Blade and Poetry

Ward is a small country located in the western continent, where it snows ten months out of the year.It is said that this country has strong financial resources, but has always maintained an attitude of indifference to the world in political communication.As I mentioned, Ordgo came from a quiet literary family.He is the only junior in the family, which is rare at the moment when families are focusing on developing descendants.

I was received with all the courtesies in the old castle where he lived.The place was empty, and we rarely ran into anyone except the occasional servant—his family, like most Wards, were reclusive.I live in a bedroom they've made up for me, just across the wall from Ord.

I spent most of our time with him in the library.The library in his house is so huge that it is worth another detached house. It is the only place I think it can be called "luxuriously decorated": the bookshelves are attached to the walls, spiraling to the golden dome, filled with Every kind of bibliography you can imagine.Anthologies of classics, old fairy tales and emerging authors, from magic textbooks to handbooks of household common sense tools.There are spiral stairs that go up with the bookshelves embedded in the wall, and there are also glass straight stairs that can slide up and down, so that readers can quickly reach their desired position.There is a ring of crystal chandeliers hanging down on the top floor; according to Odd, the light rope is elastic, as long as you jump into the air and grab it, it can smoothly fall tens of meters, sending people and books to the bottom floor.Of course, based on the various pranks I have played on Ord, I have not yet made this dangerous attempt.

It all originated from Ode's sentence: "If we can't reduce the complexity of the magic circle, why not try to increase the number of casters?"

So we started to move in the direction he said after countless simplifications to no avail.

Aside from the long hours of research and the occasional sneak into the back kitchen to make desserts, my life at the Stanleys was uneventful.I borrowed an unused racecourse from him, where I practiced sword skills and released the soul of the sword alone.It is difficult to control the burning of the flower-shaped sword soul. I can only increase the number of releases one by one, and then perform fine magic suppression on them when they feel that they are in contact with the real thing.

While improving my knife skills, I also gained a surprise: I seem to have further improved my spells related to fire.

Maybe knives and magic do have a certain connection.I remembered that before I had the soul of fire, I often cast fire magic too smoothly, and even burned Professor Ryan's sleeve with the fire control spell when I only uttered a few breaths.

I put this ordinary and leisurely life and my new experience into a few words, wrote it on my butterfly, and let it fly to the place where Karajan was.I don't know if the long journey will cause the butterfly book transmission to fail, but what I can really confirm is that my butterfly has indeed changed in appearance.

This proves that the ritual was not a temporary cover-up, but actually changed an inner part of me.

But before I got Karajan's butterfly, I got another text message.

It was brought in an envelope by a pigeon.That day I was sitting by the window with Ordgo, and I heard the wind chimes outside the window beeping twice, and then a fat snow-white pigeon flew in, with the coat of arms of Hoftas and two letters hanging around its neck.The process of flying to the top of the castle made it panting with exhaustion, and it was willing to flap its wings and continue on the road after begging for boiled sweet corn.

Both mine and Odgo's letters are the same, only the title at the beginning is different.I looked at my letter and it said:

Dear Mr. Vicente:

Adhering to the trial tradition of Hoftas third graders advancing to fourth grades, we will launch a practical battle in the "Chengfeng Town" near Hoftas City in early September. Huaisang School of Magic and Boweiwu College Students of the same year will also be invited to join.

If you have to miss this event due to special reasons, please let us know as soon as possible.

[align=right] Hofta Division Academy

July 855, 7[/align]

"It seems that this trial will be relatively mild." Odd said after reading the letter, "The trial field of 'Chengfeng Town' has many restrictions and the venue is not wide. It can only provide the effect of an advanced playground."

Every freshman in the fourth grade will have a trial like this, and the content is different each time.However, according to the oral experience of previous students, the chosen venue can relatively represent the difficulty of the trial.

But in fact, when we returned to school in early September, we were told that the location of the trial had changed from "Chengfeng Town" to "Yu Town".

