Chapter 2: The Book of Mutations

  The bright morning sun hangs in the sky, on the clean blue sky, a rose-colored mist slowly spreads out. The cyan dawn quietly passes through the rugged mountain passes, as if searching for something forgotten here yesterday. The sunlight passes through the trees, even slipping under the fallen leaves, and walks through every corner.

  On the edge of a small river, a black shadow was lying. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a person wearing a blue-gray uniform. Slowly, this person moved slightly and after a while, he struggled to sit up, revealing his face. He was a young man about 21 or 22 years old, with an ordinary appearance but a straight nose. This young man was none other than Comrade Pang Gang, the city manager who had been unfortunately thrown into the moat.

  Pang Gang struggled to sit up, looked at the newly born sunlight on his head, and felt a little puzzled in his heart. "Hmmm... I remember it was noon when Zhu Rong hit me into the moat, after falling into the river, I didn't know anything else, how did it become morning now? Did I faint here for a whole night?"

  "Huh..... the environment here doesn't seem right? How did I end up here? Is there such a beautiful scenery around Xinghu City?" Pang Gang, who had come back to his senses, sat on the ground and slowly took in the surrounding view, with more and more questions arising in his mind.

  Moat, as the name suggests, is a man-made river flowing around the city. The moat of Xinghu City was not connected to any major rivers like the Yangtze River, so Pang Gang, who had just woken up, also showed great confusion about why he ended up here.

  After sitting for a while, Pang suddenly felt that something hard was pressing against his chest. He thought about it and remembered that he had tied a book to his chest as a shield when he went out yesterday, using a book he had bought at a street stall but hadn't had time to read yet. Yesterday, he was stabbed by Zhu Rong, but the reason he didn't die was all thanks to this book.

  Thinking of this, Pang Gang took off the still wet uniform and revealed the under-shirt inside. He then carefully unfastened a black rectangular object fixed to his chest.

  When Pang Gang slowly unwrapped the bag wrapped in several black plastic bags, he saw the book slowly revealing its true face, and his mouth slowly opened wide enough to hold a duck egg.

  At this moment, a book about 2 cm thick and the size of eight open papers was presented in front of Pang Gang. The cover of the book had six simplified Chinese characters "Modern Weapon Encyclopedia". Okay, this is not the point, nor is it a problem. Comrade Pang Gang, who grew up under the red flag since childhood, has been used to seeing simplified Chinese characters all his life. Below the big characters was a scene where a group of European soldiers were holding primitive rifles and shooting at each other. Okay, this is also not the point, we can't accuse the publisher of worshipping foreign things just because they used such a cover. But the key to the problem is that this picture moves, like a movie that keeps looping and showing the scene of soldiers firing collectively. This is quite scary!

  "What the... What's going on here? Is this... is this still the book I bought yesterday?"

  Put down the book, Pang Gang looked up at the sky with a dazed expression, then looked around at the flowers and trees. The sun was orange-red, the trees were green, and the few wildflowers nearby were red. Everything seemed normal, his eyes didn't have any problems either, but how did this book become like this?

  He lowered his head again to look at the book, and the pictures on it were still flashing. Dammit, was what he bought from the street stall yesterday not a 30-yuan pirated copy, but a 3,000-yuan Apple iPad? Or had this book been possessed by that dead ghost who couldn't be killed?

  With a suspicious heart, Pang Gang stretched out his somewhat trembling hand to open the book. The paper quality of this book had now become a material he had never seen before. It was like gold but not gold, like silver but not silver, and it didn't seem like ordinary paper either. Instead, it seemed more like a special synthetic substance. Anyway, with Comrade Pang Gang's meager knowledge, it was very difficult to analyze what this substance was.

