novelraw Chapter 108: The Scribe's Papyrus
Chapter 108: The Scribe's Papyrus
Kevin's hoarse monologue lingered in the air.
He seemed drained of all strength, slumping back into the massive armchair and covering his face with his hands, emitting muffled sobs.
His mental defenses had collapsed, rejecting any form of communication or help.
In his eyes, these few unfamiliar "outsiders" before him were no different in essence from the doctors, police officers, and priests who had previously made solemn promises but could only watch the tragedy unfold in the end.
They were all just powerless "spectators" in his prolonged death drama.
Faced with a subject who had lost the will to live and sealed himself off, attempts at persuasion or comfort through words became meaningless.
Lin Jie understood very clearly that to pry open Kevin's tightly shut heart, they first needed to find a powerful "key" strong enough to overturn his desperate perception.
This key was not on Kevin himself, but hidden within this ancient manor marching towards death, filled with secrets and lies.
"Professor O'Donoghue," Lin Jie no longer looked at the young man curled up in the sofa like a walking corpse.
He turned and directed his gaze toward the history professor who felt helpless."In your previous letter, you mentioned that the O'Connor family's 'curse' is closely related to their family history."
"Then, does this manor still preserve ancient documents or private manuscripts recording their family history?"
Professor O'Donoghue was momentarily stunned, then nodded: "Of course there are."
The O'Connor family was one of Ireland's ancient noble families, and they had always taken pride in their long and distinguished lineage.
It was said there was a dedicated family library in the east wing of the manor, housing all important documents and private diaries concerning the O'Connor family from the 15th century to the present.
"Only..." A troubled expression appeared on his face, "...no one has entered there since the old patriarch passed away."
"And most of those ancient documents are written in a very obscure form of Middle Gaelic."
"Even I would need to rely on numerous reference books and spend weeks or even months to decipher just a small portion."
"Middle Gaelic..." Julian, who had remained silent until now, erupted with a fanatical gleam in his eyes upon hearing this term.
For him, the allure of a sealed ancient library far surpassed any treasure in the world.
"Take us there!" Julian's voice was excited.
Under Julian's powerful "academic pressure," the Old Butler could not refuse.
He could only shakily retrieve a rusted copper key.
Then he led Lin Jie and the others through a series of dim corridors hung with portraits of the O'Connor family's ancestors through the ages, finally arriving before a massive double door carved with intricate vine patterns.
This was the O'Connor family library, the ultimate witness to their centuries-long saga of glory and sin.
The scene beyond the door gave Lin Jie the illusion of stepping into an ancient tomb.
It was a large room with a ceiling at least thirty feet high.
All four walls, from floor to ceiling, were completely covered with top-quality dark oak bookshelves.
The shelves were densely packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of books.
Thick dust, like fallen snow, evenly coated every flat surface in the room—the bookshelves, tables, chairs, globes, and the floor.
"Oh... my God... my Holy Mother Mary... my Aristotle..." Julian let out a moan of bliss as he gazed upon this "virgin land of undeveloped knowledge."
Completely ignoring the dust and musty smell that would suffocate an ordinary person, he charged in first like a shark that had caught the scent of blood.
He took out a pair of white silk gloves and a small leather bellows for blowing away loose dust from his canvas backpack.
Then he carefully pulled from the shelf what looked like the oldest, most severely damaged, unnamed vellum manuscript.
He slowly opened the manuscript. On the yellowed, fragile parchment was recorded, in Middle Gaelic, a long-forgotten ancient epic of the O'Connor family.
Julian's brow furrowed tightly.
Although he was proficient in several ancient languages, even he found this Middle Gaelic—which had not yet been fully standardized and was filled with numerous slang terms and regional variants—to be troublesome.
"This... this is harder than deciphering those late Ptolemaic dynasty tax records from the Louvre basement..." he groaned in pain. "If we only have twenty-four hours, it's impossible..."
"Then perhaps it's time for some 'unconventional' academic tools to come in handy," Lin Jie, who had been standing behind him, spoke up.
Julian was taken aback for a moment, then he slapped his own forehead in sudden realization!
"Yes! Yes! You are absolutely right! I almost forgot! My dear Lin, sometimes I get too immersed in the pure logic and textual research of 'conventional' methods!" He rubbed his hands together excitedly. "In critical moments, it's you young folks, more accustomed to taking shortcuts, whose minds work faster!"
Having said that, he laid the Gaelic manuscript flat on the dust-covered desk.
Then, from the deepest part of his backpack, from a carefully wrapped multi-layer waterproof oilcloth compartment, he retrieved a piece of papyrus that looked utterly ordinary, even somewhat "shabby."
