The group of three people turned around and meandered up along a path carved between the mountain walls, during which they not only passed through a clear waterfall, but also saw three or two pheasants that were only available on the coast of Lancers, hovering above the heads of Liang Ke and several people from time to time, which made Liang Ke shocked that the ecological environment in the mountain was so complete. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 Info tossing and turning, the three people and one beast came to a platform high in the belly of the mountain, what made Liang Ke even more shocked was that on the granite ground of the platform, there was actually a big tree, although the tree was not tall, but the trunk was thick, the crown was wide, and the mother-in-law stretched all the way to the outside of the platform. At this moment, the gray-robed Narondo was sitting at the stone table under the tree, drinking tea. The old man saw Liang Ke standing there dumbfounded, and beckoned to him with a smile.

"Brother Aragon, come and taste my freshly brewed tea, it's not easy to drink in this season!"

Tucker and the others took their leave and turned to leave, and Liang Ke let his teeth lie on the edge of the platform, and walked to the stone table and sat down, still staring at the wide canopy with his head tilted stupidly.

"Aragonese brothers! Aragonese brothers......" Narondo called several times in a row with the teacup, and Liang Ke recovered from the shock, took the tea and choked on it, but he didn't taste whether the tea was bitter or sweet.

"Master Narondo, this ...... How did this tree grow in a cave with no light? On the way here, I saw a few pheasants that could only be seen along the coast, and I couldn't understand how amazing it was. ”

"Haha, those little guys are messengers I raised, we are relatively closed here, but it is inevitable that we need to contact the outside world, pheasants have good stamina, fast flight speed, and excellent memory, so I domesticated a few. As for this tree, it is much older than me, and there are probably not many people in this world who have seen this kind of tree, even those in our clan who know the origin of this tree. It's called the 'Tree of Life', and it's extremely tenacious and can survive in almost any environment in this world, but it grows at different rates in different environments. And the most amazing thing about it is that this tree will continuously release life essence through its well-developed root system, slowly nourishing all the life forms around it. So, you see, isn't I, an old man in his old age, still alive?" the high priest added another cup of tea to Liang Ke.

"This tree is more than five hundred years old, and was brought back from the Elven Forest by the dwarven hero Drenka and planted here with his own hands. Five hundred years ago, the then patriarch Drenka led five hundred hill dwarf warriors down Mount Narondo, crossed the Ergul River, crossed the Biaso Plains, waded through the Gantoz wetlands, crossed half the continent, entered the Elven Forest, and fought side by side with the Elven King to resist the invasion of 100,000 demons. In the end, the seriously injured elf king smashed the bow "Shirley's Hand", extracted the infinite vitality of the elven forest, and launched the forbidden spell magic of "Elven Fury", which drove the hateful ghost clan back to the dark abyss and kept the last bit of elven blood. The dwarves used their prowess and infinite loyalty to their allies to win the friendship of the haughty elves that would never betray, and also allowed Drenka to bring back the elves' only remaining seed, the "Tree of Life". Decades later, this seed finally took root and sprouted in Naronto, and it also allowed us to rely on the life essence it exuded, and we could raise some meat beasts and vegetables in the ground, so that our lives would not be so bitter. Brother Aragorn, don't listen to my stories, taste this tea, this is a special product of the Elven Forest, Tiya incense, and I am reluctant to give it to the patriarch. ”

"Oh, it's a good taste. Liang Ke began to taste tea seriously.

The pale cyan tea soup is placed in a pale yellow jade teacup, the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup are slender and straight, looking like pine needles, and slowly rotate as the tea soup rises, and those needles draw cyan circles of different sizes against the background of the pale yellow teacup, layered on top of each other, making people intoxicated. The faint aroma of tea mixed with lavender and mint is fresh and translucent, and the smell is refreshing.

"Good tea, good name!" Liang Ke raised his eyebrows, drank all the tea roots in the cup, and then brought the teacup to his nose and sniffed it deeply.

"See the color and know the fragrance, smell the fragrance can know the color, look at the shape to know its spirit, refresh and shape. The color and fragrance are good, the form and spirit are both, it is really the best in the tea, worthy of the name of Tiya!" Liang Ke turned the teacup, lifted the jade pot and poured himself another cup, squinted his eyes and took another sip, and hummed comfortably.

"Unexpectedly, the Aragonese brothers not only have a deep study of tea, but also have an extraordinary literary talent. I have never heard such a profound hymn, and in front of my brother, I feel that I have lived for more than three hundred years in vain. "The high priest looks at Liang Ke like a mother-in-law looks at her aunt, the more she looks at it, the more pleasing it becomes, her eyebrows are smiling, as if the ash on her face is not so gray.

