Published at 9th of November 2026 9:42 am

Chapter 3360: Secret Treasury Within the Book

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As Angel stepped into the painting, that door slowly began to close.

Seeing that the door in the painting was about to vanish, Jasmine suddenly rose from her seat and walked toward the doorway.

Aiya: "Jasmine?"

Jasmine paused mid-step, turned her head and said coolly, "You can discuss the deployment details among yourselves. In any case, once all the clans are assembled, these details will have to be revised again. Listening to a rough draft of the deployment plan is basically listening for nothing."

"As for me, a Temporal Body should keep another Temporal Body company. I haven’t seen Fan for a long time, and I rather miss him."

When Jasmine finished speaking, she stepped through the door.

And at the very instant she crossed the threshold, a mutter came to her ears from Aiya: "I’ve never heard of you having any dealings with Fan... If you want to drink Borman Bloodwine, just say so."

Jasmine’s body halted for a moment. She had meant to retort, but the door in the painting was on the verge of disappearing, and in the end she said nothing at all, slipping inside before it closed.

With the door’s closing, the oil painting, ripples running all across its surface, slowly returned to normal.

In the original painting there had only been an empty dining table and Housekeeper Fan alone; but now, within the oil painting, three figures were seated at the table.

These three were Angel, Laplace, and Jasmine.

Housekeeper Fan was also inside the painting, but he did not remain at the table. Instead, he slowly walked toward the near edge.

When Housekeeper Fan reached the edge of the scene, he gently drew the curtain shut; the dark-red drapery blocked off the restaurant and, at the same time, covered the entire frame.

On the oil painting, everyone had already disappeared; only a single hanging curtain remained.

As the "curtain" spread across the oil painting, the attention of the people in the Cloud Cave gradually withdrew, yet no one spoke.

Only after a long while did Prophet Yota finally break the silence: "Mr. Angele... is the refiner of the Log-in Device?"

Previously, in Aiya and Angel’s conversation, there had been no explicit, name-calling question, but the implicit meaning was clear to everyone.

Even if Angel was not the refiner, he was still a core figure intimately involved with the refining of the Log-in Device.

Facing Yota’s inquiry, Glaipnir merely lowered her brows slightly and kept silent.

Yota: "I understand. I was being presumptuous."

Yota withdrew his words, but no one present was foolish. Although Glaipnir had not answered anything, her silence, in fact, amounted to a tacit admission.

There was a very high probability that Angel was the refiner of the Log-in Device... No wonder he had become one of the founders of Dream Mirror.

If one kept thinking along this line, might the refiner also be the creator of the Crystal Origin of Dreams? That was not impossible either. After all, if you wanted to refine a Log-in Device, it was absolutely impossible to do so without understanding the Crystal Origin of Dreams.

If Angel really was the creator of the Crystal Origin of Dreams...

Everyone’s thoughts began to drift.

However, before their wandering musings could settle, Aiya reeled them back to reality ahead of time: "Who the refiner is doesn’t matter for now. All you need to know is that the refiner hails from ’Dream Mirror’, from the very Dream Mirror where my teacher resides."

Aiya deliberately emphasized "teacher", his tone respectful, both to express his own stance and to warn Yota and the others not to try any petty tricks.

"What matters more now is how to respond to the Calamity Puppets. The Dream Mirror clan has already provided an excellent plan. What we must do now is to refine this plan, and resolve the problems we may encounter within it."

Aiya forcibly steered everyone’s train of thought back onto the proper track.

At this point, Yota no longer dared to let his mind wander. The little schemes in his heart were entirely cowed into nothingness by Aiya’s gaze. Casting aside unnecessary thoughts, Yota finally began to exert the wisdom of a ’Prophet’, earnestly working to perfect the deployment plan.

...

On the other side, inside the oil painting.

After everyone had taken their seats, Housekeeper Fan drew the curtain, then returned to the table and bowed: "Please wait a moment. I’ll go upstairs and invite Aivikato down."

With that, Housekeeper Fan walked into a passage off to the side.

Once Housekeeper Fan had departed, Angel slowly began to take in his surroundings.

This was not his first time entering a space within a painting, but this particular painting-space differed somewhat from Feng’s former magic painting space.

Feng’s magic painting space was almost indistinguishable from reality: sun, moon, and stars hung high in the sky; lone trees on the plain and all living things were real; even the gentle wind and fine rain were no different from the outside world.

Even when Angel used the Eye of Nalda to observe, he could not discern at all that it was inside a painting.

To sum it up in a single phrase: Feng’s magic painting space was a true "world within a painting."

