner. He had no visible injuries on his body, but his expression was extremely ferocious and distorted, as if he was in great pain.

Enduring the lingering buzzing in his mind, Liu Bo struggled to open his eyes and saw the bridge above him, with the crimson full moon high in the night sky.

Crimson Moon… Loen Kingdom… Backlund… Memories of these names flooded Liu Bo’s mind. After a while, he felt that his body had regained some strength and he leaned against the wall to stand up.

He looked down at his hand, which didn’t seem to belong to him, and said with a wry smile, “I’ve time-traveled… Loen Kingdom, Backlund? Heh, hearing those familiar names, I’m still in the world of my favorite online literature, “Lord of the Mysteries”? This isn’t exactly a place to look forward to!”

Liu Bo was originally a lecturer at a third-rate university. Who would have known that when he woke up, he would travel through time and even be reborn into the world of “Lord of the Mysteries”?

“My current body is called Abner Bryan. I just turned 18 and was still studying in public school. I fell off the Backlund Bridge while in a trance and that’s how I traveled through time. As for the reason for the trance, it seems to be a big change in the family… Wait, that doesn’t seem right!”

Liu Bo, who was recalling the memories of the original owner of the body, suddenly changed his expression and quickly reached into his pocket to take out a thumb-sized, sharp-edged blue gemstone.

Holding the gemstone up to the red moon, a scene flashed through Liu Bo’s mind: a middle-aged man lying in a pool of blood, wearing only his underwear. The gem was lying quietly on his chest, untouched after he was robbed. Abner, who happened to pass by this remote corner, became greedy and picked up the gem before quickly leaving.

“Is this gem the extraordinary characteristic that is precipitated after the death of an extraordinary being? Did the death of the original owner involve an extraordinary event? No, maybe it was just the erosion of the extraordinary characteristic that killed him!”

Thinking about how the original owner, Abu Na, had carried this gem close to his body for almost a week, Liu Bo’s eyes twitched. While mourning his ignorance, he quickly took out an iron cigarette box, like Klein in “Lord of the Mysteries”, and threw away the only two cigarettes left inside before carefully placing the blue gem inside.

After taking care of the gemstone, Liu Bo let out a sigh of relief and put away the cigarette box. He determined the direction based on his memory and rushed to his temporary rented residence in the East District. The bridge area was not a safe place to be at night, with a diverse and potentially dangerous population. It was not as secure as the relatively safer areas in the East District.

On the way, Liu Bo was constantly worried. He hadn’t fully received the memories of the original owner and was unsure of the exact date after time travel. He was afraid of encountering killers, demons, or cultists from the original book “Lord of the Mysteries”.

Fortunately, his worries were unfounded. Apart from seeing some homeless people who looked like walking corpses along the way, there were no other accidents. He returned to the small one-bedroom house he rented on Black Palm Street in the East District without incident.

The house was small and the rent was 4 soli a week, so the furniture was also very basic, with only a bed, a chair, a bedside table, and a half-length mirror hanging on the wall. Thanks to Emperor Roselle’s improvements in craftsmanship, the cost of glass manufacturing had been greatly reduced, otherwise, there might not have even been a mirror.

Liu Bo lit the candle on the bedside table and took out the sapphire from the cigarette case again, examining it carefully. He said to himself, “I don’t know which sequence number this extraordinary characteristic belongs to or if there are any sequelae to the erosion of my current body…”

As he spoke, he suddenly found that his concentration and logical analysis ability had increased dramatically. His brain seemed to have turned into a high-speed computer, with data flowing and being calculated in it. Within a few seconds, severe pain flooded his brain and Liu Bo let out a scream, collapsing to the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the half-length mirror before passing out. It was a young man with brown curly hair, but his eyes were completely white at this moment, as if he had lost his pupils.

…

At the same time, at the base of the Holy Wind Cathedral in the Jowood District, a member of the Punisher team was reporting to the captain:

“Captain, Old Rhett found An Rui’s body in a garbage dump in the Bridge District. He was obviously in poor condition after the battle in the suburbs last week and was killed by someone in the end…”

The captain of the Punisher team showed obvious anger on his face. He asked, “Are you a psychic? Do you know who did it?”