That piece of papyrus was about the size of ordinary letter paper, displaying a fragile, withered yellow color.
Its edges were ragged and tattered, with several small holes that seemed to have been caused by insect damage.
The fibrous texture formed by the pressed stems of the papyrus plant was clearly visible on its surface.
The entire sheet bore no writing or patterns.
If thrown into the Egyptian exhibition hall of any museum, it would be dismissed as an ordinary, worthless scrap of raw paper material, attracting no attention.
But when Julian took it out of its protective case, a pious expression appeared on his scholarly face.
This was Julian Beloc's ace in the hole, an item rated as a "Kingdom-class" auxiliary artifact by the I.A.R.C., a Grotesque Armament with extraordinary abilities—[The Scribe's Papyrus]!
"Legend has it," Julian's voice became reverent, "that in the ancient Egyptian underworld, when the souls of the dead underwent Anubis's 'Weighing of the Heart' judgment, the god of wisdom and scribes, 'Thoth,' would use a reed pen to record all the good and evil of that deceased person's life on a piece of papyrus possessing the divine attribute of 'recording all truth in the world.'"
"This papyrus cannot be tampered with or deceived;
it is synonymous with 'absolute truth.'"
"And the one in my hand is said to be the most inconspicuous yet most miraculous fragment among the countless funerary items found within the sarcophagus when Napoleon's army, during their Egyptian expedition, barbarously blasted open an unrecorded scribe's tomb from the First Dynasty period."
As he spoke, he gently placed the papyrus, which looked as if it would shatter at a touch, over the opened vellum manuscript.
Then he closed his eyes and slowly channeled his mental energy into that unremarkable sheet of paper.
In the next second, a miracle occurred.
Lines of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script, composed of flowing golden sand grains, appeared on the previously blank papyrus!
Those golden hieroglyphs rapidly performed translation and transcription on the papyrus.
They accurately translated the obscure Middle Gaelic sentences from the vellum manuscript below into ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, line by line.
Then, an even more incredible scene unfolded.
The hieroglyphs that had just been translated began to change again!
They wriggled, decomposed, and reassembled, ultimately undergoing a second translation from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs into lines of elegant, clear modern Latin script!
Not only that!
On the papyrus, sections of the vellum manuscript that had become blurred due to age or were completely missing due to page damage were perfectly "restored" by those flowing golden sand grains through a method of deduction based on contextual logic!
This was the heaven-defying, unsolvable ability of [The Scribe's Papyrus]—"Absolute Truth Translation and Completion"!
Before it, any script or symbol in this world, as long as it was created by "intelligent life" to record "information," no matter how ancient, how obscure, how fragmented or incomplete, would be translated without obstacle into a language the user could understand and presented before their eyes in a state closest to the "original truth"!
For a "knowledge maniac" like Julian, this Grotesque Armament fascinated him even more than King Arthur's "Holy Sword"!
"Aha! Found it!" Julian let out an excited cheer as he watched the clearly appearing Latin text on the papyrus!
Pointing to a crucial paragraph "completed" by the papyrus, he read aloud and simultaneously translated it for Lin Jie and William.
"...In the year of our Lord 1603, our clan's chief, 'Bloody-Handed' Liam O'Connor, to demonstrate 'loyalty' to the newly arrived English Queen Elizabeth I, betrayed the ancient covenant with the 'Children of the Moon,' namely the Druidic followers."
"He set a trap and lured Ireland's last great bard, 'Blind' Tarlough, to 'Weeping Blood Hill.'"
"There, far from keeping his promise to protect this lifelong friend who had sung epics for our clan for generations, he instead, to seize the holy relic—the 'Silver-Stringed Harp'—said to have been personally blessed by the moon goddess 'Danu,' stabbed the unarmed poet through the heart from behind with his sword stained with the blood of his own kin..."
"With his last breath and the power of his Druidic bloodline, Tarlough laid down a vicious curse that would haunt our clan's lineage for eternity."
"He fused his own 'voice,' his own 'wail,' with that harp."
"He cursed that any descendant of the O'Connor family who heard the specific lament he composed for our clan, titled 'The Blood-Tear Dirge,' played upon this 'Silver-Stringed Harp,' would have their soul return to dust within three days in a painful and grotesque manner..."
"And after murdering his friend and seizing the cursed harp, Liam, far from gaining the wealth and honor he desired, became the curse's first victim three years later."
"It is said he choked to death on wine from his own mouth while laughing heartily at a grand banquet..."
Reading to this point, Julian looked up.
"So that's how it is..." he whispered in a tone of deep emotion.