595 Geography of Luminance Empire

Alex walked up to the door of the library. The door looked like a small tear on the cover of a book, which was used as a handle.

Alex opened it up and walked in.

As soon as he walked in, Alex realized the building was much large than he had imagined. He didn't know if the outer section gave the illusion of being small or if the inner space was somewhat stretched using formations, but it was a lot larger for him.

Alex looked straight ahead. The main room of the library was circular. It looked like the inside of a tower as he finally saw the library go up to 20 meters high.

There was a space manipulation going on here with some formation.

The circular room had walls that were stuck with shelves that were filled to the brim with books. There were some ladders along the side to climb up to grab the books, but most people simply flew to get them.

Surrounded by the bookshelves were reading tables all laid out in a circular pattern.

And at the center of the room was a circular reception table sort of location where men and women of green, red, and blue stayed.

Those were the colors of the 3 factions, so Alex guessed they were the disciples of the 3 factions working as a librarian.

He truly realized how large the place was when he finally went past the corridor and into the center of the circular room.

He looked at the few people in the air, searching for their books, and so he decided to do that as well.

Searching for anything related to the world, leaving alchemy and formations for later, Alex flew towards a section of the library that was filled with books about the world.

Some taught about geography, some that taught about plants and animals, some that taught about the history of the world, some that taught about famous peoples, and some that even taught about famous sects and locations.

Alex wanted to learn about geography, so he took out one related to it and flipped it.

However, when he did so, he realized that aside from the cover of the book, there was nothing else written in the whole book.

"What?" Alex spoke a little too loudly and got a lot of 'Shhh' directed as him.

"Sorry," he whispered as quietly as he could. He picked out some of the other books on the shelf and looked at them.

They were blank on the inside too. 'So the first book wasn't a mistake, huh?' he thought.

He kept back the other books and looked at the geography book again. He sent in his spiritual sense to see what it was, and that was when he noticed a seal on it.

A faint, white formation was placed on the book. Judging from the seal, Alex deduced that it was part of a bigger formation that was constantly giving the book's seal the power to continue working.

Very likely, it was the same formation that expanded the space in this building.

'They have quite a bit more knowledge about formations than I would've thought,' Alex said to himself and slowly floated down to the ground.

If there was a seal, that meant he would have to get it opened.

Alex walked to the center of the room towards where the librarians were and quietly asked, "excuse me, how do I get the seal removed from this book?"

The girl took the book from Alex's hands while looking at his robes and said, "it will cost you 150 spirit stones."

"Sorry… cost?" Alex asked with a surprised look. "It costs money?"

"Of course, sir," The girl said. "Books in here cost somewhere from 1 True spirit stones to 10, depending on the book."

Alex was stunned. Maybe because he was getting a little used to the books in the Capital's library being completely free, he didn't expect to have to pay here.

"I see," Alex said. Just then, a man walked up next to him and handed the same woman the book.

The girl removed the seal and noted something in a talisman that was inside the book before replacing the talisman and giving it back to the man.

The man walked away without paying at all.

"He didn't pay," Alex said, pointing to the man that just left.

"If you are a member of the Three Faction alliance, you do not need to pay," she said. "If you are, you can bring out an identity talisman, and you too can take a book a week for free."

"I see," he said and took out 2 True spirit stones. He handed them to the lady who handed him back 50 spirit stones.

She then released the seal and said, "You also can only read the book inside the library. Please don't try to take it outside."

Alex was a little surprised about that too, but he didn't let it show on his face. He understood that it was likely only the disciples and elders from the 3 sects that could take the books away.

Even though the number of people in the library was quite sparse —may it be because of today being the last day of the week, or libraries just not being that popular— Alex still went on to find a relatively less crowded section of the library.

Alex didn't use his spiritual sense to quickly read the book. He had nowhere to go, no need to log out, no need to go eat food or practice alchemy.

He had all the time in the world, so he used it to read and digest the book as he did.

He had paid for the book, and he would read end to end no matter how long it would take.

It took him about 25 minutes to read the whole book. However slow he may want to read the book, he was still a cultivator, one with exceptional mental strength and capacity.

Since there was no 'comprehension' required for the knowledge, he could simply read it all and learn it. And that only took him 25 minutes.

Alex was quite surprised at the information he gained from this one single book.

Alex first saw the map of the Luminance empire. It was about the same as what Yao Jia had shown him, but this was more clear than the hasty drawing on the dirt she had made.

The Luminance Empire was cone-shaped, its northern border nearly 3 times as large as its southern border. There were a lot of islands that floated around the empire too, some that were part of the empire, some that were not.

The land was about 60% plane, while the rest 40% were mountainous. The mountains were clustered mostly along the eastern side of the empire, leaving the western half to be the plane that was home to the experts of the land.

The Radiant City, the capital city of the Luminance empire was located about 400 kilometers away from the western shore, and 2000 kilometers away from the southern shore.

Considering the Luminance empire was over 10 thousand kilometers in length and width, the capital was firmly located in the southwestern portion of the center of the city.

There were other many cities located around the empire, but most were located at the center or western side of the empire.

The eastern side of the mountain didn't seem to have a lot of cultivators willing to go there to settle.

The book read it was partly because of the many dangerous locations on the mountains that spanned from mountains with nothing but True beasts, to poisonous swamps that would even threaten to kill the True realm experts in the True emperor realm.

Alex also read about some mountain peaks that were so cold that most people couldn't even go near them without proper preparation.

Aside from those, there were also other various dangerous spots along those mountains known as the 'Dreaded Mountain range'.

That one book alone gave Alex a lot of information about this land that he would've likely never gained if he were to skip it for the internet if he still had access to it.

He nodded to himself at the information he learned and went back to the librarian to get it resealed and get another book to read after that.