Eighty-somethings in our grade sat on the long-section school bus; the wheels flew past the large sand nest from time to time.We all closed the windows tightly so that the yellow sand kicked up outside would not leak into the car.The wind and sand were too strong, the speed of the car was very fast, and the passing scenery outside was muddy.

"'Yuzhen' has not opened for 11 years." Lando said in the back seat.

"There seemed to be casualties when we drove last time?" Joanna, a girl with long ponytails beside her, said.

"Yes." Little Odd also joined in, "There is a mistake in the scientist's design. The casualties in Yu Town should not be counted. The real casualties in the eyes of the townspeople will be affected by the special forces in the area. The magic is offset. But something went wrong that year, and several students and staff were killed and injured, so it has been closed for renovation.”

"The design of Yu Town is rumored to be much more complicated than that of Chengfeng Town."

"Does this count as a temporary increase in difficulty?"

"It's okay," I leaned my head back in the chair, "people like more difficult challenges."

The voice of the little flower and bird came from a long distance: "Don't count me out, thank you."

After driving for about three days, we were let down in front of an ancient building with dark red brick walls.A guide in front of the building was waving to us enthusiastically; I thought he looked familiar, so I took a closer look and found that he was the carefree librarian I had seen.He didn't recognize me, and introduced the place to us vigorously all the way.

"Is this building 'Yu Town'?" Someone in the team asked him.

"No, ladies and gentlemen. We haven't arrived yet." He gave a shy smile; anyone could see that he was deliberately hiding his thoughts with answers.

I was very curious about his appearance here as an ordinary person, so when the large army was attracted by a dazzling star map on the wall, I fell behind and chatted with him.

"Sir, wouldn't it be tiring to work all day in such a remote place?"

He seemed a little surprised by my name, and then smiled with a few teeth: "You misunderstood. I don't stay here all year round. I work everywhere, wherever there is money and interesting. Ordinary people in The pay here is pretty good—something we’re not doing badly at all.”

I still wanted to continue talking with him, but he saw something in front of him, his eyes lit up, he said "Excuse me", and hurriedly passed through the line to the front.

He knocked on the hanging bell hanging from the ceiling, and the students in the line fell silent immediately.

"Ladies and gentlemen, here we are," he said.

I looked around; we had probably traversed most of the castle up and down, and should now be in the corner of the ground floor, but didn't find a path that would lead to another building.

"Could it be that 'Yuzhen' is under our feet?" Someone asked eagerly.This person seemed to be from the East Court, and he was booed by some radicals from the West Court about etiquette.

"No." The guide lowered his head, took out the small key hanging around his neck, and inserted it into the keyhole of an inconspicuous door beside him—a lot of dazzling light leaked from the place where the key touched out. "Yu Zhen is in this room. The guide, Zhu Li, wishes you good luck."

We stepped into the room one by one - to be precise, it is not like a room, but more like a portal.I felt myself stepping into the air and then hitting the ground.There are people around me who are as confused as I am, standing in this arched fortress and looking around.

The stones on the ground and walls are cool gray, and there are six windows evenly distributed on the circular wall, where the source of light is.Another opening in the floor tiles seemed to be the only way to go downstairs.There is no decoration; only there is an altar-like white bowl in the center.

Suddenly someone shouted: "Look outside!" We rushed to the window together.

It looks like we're in the tower at the top of the castle.Outside the city walls and gates surrounding the city, dense and huge clouds piled up layer after layer, making it impossible to see the whole picture outside the city; I guess, in the eyes of people outside the city, this steep city should be It's like standing on a cloud.

"Looks like we've been sorted into Sky City," Ordgo said behind me.He raised an open letter in his hand, indicating that he got it from near the altar.Everyone gathered around him and listened to him read the above content-it was a riddle:

"On the vast continent, there are three city-states:

'Sky' is high above, and the border is sealed by clouds;

The 'earth' lives in it, and the trees are lush and luxuriant;

The 'deep sea' sinks to the bottom, and the ocean currents swirl.

