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The jungle is silent.
To the east, the land plunges down into the green, and to the west the mountains rise high above, but here there is foliage all around, and a game track, and a conspicuous lack of small mammals and birds.
You might even say it's too silent.
"But they care about them enough to not teach them that it's morally obligatory to give your teacher half the food you collect, or to not teach them like, a defective sword style that will work fine until they're in a fight with a Jian master and their teacher and then it'll get them killed messily in a way that gives their master an opening to win the fight?"
"...well, we don't have swords, and mostly people catch their own food once they can catch any."
"I'm glad we had this talk. Don't forget that favour, when you've made it big."
"Yes, yes, write it down in your magic papers that foolish people will also seriously consider the viability of killing you to steal."
"The extremely foolish would not consider this to be relevant and the moderately foolish would kidnap you to make you teach them?"
"Uh, do you want the basics of interrogation as I would do it under remotely sane circumstances or do you want how I think someone stupid enough to think this plan would work would do it."
"The fundamental problem with interrogating someone you have captured is that you have them entirely in your power but you still don't have access to the inside of their head. An idiot will solve this by getting a large stick or a knife or something and threatening to hit you with it. Then you will refuse to give them what they want out of principle. Then they'll hit you some more. Eventually the desire to cease being in pain will overcome principle and you'll tell them something, but it doesn't need to be the truth. This leads to two key problems. If they believe, for example, that your book records your heterodox cultivation techniques that they would also like to use, you can misinform them that the word 'not' in the sentence 'you should not channel qi into your eighth meridian or else your head will explode' means 'must' and then when they try and use the technique their head will explode. Secondly, if they believe that your book describes your cultivation techniques and in fact you've just been noting down everyone's name and description so you don't get embarrassed by forgetting, you have no way to convince them of that and will just get tortured forever or until you make up something that seems persuasive."
"If I were doing this, I firstly would choose to ask about information I could verify, like the location of hidden treasure or the passkey to a vault, rather than the translation of the text in a mysterious enchanted book. Secondly, I'd talk to you, discover what principles make you want to conceal this information from me and how they can be put in tension with your other beliefs, make sure you believe in the possibility of a future outside this cell if you cooperate, and in the mean time keep you hungry and sleep deprived and isolated and emotionally off balance so you're not in a good state of mind to actually refute any arguments. And then maybe if that didn't work I'd get someone else with a big stick to hurt you, but I'd be very apologetic about it. And I would let you go at the end, because my reputation matters too."
"Wow. I think possibly not all the things that have been invented here are good. The book isn't magic, I can do the same thing to any writing I read."
"If you intend to continue having whatever it is you do be visible, it might be wise to do it to some local books as well so it's obviously you and not the books."
"Do you know any useless information you would find amusing to recite and not be offended for me to forget about?"
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