I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 142 The Lovers Card

That morning, Mr. Hutton asked Richard to come to his private office.

As Richard walked down the corridor, he saw that most of the office doors were closed; the teachers who had finished their classes had gone home early to spend Christmas with their families.

There were no lesson plans on the old gentleman's desk today.

A map lay open in the center of the table. The paper of the map was yellowed and the edges were frayed.

The map depicts a desolate area in the northern part of the empire, with dense contour lines.

Several rivers meander through the highlands, each pointed to a different direction by red arrows, and several specific locations are marked by black boxes in the wilderness.

Several things were stacked next to the map:

A thin, poorly bound report, an old photograph of a mill, and a small rubbing wrapped in oil paper.

"sit."

Mr. Hutton pointed to one of the squares on the map with the tip of his pencil.

"This is where you will be interning this time."

He placed the pencil next to the map and leaned back in his chair.

"Before I begin to explain this mission, I'd like to teach you something."

Richard waited for the next sentence.

The old gentleman said, "It is far from enough for scholars to just read books."

"When you're on fieldwork, you usually only get a few things."

An official report, one or two pieces of physical evidence, and a few incomplete oral accounts.

The surface information is limited; you'll have to dig deeper yourself.

"What is the most common method of decomposing academic tracks?" He began his lecture.

"Syntactic analysis, literature comparison, structural deduction," Richard answered smoothly.

"Yes," Mr. Hutton nodded, "but that alone is not enough."

"There's a saying in our line of work: what the eyes can see is only the shallowest layer."

"Next, you'll need other tools."

Richard had a general idea of ​​what was going on.

"Hidden direction."

"Yes." Mr. Hutton leaned back in his chair.

"Weren't you at the branch office recently, learning the basics of clairvoyance and divination?"

"Um."

"How far have you progressed in your training?"

Richard thought for a moment and then chose to speak honestly.

"As soon as the spiritual vision touched the door, it could perceive the basic form of the etheric field."

Regarding divination, they only taught the wax and stone readings; they haven't properly explored any more advanced card spreads yet.

Mr. Hutton hummed in agreement but did not comment on the progress.

"Today I'll teach you a job that involves switching directions."

"It's called 'physical evidence retrospection,' and some people call it 'trace divination.'"

"You need a solid foundation in academics and a keen sense for clandestine matters; you need to use both skills to get things done."

"Most practitioners with only one-way skills don't know how to use this technique well."

"How exactly do I use it?" Richard took the notebook out of his bag.

"Using divination techniques, we can retrospectively interpret a known piece of evidence and pull out something deeper than the surface information of the evidence."

Mr. Hutton put it succinctly.

"It sounds the same as before."

"The difference lies in what you read," the old man said.

"Reading the words literally, but tracing back physical evidence means reading beyond the literal meaning."

For example, emotional residue, etheric imprinting, and causal connections to the event itself.

Mr. Hutton reached out and pulled open the drawer.

The drawer was filled with odds and ends: a few old notebooks, half a box of matches, and a keychain wrapped with twine.

The old man took out a small cloth bag from the very inside.

Seventy-eight tarot cards were poured out of the bag.

Richard's gaze involuntarily fell on the cards.

The card has an old-fashioned print style, with black and white lines as the main feature. It is severely worn and even has coffee stains on it.

"It was given to me by a senior sealing master," Mr. Hutton said frankly. "I've been using it for over thirty years."

He stacked the cards together, pressed his left hand on the cards, and began to shuffle them.

"There are 78 cards in total in the Tarot: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana."

"Each card corresponds to one or more symbols. The symbols themselves are flexible and need to be pieced together by the interpreter according to the specific context."

"Today we'll use the simplest three-card spread—Event, Cause, Result."

Mr. Hutton put the cards back on the table.

"You cooperate."

"What should I do?"

"Use your spiritual vision." The old man pointed to the police report:

"This document has passed through many people: police officers, scribes, mail carriers, filers, and everyone leaves a faint mark on it."

"Your clairvoyance is just beginning, but it's enough to perceive traces on documents."

"Push your senses out and fixate on them, see what you can feel."

