Chương 37: Wellspring Step

In the gloomy primeval forest, a heavy silence hung over the area, likely because the earlier stampede had swept away a significant portion of the local mana-beasts. The broken bone in his left arm had completely healed under the wolf-woman's miraculous "lunar healing," leaving not a single trace of a scar. Rowan clenched his left fist, feeling the restored physical strength and the smooth, unimpeded flow of mana. He couldn't help but marvel inwardly at the wolf-woman's terrifying power.

"My injuries are healed, and the Möbius ring's cooldown is about to end... Right now, the initiative has completely returned to my hands." Rowan glanced in the direction the wolf-woman had departed. He had no intention of activating the teleportation on his wrist to return to Terra the moment the cooldown finished. Since the greatest immediate threat to his survival had been resolved, tossing back and forth between worlds would be a severe waste of cultivation time.

He absolutely loathed the idea of wasting the high-concentration mana blanketing this world. But staying exactly where he was to cultivate undoubtedly carried massive risks. As Rowan moved through the forest, he spotted patches of glowing mushrooms; unfortunately, despite their unique appearance, they were merely low-mana plants.

"I need to find a safe location." Rowan analyzed the surrounding environment. Beams of moonlight pierced through gaps in the dense canopy, but visibility at night was severely restricted. His gaze swept through the gloomy woods. Soon, a bold yet highly logical location surfaced in his mind. The Rock-Scaled Giant Crocodile's stream-marsh!

Although that Tier 1 giant crocodile—which he had crippled by grinding through its leg with a water blade and blinding one eye—had fled in a panic, that area remained the territory it had dominated for years. In the brutal jungle of mana-beasts, the territorial pressure and scent of a Tier 1 predator acted like a natural quarantine zone. Ordinary unranked beasts wouldn't dare approach, and other high-tier mana-beasts wouldn't casually intrude into the territory of an equal without a specific reason.

"Even if that blind crocodile actually ran back to its lair to lick its wounds, with my body restored to its peak state and my mana mostly recovered, I might just be able to slaughter it." His mind made up, Rowan moved like a weightless night cat. Cradling the Crystal-Scaled Pangolin against his chest, he wove silently through the underbrush. Half an hour later, the familiar scent of damp, swampy moisture permeated the air once more.

Rowan stopped on a concealed elevation about three hundred meters away from the stream-marsh. The terrain here was slightly higher, preventing water accumulation, and sat exactly on the fringe of the giant crocodile's territorial aura.

"Time to work, little guy." Rowan pulled the pangolin from his jacket, placed it on the ground, and mimed a downward digging motion. The pangolin elegantly flicked its tail and blinked its little green-bean eyes. An earthen-yellow mana glow illuminated its four stubby claws. The semi-moist soil parted before it without producing a single grating sound.

In a mere fifteen minutes, it had bored diagonally into the earth, excavating a spacious, dry burrow five or six meters deep—large enough to comfortably accommodate a person and a beast lying flat. Rowan jumped into the burrow, and the pangolin expertly sealed the upper entrance with dirt, leaving only a tiny ventilation shaft. Completely cut off from the birdsong and insect chirps of the outside world, the burrow plunged into darkness and absolute tranquility.

Rowan leaned against the dirt wall and let out a long sigh of relief. He didn't sleep immediately. Instead, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the ancient book the wolf-woman had tossed him. Activating the night-vision mode on his tactical binoculars, Rowan opened the slightly tattered, leather-bound ancient tome. This was a cultural collision spanning two different worlds.

Some of the text in the book vaguely resembled the common language of the Terra Republic, while other parts looked more like twisted totems and hieroglyphics. If an ordinary Terran picked up this book, they would absolutely assume it was the meaningless scribbles of an illiterate child practicing letters.

"Mr. Larry once said that the underlying logic of the language in any magical civilization is inevitably born from the world's most foundational [Source Runes]." This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. For example, words related to water—such as "river," "ocean," or "flow"—were essentially simplified variants of the [Water Source Rune].

Abstract concepts like "tranquility" or "permeation" similarly derived from simplified text of corresponding spell models. Rowan settled his mind, his fingers gently tracing the rough ink marks on the pages. This method of recording was incredibly primitive. Rowan began to compare and dismantle the otherworldly text against the [Water Source Rune] embedded in his heart, as well as the runes he had learned in his school classes.

"The curvature of this radical heavily overlaps with several dozen circuits within the Water Source Rune; it should represent the concept of 'flow' or 'water'... This section means 'burst,' which is fundamentally identical to Terra's version... This one is..."

Through extremely hardcore etymological deduction, contextual guesswork, and—most importantly—the fact that a fair amount of the text was structurally identical, Rowan painstakingly gnawed through the preface of the ancient book bit by bit, like assembling pieces of a fragmented puzzle. It took over an hour before Rowan rubbed his swelling temples, having barely pieced together the origins of the book.

