The door was opened silently. When Ding Qianlie and Luoxue saw Ding Ning who came out of the laboratory, they instantly felt distressed and funny.
At the moment, they saw Ding Ning’s gaunt face, disheveled hair which was like a chicken’s nest, and bloodshot eyes. The Italian handmade white shirt he wore was like the one a tramp wore, smeared with ink stains as if he was a refugee who had just fled back from Feizhou, but he was extremely exhilarated in spirit, with undisguised joy.
“I don’t object to your experiment, but you can’t work so hard. What if you damaged your health? Go and take a bath, and then eat.”
Ding Qianlie felt distressed and blamed him, and Luoxue nodded repetitively and fully agreed.
“Sister, I’m not hungry; I learned…”
Ding Ning was about to show what he had learned in the past few days, but he was interrupted unquestionably by Ding Qianlie. “I don’t care what you have learned. Now, at once, and immediately take a shower. You are so dirty.”
“Hee hee, I’ll cook for my brother.”
Luoxue stuck out her little tongue and ran to the kitchen instantly. Now they had a housemaid, but if Ding Ning ate at home, she would cook herself.
“Sister, I…”
“Well, if you have anything to say, tell us after you take a bath and eat. Without eating or drinking for seven days, you’ve made me so worried.”
Ding Qianlie undeniably took Ding Ning’s arm and left.
“Seven days? I have been in the laboratory for seven days?”
Ding Ning allowed her to take him but opened his mouth wide in shock because he felt that only one day had passed at most. Unexpectedly, seven days had passed in the blink of an eye.
“What do you think? Luoxue sent you three meals a day, but you never touched them. If I had not been afraid to disturb your work, I would have rushed in to feed you.”
Ding Qianlie pushed him into the bathroom and ordered, “Wash now. I’ll get you some clothes to change and put them at the door.”
“Uh, okay!”
Ding Ning shrugged but obediently opened the shower to wash because he could not refuse his sister’s kindness. In fact, now he did not need to take a shower at all, for a Clean Water Charm would do.
Right, it was a charm. A better understanding comes from repeated reading. In the past few days, he continuously copied the rune on the gold foil numerous times. Finally, he wrote it down, but it only had the form but did not have the spirit. After all, he practiced calligraphy before, so he knew that copying the rune was like copying calligraphic works. The one only with its form but without its spirit was a failure.
He was stubborn, but he had begun to doubt that humans could copy this rune. In addition, the rune that he anxiously copied did not even have its form.
With his calligraphy practice experience, he soon realized that the peace of mind was needed in calligraphy practice, and irritability was the taboo of it.
So, he forced himself to calm down and used the Heart Sutra of Bodhi to help himself write again, calmly and attentively. Unexpectedly, he found that the rune he had copied had 90% spirit of it.
This gave him so much encouragement. As he ran the Heart Sutra of Bodhi, he copied the rune, with all his mind immersed in it, so he had no idea about the passage of time.
Finally, at a certain moment, he copied successfully. When he was about to put away the rune and find an expert on ancient writings to ask about what the rune was, the paper with the rune suddenly ignited of its own accord. Instantly, he understood the meaning of the rune on the paper.
The rune was a “rune” character. Just as he thought with a wry smile that it was meaningless to know one more Chinese character, a sudden shock occurred in his mind. The “Rune” character on the gold foil turned into a golden symbol, flew out of the foil, exploded in his mind, and turned into countless different forms of strange runes, which formed a pyramid-shaped rune tower, floating in his mind.
A rune that literally meant a “rune” but contained the inheritance of the “rune” doctrine was the general outline of the Rune Doctrine. This reminded him of the book Tao Te Ching’s lines “One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things.” that he had read when he was young. This was so much like the Rune Doctrine.
Ding Ning did not know where the gold foil came from, nor did he know why it had such a magical power, but this did not stop his enlightenment. “I am afraid that each rune on the gold foil represents a kind of inheritance.”
The gift of Battle God Totem was really a great gift. So, for the first time, Ding Ning felt grateful to his ancestor Chiyou, though he was numerous generations away from him.
The number of runes on the lowest level of the rune tower was extremely large, with more than 1,000 runes, and each rune was a basic charm-making method. These charms were: Clean Water Charm, which was used for cleaning oneself; Mind-refreshing Charm, which was used to refresh one’s mind; Devil-suppressing Charm, which was used to suppress devils; Ghost-exorcising Charm, which was used to exorcise ghosts and demons; Soul-redeeming Charm, which was used to expiate the sins of the dead; and Fireball Charm, which was used for your family trip, murder, and corpse destruction…
From the rune tower’s bottom to its top, the charms’ powers increased and their classes became higher. For example, the Fireball Charm could send out a fireball, but when it was raised to a higher level, it would become the Firedragon Charm, which could turn into a fire dragon to burn the fighter’s enemy; if it was raised to a higher level, it would become the Explosive Firedragon Charm, which could explode.
If it were only so, Ding Ning would not be so excited. After all, he was a peace-loving person in his bones. What excited him most was a rune called Purification Fulu.
This Purification Fulu could extract and purify a certain substance it needed from any article. For an ordinary person, even if he had the Purification Fulu, he could not use it to do anything, but for him who had the Absolute Touch, this was equivalent to a nature-defying treating-cheating device.
The truth was that his Absolute Touch could clearly show the composition of the objects he touched, and the Purification Fulu could refine some of the material components he needed.
You might as well imagine like this: What would be the effect if the Purification Fulu was used on a cancer patient?