"Haha! Since you call me brother, then I won't call you Lord Sacrifice anymore. My brother praised it, and I only knew some of the skin. Now, I've drunk three cups of tea, and my brother should tell me why he invited me to tea!" Liang Ke put the teacup down gently, and then looked at Narondo's gray eyes seriously, as if he wanted to read the answer from there.

"Hahaha! What a fur, these furs of the Brotherhood can make the descendants of our gods of work look up to the mountains! Since we are talking about fur, let's start with fur. The gray-robed priest also put down the teacup, and his eyebrows and eyes slowly became solemn.

"The history of the dwarves is as old as the Narondo Mountains, our ancestors came here thousands of years ago, and generations of people have worked hard to exchange the remnants of the surrounding humans, beasts, and even demons for necessary living materials by mining ores and forging weapons and equipment. At that time, although the dwarves had extraordinary talents for smelting and forging, due to the limitations of the level of mechanical manufacturing, the space we lived in was far less spacious and comfortable than what you see now. It wasn't until that snowy night five hundred years ago, when Drenka, who was still a hairy boy, went out hunting and rescued a frozen and dying old man from the snow, and the dwarf's life changed dramatically, and the old man's name was Jonah. Speaking of this, the high priest slowly raised his head, and Liang Ke saw that there were shallow tears in his gray eyes, and Liang Ke felt that maybe it was worship and respect.

"Old man Jonah was slow to recover, so he lived in the holy city for a long time. During that time, he told many stories to the dwarves, allowing us to gradually understand the outside world; helped the dwarves open a school and teach children to read and write; helped the patriarch at that time set up the House of Elders, the Executive Yuan and other management institutions, so that the dwarves could slowly transform from a tribe into a country; taught the dwarves some methods of making complex machinery; taught the dwarves the spiral mountainside digging techniques, helped the dwarves introduce the water of the heavenly pool on the top of Mount Naronto into the holy city, and used the drop of the water flow to drive those hanging baskets. As a final gift, the old man left Drenka before leaving Narondo, saying, 'If you can get the friendship of the elves, then you will have a tree seed, and with that tree, the dwarves will never have to worry about not having enough to eat.' A dwarf who keeps a dwarf from starving is a hero'. ”

The old man seemed a little tired when he said this, stood up and paced two steps, and then continued: "Jonah also sent a book to the patriarch at that time, telling the patriarch that if one day anyone could understand some of the truths in that book, then this person could be a wise man of the dwarves. Later, many dwarves read that book, but the content recorded in it was too profound, and no one could understand the truth in the book, until three hundred years ago, I secretly traveled to the mainland and learned alchemy secretly at Jonah Academy in the imperial capital, only to know that the old man was the famous sage Jonah of the mainland, who was considered the wisest person under the gods, and only the sage Jonah had his own god position in the Jialan Temple. It was that trip that allowed me to learn more than the average dwarf, and after returning to the Holy City, it took me another twenty years to comprehend some of the healing and alchemy techniques recorded in that book, and I became the high priest of this city in the sky. You see, even though I have only learned a little, it is embarrassing for the simple dwarves to use the eternal Mount Narondo to praise my holy name!

"Brother is too modest, as you said, dwarves are simple, their recognition, it must be that you have done what everyone wants, or you have done more than others need. I've also heard the name Jonah, and the student practice team I met before coming to Naronto was from the Imperial Capital Jonah College. ”

"Haha! yes, who on the continent doesn't know the reputation of Jonah the Sage!"

"Hey, hey! That's what the old brother said. Liang Ke laughed dryly, thinking to himself, if it weren't for the students who happened to meet, Liang Ke I really don't know who Jonah was.

"Brother Aragorn, in fact, I invite you here today just to let you see the book of Jonah, in my experience, without a considerable foundation, I am afraid it is difficult to understand those advanced knowledge. And brother, you have a wide range of knowledge, you may be able to understand this book easily, rather than let this holy book dust, it is better to let those who are destined to get some gains. If the Aragonese brothers can really read, then it can be regarded as a dwarf who will repay you a little kindness!" After saying that, Narondo turned and walked into the stone room behind the platform, and after a while returned to the table with a "big book" in his hand, and handed the book to Liang Ke with both hands.

"Big brother, this ...... Is it appropriate?" Liang Ke asked uneasily, looking at the book in front of him.

In fact, after listening to Naronto's legendary introduction, Liang Ke had a snooping heart, and the old man went back to get the book without hindrance, but if he really wanted to reach out to receive this holy scripture, he had to pretend to shirk it.

