I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 137 Buying a Gun

This week's schedule is packed with all sorts of things.

On Friday, when Mr. Holland saw him off at the classroom door, he casually mentioned:

"The holidays are almost here, and next week will be the last one-on-one tutoring session of the semester. Please prepare your questions in advance."

Richard nodded.

This semester's Latin tutoring has continued from before the Cicero Cup until now, and has transitioned from the preparation stage to a pure rhetorical expansion.

Mr. Holland’s recent speeches are no longer based on classic passages like “In Defense of Murena” or “Against Catiline”.

The content gradually progressed to Tacitus's Chronicles and Suetonius's Twelve Caesars.

The style shifted from rhetoric to history, and the difficulty increased layer by layer.

This weekend is also the last tutoring session. After school ends next week, we'll be on Christmas break.

Tom recited the eight suffixes of the second declension three times in a row, without pausing between each repetition.

As Richard closed his textbook, the boy couldn't hide the smile on his face, his gaze drifting sideways to the honeycomb-shaped cookie on the table.

"You got it right." Richard pushed the cookie in front of the boy.

Tom grabbed it, stuffed it into his mouth, chewed it a couple of times, and mumbled a bulging "Thank you, teacher."

Charlotte stood by the door frame, her arms crossed, her gaze shifting from her brother's cheeks to Richard's face.

She stepped aside. "Mr. Williams, may I speak to you in private?"

Richard followed her to the small study at the end of the corridor.

The study is small, with mahogany bookshelves reaching the ceiling on three sides, each shelf crammed full.

Charlotte took an envelope from the drawer; the envelope was sealed with wax.

"This is the last payment for tutoring fees this semester."

She handed the envelope over.

"After class today, Mom insisted on giving you an extra Christmas pudding, which is in the basket by the door."

"The Christmas pudding was something Mom wanted to give you. She made three big portions, two for the family, and one for you."

"Please thank Mrs. Dawn for me."

Richard tucked the envelope into the inside pocket of his coat.

Charlotte pulled out another business card from under the proofs.

The business card is made of matte cardstock, with a line printed in serif font in the center:

Charlotte Dawn, editorial assistant at The Northern Literary Review.

Below is the magazine's address and a phone number.

Richard, holding the business card, asked, "You work at a magazine?"

"My advisor introduced me to this job after I graduated, and I worked there for a year and a half."

Charlotte's tone was somewhat lighthearted.

"Our magazine is not large in scale. Its distribution area is mainly a few industrial cities in the north, plus some lecturers and professors in the classical studies community in the capital who have been subscribing for many years."

"Sales weren't high, but every single copy was read carefully."

She reached out and pressed her hand on the top stack of proofs.

"We have a column called 'The Pen of Young People,' which is specifically for writers aged fourteen to twenty-two to publish their work."

Richard raised an eyebrow slightly: "To present to the students?"

"For everyone of this age."

Charlotte corrected.

"Factory apprentices, newly enrolled preparatory students, children from farming families... as long as the article is qualified, we will publish it."

"The pay isn't high; an essay costs about eight to two pounds, while poetry is paid by the line."

She gently patted the proof.

"But if you publish your name here, the admissions offices of several universities in Beijing will take notice of it."

Her gaze shifted from the business card to Richard's face.

"During the university's pre-university screening process, the examiners often have dozens or even hundreds of candidate materials piled up on their desks."

They need to select a dozen or so candidates for interviews, and the selection criteria, besides academic transcripts, often include a list of published works.

"A short essay in a literary review is more effective at making people remember your name than a letter of recommendation."

Richard tucked the business card into the last page of his notebook.

"I have no idea what I can write right now."

Charlotte turned and pulled a bound booklet from her writing drawer.

The booklet cover is light gray with silver lettering—"Northern Literature Review: Annual Compilation Special Issue".

"Go back and look it up."

She handed the booklet over.

"The articles in this collection vary in style, but they have one thing in common: they are written with sincerity."

"Really?"

Write about what you have truly experienced and thought about.

"Our editor-in-chief once said: 'What northern teenagers have in abundance is authenticity. They were born under the chimneys of mines and factories, and they breathe authenticity through their nostrils every day.'"

Richard took the booklet and weighed it in his hand.

The booklet wasn't very thick, and the cover had a faint smell of ink, typical of the proofreading room.