But the painting-space they were in now, although it looked exceedingly real, revealed oddities the moment one carefully observed the surrounding objects—those objects would suddenly generate all sorts of strange bits of information.

Take, for instance, when he looked at the candlestick on the table: in his mind there involuntarily appeared a line of text: "Vine Candlestick: A candlestick made of wasteland copper. Because it has long been scorched by the high temperature of candle flames, irregular verdigris spots have appeared upon the copper. The carved pattern on the candlestick is a vine pattern; the verdigris spots seeping into the vine motif are like elongated branches sprouting new leaves."

Not just the candlestick—the tableware beside it was the same: "Telu Tableware: Tableware made of fine white porcelain, the favorite of the Telu nobility; especially that curve-laden teapot, which resembles the head of a Telu maiden, cherished by the Telu nobles. Even the golden patterns outlined upon it look like the maiden’s innocent smile, filling one’s heart with delight."

Likewise, the dining table had its own detailed description, including the specific type of wood used, and its exact length, breadth, height, and so on...

If one took the time to observe the surroundings, any single object, as long as one stared at it long enough, would invariably produce a line of similar textual information.

These snippets of text described in detail the object’s appearance, material, and function...

This sensation was an experience absolutely indistinguishable from that of a magic painting space.

However, as Angel observed the food around him, he also discovered that it seemed only items native to the painting would trigger textual prompts; things brought in by them as outside guests, no matter how intently he stared, would never generate any text.

For example, Angel’s own robe—he fixed his gaze on it for a long time, yet no information appeared.

While Angel was staring fixedly at his robe, a voice sounded at his ear: "Foreign items, whether living or dead, will never cause text to surface in your mind."

Angel raised his head and looked over. It was Jasmine, sitting opposite him, who had spoken.

He had been somewhat surprised when Jasmine followed them in earlier. Still, this was a Dragon Banquet hosted by the Mystic Book Dragon; whoever he chose to invite was entirely his prerogative.

Moreover, after entering, Jasmine had simply sat by herself, lost in thought, without disturbing them, so Angel had not paid her much attention.

It wasn’t until Jasmine spoke that Angel finally turned his attention to her.

Maybe she had noticed the doubt in Angel’s eyes, or maybe she was just bored with nothing else to do while standing here, but Jasmine simply started explaining for Angel: "Everything here is actually made up of text."

"Including the oil painting we saw outside—on the surface, it looks like an image, but when Aya first created it, what he actually did was write a piece of text."

In other words, the lines Aya wrote were turned into a solid image, and what appeared outside as an "oil painting" was born from that.

In essence, this place is still a space created by text.

That’s why everything Angel sees here is accompanied by textual information: it’s because their original form is "a passage of text," only made real under the blessing of the Mystic Book Dragon’s Special Ability, which manifests text into reality.

This is also why, the moment Angel stepped in here, he felt that it was different from the Magic Painting Space.

One is a space inside a painting, and the other is a Text Space.

Which is superior is hard to say; but it has to be admitted, this Text Space is rather interesting.

"So these ’tableware most loved by Telun Nobility’ didn’t just appear out of thin air, but were all written out word by word when Aya was composing this piece?" Angel pointed at the tableware before him and asked curiously.

Jasmine nodded, then shook her head: "Indeed, these pieces of tableware were written out word by word, but they weren’t necessarily written by Aya himself."

"Aya only constructed this space. He put up the skeleton; as for filling the skeleton with flesh and blood, part of the work he did himself, but other people helped as well."

Jasmine said this as she stood up, her graceful figure swaying slightly as she walked over to a cabinet nearby.

She opened the cabinet door and took out a stack of paper and a fountain pen; these paper and pen had no descriptive text on them, so they were probably brought in from the outside.

Having taken the paper and pen, Jasmine sat back down at the dining table: "Just like this."

Right in front of Angel and Laplace, Jasmine picked up the fountain pen and wrote a line of text on the blank page: "A pair of pure white silk gloves for women, decorated by a special embroidery technique that stitches the pattern of crow feathers upon the silk surface; at the glove’s opening, there is fluffy ruffled lace."

As Jasmine’s pen finished its stroke, that sheet of white paper vanished before everyone’s eyes, replaced by a pair of ladies’ white gloves adorned with lace.

Jasmine examined the gloves, and once satisfied, slipped them onto her hands before looking up at Angel: "That’s how you operate it."

"The items here aren’t necessarily all written by Aya; they might also have been supplemented by other people, for example... Housekeeper Fan."

Jasmine had barely finished speaking when Housekeeper Fan’s voice floated over: "Yes, Lady Jasmine is correct. The tableware was indeed written by me. The main body only constructs the skeleton; naturally, the task of filling in the flesh and details falls to people like us."