Richard pushed his consciousness out from behind his sternum, following the method taught by old Big.

On the etheric level, this photocopy is almost "dead".

After all, it's just a copy.

But Richard still managed to detect some extremely faint remnants.

As the document was repeatedly read, the author's emotions seeped into the paper fibers.

"You felt it?" Mr. Hutton asked.

"Fear," Richard said.

"It's very deep, very old...it feels like it's been left by many people repeatedly handling this document."

"Good." Mr. Hutton nodded. "Now read the contents."

Richard looked down at the report.

On November 4, 1863, an accident occurred at the Whitcomb Mill, in which twenty-three workers died simultaneously that afternoon.

Cause of death: to be determined.

The autopsy revealed that none of the deceased had external injuries, signs of poisoning, or signs of suffocation.

The only anomaly was that the rate of temperature drop in all the deceased was significantly lower than normal.

The coroner's conclusion: The cause is unknown; further investigation is recommended.

The report ends here; there is no follow-up, no investigation results, and no explanation.

Richard put the report down:

"The fact that the body temperature did not drop indicates that something inside the body was maintaining its warmth."

Or rather... something still occupies these bodies after death.

Mr. Hutton did not comment on whether this inference was right or wrong.

He picked up the tarot cards and began to arrange a simple three-card spread on the table.

"I'll turn to the first one; you observe carefully."

Mr. Hutton's fingers gripped the edge of the leftmost card.

The cards are turned over.

The image shows a tower struck by lightning, its bricks and stones crumbling, and two people falling from the top.

This is one of the most impactful cards in the Grand Arcana, and even a beginner like Richard is familiar with it.

"The Tower - Upright"

Mr. Hutton wore a mysterious expression, as if he were receiving a signal that only he could hear.

In reality, what he was thinking in those two seconds was: Thank goodness, it's a tower, this is the best way to make things work out.

"The tower points to a sudden catastrophic event, the complete collapse of an existing structure."

His voice was firm: "Combined with the timeline of physical evidence—1863, the peak of the empire's industrialization."

He tapped the cracked bricks on the card with his fingertip.

"The large-scale environmental destruction during the industrial age affected the stability of some ancient seals, and the incident in 1863 was one of them."

Richard quickly processed this information in his mind.

Mr. Hutton turned over the second card.

The card was turned over, and Mr. Hutton's finger stopped.

The Lovers, upright.

This card depicts a man and a woman standing face to face, with an angel spreading its wings above their heads.

Of all the tarot cards, this is probably the one least connected to a mysterious accident that resulted in the deaths of twenty-three people.

Richard also noticed the incongruity of the card.

He glanced at Mr. Hutton, waiting for an interpretation.

Mr. Hutton picked up the tea on the table and took a sip.

The tea had long since gone cold, but he drank it slowly, giving himself time to let his thoughts settle.

Lovers card, lovers card... Okay, no problem, I can cover it up.

He put down his teacup.

"The Lovers card has a different meaning in trace divination than in everyday interpretation."

His tone was even more composed than before.

"It doesn't point to love or relationships, but rather to a fundamental binary structure."

Two things, opposing yet interdependent, inseparable.

His finger moved from the man and woman on the card to the angel above their heads.

"In the theory of ether, what fits this description?"

Richard's answer was almost a spur-of-the-moment reply: "Shadow."

The answer came so quickly that Mr. Hutton raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Whitcomb Mill, built on the pre-Roman border stones."

"It dates back at least two thousand years."

"The area was inhabited by the ancient Celtic tribes, who erected a circle of giant stones at this location to form a boundary."

"The border was used to seal off an existence that the locals called 'the one who eats shadows'."

Richard silently repeated the name to himself.

The image of his own shadow standing up and grabbing his throat in the alley of nails silently surfaced in his mind.

"According to existing ancient Celtic oral traditions, descriptions of her are very scarce."

Mr. Hutton said.

"A few fragments of folk songs mention that she 'lives underground,' 'comes out at night,' and 'devours people's shadows.'"

"She was imprisoned on that land for a long time, occasionally waking up, but never escaping the seal."