The answer was undoubted: The cancer cells that were spreading would be concentrated and refined. Then, a doctor could conduct an operation or use Chinese medicine to drive the cancer cells out of the body, and the cancer patient would recover.
Pitifully, he had to learn the runes on the rune tower step by step. If he could not master the more than 1,000 basic runes at the bottom, he would have no chance to learn the runes on the next higher level.
The function of the basic Purification Fulu was limited, and its purity could only reach 50%, which meant that if Ding Ning wanted to treat Sun Lanying in this way, he must learn a higher level of charm-making methods.
The Rune Doctrine had three charm-making methods: Magical Charm, Spiritual Charm, and Deity Charm. The so-called Magical Charm was one which was made from the elements such as cinnabar, rune paper, Essential Blood, and others and contained the True Qi of the maker. The Spiritual Charm was a much more advanced charm, which was made by drawing runes on an object with the Spiritual Power and contained the maker’s Spiritual Power. The Deity Charm was even more powerful. The maker made it in the void by using the power of his Soul without the help of anything. The created charm was formless and colorless, and only those who had the same Power of the Soul could see it.
In a word, no matter how a charm was made, its power was determined by the Magic, Spiritual Power or Power of the Soul that was stored in it.
Of course, as the most basic charm, the Magical Charm could not be compared with the Spiritual Charm and the Deity Charm in effect and power.
It was complicated to describe it, but in fact, its principle was very simple. According to Ding Ning’s understanding, the so-called charm-making was actually a way to make the concentrated mini-matrix and then input enough energy into it to form a special effect.
Just like producing medical equipment, we must have a mold first and then produce it on a large scale according to the model of the mold, and each mold has a different appearance according to its role.
This mold was equivalent to drawing the runes. According to the function of the runes, the functions of the produced runes were also different.
The reason why some random warlocks of the complicated human world would make demon-exorcising charms to fool others was that they all had samples passed down by the ancestors of their sect, and they could use these samples to make things. In fact, they only knew them but did not know their principles. They had no idea about the principles of the charms.
All roads lead to Rome. The Rune Doctrine and the Matrix Doctrine had a very close relationship. So to speak, the Rune Doctrine was based on the Matrix Doctrine.
To verify his guess, Ding Ning also opened the matrix gift package left by Xuan Ji to learn the basic knowledge of the Matrix Doctrine and compared it with the Rune Doctrine.
It was really convenient to use his Shenshi to transfer the package. He had to learn the methods of making the charms one by one, but he could master the basic matrix knowledge that had been stuffed into his brain in a few minutes. It was even hard to forget it.
The verification result proved that his guess was correct. The charm-making was actually a depicted form of expression after the matrix was reduced countless times.
With the knowledge of basic matrices, Ding Ning could easily learn how to make the charms, and some parts that he didn’t understand before suddenly became clear to him.
“Knock! Knock! Knock!”
The knock on the bathroom door interrupted Ding Ning’s infatuated study, and then came Ding Qianlie’s unpleasant voice, “Have you fallen asleep in the bathtub? Luoxue has warmed your food twice.”
“Uh, I’ll be done right away.”
Ding Ning replied in embarrassment. He had gone too far because he had almost spent an hour taking the shower.
“I put your clothes at the door. Come out and get them yourself.”
Ding Qianlie shouted, turned around, and left.
“Oh!”
Ding Ning rinsed quickly, closed the shower, opened the bathroom door, changed clothes, and went downstairs to eat.
“Young master!”
…
When he came to the living room on the first floor, 12 uniformly dressed and pretty-looking little housemaids, who were led by a meticulously dressed silver-haired old man and stood in a line, bowed together to greet Ding Ning.
Among them, several little maids secretly raised their heads to look Ding Ning up and down with curiosity, for they were very curious about this young master who had not shown up for several days in a row.
Ding Ning had never experienced anything like this and nodded to reply in a rather embarrassed manner, but he won the praise of the little maids. “Wow, the young master is so handsome and so approachable, but… he stays indoors a little too much.”
“Come, sit down, and eat. This is our housekeeper Uncle Zhang, who graduated from Yinggeli Royal School of Etiquette and has served as a housekeeper in many aristocratic homes. When he got old, he wanted to return to his homeland and then came back to Shenzhou!”
Ding Qianlie sat on the left side of the dining table, and Luoxue sat on the right, leaving the head seat to Ding Ning to show his position as head of the family, and she also introduced Uncle Zhang’s glorious resume.
Ding Ning nodded with a smile at Uncle Zhang, who replied with a rather serious smile. Sitting uncomfortably on the head seat, he whispered in Ding Qianlie’s ear, “Sister, this is too much, isn’t it? I feel so awkward. When so many people watch us eat, I’m afraid I can’t eat.”
“To be honest, I also feel awkward, but Uncle Zhang asked for it. He said that a master must have the authority of a master, and the servants should stay with him when the master is dining, waiting for his orders at any time. I could not persuade him, either.”
Ding Qianlie also had a helpless expression. Initially, she thought it would be more convenient to pay a high salary to get a housekeeper who understood etiquette, but she did not expect that Uncle Zhang’s requirements on etiquette were nearly harsh. From time to time, he also corrected her unladylike behavior, making her feel that she had caged herself.
Ding Ning grinned, turned to Uncle Zhang standing straight behind him, and said with a smile, “Uncle Zhang, have you eaten?”
His expression was like the one he used to randomly greet Old Wang next door when he woke up early in the morning to walk and came across him.