The team member sighed sadly and replied, “It was too late for us to find An Rui’s body. He was killed by a few homeless men and thrown into the garbage dump. There aren’t many remaining spirits, and the psychic couldn’t get a good reading. However, our ‘Watcher’ speculates based on clues that he must have met a gang member in the East District while severely injured and was robbed and killed.”

“How dare those maggots in the sewer?! Hmph, since it was a robbery, they should have taken away An Rui’s belongings and extraordinary characteristics. Follow this clue and make sure you find the garbage that harmed An Rui!” The captain stood up and slammed his fist on the table before sitting back down, looking discouraged. He continued, “You and old Rhett should also rest for a while before setting out to investigate. The sky is about to dawn and since I have a clear idea of what to do, I will go and confront An Rui’s family on my own.”

“Captain…”

Liu Bo woke up with no confusion, calmly taking out a pocket watch to check the time. He thought to himself, “I’ve been unconscious for nearly six hours… I seem to have a bit of luck when it comes to time travel. It’s just a bit of luck that allows me to fall unconscious for six hours in just a few seconds… I wonder if it’s just gold-plated, though.”

He then looked at himself in the half-length mirror and saw that his eyes were back to their normal size. However, he couldn’t forget the pure white pupils he saw before he passed out, and he couldn’t help but laugh at himself. “What is this? The white eyes of the Hokage? In terms of insight, it’s about the same, but the duration is too short! Well, according to the painting style of this world, I’ll just call it the ‘Pure White Eye.’”

Despite making self-deprecating comments, Liu Bo knew that this traveler’s welfare, which he had named the “Pure White Eye,” was actually quite functional. In just a few seconds, he had already gained a lot of benefits from it. He took out a pen and paper to summarize these benefits in Chinese.

“The first ability of the Pure White Eye is to enhance my memory and memory processing ability. In just a few seconds, I not only absorbed all the memories of the original owner, Abner, but also all the knowledge and books I had read before time travel. The knowledge and books I have read are also clear! This is wealth, not to mention anything else. The potion formulas and ritual spells involved in the novel “Lord of the Mysteries” alone are priceless. I loved reading this novel before, but it was impossible for me to memorize the potion formulas on purpose. Now, the Pure White Eye allows me to directly access these memories, which is really great! However, after leaving the Pure White Eye state, these memories will gradually become distorted and I’ll have to review them quickly to truly remember them. It seems that knowledge related to demigods is particularly prone to being forgotten, and knowledge about outer gods is even harder to remember.”

“The second ability is to enhance logic and insight. It allows me to discover many details in the Pure White Eye state and think about the internal logic and connections of these details through multitasking. It’s an excellent auxiliary skill for planning and strategy. I had no confusion after waking up because I thought through all the situations in the seconds before I passed out.”

“The third ability of the Pure White Eye is its most important, and that is its ability to analyze. This ability can only be used based on the knowledge in my memory and the specific phenomena I have observed. In other words, the first two abilities are prerequisites for this one. And this ability is extremely powerful. In those few seconds, I was able to analyze a lot of things just by glancing at the Extraordinary characteristic and looking at myself in the mirror. I recorded the analysis results on a new piece of paper:

First, this Extraordinary characteristic belongs to the ‘Reader’ sequence, specifically the ‘Deduction Student’ of Sequence 8. Secondly, my body has indeed been polluted by the Extraordinary characteristic, but because I passed through the suppression of the Pure White Eye, these pollutions have been integrated into my body and spirit. This has slightly improved my spirituality and mental body, similar to the second generation of low-to-middle-sequence Extraordinary who are born with some Extraordinary characteristics.

After writing this, Liu Bo couldn’t help but laugh bitterly to himself. He thought, “This also means that I can’t advance to other sequences. I can only try to improve as a ‘reader’, and the superhumans of this sequence also improve memory, insight, logic, and analysis ability in the early stage. My Pure White Eye is almost a standard ability for them, and I’m sure I’ll be able to continue improving. Is it really just a coincidence?”

“Oh well, I don’t really have a choice now. Even if I do manage to advance as a ‘reader’, the integrated characteristics from the suppression of the Pure White Eye will still be a great hidden danger. If something goes wrong, it could get out of control…”

Thinking of this, Liu Bo continued to write on the paper with the analysis results:

“The main material of the Reader Sequence Nine: the pupil of the Galore fish…”

This is the true power of the Pure White Eye’s analysis ability, which surpasses the five-level analysis ability of the reader’s pathway sequence.”