"What's inappropriate, this book is borrowed casually among the dwarves, as long as it is not damaged, it doesn't matter how long you read it, the book is meant to be read by people, otherwise what value is there. Haha! You can take it. By the way, you will live with me in the future, I am usually alone here, and there are enough rooms, you can choose one to live in. I'll have the Tucker boy deliver three meals a day, and you can tell him if you need anything. I've been living in the smelter with Patriarch Patton recently, and I've found a vein of mine that may be buried with amethyst, and if it is mined, our weapon-making process can be upgraded to a higher level, and the stakes are so important that we can't be careless, so I and the patriarch should be more careful. Look slowly, I'll go first, and when I come back, maybe I'll call you teacher, but don't let me be a student when the time comes!"

In the next few days, Liang Ke, like those ascetics, lived a life of meditation and asceticism. On this day, Liang Ke had eaten and watched the dwarf in charge of the patrol dim the candles on the platform one by one, knowing that another night was coming. Liang Ke habitually picked up the "big book", and then came to the big tree on the platform to read by candlelight.

It's a big book, of course, because it's really big. The book is almost equal in length and width and square in shape. Each side was a foot five long, and more than fifteen centimeters thick, and the gray-brown cover was as vicissitudes as the crumpled skin of the high priest of Naronto, and it was not known what kind of animal leather the cover and pages were made of, soft and greasy, and the layer of grease effectively isolated the air, ensuring that the pages were not oxidized and could not rot for a long time, but the grease did not touch the hands of the reader. In the center of the cover is a hand-painted scale, on the right side of which is a small pile of glittering gold coins with a king's scepter inserted, while the balance tray on the left is empty, but the balance is still magically balanced. The four sides of the cover are woven into a complex and regular pattern with gold threads, which extend to the left side of the cover like flowing water, and then pass through the cover, the pages, and then connect the back cover, making the whole book look both artistic and durable. In the lower right corner of the cover is a hexagonal metal badge with the word "Jonah" elegantly engraved in the lingua franca of the continent.

Turning the cover open, on the yellowed title page is a passage written with a quill pen.

"I know a lot of things now, which have helped me to see the world more clearly, and these things have allowed me to help some friends in need. But I also know that I don't know a lot of things that fascinate me, obsess, and terrify me. I want to know more in my lifetime, and if I can't know more, then I want someone to know what I know, and then maybe he can know more than I know. ”

This passage looks a bit like the preface of a book, or it may be an epigraph, more like a monologue, but Liang Ke faintly feels that it is also an entrustment. The Book of Jonah is not so much a book as it is a note of what the sage Jonah saw and heard during his life.

The whole book chronicles Jonah's growth from an ignorant boy to a glorious sage who is praised by people step by step on the axis of time. In this book, a large number of stories and cases record Jonah's understanding, experience and analysis of various knowledge in this world, as well as Jonah's own views and innovative thinking on some traditional knowledge, and even challenges to some traditional scholarship. For example, what Liang Ke saw yesterday was that when Jonah was thirty-five years old, he traveled to an isolated island in the waters of Lancers, where he and his attendants were trapped for half a year. As the monsoon changes, he begins to suspect that God the Father created the continent and that the whole flat continent is the center of the world, and he suspects that the place he is in should be a huge bulge of a sphere, and sometimes he even hangs his head upside down on this ball. But since Jonah's soul had returned to the Father's arms, he could not understand why he had not fallen into the endless sky when he was headfirst down, so this set of theories that sounded appalling but were in fact infinitely close to true knowledge had to lie lonely in this notebook. Liang Ke was deeply shocked by Jonah's intelligence and leap of thought, and if those theories were confirmed, the world would enter a new era.

The whole book is sprinkled with hundreds of thousands of words, covering fields such as agriculture and animal husbandry, industrial manufacturing, geography and meteorology, astronomy and astronomy, medicine and treatment, magic and alchemy, and theological conjectures. Liang Ke has been indulging in the pleasure of reading these days, and in his memory, it is the first time that he has read a book so seriously. Not because of how wonderful the stories in the book are, nor because of how unfathomable the knowledge is, but because Liang Ke was deeply infected by Jonah's truth-seeking and pragmatic perseverance.

It is no wonder that the dwarves could not understand the content of the Book of Jonah, it was just a notebook, in chronological order, one sentence in the east and one piece in the west, completely out of order. To understand any of these fields, it is impossible to do so without a set of appropriate basic theoretical supports. For Liang Ke, an earth traveler, needless to say, the basic theories, and even the knowledge mentioned in most of the notes is not as systematic and thorough as Liang Ke's understanding, Liang Ke is more concerned about the changes brought to the world by the application of those knowledge in practice, as well as those unfamiliar knowledge related to magic and theology.