Alice froze for two seconds, then reached up to cover her mouth, staring at Edwina with innocent wide eyes.
After Edwina stared at her for over ten seconds, she realized that Alice was indeed very good at acting innocent, so she slightly emphasized her tone and asked again:
"Taste? Texture?"
Alice was silent for two seconds, then let her left hand hang naturally, raised her right hand with palm facing outward, three fingers together, thumb and pinky bent close to the palm, then said firmly: "I guarantee that the book is no different from when I first got it!"
Edwina remembered that sleeve that had no difference in even the wrinkles from the beginning, looked at Alice and lightly frowned, falling into contemplation.
After being stared at by Edwina for over ten seconds, Alice finally couldn't withstand the pressure, silently put her hand behind her back, and guiltily lowered her head.
Edwina felt she completely understood what had happened. She took a deep breath and asked in as gentle a voice as possible:
"Why did you do this?"
"Because, because..." Alice carefully lifted her eyes to peek, and only after confirming that Edwina at least didn't look angry did she stammer an explanation: "I, I wanted to taste what books taste like..."
Edwina maintained her composure and continued asking gently: "Why would you have such an idea?"
This attitude made Alice relax a little. She gave up her escape posture and explained while pinching her clothes corner: "Because I hoped I could gain knowledge by eating books, and then, then I thought of..."
The entire logical chain connected. Edwina looked at Alice, smiled slightly and said:
"People in the Church really have done this kind of research."
"Eh?!" Alice widened her eyes and looked up in surprise.
Seeing her expression, Edwina knew she was interested, so she continued:
"A saint in the Church once had the same curiosity as you. After research, he invented a type of magic.
"This magic can be cast on ink, injecting one's own knowledge into the ink. As long as you drink the ink, you can master the knowledge the caster injected.
"Setting aside the taste of the ink, after multiple experimental verifications, the effectiveness of this magic was confirmed.
"For a period after that, this magic was quite popular within the Church. Everyone liked to pass knowledge this way. I have also received and transmitted knowledge through this method, but...
"Everyone soon discovered that after our bodies expelled the ink, the knowledge left with the ink too..."
Alice fell into contemplation.
Edwina then asked:
"If you want to experience it, there should be some ink in the captain's cabin, and I also mastered this magic... would you like to try?"
Alice decisively shook her head, then curiously asked: "Wouldn't this magic be very... very useless then?"
Edwina shook her head: "For ordinary Beyonders, it's indeed as Emperor Roselle said—tasteless, flavorless to eat but a pity to discard.
"But for 'Readers,' it's not like that."
Alice was slightly stunned, ignoring Emperor Roselle who was making appearances everywhere, looked at Edwina who didn't intend to elaborate, and curiously asked:
"Could it be that you and 'Mystery Pryers' are similar, that to a certain extent, knowledge represents power?"
After a pause, she suddenly remembered Edwina's ability to mimic extraordinary abilities she had seen, had a flash of inspiration, and blurted out: "The prerequisite for you to mimic extraordinary abilities isn't having seen them, but having sufficient understanding of them—it's knowledge!"
This time it was Edwina's turn to be surprised. The conditions she had given were obviously insufficient to deduce this result, even the intermediate steps seemed quite forced.
This kind of leaping thought process was obviously fundamentally different from the step-by-step logic of "Detectives." She was more like directly taking the answer and looking for the process. After glancing at Alice, Edwina realized this might be the specialty of the "Fate" pathway.
Excessively high spirituality and spiritual intuition brought not only danger, but also that mysterious sensing. Sometimes without divination, they could guess the answers to some things.
This was an intuition-dominated reasoning process.
Similarly, this non-rational, non-logical way of thinking was also more suitable for interpreting language... Edwina looked at Alice thoughtfully, didn't explicitly confirm, but didn't deny either. Instead, she smiled slightly and asked about another matter:
"What's the origin of that gesture you made just now?"
Questions about Roselle surged to her lips but were swallowed back by Alice. She clearly realized that regardless of whether Roselle had said it or not, asking this question would be equivalent to giving Edwina a clear clue.
Alice didn't care about Tarot Club members knowing about Roselle's relationship with her or them—they wouldn't dare talk nonsense anyway, but Edwina...
The precedent of "The Hermit" Cattleya left a deep impression on Alice. She realized that these adults weren't necessarily better than her, a child, when it came to keeping promises.
No, maybe they were even worse.
Tsk, hypocritical adults.
After thoroughly despising them in her heart, Alice finally spoke:
"This is a Boy Scout oath gesture... I don't remember which country's Boy Scouts it was, and even if I told you, you wouldn't know. Anyway, in the version I saw, the three joined fingers respectively represented loyalty, friendship, and courage."
Boy Scouts... this was a completely unfamiliar term. Alice had combined "child" and "army" into a phrase. Edwina could roughly understand what she wanted to express—an army of children.
But... having children join the army?
Although this era had no laws protecting minors and no one cared about children's rights, with extraordinary armies prevalent, Edwina couldn't think of what an army composed of children could be used for.
This sounded more like a game.
However, Alice's words were enough for Edwina to make certain guesses: "Before the First Epoch... did a civilization exist?"
Alice widened her eyes.
This was no different from confirmation. Edwina continued asking: "That civilization had many countries?"
Alice pressed her lips together.
Since this was the case, Edwina curiously asked the question she was most concerned about just now: "Would that civilization have children join the army? From your description, it seems more than one country would do this..."
Alice was silent for over ten seconds, then lifted her head and said sincerely: "At that time, the extraordinary wasn't a game for the few. Everyone would awaken strange powers at eighteen and be conscripted by the army.
"At that time, we called these people Espers..."