บท 21: Chapter 17 Materials
After returning to the countryside, Lin Fei and her parents and younger sister stayed for a day, and the next afternoon, she boarded the bus back. Although she had only stayed there for one day, Lin Fei firmly remembered the forest where she had killed for the first time.
Back at school, life continued as dull as ever, with Xu Ke still often coming over in the morning to have breakfast with Lin Fei. However, Lin Fei noticed some abnormalities in her younger sister.
May 28, 2004, afternoon
"I'm going out!" Lin You shouted loudly at the door, adjusting the small bag behind her, and without waiting for a response from home, she slammed the door shut.
Mother Jiang Feng was tidying up the dishes in the kitchen and hadn't managed to respond when she heard her daughter slamming the door. She couldn't help but smile bitterly, "This child, always so secretive, who knows where she's headed to hang out?"
After dinner, Lin Jianguo lit a cigarette and sat on the living room sofa watching the nightly news. Lin Fei sat beside him, listening to the diminishing sound of her sister going downstairs and glanced at her dad, who was engrossed in the TV.
"Dad, I'm going back to my room to read."
"Yeah, go ahead, you've been quite good today," Lin Jianguo said, eyes still fixed on the TV screen, responding casually.
Lin Fei went back to her room and stood by the window, watching Lin You walking on the road below, looking around as if waiting for someone.
"Could there be something up?" He glanced at the living room; his dad was oblivious, watching TV, and in the kitchen, his mom had started washing dishes, humming a tune.
"Maybe now's a good time to search my sister's room. If I'm quick, there shouldn't be a problem."
He carefully pulled a thin piece of wire from a drawer in his desk, a lock-picking tool he had prepared earlier.
His sister's room was next to his, just a few steps away from his own room's door.
Lin Fei tiptoed, trying not to make a sound as he quietly moved to Lin You's door, the thin wire silently sliding into the keyhole.
Using the sound of the TV news as cover, the wire slowly turned inside the lock.
"Click."
After a soft sound, the door automatically opened a crack. With the dishwashing and TV sounds covering up any noise, his parents didn't notice anything.
Lin Fei looked back at the other rooms to make sure no one was paying attention before retracting the wire and gently pushing open the door, slipping inside and carefully closing it behind him.
Lin You's room was very clean and neat, faintly emitting a fragrant scent. It was the body fragrance of a young girl.
Lin Fei usually only glanced into this room when passing by. Now he had a chance to look around freely.
The room was spacious and neat, the window was half-open, and the white curtains fluttered with the breeze. Below the window was a desk, neatly stacked with books, among them, the black notebook that Lin Fei was most concerned about, quietly sandwiched in the middle of these books, looking just like any ordinary notebook.
Lin Fei quickly stood up, walked to the desk, and pulled out the black notebook. He gently opened it.
With a hiss, a small pale yellow bookmark suddenly fell out from the first page.
The bookmark floated down to the floor. Just as Lin Fei bent down to pick it up, he suddenly noticed something under the bed—a bamboo basket. It was packed with many things.
Upon closer inspection, Lin Fei immediately averted his gaze, his face heating up. There were some undergarments that Lin You had changed out of.
Daring not to look any further, Lin Fei picked up the bookmark, finding a line of small print clearly written on it: "28 West Lake Boulevard, 7 PM." Following it was a series of cryptic symbols with corresponding Chinese characters beside them.
"This must be some kind of coded reminder. I didn't expect it to be so easy to obtain," Lin Fei murmured, holding the bookmark and flipping open the black notebook again.
He discovered it was full of similar cryptic symbols. It seemed the bookmark was used for the corresponding translation.
Lin Fei suddenly became interested.
"Finally, a clue. I didn't expect that my sister has already started to contact the Inner World." Due to time constraints, he couldn't translate slowly but had to directly translate from the topics noted in the notebook.
"Psychic... corresponding level, Ice System... control, basic knowledge, precautions..." Lin Fei frowned as he translated the topics one by one.
"As expected, it's all about Psychic abilities." He closed the notebook and reinserted the bookmark. Then he carefully approached the door, gently opened it, and quickly slipped out. Then, he closed the door and returned to his own room.