Housekeeper Fan walked in from a passage on the side.

Jasmine glanced over, deliberately looking behind Housekeeper Fan, but it was empty, no one was following.

"Where’s Aivikato?" Jasmine asked, puzzled.

Housekeeper Fan: "Aivikato went to the backyard to pick out fruits and will be here soon."

He paused, then turned specifically toward Angel and Laplace to offer an explanation: "Aivikato is the head chef for this Dragon Banquet."

Angel nodded. At first, he’d been wondering how a space inside a painting could be so large, with not only a two-story building but also other residents; but now that he’d learned this was a Text Space, its vastness seemed perfectly natural. All it would take is an opening line of ’This is a vast castle’ to construct an enormous space.

"Aivikato will still take a little while to arrive." Housekeeper Fan said, "While waiting, if the guests are interested in textual items, you are welcome to try your hand at text creation."

Angel really was rather curious about these text "items," so the moment Housekeeper Fan brought it up, he agreed without hesitation.

Laplace, however, wasn’t very interested.

After all, this Text Space Ability was something Laplace had helped Aya develop.

As Laplace had recounted in the Mind Ribbon, this Ability is a derivative of the Mystic Book Dragon’s Book of Time Talent, and it was originally developed with Laplace’s assistance. It’s called "Secret Treasury Within the Book."

Back then, when Aya had just begun developing "Secret Treasury Within the Book," he had to use long, essay-like passages just to construct some little trinkets—and even then they were intangible trinkets.

But now, Aya is directly creating "paintings," building the skeleton, and the fleshing out of the details can be done in just a single sentence, which clearly shows how much his Ability has progressed.

Even so, at its core it’s still "Secret Treasury Within the Book." Laplace had already witnessed it back then, so naturally his interest now was much weaker.

"Speaking of which, Aya originally intended to develop ’Secret Treasury Within the Book’ to the level where a single phrase could create Extraordinary Items, and a single phrase could create Life. I wonder if he’s reached that point yet." Laplace remarked in the Mind Ribbon.

Angel: "We’ll know if we ask."

Angel raised his head and, while Housekeeper Fan had stepped aside to fetch paper and pens, took the chance to inquire about the limits of text creation.

"Extraordinary Items can be created—but there are strict conditions." Housekeeper Fan wasn’t surprised by Angel’s question. When someone hears about creating items with text, it’s only natural to think of creating Extraordinary Items.

Angel: "What conditions?"

Housekeeper Fan: "First, you must write on special paper prepared by Lord Aya. Only the special paper can bear Extraordinary Power; with ordinary white paper, anything you write can only be mundane items."

"Second, you can’t directly describe an Extraordinary Item as a finished whole. You need to describe it in detail, starting from each individual material."

In other words, only if you understand Extraordinary Materials and have sufficient Alchemy knowledge can you, through material combinations, ultimately create an Extraordinary Item. It sounds troublesome, and in fact... it really is troublesome.

It’s basically using text to detail various materials, then performing Alchemy with those textual materials. If you have the time to do all this, wouldn’t it be easier to just use the real materials for Alchemy...

Furthermore, products of text Alchemy don’t last; since they are made of text and paper, they are extremely fragile. Once the power attached to them is fully consumed, they will turn into paper ash.

These constraints make the textual creation of Extraordinary Items very harsh.

Of course, text Alchemy Tools have their own unique merits, but with so many restrictions and such a convoluted process, they tend to turn people away.

"As for whether we can create living beings?" Housekeeper Fan shook his head. "Not in here. The creation of living beings touches upon the Life Law and the forging of life itself, which requires a very high-spec laboratory for support. Even then, the living beings created are subject to stringent limits. This place, however, is merely a Dragon Banquet kitchen."

From Housekeeper Fan’s answer, it’s clear that Aya seems to have already developed a method of creating living creatures, but it’s similarly bound by heavy limitations, and the facilities here are too Low-level to bear the birth of Life.

Judging from this, the Mystic Book Dragon’s years of research haven’t been in vain. Compared to when "Secret Treasury Within the Book" was first developed under Laplace’s guidance, the current state has made considerable strides.

Housekeeper Fan had no idea that Angel was asking on Laplace’s behalf; he thought Angel was personally interested in these special forms of text creation, so he continued: "If sir is interested in living creatures created from text, I can bring over a finished specimen for you to see."

Angel nodded without hesitation. This was the creation of Life—how could he not be interested?

Housekeeper Fan nodded and first handed the paper and pen to Angel: "Please wait a moment. I’ll head to the Observation room and bring back a textual living creature."

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