The maze surrounds the city, and the fire spreads into the maze.

The king's feathers are hanging down, and the reunion requires ingenuity.

Who fills the bulbs so that the nights are bright? "

The paragraphs above are vague - thankfully there is some more explicit text below:

"Welcome to the city-state of the sky.

The following is a reminder of the rules of this 'Battle of Feathers':

45 three-color fires were evenly distributed among the mazes of the city-state.

When all city lights are lit or destroyed, the Battle of Feather is over, and the camp that lights up the most fires of its own color becomes the winner.

Your classification is: Red Tinder.

another:

The most elusive things often do the unexpected.

If you can't hold the wick, you can choose to break the lampshade, or you can choose to find the mechanism. "

I looked out the window: "So, the city lights here refer to the five lights hanging on our outer city wall?"

Coleman followed my gaze and jumped out of the open window, his whole body weight hanging on his fingers that were hanging on the window sill.We heard a tinkle, and saw him turn back again.

"Five empty city lamps, there is no obvious mechanism to open the lampshade."

After getting confirmation, everyone began to analyze the meaning of the words on the letter.

"The poem at the beginning is a brief overview of the three city-states. The following lines are also related to the rules—"Mazes surround the city" This is what we can see with our own eyes, and "The fire falls into the maze" should be hinting at where to find the fire."

"We'll need to fill the lamp with red tinder, I suppose."

"Forty-five—so we may assume that, of the fifteen fires that belong to us, five are in the maze of our own city."

The basic rules were explained in a few words, but new problems reappeared:

"What is a feather coat?"

We looked at each other.

"In the prompt, the 'most difficult to find' and 'unexpectedly useful' thing - since there is 'most', it should not be a large number of fire seeds, let's assume it is Yuyi." I thought about it and expressed my opinion , "According to the poem, the feather coat is related to the king, and may even be a symbol of the king's identity...Then first, it is very likely to be unique; second, it has its own use, associating with the king's identity, maybe It's able to do something like give orders."

There is also a brief map on the back of the letter. In addition to indicating the direction, we can only see that the city of deep sea where Huai Sang is located is the farthest from the other two, while we are closer to the city of land in Bowei. The positions of the three cities just formed a triangle with a particularly pointed end.

In the end, we reached a consensus that half of the people stayed here, looking for the fire and feathers in the maze of the sky, and filled the fire into our own city lights as soon as possible, and also prepared for defense.The other half went to the farthest city in the deep sea: Huaisang was far away from the enemy city, and it was difficult to turn back and move troops repeatedly, so it was very likely that most of the troops would be dispatched to take the initiative in attacking the city.On the premise that they stay weak, our people can have an advantage in numbers, snatch the fire or break the city lights.Pick out a few more people and go to the nearest city of the earth to search for fire, so as to cause interference for them to find and fill fire.

Originally, Coleman, Ordgo, me, and Minnelli, the black-haired girl who sat next to Lando in the literature class, were appointed as members of the team going to the city of the earth because of their agility.But Minnelli said that her sword skills are more suitable for guarding the city, so her position was replaced by Lan Duo.

Moments before our trip, we found another hint in a pile of ashes in the center of the altar.

Those were three pieces of paper: only as big as the palm of your hand, with "Sky", "Earth" and "Ocean" written on them respectively, and only the word "Sky" had a line of small characters under it:

"I'm in the burning shadow of that cloud."

"It looks like a reminder of the location of the fire." Lando said, holding his chin, "Only the one in the sky appears, and the reminder on the earth may not appear until we get there."

We took the piece of paper with "Earth" written on it, entered the opening on the floor tile, walked down the stairs, and walked out of the city of the sky.Perhaps it is due to the reason of the territory, the cloud-like maze outside did not hinder us, we recalled the direction indicated by the map, and finally arrived at the periphery of the maze of the city of the earth after half a day. Turned in.