I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 134

The Lord of True Speech flipped through his own book as if reading something he’d never seen before.

Bai Zhou tentatively extended his tentacle again, he could touch the book in the Lord of True Speech’s hands, but not his hand.

“Stop waving that around, you’re blocking me,” the Lord of True Speech said, gently brushing the tentacle aside.

At that, Bai Zhou finally stopped trying; it seemed whether you could touch him or not was entirely up to the Lord of True Speech.

The Lord of True Speech continued reading with relish, translating the content aloud as he went.

“Method of Distilling Truth from Falsehood: Rot is the path to the truth of language. Only by letting the flesh rot can one comprehend true language from death and open the way to the real gate, glimpsing the true power of language from the words of the Lord of True Speech.”

“Let rot enter the blood, soak the whole body, let the will of rot pull the soul into a place called the Spirit Thin Prison between life and death, to steal the truth from disordered language and draw the shadow of death into reality.”

“I have to say, their wording is much better than when I wrote this. It sounds much more mysterious now.”

As he read, Bai Zhou edged away, shaking his diving helmet so the water inside sloshed noisily.

When the Lord of True Speech finished, Bai Zhou cautiously came back and demanded, “Why did you read that out loud? Are you trying to pollute me with knowledge?”

The Lord of True Speech was stunned, then burst out laughing. “Pollution? It’s all fake. Those guys added that themselves.”

Fake?

Are all these ascension rituals fake? Then why did the robed figures gain power and find the stone door?

Bai Zhou looked utterly incredulous.

“What are you really after?” he pressed.

There were too many mysteries about the Lord of True Speech-he appeared out of nowhere at the center of Black Tower City, revered by all the robed figures, fluent in both normal and twisted languages.

Not to mention his untouchable, magical abilities.

Hearing Bai Zhou’s question, the Lord of True Speech finally grew serious and answered, “My goal is the same as yours, to leave the Black Tower.”

……

The Lord of True Speech was not a long-term resident of the Black Tower monitoring station.

But by chance, he ended up inside the twisted Black Tower, trapped by its endless, labyrinthine walls, unable to escape.

Because of his special ability, he wasn’t twisted and could move freely through the Black Tower, so he kept searching for a way out.

Soon, he found the stone door, which led to a strange space inside the Black Tower, inaccessible from anywhere else.

There, the Lord of True Speech found something like a core, which seemed to have a consciousness, always muttering to itself.

After finding the core, the Lord of True Speech tried to wake it and ask how to get out.

But the core said there was no way out for now, it had sealed the Black Tower.

“Let me out. I won’t tell anyone what happened in the Black Tower,” the Lord of True Speech bargained.

“When correction is complete, you can leave.”

“I won’t participate in correction. Just let me out,” the Lord of True Speech tried to outwit the core, realizing it wasn’t very smart, and tried all sorts of ways to get around its judgment.

“Correction is required. You are human,” the core replied.

“What if I’m not human?” the Lord of True Speech asked.

“Then you can leave.”

With that answer, the Lord of True Speech tried everything, but the core still judged him as human and wouldn’t let him out.

So he started asking the core what counted as a completed correction.

“Language must be correct. That’s correction complete.”

The Lord of True Speech thought of the twisted humans in the Black Tower, wasn’t that correction complete?

He found a linguistically twisted human, who tried to attack him on sight, so he tied the person up and brought him to the core.

The human angrily summoned all sorts of shadowy powers to attack, but they passed right through the Lord of True Speech, doing nothing.

While being attacked, the Lord of True Speech asked the core,

“Look at him, correction complete? Can he leave?”

“Correction incomplete. Continue correcting,” the core replied mechanically.

“So what counts as complete?” the Lord of True Speech grew impatient.

“Pronunciation must be standard. Speech power must be at its peak. Only then is it complete.” The core shot a beam of light at the human, then slowly spat out three words: “Not qualified.”

The Lord of True Speech had no choice but to let the human go and ponder the problem.

He didn’t know when these people would ever be “corrected.” They didn’t even understand the source of their own powers.

The Lord of True Speech learned that these twisted humans saw themselves as natives, wore robes to distinguish friend from “outsider,” lived in crooked houses, and led primitive lives.

Expecting these “primitives” to realize the source of their power, then keep training until their pronunciation was perfect, who knew how long that would take.

Besides, he didn’t know if the robed figures’ pronunciation was even standard. He couldn’t have them recite every word to see if the summoned power was strong.

Luckily, he finally thought of a solution-

He would learn it himself.

Since the robed figures weren’t reliable, he’d study the language himself. Once he mastered it, wouldn’t that count as correction complete?

So he got to work, grabbing a few robed figures and using sign language to learn basic vocabulary.

First the twisted words, then grammar and tones, he gradually became able to communicate.

At that point, he put on a robe and blended into the villages, communicating with the robed figures. If discovered, he’d just run and switch villages.

At night, he’d practice pronunciation inside the stone door. Whether it was standard was easy to judge-the stronger the summoned power, the more standard the pronunciation.

Gradually, no one in the villages could recognize him, and because his pronunciation was so beautiful, many robed figures came to him for guidance.

With enough communication, he learned more vocabulary and slowly mastered the whole language system.

Any language system has internal patterns. Using these, the Lord of True Speech deduced the correct pronunciation of rarely used words.

He cracked the entire twisted language system.

He slowly became the person in the Black Tower with the most standard pronunciation and vocabulary.

At this point, the Lord of True Speech sighed and said with relief,

“Fortunately, it’s just mastering a language. That’s not so hard.”