"The Lancer Family..." Rowan silently repeated the transliterated word in his mind. Judging by the intensely proud and eulogizing descriptions in the preface, this [Wellspring Step] was by no means a common, street-market technique. It was a family secret art belonging to an otherworldly lineage of mages known as "Lancer"—a technique passed down exclusively to mid-level scions who had reached a certain core status.

As for the specific details regarding their family glory, Rowan wasn't an expert in deciphering text and couldn't parse the exact meaning. He planned to seek out the Dark Web expert "@plus_Hermit" to continue the translation once he returned to Terra.

"It seems that wolf-woman didn't just provoke the knights of the Holy Radiance Church; she also casually robbed a local spellcaster family while on the run," Rowan clicked his tongue inwardly. Continuing to flip through the pages, Rowan's gaze grew serious. Before the actual chapters on constructing the Wellspring Step spell model, there were several pages containing guided diagrams on how to regulate breathing and resonate internal mana with the external mana environment.

"This is... an alternate world's version of a Mana Channeling Manual?!" Rowan was shocked. Although limited by his vocabulary and unable to fully comprehend the dense annotations just yet, simply looking at the circulation route diagrams of mana flowing through the body gave him a profound sense of familiarity. This was absolutely a method for channeling mana.

"In the alternate world, the value of this section might not be any lower than Wellspring Step itself." Even if the grade wasn't particularly high, discovering a new cultivation technique (usually excavated from ancient ruins) could be uploaded to Terra's National Library in exchange for massive contribution points and Terra Credits. Rowan committed the diagrams to memory before flipping to the main text. Now came the true main event.

Rowan closed his eyes and retrieved the three-dimensional, aqua-blue spell model that the wolf-woman had forcefully branded deep into his mental sea. Compared to when it was first implanted, the model had already begun to fade; it looked like it would dissipate completely within a week at most. He opened his eyes and meticulously compared it against the flat, 2D circuit diagrams and obscure text recorded in the book. This comparison instantly lifted his spirits immensely.

The highly specialized, otherworldly magical terminology that had previously been as incomprehensible as a divine script was fundamentally deciphered when cross-referenced against a perfect, ready-made "3D answer key"!

"Ah, so the 'Counter-flow Node' mentioned in this sentence actually refers to a momentary pause in the mana circuit during actual construction. And this strange symbol represents the synchronized folding of three Water Source Runes..." Rowan's eyes grew brighter and brighter, his breathing quickening. It was exactly like asking an engineering student to hand-build a complex engine. If you only gave him a manual in a foreign language, he might have to study it for months.

But if you placed a transparent, perfectly operating physical engine right next to that manual, absorbing the theory would be exponentially faster than trying to chew through raw text alone! Referencing the brand in his mental sea, Rowan's comprehension of Wellspring Step skyrocketed at a terrifying speed.

"Too fast... this kind of learning efficiency is practically cheating." Rowan halted his deduction, a trace of complex emotion flashing deep in his eyes. This addictive, accelerated learning method naturally drew his thoughts back to Terra, back to his high-and-mighty nemesis—Julian Sterling.

"I finally understand why, even though we attend the same school and listen to the same teachers, those Consortium scions will always, forever master spells infinitely faster than us commoners." Rowan sneered coldly in the darkness, his fist clenching slightly. On Terra, if a bottom-tier student like him wanted to learn a spell, they had to huddle in a cramped rented room with a spellbook.

Risking the lethal backlash of mana, they had to endure endless trial and error, slowly piecing together broken lines and fragmented theories. And those heirs like Julian? Their families absolutely retained high-tier mage mentors. When they learned new spells, those mentors could do exactly what the wolf-woman did today: use their mental power to directly brand the perfect spell model into their sea of consciousness, guiding them hand-in-hand to complete the construction of the mana circuits.

"Innate advantages... From the very moment they are born, they are already standing leagues ahead of us. Knowledge, resources, even the very avenues of learning—they monopolize every single advantage."

"Does this mean I technically just got to experience the lifestyle of a Consortium Consortium prince for a day?" Suppressing the tumultuous thoughts in his heart, Rowan closed the book. He checked his progress and decided to leave the remaining half of the deduction for tomorrow. Too much had happened today. Exhaustion permeated every fiber of his body; he simply wanted to rest. He tucked the book securely inside his robes. Beside him, the rotund pangolin was already fast asleep, sprawled out on its back.

With every breath, the crystalline scales on its belly emitted a faint, rhythmic fluorescence. A rare, gentle curve softened the corner of Rowan's mouth. He reached out and pulled the warm little creature into his arms. Closing his eyes, he fell into a peaceful, deep sleep deep beneath the earth of the alternate world.