"I mentioned your Cicero Cup speech to the editor-in-chief."

Charlotte added.

"The editor-in-chief approved it after reading it. As long as you are willing to write, he is willing to give you the opportunity to publish. It is about one to two thousand words, and it can be an essay or a short commentary."

Richard stood there thinking for a while.

"How much time will you give me?"

"The deadline for the first issue after the start of spring is March 15th."

Charlotte took a pencil and wrote a date on the cover of the booklet.

"If you are confident, send the manuscript to me by the end of February."

Let me take a look first, and I'll remind you in advance if any changes are needed.

Richard nodded.

"Thank you, Miss Dawn."

Call me Charlotte.

She put the pencil back on the proof.

"We've been tutoring each other for so long, maybe we should change how we address each other."

………………

When Richard came out of Dawn's house carrying a basket, the afternoon sunlight was already beginning to illuminate the brick walls.

After putting his things down at home, he took a 20-minute bus ride and got off at the freight yard.

It was just as deserted as last time, the stones of the wall turning bluish from the winter frost.

At the end of the alley, the side door next to the branch office was ajar.

Upon arriving at the office on the third floor, the hissing sound of a teapot could already be heard.

The door wasn't closed. He knocked twice and pushed the door open to go inside.

"Sit down, sit down." Old Big didn't even look up, he was squatting under the table rummaging through something. "You've come quite early today."

Richard placed his schoolbag next to the chair.

"I promised to bring you chestnuts."

"Oh, oh, oh, you really brought it!" Old Biggs crawled out from under the table, his round face immediately beaming with a smile:

"That old man's family on Grafton Street?"

"Um."

"A two-pence bag?"

"A large bag for two pence."

Richard placed the oil paper package on the table.

"You're a man of your word."

He grabbed a chestnut, popped it into his mouth, chewed it twice, and squinted his eyes.

"Hmm... this place is just more interesting than others; they don't use ordinary charcoal."

"It's elm charcoal," Richard said.

How did you know?

"I asked him."

"...You actually asked such a thing."

Old Big handed me a chestnut.

Richard took it, peeled it, and ate it slowly.

The two sat quietly at the table for a while.

Chewing chestnuts in my mouth, I tasted the smoky flavor of charcoal, and as I chewed, a hint of sweetness emerged from deep within the starch.

After eating for a while, Richard got down to business.

"I'm here today to buy a gun."

Old Big wasn't surprised: "You finally remembered."

"I've been thinking about this, but I haven't mastered it in the last two months."

"Okay, I need to call the boss."

He reported the matter to the head of the inspection team.

After obtaining permission, he took the key from the metal cabinet against the wall in the office and unlocked it.

The metal cabinet contained a row of gun cases, all sizes, ranging from short-barreled pistols to long-barreled revolvers.

"The branch office provides trainee inspectors with three different types of firearms."

He took three gun cases from the cabinet and placed them in a row on the table:

"Take your time and look around first, there's no rush to choose."

The first gun case was opened, and inside was a short-barreled revolver.

The gun is relatively short, the grip fits snugly in the palm, and it has a six-round cylinder.

"The Webley police version, a modified one," Old Bige explained.

"Unlike the large military-grade version, it weighs only one pound and eight ounces, has moderate recoil, and an effective range of twenty-five meters."

"Twenty-five meters? What can that do?" Richard frowned.

"Enough for you to beat up a pickpocket ten meters away in an alley, enough for you to beat up an evil spirit that comes through the door in a house."

"Even if the accuracy of the rotary wheel is good enough, you still won't be able to hit the target at a great distance."

Richard nodded in agreement. That made sense, after all, he was just a novice marksman who had only practiced shooting at fixed targets for a few months.

The second gun case was opened, and inside was a long-barreled pistol.

Enfield Type II.

"The barrel is two inches longer than the first one, and the effective range is thirty meters."

"The price is weight, two pounds and an ounce, and the gun is long, so it can't be hidden in a pocket."

"Wearing a belt and holster is fine, but that kind of thing would be too conspicuous on the street."

Richard picked it up in his hand; it was indeed much heavier than the first one.

The contents of the third gun case looked quite different from the first two.

The gun has a flat barrel and is magazine-fed.

"This is new stock." Old Bige was unusually proud.

"The branch office just issued them this year; it's a new design from the capital, called an 'automatic pistol.'"

