Chapter 601: Forbidden Knowledge

In the illustration, the great tree glowed with a sparkling pink-purple hue, its leaves a deep, mysterious blue. The colors instantly captured everyone's gaze.

As expected, humans also have phototaxis. In the dim ruins, suddenly seeing such a bright great tree drew everyone's attention at once.

In front of the great tree stood a jackal statue—it seemed like a tomb? Could this be the Scarlet King's tomb?

In the story, Alhaitham stepped forward to examine it and discovered an elegy inscribed before the tomb.

The text on the elegy was in ancient script—even the current desert folk couldn't understand it, and ordinary people certainly couldn't. Fortunately, Alhaitham was no ordinary person.

[Alhaitham translated: "Here lies our loyal priest, Kasala."]

["He was wise as a miracle among the people, worthy of praise and song."]

Now it was clear—the one lying here was not the Scarlet King, but the Scarlet King's priest, Kasala.

[Rahman exclaimed in shock: "You can read ancient Scarlet King script?"]

Rahman was extremely surprised, because even as a fervent believer in the Scarlet King, he couldn't understand these words.

[Alhaitham said plainly: "It's nothing. Every young person should learn at least twenty languages before graduating, right?"]

Right? Is that correct? The young people expressed doubt.

But Faruzan wasn't young, and she approved—this was indeed a basic requirement for Haravatat.

Good, good. She never expected that this relic from the old era could find such a motivated young person in the new era.

In the past, Haravatat wouldn't let you graduate without learning twenty languages. The current Haravatat no longer had such extreme requirements.

The other Sumeru scholars seeing this were sweating profusely.

Senior Alhaitham, please stop talking. If you keep going, don't raise the academic standards even higher. Our degrees are already all watered down—we can't withstand your big academic stick.

But more scholars thought about it and felt relieved instead.

Why relieved? Because Alhaitham said "every young person before graduating."

Honestly, graduating in their teens or early twenties like Alhaitham and Tighnari made them absolute geniuses among geniuses.

Rosaria and Lisa also graduated young, because they were top-tier geniuses.

Even Setaria was a once-in-a-century genius from the desert.

As for ordinary people like them, by the time they graduated, they were likely no longer young.

We weren't young when we graduated, so we don't need to learn that many languages. No problem—the logic of Haravatat wasn't learned in vain.

Unlike the "roundabout" Sumeru scholars, Paimon was straightforward.

[Paimon: "He's joking, right?"]

Unfortunately, he really wasn't joking—at least the number of languages he personally knew was likely more than twenty.

But it didn't matter. Whether Alhaitham was joking or not, the few people in the story didn't really care.

Because none of them were scholars—they were all rough types. They didn't care about what graduation requirements scholars needed.

[Cyno: "Something still feels off… The elemental energy here is too dense."]

["The scent of life… Is it trying to tell us something?"]

This made everyone curious—what did the scent of life smell like? Just imagining it… the smell of lilacs?

Probably not, but it was hard for everyone to imagine the exact scent. Since this was the Mausoleum of King Deshret, maybe it was the smell of chicken wings.

The readers didn't have time to think deeply about the scent, because further on, something appeared that made everyone's eyes widen.

[System voice: "Analyzing…"]

That jackal statue seemed to speak! And it was a mechanical voice! Was the technology from the Scarlet King's era already this exaggerated?

At first, everyone came with an archaeological mindset, but after examining, they discovered they were the "ancient" ones.

But looking at the later annotations Lucian wrote, it turned out the one speaking earlier wasn't the jackal statue—it was the Akasha Terminal Alhaitham carried, a function he had modified himself.

They breathed a sigh of relief. Good—they hadn't become "ancient people."

[Analysis complete. Alhaitham stated the conclusion: "There seems to be hidden information left on these remains."]

Understood—dig up his grave!

["Conveniently, there are devices left from the Scarlet King's civilization in the mausoleum. I will project the information onto those devices to display it."]

Disappointed—it turned out no grave digging was needed.

Wait—what did you just say? Devices left from the Scarlet King's civilization? Project it?

After all that, the Scarlet King's civilization technology was still incredibly exaggerated!

[Rahman crossed his arms and mocked: "Doesn't sharing knowledge violate your principles?"]

This was pure sarcasm toward the Akademiya, because the Akademiya treated knowledge as a resource—sharing it casually was illegal.

[Alhaitham: "It does. But given someone like you is present, I hope this information can be directly received by you."]

["You'll understand once you see it."]

Seeing Alhaitham not get angry at this actually surprised Kaveh a bit.

This isn't right? Doesn't he have a bad temper? How is he tolerating this now? Could it be he's only bad-tempered toward me?

Before he could complain, Kaveh discovered that the following content was consecutive illustrations.

Now all attention was drawn to the illustrations—he completely forgot about complaining.

It opened with a black background and white text.

[Civilization was born from knowledge]

The illustration showed the sun, pyramids, eyes, and quicksand—clearly things from the Scarlet King's era.

[And similarly, knowledge can destroy civilization]

Black substances flowed like tears from the eyes before the sun, streaming into the pyramids and seeping into the earth.

[Catastrophe descended unknowingly—that was knowledge not belonging to this world!]

The illustration depicted it very directly. Clearly, this black, fluid-like substance was the knowledge not belonging to this world.

And now, it was infiltrating this world.

[Ever since the Scarlet King brought "forbidden knowledge" to this world, it spread like a plague]

The "black water" continued seeping downward. The scene shifted to above a city, where the desert people clutched their heads in pain.

[Minds filled with mad whispers]

The image showed a person's back, with black scales beginning to grow from it.

[Gray-black scales covered the spine]

Such madness—it truly deserved the title of Crazy Thursday.

The Sumeru people widened their eyes. Wasn't this Eleazar? Could this be the origin of Eleazar?

What exactly was this "black water"? Why did the Scarlet King bring it?

The answer was here. Lucian had Albedo draw even more illustrations than the original.

In the illustrations, the crowds seemed interfered with by outer gods—their sanity had already hit zero.

They howled, they wept, they begged the gods. Their civilization and their god collapsed in this moment.

Until a touch of green appeared.