All of a sudden, he opened his eyes.
The now familiar view of the cave instantly greeted him.
'So I'm back" he murmurs to himself.
It seems that the voice was not lying, at least in this regard.
He looks around. The cave seemed brighter than he remembered, with rays of light illuminating even the most obscure corners.
Everything looked mostly the same. Only the embers in the fireplace were now much dimmer than they had been before.
It seemed that quite some time had passed since he entered the library— at least a few hours. If what that voice said was to be trusted, he calculated that about two and a half hours should have passed since he was kidnapped by that green light.
He had spent roughly an entire day navigating those halls. If time moved ten times slower in that space compared to the outside world, then about 2 hours and 30 minutes shouls have gone by in the real world.
However, he didn't really know exactly what time it was when he got sent to the library. And so, unfortunately, he had no way of ascertaining if his calculations were correct or not. He had nothing as useful as a clock on him to make things easier.
This seemed like an important detail to leave unanswered, though. Not only would it allow him to ascertain how this aspect of the library worked, it would also enable him to determine if that voice's words had some truth to them or were just there to mislead him.
He was obviously not going to trust some random voice he had never heard before, telling him what to do and how to do something, especially in regards to something as powerful as that library seemed to be. That's just begging to get killed.
He was no idiot. He would verify it himself draw his own conclusions.
'It seems like I'll have to conduct a few tests with this thing myself to make sure of how it works exactly.'
And so, he got to it. He was in no rush to do anything else at the moment. Slowly taking in everything he could and understanding exactly how everything around him worked was the best way to ensure his own safety and future success.
Running head-on into things without fully understanding your own environment is a fool's errand and would only lead to unnecessary suffering. It would be too late to regret anything if he ended up getting himself killed because he didn't understand some minor detail regarding the way something worked.
This wasn't a game where you could just respawn after your death. At least, it wasn't supposed to be. And he certainly didn't feel like testing whether he was exempt from this rule or if his previous reincarnation was a one-time-only mistake in the fabric of the universe.
At least for now, he didn't really want to get himself killed. He had found a world worth exploring and investigating, so he wasn't willing to let go of it like that.
Arthur got up.
Firstly, to understand exactly how the time manipulation of the library worked, he had to find some way to measure time. His initial instinct was to go outside and base his analysis on the position of the sun. However, he quickly dismissed that.
Firstly, he had no real experience in measuring time based on the sun's location in the sky. It was one ability he never bothered to learn, as it was mostly useless with the level of technological advancement his society enjoyed.
Secondly, there was a very real chance that, even if he knew how to do it, employing such a tactic would end up leading him to erroneous conclusions. This planet was not Earth, and the star in the sky was also not the sun. Thus, many things could go wrong by trying to apply a system that only worked with a very different scenario.
This planet could be spinning far faster or far more slowly when compared to Earth. Or instead, not spinning at all. This could mean the days are faster, slower, or even the same.
He knew, from his memories, that a day in this world was still 24 hours long. However, because he didn't know the exact size of the planet, he couldn't draw any conclusions regarding this. Many factors, such as the distance from the star, the planet's size, the star's size, and many more, impacted how the star moved across the skies from his perspective, and he was clueless about them.
And let's be honest, even if he did know about them, he still wouldn't be able to make any illations. He was no scientist after all. He had no clue as to how all these factors would affect the movement patterns of the star and how to measure time with these changes in mind.
Not to mention that, in this world, Qi existed. The rules of the universe might be totally different due to that. And even if they are the same, Qi itself is certainly able to break said rules. So it's better not to rely on any scientific knowledge he might have from his previous world.
After discarding that path, Arthur ponders a different solution. He tries to recall from his memories exactly how people here measure time.
There were certainly a multitude of devices that allowed you to measure time—what time it was, how much time had passed, and so on. However, as was to be expected, he had none of those on him at the moment. Lao had long been robbed of anything of value he might have had.
And so he had to be a little more ingenious with his ideas. He thinks for a little bit, with multiple options flashing through his mind—some better, some worse.
Eventually, his mind settled on a choice. It was a little rudimentary, but it would have to do.
He motioned to the corner of the room. There, he could see a small pile of brown leaves organized into a small heap—something Lao had gathered the prior night to make his fireplace.
He picks a few leaves. All these leaves had a similar size and were made of the same material. They looked almost identical to the naked eye.
He set six out of his seven leaves aside. Then, he let the final leaf in his hand fall into the fireplace.
The embers, now almost completely dead, threatening to die out, instantly come back to life. An invincible roar sounds as an incredible rush of energy emanates from the embers into the leaf, turning it ablaze almost immediately upon contact.
Just like a phoenix rising from its ashes, the fireplace comes back to life once again, with a small flame flickering and sparkling anew.
Arthur stands there, with a concentrated expression on his face, looking directly at the fireplace. Nothing else seems to enter his eyes. Nothing seems to break his concentration.
A few moments later, the fire dies down again, the leaf it had been using as its sustenance having turned into nothing more than a carbonized shell of its former self.
Ok, I roughly counted 138 seconds since the leaf caught fire up to now.
All this time, Arthur had been concentrated, counting seconds in his mind, trying to measure out exactly how long it took to burn one of those leaves.
One thing that surprised him was how long he managed to retain his concentration, not allowing any distractions to enter his mind. This was not something he would have been able to do back on Earth, at least not to this extent. It seemed cultivators, even the ones at the lowest levels, were extremely impressive when compared to regular people.
Now that Arthur knew exactly how long it took for a leaf to burn and the fire to die out, he could implement his plan. His "strategy" was to light a leaf on fire, enter back into the library, and then, following the time measure he just got, see if the library did, in fact, really work at a speed 10 times slower.
There were still some issues with this process. For instance, the leaves he was using may look identical, but they were always going to have some sort of difference in terms of size, shape, thickness. Additionally, the way the leaf was placed and where the fire started were always going to change the outcome in some way. However, this was good enough for what he had available.
His plan was now to lay one of the leaves on the embers and wait for it to catch fire. He then would immediately enter the library. He was then going to wait inside the library for about 21 minutes.
His plan was now to lay one of the leaves on the embers and wait for it to catch fire. He then would immediately enter the library. He was then going to wait inside the library for about 21 minutes.
Here, he would leave the library. He was allowing 6 seconds of leeway for the time he was going to waste getting into the library and getting out.
As for the reason he would come out before the fire had fully died, it was simple. You couldn't really measure how long exactly the fire had been dead for. If he got out and saw no fire, this could mean the fire had died down 5 seconds ago or 5 minutes. It was not the best way to measure things.
If he got out before the fire died out, he would have be able to measure exactly when the fire dies down.
So, after he gets out, he would begin counting the seconds left until the fire died. If, taking into account the previous leeway he had given himself, the fire dies out after 6 seconds, he would consider this theory correct.
He would give this experiment an error margin of 10 seconds to take into account all the other factors that may end up interfering with the time. That was quite a massive error margin, but he couldn't help it, since the means at his disposal were terrible.
This would mainly serve to make sure that what the voice said wasn't a massively noticeable lie. He would try this again with some more accurate measurements later on.
The other six leaves were there to help him recreate this experiment multiple times, allowing him to be more sure of his results.
And so, he readied himself.
He sat right in front of the fireplace. Next, he grabbed one of the leaves by his side, gently setting it on top of the embers.
The leaf comes to life as a small flame envelops it.