"Phew..." He breathed a sigh of relief softly.
Lin Fei sat at his desk. By then, the sky had also darkened a bit, and he switched on the desk lamp with a snap. The white light shone directly on the black cover of the notebook.
"This must be something akin to an entry manual."
He opened the notebook, corresponding to the bookmark, and began to translate all the recorded topics little by little. Lin Fei also placed a blank notebook next to him, ready with a pen to record important information.
As time passed, an unknown world slowly revealed itself before Lin Fei's eyes.
"Awakening your Psychic ability only means you have crossed the threshold of F-tier Combat Power. A regular person, without any talents but merely through years of training as a Special Forces Soldier, also possesses F-tier combat strength. Therefore, do not underestimate any opponent because of your Psychic abilities. In this stage, we are all very vulnerable. A bullet, a small knife, can easily end our lives."
Lin Fei continued to translate further.
"We Psychics, in ancient times, were called demons, heretics, wizards, devils, and so on. But in fact, we are just a group of slightly different humans. The world pushed us out, isolating us into a distinct circle. However, some geniuses later sought to change this situation. They proposed the theories of being superior to humans, better than humans."
Thus, a portion of the oppressed and persecuted Psychics stood up. They attempted to confront the world, aiming to position themselves at the pinnacle. This is the Pantheon.
And the viewpoint we heretics uphold is that we still belong to humanity, we are an extreme example of the human family, slightly different from ordinary people, our essences are still part of humanity. We are the elites of the human race. We belong to a new type of humanity that belongs to the future. This is the miracle and coincidence of evolution...."
The rest of the text was full of praise for the heretic organization, which Lin Fei skipped over.
This passage revealed two major organizations of Psychics: the Pantheon and the heretics, which seem to be antagonistic.
"Just don't know which camp that red-haired man belongs to. However, from the records here, there is a high likelihood that he belongs to the Pantheon," Lin Fei flipped through the pages. But most of them were irrelevant brainwashing content. Impatient, he directly flipped to the last few pages.
At the end, there was an appendix table.
"Combat Power division standards?" That was the meaning translated from the code.
The appendix had divisions into six levels: A, B, C, D, E, F. According to the descriptions, the lowest F-tier was equivalent to the strength of a fully armed Special Forces Soldier. As for the higher levels, there were no detailed descriptions, only some strange symbols and patterns corresponding to these letter grades. The meanings were unclear.
"F-tier is equivalent to a fully-armed Special Forces Soldier? That means, at my full strength, I am not even as good as a Special Forces Soldier, not even reaching the lowest F-tier?" Lin Fei was slightly taken aback, but considering that he had just started his training, he did not dwell on it, merely marveled at the high strength levels in the Psychic world and continued reading.
"Generally, when a Psychic awakens, their future potential is already set. We divide the perfection process of Psychic abilities into three stages: Entry Stage, Mature Stage, Transcenders. Normally, more than ninety percent of Psychics belong to the Entry Stage...." The rest was a bunch of other symbols completely different from the code on the bookmark. Clearly, it was another type of encryption.
Lin Fei flipped through the notebook again, making sure there was no more content to explore, and then finally closed the notebook reluctantly.
"This notebook has a lot of important information about the Inner World, and the Combat Power levels gave me a perfect reference to know how my strength compares to other Psychics. It also revealed the organizations, the Pantheon, and the heretics. This is enough for me."
Lin Fei stood up, "Right now, I don't have the strength to intervene in higher levels, and as someone who hasn't even reached F-tier, I'm probably just an ant among ants in the Psychic world. Now, knowing the hierarchy of strength, I don't need to probe this aspect anymore. Focusing on enhancing my strength is what I should do."
Carefully, he left his room. His father, Lin Jianguo, was still watching TV, and his mother, Jiang Feng, was knitting woolen slippers. Both were sitting on the living room couch.
Lin Fei used the same method to open his sister's door and carefully placed the black notebook back in its original spot. Then he quietly left the room and returned to his own.
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