I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 120 Small Surprises and Big Surprises

Inside the room, after his daily breathing exercises, Richard decided to try nurturing the rare object.

He glanced at the panel: [Spirit Appearance] 10/10

The tank has been full for several days now.

The reservoir stops filling when it reaches its maximum capacity; it can't hold any more.

It's a bit of a shame that once the gauge is full, it can't accumulate any more.

The breathing technique, practiced daily, could have continuously infused it with pure ether.

As a result, once it reaches the top, it can only overflow in vain.

The overflowing portion entered the air and mixed with the loose ether outside, never to be found again.

Richard made a mental note of this, planning to expand the capacity once he had enough points.

Upgrading from 10 to 20 only costs 1 point, which is a good deal.

But I'm not in a hurry to think about that tonight.

He moved the Sphinx lamp further to the center of the table, making the distance between the lamp and his palm just right.

As Mr. Hutton said, nurturing is like "watering" a rare plant; too much water will cause it to overflow, and too little water will cause it to wither.

Richard closed his eyes and held his breath.

In the third, breath-holding phase of the cycle, ether methodically gathers in the Sun's constellation.

He thought his output was more abundant than usual because he was in good condition tonight.

The ether was pushed out from the Sun's Seat and slid along the inner side of the right arm toward the palm.

Just as the remaining amount began to be injected into the lamp body, a small stream of pure ether from the ten units in the reservoir spontaneously gushed out.

One stream is the surplus of cultivation output from the Sun's Seat, and the other is the pure ether that automatically flows from the Spirit Form.

The two streams of ether converged in the palm of the hand, and the mixed ether flowed into the lamp body through the skin of the palm.

The next moment, the temperature of the Sphinx lamp jumped from lukewarm to scorching hot.

His palms were so hot they went numb, and he almost wanted to pull his hand away.

But the heat didn't continue to climb; it stopped at a critical point between "scalding" and "tolerable."

Richard opened his eyes and his gaze fell on the relief carving on the lamp body.

The outline of the Sphinx was obscured by several layers of oxide.

He had looked at the relief of the human-faced beast countless times.

Half-closed eyes, an indifferent jawline, and a mouth that neither turned up nor down.

But now, he has noticed something different.

Those half-closed eyes seemed to have wider slits than before.

He held his breath and watched for a while, but it felt the same as before.

Richard removed his right hand from the lamp; he could feel a pull between himself and the lamp.

[Lingrong] 9/10

The ether in the reservoir has also decreased by one unit.

Richard leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment.

Since the Sphinx Lamp could draw ether from him, it might have also considered the contents of the [Spirit Frame] as part of itself.

Mr. Hutton's assessment at the time was that he had a "slight resonance" with this strange object.

The word "weak" may need to be reconsidered after tonight.

If he maintains a state of full spiritual energy for nurturing.

During the daily nurturing process, extra pure ether will be absorbed by the Sphinx lamp.

One unit may not seem like much, but it adds up over time.

He couldn't yet determine what changes these pure ethers from the [Spirit Form] would cause to the lamp body.

Mr. Hutton once said, "Keep nurturing, and you'll be pleasantly surprised."

Perhaps what started as a small surprise will turn into a big surprise?

I heard my mother cough twice downstairs, and my father snoring soundly as he slept.

Ten chimes came from the direction of the clock tower in Greenwood.

He climbed into bed, and his sleep skills slowly took effect in the warmth of the blankets.

In the next room, my younger sister is still memorizing geography; she has an exam tomorrow.

"...Man City is the largest city in the northern industrial region of the Empire, with major industries including cotton textiles, wool textiles, and machinery manufacturing..."

The little girl's voice grew softer and softer until it became a few indistinct murmurs.

………………

After school that day, Richard went to the library again.

On the second floor of the Greenwood library, against the east wall, is a newspaper and magazine rack.

Dozens of newspapers from that day and recent days were clipped together in wooden clips, categorized by city: those from the capital, Briston, other cities in the northern industrial region, and overseas colonies.

As Richard came up the stairs, his gaze habitually swept over the newspaper stand.

The outermost wooden clip holds today's Albion Evening Post.

The front page featured a few unremarkable local news items, while the third page, half-flipped by earlier students, revealed a short message that wasn't in the lead position:

Captain of HMS Gloucester dies suddenly in hotel; police preliminarily determine cardiac arrest.

Richard stopped in his tracks.