  However, the content of this book is still reliable. The first few dozen pages are about cold weapons, from the bronze long spear of the Shang Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty's broadsword, the Persian scimitar, and the modern cavalry sword, all described in detail with color pictures. The following dozens of pages then describe the light weapons of hot weapons, from the primitive fire arrows of the Song Dynasty, the fire guns and bird guns of the Ming Dynasty, to the flintlock guns, matchlocks, and modern muzzle-loading rifles, with various models available. Then comes the artillery chapter and the shipbuilding chapter.

  Pang Gang flipped through the book roughly and found something that made him a bit annoyed, which was that except for the colorful pictures in the front section on cold weapons, all the pictures behind were black and white.

  "Depend on it... these damned pirates are really stingy, they only put a few pages of color pictures and then use black and white pictures to cheat me, are those scoundrels making money by this means? "Pang Gang was about to close the book with a hum, but was surprised to find that under these pictures were actually marked with familiar Arabic numerals.

  For example, under a matchlock gun is marked with a price of 200 iron ore and 30 wood, while next to it a flintlock gun has a picture with a price of 300 iron ore and 50 tungsten ore. Further back, the muzzle-loading rifle is even more expensive at 500 iron ore, 100 wood, and 100 tungsten ore.

  "What does this mean, is this a price list for these guns?" Comrade Pang Gang expressed great confusion, but the curious Pang Gang flipped the book back to the previous section on cold weapons and found that there were also symbols representing prices under these cold weapons. However, the prices listed for these cold weapons were much cheaper than those for the hot weapons in the later section. For example, a cavalry sword was only priced at 10 iron ore, and a famous Damascus curved knife was only priced at 30 iron ore.

  "It seems that Cold Weapons are really worthless, even those unscrupulous pirates can't be bothered with you!" Pang Gang shook his head, and his hand unconsciously poked at one of the colored paintings. Suddenly, he felt a chill run through his fingers, and in front of him appeared a dark cloud, which quickly took the shape of a knife. With a "clatter" sound, it fell onto the grass, and a curved knife appeared before Pang Gang's eyes.

  "Huh, what's going on? Did I have another hallucination?" Pang Gang, who had been startled, slowly stretched out his right hand and grabbed the curved knife on the ground. He slowly grasped the hilt of the curved knife, feeling very real... it didn't seem like a hallucination.

  When Pang Gang carefully examined the knife in front of his eyes, his sensitive skin suddenly felt a chill. He took a closer look and saw that the knife was curved, about 100 cm long, 1 cm thick, and weighed around 2.5 kg. The blade widened near the tip, with a convex surface on the back and a blood groove on the front. The hilt had a cross-shaped guard and a rounded ball-shaped pommel, which seemed to prevent it from slipping out of his hand during chopping.

  And the pattern on the blade of this knife is like silk fabric, the whole knife is dazzling, which is one of the characteristic patterns of Damascus curved knives - snowflake pattern.

  Holding the curved knife, Pang Gang looked at the books placed on his knees again. Under the pictures, it was clearly written: Place of origin: Ottoman Turkey Empire, Knife name: Kilij Curved Knife.

  "Damn, it's the real deal!" As a pseudo-military enthusiast who often hangs out on Iron Blood Military Network, even if he was extremely ignorant, he knew how much a genuine Damascus curved knife was worth. The value of this knife was enough to buy him a 100-square-meter suite in Xinghu, a second-tier city.

  "Huh... but how did this knife suddenly appear from the book? Is it some kind of magic trick?" Pang Gang was completely bewildered by this sudden turn of events. Ever since yesterday, strange things had been happening one after another. He fell into the moat and didn't die, then suddenly appeared on the riverbank, and now something had come out of a book... all these bizarre incidents had left Pang Gang feeling numb.

  "Whatever, forget it. Now let's first take a look at how to find the way back home, Zhu Rong! Wait till I get back and see how I'll deal with you!" Pang Gang also gritted his teeth in anger, struggled to stand up, picked up the Kukri knife and the "Modern Firearms Encyclopedia", and slowly walked forward...