"automatic?"

"After you fire one shot, the gun automatically ejects the empty casing and loads the next shot into the chamber."

"You can fire continuously without pulling the hammer, just by pulling the trigger."

Old Bige gestured by pressing the slide:

"The magazine has a capacity of seven rounds, an effective range of 25 meters, and less recoil than a revolver."

Richard stared at the gun.

He was naturally familiar with automatic pistols, but he was somewhat surprised to see this model in the Albion Empire.

"It's newly developed, so it must have some shortcomings, right?"

"Of course, this gun has a relatively high failure rate," Old Big made no attempt to hide it.

"Our branch office issued twenty tubes this year, and four of them broke down in six months. The most common problem was jamming."

"We haven't experienced any lag this time, but who can guarantee we won't next month?"

Richard's gaze lingered on the flat gun for a moment longer.

Seven-round magazine, continuous firing, low recoil... these parameters are all beckoning to a novice with poor shooting skills.

Old Bige seemed to see right through his hesitation.

Before he could even speak, the chatterbox took over the conversation himself.

"I bet you're feeling a bit nervous, don't you think an automatic pistol sounds more exciting?"

Richard did not deny it.

"Young people, who doesn't like new things?"

Old Big took the automatic pistol out of its case and weighed it in his hand.

"But the 'newness' of this thing is precisely its Achilles' heel."

He placed the gun flat on the table and poked the slide with his index finger.

"It's perfectly fine for routine street patrols, catching thieves, and dealing with drunkards."

"But what if one day you follow the team across a certain line and take a look at the other side of the veil..."

His tone remained nonchalant.

"Then this guy is just a piece of iron."

Richard didn't respond, waiting for him to continue.

"The layer near the shore interferes with the machinery." Old Bige was unusually serious.

"Unlike the kind of pulse interference that suddenly stops your machine, this kind of interference is subtle and gradual."

"The etheric layer and the matter layer are too close together over there, so the small gears, springs, and guide rails inside the metal no longer follow the paths they are supposed to follow when they are working."

"There's a slight slipperiness, a slight stickiness, and a slight 'indescribable but just not right' feeling between the parts."

"You say it's broken? No, it's not. You say it works? No, it doesn't."

"The more parts a device has, and the more precisely it fits together, the more severely it is affected."

He gestured with his thumb towards the revolver barrel.

"The rotating disc is easy to handle; its structure is so simple that you can recognize each piece if you take it apart."

The breech, firing pin, and trigger linkage are made of three springs and three pins.

In places like near the coast, you could use this thing all night, and it might jam once or twice at most. Just tap it a couple more times and it'd still work.

He then pointed to the automatic pistol lying on the table.

"Automatic pistols are a different story."

"Recoil spring, firing pin spring, ejector, sear, interruptor... Each shot involves more than a dozen actions going through smoothly."

"If you're even slightly off on any one of those questions, you'll get stuck."

Old Big raised his hand and made an exploding gesture.

"If you're lucky, you can pull the slide and clean the flank again; if you're unlucky... the flank will explode!"

"Three years ago, my senior sister went down into an old mine in the north with a hunting team."

One of the female hunters in the team complained about the slow reload speed, so she paid out of her own pocket to get an even more fancy automatic pistol from an arms dealer.

Richard asked, "And then?"

"It got stuck on the second shot," Old Big said casually.

"The girl was still jogging when the card was debited, so I didn't pay attention and it was debited again."

He tapped his right wrist: "My right thumb and half of my palm are gone."

Richard looked down at the automatic pistol.

Old Bige recounted the story as if it were a casual snack, and then took another bite of a chestnut.

"So, when you put these three words together—complex machinery, nearshore, and newcomer—the outcome is never good."

"There's an old saying in our line of work: 'Behind the curtain, the simplest things last the longest.'"

"Swords have survived the longest, which is why hunters still use them today; next are bows and crossbows, single-shot matchlocks and flintlocks, and then revolvers."

"Automatic pistols, machine guns, repeating rifles... these things are for the world under the sun."

Richard's fingertips lingered on Webberly's grip for a moment.

However, Old Bige clearly had no intention of ending the conversation there.

He picked up the teapot and poured himself half a cup, then added some to Richard's cup as well.

"Speaking of this, I have to say a few words."

Richard smiled wryly to himself; this guy's mouth had never been closed anyway.