He took off the wooden clip and laid out the third edition completely.

The text message was immediately followed by another, even smaller article.

The Navy's third recruitment deadline for the support team has been extended by two weeks because "the number of volunteers did not meet expectations."

I flipped through the pages.

In a corner of the sixth edition, a summary reprinted in the Commercial Gazette (Colonial Edition) mentioned that several border towns in the New World experienced a "population decline in non-war, non-plague circumstances" this quarter.

Richard put the newspaper back in the clipboard and then pulled out several old newspapers from the past month.

Flip through them in chronological order.

The expeditionary force went missing, the support team went missing, the parliament passed a secret appropriation, and the colony's resource import data rose abnormally.

Each text message is inconspicuous when viewed individually, but when they are strung together in a line, it's a different story.

He had a general idea of ​​how the Empire would react to the New World.

To downplay the issue externally, allocate large sums of money internally, and eliminate any unusual statements in the media.

Richard leaned against the wooden frame of the newspaper rack, his gaze shifting from the newspapers to a map of the empire's overseas colonies hanging above the newspaper stand.

The map was drawn decades ago, and the colors have faded.

The New World was depicted as a huge, irregular landmass, with the names of more than a dozen colonies marked along the eastern coast, densely packed together.

The area west of the central mountain range is just a light gray expanse with no named outposts.

Richard stared at the light gray area for a while.

The empire's colonization of the New World has lasted for at least three hundred years.

In the last century, the Albion Empire had already taken steam engines from factories to ocean-going merchant ships, laid telegraph lines to every medium-sized or larger city within the empire, and installed internal combustion engines in the army's latest armored vehicles.

Logically, over three hundred years of colonization would be enough for a foothold in the New World to grow into an autonomous city and gradually develop into a new nation.

The land on the other side of the ocean is naturally suitable for the development of independent regimes, and the control of the suzerain state could not extend that far.

Richard had never heard of any autonomous regimes emerging in the New World.

Not only was there no autonomous government, but there were also no newspapers reporting on the situation in the country.

The occasional colonial updates in the newspapers kept repeating the same few words: "frontier outposts," "stable supplies," and "seasonal fluctuations."

The New World remained in this form for over three hundred years, without growing or expanding.

Towns on the east coast are densely packed along the coast, becoming sparser as you move inland, and west of the central mountains, there is a blank space.

Richard turned his attention back to the few short news items in the newspaper:

"The nights there are darker than the nights elsewhere."

Captain Harding's words from his public statement seeped out from between the lines of the text message.

Richard put the newspaper back in its place.

He walked to the seat in the east corner of the second floor.

He took out the ancient Greek vocabulary list he was going to read that day from the chair, but did not open it immediately after sitting down.

He didn't plan to delve into the news about the New World for the time being; he shouldn't be focusing his attention on such distant matters right now.

But his mind won't actually stop thinking just because you say "don't think about it".

For scholars to advance in their spiritual practice, they need a sufficiently concentrated ether, sufficiently ancient artifacts, and sufficiently deep sources of information.

Where did the strange object come from?

Most ancient artifacts are located in the known birthplaces of civilizations.

The Black Earth River basin, Mesopotamia, the ancient Greek coast, the Spice Islands, and the ancient monasteries and ruins of civilizations within the empire.

Richard could generally access artifacts from these places through the academic system and auction house channels.

But what happens after you reach a certain rank?

He remembered clearly what Old Big had said.

In the Old World, true mastery was the pinnacle of knowledge; the experts, masters, and recluses described in literature were nowhere to be found in the Old World.

Appendix C describes it in the same tone: the deeper the veil, the more the rules deviate from common sense, and the higher-level cultivators "no longer need to be known by us."

Those higher ranks cannot simply disappear into thin air.

It's either hidden in some corner of the Old World that Richard can't reach yet, or it's outside the Old World.

Besides the Old World, the only known continent is the New World.

For hundreds of years, no autonomous regimes or independent nations were formed in the New World, and the colonial process remained confined to a narrow coastal area.

The simplest explanation Richard could think of was that something inland was preventing humans from gaining a foothold.

The extent of the obstruction was enough to cause countless expeditions to lose contact, to cause the population of border towns to decline continuously, and to cause returning captains to die suddenly in their hotels.

Richard closed the book in his hand.

As long as he wants to continue advancing towards mastery or higher, a new world will appear before him.