Chapter 104: Azure Moon Festival
It was January 1st, 7845 in the Three Moon Calendar. Heavy snow, with a temperature of minus twenty-two degrees Celsius.
In the morning, Silas, returning from his morning exercise, happened to see Ada, wearing a white fleece top and a brand new light blue skirt, wiping the table at home clean.
"Ada, it was already wiped yesterday; no need to wipe it again," Silas said, taking off his coat and picking up a towel to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
Today was the Azure Moon Festival. Yesterday, the two had returned home to tidy it up nicely.
Ada smiled. "I just wiped it because I saw it was a bit dirty. Today is the Azure Moon Festival. The Azure Moon Goddess is a goddess symbolizing purity. We are both clergymen and must set an example!"
Silas took off his thin top, revealing his well-built upper body, and smiled. "I know, so I've decided to take another shower!"
Standing in front of the mirror in the washroom, Silas raised his arms, looking at the bulging muscles, his face full of satisfaction.
It had been seventeen days since he had officially joined the Church on December 13th.
In these seventeen days, Silas had only gone home once. He had used the remaining time entirely for training and studying.
For seventeen days, Silas had only slept five hours a day.
He woke up at five in the morning to do morning exercises, ate at six, and then read until noon, when he ate lunch. After lunch, he took a one-hour nap to digest the knowledge he had seen that morning, integrating it.
He spent from 1:30 PM to 4 PM doing combat training.
After resting for half an hour, he continued to study at 4:30 PM, lasting until 7 PM.
He spent from 7 PM to 8 PM doing one hour of muscle exercises.
He ate a pound of beef for dinner, then did some appropriate post-meal exercises before continuing to study at 9 PM, lasting until 12 AM on the dot, when he went to sleep. He then woke up at 5 AM to continue a new day.
Silas, who seized every minute and second, had even calculated the time down to the minute - how many meters he needed to walk back and forth each day, how long it would take - everything was calculated by Silas with absolute precision.
This meticulous lifestyle had lasted for sixteen days, and the results were unprecedented.
Under the training of expert-level combat experts in the Church, Silas's close-quarters combat skills and ability to utilize his body had greatly improved. Regular, scientific exercise, combined with the balanced nutrition allocated by the Church, made Silas's physical fitness advance by leaps and bounds.
During this time, Father Hank had even injected Silas with blood twice to heal the muscle damage he had sustained during training.
With the blessing of these three aspects, Silas's current physical state was at least twice that of what it had been before. And his overall combat readiness was at least four times better.
While his body was improving, Silas's knowledge base was advancing at a speed dozens of times more terrifying than his physical progress. It could even be said that he was undergoing enormous changes every day.
Possessing a divine processor, Silas didn't even need to pass things through his brain to look at them. He only needed to skim through the content, remembering the general idea, and then analyze it with his divine body in the dream. Everything would be integrated and understood. No matter how difficult the problem, in the eyes of the divine, it was as simple as 1 + 1 equals 2.
This cheat-like speed was very exhilarating and even produced a unique sense of pleasure that made Silas feel addicted.
In the past half month, Silas had read a total of twenty-five thick tomes with thousands of pages each.
At first, it took him one and a half days to finish one. As time went on, he became more and more proficient, and in the end, he could finish two in one day.
They covered religion, history, geography, human anatomy, mysticism, formations, materials, alchemy, magic potions, monsters, Secret Treasures, mystical armaments, hypnosis, mechanical engineering, and many other subjects.
Although all this knowledge was still in the theoretical stage, lacking hands-on experience, Silas could now speak fluently about things he had simulated many times through divine thought, almost instinctively.
Of course, this growth was not without a price.
That was that Silas felt his brain capacity had temporarily reached saturation.
From yesterday onwards, continuing to ingest knowledge gave Silas a strong sense of dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms.
After analyzing it, Silas found that his physical brain could not bear so much knowledge for the time being and had temporarily entered a saturation phase.
As time went on, as the brain was developed more through constant use, and after it had completely digested this knowledge, he could then continue to the next stage of learning.
"Although the brain gets better the more you use it, filling it at this speed will definitely be slower than the speed of development. It's like watching a video with a bad internet connection; the progress bar often catches up with the buffering bar, causing the video to freeze. When you can't improve the hardware, the only method is to pause and wait for new buffering."
Rubbing his forehead, Silas felt his head was heavy; this was a sequela of saturation.
When this feeling disappeared, it meant the brain's "buffer" had advanced a lot again.
After showering, Silas put on a clean white shirt and a handsome, bright new tailcoat, combed his hair neatly, put on leather boots, and a spirited and handsome young man appeared.
"This craftsmanship, these materials are truly excellent. This 2 Crown expense was well worth it!" Ada said, looking at the subtle patterns on Silas's collar, a look of satisfaction on her face.
Silas smiled. "Let's get ready. The celebration performances seem to have already started. We need to find a good spot."
After everything was ready, Ada, unusually, took off her nun's habit when going out and put on a pure white fleece overcoat.
Silas symbolically put on his new coat and a tall top hat made of black silk with gold embroidery.
Putting on black leather gloves, and finally picking up his staff, the two went out.
"You've changed your whole outfit, why not change this staff? It doesn't suit your current status," Ada said, expressing dissatisfaction with the somewhat worn-out grey staff.
Silas smiled. "It has a special meaning for me. Let's go!"
There were already many people on the street. They were of various identities, but at this moment, they were all dressed smartly and had faces full of joy and excitement.
Snow was still falling from the sky. Ada reached out and caught a few snowflakes, saying, "Snow symbolizes purity and purification. No matter how filthy things are, after being covered with snow, the world will become as pure as new. It's rare to have such heavy snow during the Azure Moon Festival; this is great luck."
Silas smiled. "A timely snow promises a good harvest!"
The two followed the crowd towards Holy Blood Square in the center of the city.
While passing the West City Police Station, Silas happened to see Jack and Roland on duty.
The two weren't so lucky; they still had to work today. At this moment, they were wearing their uniforms and greatcoats, walking forward with the crowd, maintaining order.
Silas saw this and happily went over to greet them. As he got closer, he suddenly noticed that Roland's face was not good. Her beautiful big eyes had deep bags under them, and there were bruises on her left cheek, as if she had been beaten.
"What's going on?" Silas frowned slightly and hurried over.
"Hi! Long time no see!" Silas proactively greeted them.
The two, hearing this, were startled and abruptly looked up. When they saw Silas, Jack immediately stepped forward and hugged him, saying, "Thank the Goddess, I'm finally seeing you again."
"What's wrong?" Silas felt their condition was not right.
Roland said in a low voice, "My fiancé seems to have a problem."
"As expected!" Silas remembered Roland's strange contemplation from more than half a month ago and understood.