Chapter 021: The Shamanism Codex
“By the way, Divine Emissary!”
Just then, the native Great Elder suddenly jumped up, startling Chen Ran. The old man’s face was flushed, and he said excitedly, “Your Excellency, you should be able to read, right?”
“Uh…” Chen Ran was stunned. To be honest, he had never seen what the writing of another world looked like. He didn’t know if, just as his spoken language had been automatically converted upon transmigration, the written language would also be defaulted.
He glanced at Lia beside him. She looked like an intellectual, so Chen Ran wasn’t too worried. How hard could it be to fool a group of illiterate people? He immediately nodded and said, “I can.”
“That’s great!” the Great Elder said excitedly. “Divine Emissary, please follow me to the temple we built for our ancestors. There might be something there that can help us find our lost civilization.”
Next, under the guidance of the Great Elder, Chen Ran returned to the native ancestral burial ground where he had been trapped the day before.
It was clear that the old man was very devout to the heroic spirits of his ancestors here, maintaining a low, stooped posture as he passed through.
The burial ground was not too far from the tribe, about a twenty-minute walk. To prevent the graves from being damaged by wild beasts, the tribe would send a team in shifts to patrol here, preventing wild boars, wolves, and the like from causing destruction.
The place Chen Ran and the others were going to was the stone house he had seen yesterday. The house looked very ordinary from the outside, but upon entering, he found that the furnishings inside were surprisingly luxurious.
There were many Tier 4 magical beast pelts, a large number of magical beast crystal cores, and various metals and gems that he couldn’t name at the moment. No wonder Chen Ran had been thinking that for a tribe of five or six hundred people, they seemed too poor. It turned out that all the good stuff was kept here.
In Chen Ran’s eyes, these things were already deeply imprinted with his name. He just needed to find a suitable reason to collect them all later.
Guarding this ancestral hall were two of the Great Elder’s disciples. When they saw the Great Elder arrive, they hurried forward to kneel and pay their respects.
The Great Elder made a gesture for them to step aside, telling his two disciples to wait outside for a while. He then continued to lead Chen Ran inside until they stopped in front of a shamanistic array with a messy pattern that was impossible to decipher.
On a stone platform, there was a large object carefully wrapped in multiple layers of animal skin. The Great Elder stepped forward and unwrapped the skins. It turned out to be a book.
A very large book!
Chen Ran had never thought that some bored idiot would have nothing better to do than to make a book out of bronze. This thing was as big as a folded quilt and probably weighed at least seventy or eighty jin.
At this moment, the Great Elder’s trembling hands caressed the bronze surface of the book, as if stroking the beautiful body of a young girl, with extreme gentleness. He looked up and said to Chen Ran, “Divine Emissary, this is the sacred object passed down through the generations of our tribe. It is said to be the origin of our witch doctors’ shamanism and the source of our tribe’s prosperity. Back then, our ancestors sacrificed many warriors to retrieve this codex and enshrined it here, hoping that one day, someone could decipher its contents and bring back our lost civilization.”
“Let me see first,” Chen Ran said, nodding as he walked over.
The book was very heavy. Chen Ran opened a page. This single page was as large as a 21-inch monitor and weighed three or four jin. It felt very substantial to turn…
When he saw the text and illustrations on it, Chen Ran couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. He could actually understand it. It seemed that the written language had also been automatically translated. And seeing Lia’s engrossed expression, this script should also be the common language of the continent…
With this assurance, Chen Ran roughly flipped through the contents of the book.
It was quite a joke, actually. This huge book had only about twenty pages, and each page recorded the casting method of only one shamanistic spell. The entire content could have been easily recorded in a small notebook or a few scrolls of parchment.
These shamanistic spells were mostly support-type, exclusive to the witch doctor class. There were no special attack skills. Most of the skills required specific medicinal powders to complete the casting, which explained why witch doctors always wore necklaces of various small and large bottles. Although the Great Elder beside Chen Ran also had one, most of the small bottles were empty…
Chen Ran could easily help these natives translate these incantations, and he could also use his master-level alchemy skills to concoct the medicinal powders for them. As for the shamanistic spells themselves, Chen Ran was gradually stunned as he read, because there were many good spells he recognized, including Bloodlust (a berserk effect that increases movement and attack speed), Curse (deepens and rots wounds), Puppet Doll (creates a small cloth doll to control the target’s consciousness), and Voodoo Restoration (continuous healing in an area)…
Although these skills were very good, Chen Ran couldn’t learn them. Witch doctors had to undergo shamanistic tattoos as children and then perceive the qi of heaven and earth to gain shamanistic power. Just like the current Great Elder, he had a specific talent totem tattooed on his body, and his innate shamanistic power was not low. If it weren’t for his crappy teacher, his abilities would definitely not be so weak. At the very least, he would be strong enough to abuse the current Chen Ran.
Flipping to the last page, Chen Ran finally found something interesting.
The last page recorded a skill called “Soul Bead.” This skill was very interesting because it was not a spell cast with shamanistic power, but with the spiritual power common to all shamans and mages.
Strictly speaking, this was not an attack skill, but a life skill. It could use the caster’s spiritual power to collect spiritual bodies or soul bodies and turn them into something called a “Soul Bead.” The “Soul Bead” was an existence almost equivalent to a special material…
【Congratulations, you have mastered a new talent, “Soul Bead Collection.”】
A sudden prompt pulled Chen Ran back to reality.
Just as he had finished reading the specific casting method of this skill and felt that he could master it, this new prompt appeared. He had never thought that a hidden talent could be obtained this way…
Chen Ran blinked, opened his skill panel, and found this skill in the talent skill column. He curiously looked at the skill’s description.
Soul Bead Collection: Use spiritual power to condense unconscious spiritual bodies and soul bodies into Soul Beads.】
Although Chen Ran had mastered this skill, he still didn’t understand what it was for. But the burial ground was right outside; there should be so-called souls there.
Chen Ran couldn’t help but walk outside. The Great Elder followed him obediently. It was obvious that the old man understood that Chen Ran could read the book and had probably comprehended something important. A look of secret joy appeared on his face, and he remained silent, afraid of disturbing Chen Ran’s enlightenment, quietly following behind.
