Chapter 123: 123

The constant deliberation over those skills as well as a deep yearning for it left Xiao Lin incapable of fully concentrating on his work for that day. He had used his replication skill the day before, so he would have to wait seven more days for its next use. In addition, the past day’s gravity training made his muscles sore and swollen. He appeared absent-minded when transcribing that morning, and it did not take long for Professor Brown to head downstairs and point out—very harshly—some grave grammatical errors in Xiao Lin’s transcript.

“Xiao, your focus seems to be lacking.” Brown had also noticed that Xiao Lin was in a state of malaise.

“Professor, I went to the training hall yesterday and I’m still a bit tired. I think I need some time to adjust.” Xiao Lin took the opportunity to ask, “Can I take a day off if it’s possible?”

Brown’s face was very unhappy. “I’m sure you’re aware that our current rate of progress is unsatisfactory.”

“Okay. I understand.” Xiao Lin was not too optimistic that the strict professor would agree. He shrugged to indicate that it was not a big deal, then handed to Brown the few volumes that had been copied. He pointed to areas that had been circles with a red pen and said, “These aren’t easy to translate. They’re not smooth in terms of Ancient Normese’s grammar.”

Chloe looked up and added, “I’ve seen those areas. The contents existed on the slate to begin with, and we couldn’t have possibly made a mistake either in transcribing or by missing some letters. I think it’s likely that they were erroneously recorded on the slate.”

Brown frowned, and said in a reprimanding tone, “Ancient Normese is a very rigorous language. It’s impossible that they’d make such a low-level mistake. You’re not on a high enough level!”

Brown casually took it and narrowed his eyes before looking at it for a moment. A trace of confusion flashed in his expression and he chanted repeatedly before whispering to himself, “This is odd. It doesn’t look like the standard grammatical combination for Ancient Normese. Is it possible that there’s still some grammar that I haven’t figured out yet? No, that’s impossible.”

Xiao Lin was the closest to Professor Brown and could therefore hear the man much clearer. When he thought about how Professor Brown—whose understanding of Ancient Normese had reached the peak—could not even understand it, Xiao Lin decided not to be too hard on himself.

Brown appeared to be quite a serious person, and when he discovered that he could not even comprehend the grammar, the wrinkles on his face seemed to become even deeper. He paced back and forth around the area, causing everyone else to put down their work and wait curiously to see if Professor Brown could solve the problem.

“Might it perhaps be an inversion? I remember Ancient Normese having grammar like that,” Chloe suggested.

“No. It doesn’t work.” Brown shook his head.

“Shorthand? Like English shorthand,” Lolander ventured.

“Impossible. There’s no evidence that shorthand exists in Ancient Normese! I only believe in facts that have reliable information!” Brown continued to reject.

Everyone rushed to offer their suggestions, but were all refuted by Professor Brown. The scene soon reverted to silence again. They were unable to offer any more help with their level of Ancient Normese, but simply offered their opinions for the sake of constructiveness. After all, it was Judge Academy’s affairs, which had nothing to do with them.

Xiao Lin did not say much. His level was the lowest and he was the one with the least right to speak. When other people were discussing, he held the copied volumes and flipped through them. Though he could not understand the meaning of those texts, he could just barely recognize the pronunciation of some words.

Xiao Lin suddenly had a thought and said in a half-joking tone, “Maybe it’s a transliterated word? Like foreign words that don’t appear in their vocabulary, so they use similarly pronounced characters instead. I used to learn English like that, using Chinese with a similar pronunciation in place of…”

Lolander chuckled and empathized with Xiao Lin. “I understand what you mean. I did the same when I learned Standard Normese!”

“How boring…” Chloe shot the two of them a blank glance. Tricks like that were clearly pointless for someone who was really proficient in foreign languages.

However, Professor Brown’s eyes lit up slightly and he said softly, “That’s a good idea. If this is a transliterated word, what language would it be transliterated in?”

“Judge Academy was the one that attacked the Thunder Kingdom, so it must be English,” Lolander said matter-of-factly.

Chloe shook her head. She read the untranslatable text in Ancient Normese and said, “This pronunciation obviously has no association with English.”

“Sounds a bit like French?”

“Please! I don’t think it’s French!” Lolander, the only one from a French academy, immediately denied.

“We should approach this with an open mind. The pronunciation might not be exactly the same when transliterating characters. You probably know that it’s sometimes really difficult for local indigenous people to learn our language. Their pronunciation would be quite awkward.”

Xiao Lin kept quiet. It was definitely not Chinese from the pronunciation, but he thought about it and spread his palms. “Let’s not get ourselves in a twist, guys. How many colonial colleges are there? We can just try each language one by one.”

Everyone looked at each other and seemed to view that idea favorably.

“There are a dozen colonial colleges in total, but there weren’t that many when the Thunder Kingdom was still built. Several colleges in South America and Africa were built in the last couple of decades, so we can exclude them from the list.”

“I think Xiao may be right. Let’s try everything!”

“Egyptians speak Arabic, right? Do any of us know Arabic?”

“We can just let Judge Academy go over there and find someone who understands the language. That won’t be a problem!”

“Silence, everyone!” Brown shouted in a deep voice. He rubbed his head before saying, “Let’s try all the languages that you’ve mastered. Since you’re all from different countries, you may try it in your native languages. Xiao, let’s start with you!”

Xiao Lin read it half-heartedly a few times and shook his head. “It’s not Chinese.”

“Not French either. Swear to God!” Lolander did not even bother to read it.

“It’s certainly not English either.”

…

The questioning soon ended, and many academies did not have any representatives there. Not every academy was like Dawn Academy, who did not share a boundary but produced students like Xiao Lin who understood Ancient Normese.

“What about Russian?” Professor Brown asked.

“None of the people from Russia’s Voyna Akademiya are here. They’re all war-loving madmen who don’t appreciate the wonders of linguistics!” Chloe’s tone seemed to suggest her unfavorable view of Voyna Akademiya.

“I know a little bit of Russian. My grandmother is Russian, but I don’t know much,” a thin, tall man answered in a low voice.

Chloe turned around awkwardly.

Brown could not care less about insignificant things and asked bluntly, “Then come over and read it. Does the pronunciation resemble Russian?”

The man frowned for a while and did not immediately state his answer. He looked a little nervous in front of Brown, and after a moment’s consideration, said, “I’m not sure, Professor. It doesn’t look like standard Russian, but if you ask me from a purely pronunciation point of view, my opinion is that this text is trying to express a name. A Russian’s name!”