I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 174 "A Plan for the Poor"

Richard followed his pre-arranged plan for the next two days.

He wakes up at six o'clock sharp every morning; his [Sleep] lv2 skill allows him to wake up precisely to the second.

After getting dressed and going downstairs, I found my mother already frying bacon in the kitchen.

He drank half a cup of warm water and jogged slowly around the slag heap.

[Walking] Lv.2 will automatically adjust breathing rhythm to match walking pace.

During the jogging, his microcirculation remained at a very low level, and he only sweated slightly after the whole workout, without the usual feeling of being out of breath.

After running, I went home, took a shower, changed clothes, and then went downstairs to have breakfast.

Evelyn usually comes downstairs at this time.

She rubbed her eyes and went into the kitchen, where she saw her brother already at the table drinking tea and eating bread.

"Brother, you get up and go for a run before dawn. Is that something a normal person would do?"

"No normal person can't."

"But winter break is almost over, have you finished your homework, you normal person?"

"..."

Evelyn stopped talking and ignored him as soon as he mentioned homework.

After breakfast, it was Richard's training time.

He used old Latin textbooks as targets, tying them to the wardrobe door with thin rope.

Hold your breath, push ether, thread the needle, and strike.

"puff."

The silver needle pierced the letter N on the second line of the textbook cover.

He pulled the needle off the wardrobe door, returned to its original position, and shot it again.

"puff."

It's the second line, N again.

Practicing the moon nail is currently my most important training exercise.

If you practice until you're proficient, you can pass the reversal judgment standard.

In that case, I will be able to acquire new techniques and use the semi-finished model to get something for nothing at the party, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

The afternoon session was for practicing "Stone Armor".

During the third cycle of exhalation in the fourth breathing phase, ether is pushed to the surface of the skin.

Under his control, a thin, hard shell gradually formed on his entire left arm, spreading from his fingertips all the way to his shoulder.

The armor plating solidified steadily on his arm.

"call."

He exhaled a long breath, and the armor disintegrated.

Then repeat the above process again, in a continuous loop.

The proficiency of [Shadow Armor] is tied to that of [Stone Armor]. When he practices the latter, the proficiency of the former also increases.

After mastering the [Stone Armor] technique, he began practicing spiritual vision and divination.

The training bronze disc given to him by Old Big was placed in the center of the table.

The gray wax stick was lit, and drops of wax dripped onto the plate.

The seventh drop of wax condensed into an irregular little flower.

Richard examined the outline of the flower.

It has five petals, with the largest one facing east and a thin slit running through the middle.

He was familiar with all the symbols Old Big had taught him, but this one tonight didn't belong to any of them.

There's a saying in wax storytelling: if a fortune teller gets a shape they can't understand, it's mostly because their mind is cluttered with too many things, affecting the solidification of the wax.

Richard blew out the wax sticks and wiped the plate clean.

After finishing his divination practice, he took out the copy of "Northern Literary Review" that Charlotte had given him.

It's about time I started writing myself.

He first read the entire book through.

The writing styles can be broadly divided into two categories.

The series consists of essays by children of miners in northern China, describing their fathers working underground, their mothers working in the laundry room, and their own experiences studying at a primary school in the mining area.

The language is simple and unadorned, the structure is straightforward, and it hardly uses any rhetoric; it wins people over with its sincerity.

Another group consists of grammatically trained teenagers who write about daisies in spring, lakes in summer, chestnuts in autumn, and fireplaces in winter.

The rhetoric is sophisticated, the imagery is rich and the structure is symmetrical; every paragraph reads like a series of parallel structures.

But the ones Charlotte circled were all first-rate.

Richard saw her red pen annotation next to one of the articles on the second route: "Beautiful writing, but unfortunately it's empty."

He closed his subscription.

For his first idea, he planned to write about his Cicero Cup experience, focusing on "how a northern boy gained a foothold in the capital."

When he got to the second paragraph, he read it and felt something was wrong.

The self portrayed in writing is far more glamorous and composed than the real self, which has nothing to do with "authenticity".

After revising it, it was found to be even more incorrect, which became a competition experience that caught the attention of the admissions office.

Richard crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into the wastepaper basket.

For his second idea, he wrote about Mr. Hutton.

When he got to the third paragraph, he became alert.

What would Mr. Hutton's image be like if the veil behind the curtain were removed?

A traditional teacher who upholds classical values ​​in a northern industrial city.

This image has been written to death in the second batch of articles.

By evening, Richard's desk was piled with seven or eight wads of scrap paper on the left side.

Evelyn glanced at it when she came in to deliver the hot milk.

"What are these crumpled pieces of paper for?"

"...writing."

"Write what?"

"Submit."

"to whom?"

"A magazine."

Evelyn put down the hot milk and reached out to flip the top clump.

Richard slapped him down.

"Don't look."

Why?

"It's not written well."

"I won't laugh at you."

"..."

"Alright, alright." Evelyn withdrew her hand. "When you're done writing, show it to me, and I'll help you pick the best one."

How will you choose?

"The one that made me cry, that's the one."

"Your standards..."

"What's wrong?"

The most painful article to write is not necessarily the best article.

"What is the best-written article?"

Richard thought for a moment.

"After it was written, both the writer and the reader felt that this was exactly how it should be written."

"Is this how it should be?"

Evelyn didn't understand.

She carried the empty tray out, glancing back at her brother just before closing the door.

Don't stay up too late.

"it is good."

After the door closed, Richard brought the hot milk to his lips and took a sip; the cup was scalding hot.

He put the cup back.

A blank sheet of paper lay spread out on the table.

He wrote the first sentence.

"The third household at the east end of Slag Lane is a widower named Burns."

"He carried coal at the dock for thirty-one years."

"Last winter he coughed up blood, but he didn't dare go to the hospital."

After stepping back from his own perspective and that of those around him, he discovered that he actually had a lot to write about.

Why didn't Burns go to the hospital?

The municipal hospital in Briston North is located in an affluent area across the river.

A one-way trip on the tram costs two pence, the outpatient registration fee is six pence, the doctor's examination costs an additional shilling, and buying medicine afterwards is an even more expensive drain on your wallet.

All of this was not a small sum for the Williams family, let alone a widow living alone.

But money is only the surface.

According to the rules of the South District Dock Union, if someone fails to attend the morning roll call for three consecutive days, their position will be removed from the job.

If you want to reapply after crossing it out, you'll have to be placed at the very end of the union's waiting list, and it will take at least three months to get a vacancy back.

In three months, a 62-year-old's savings would be eaten up by rent and coal, bread would have to be bought on credit, and winter wool would have to be donated by the parish.

When the housewife next door passed by the gate, she would also glance inside with the eyes of someone looking at a poor person.

Richard's pen returned to the paper.

He recalled a worn-out booklet he had flipped through at Whitcomb during his winter break internship.

Mrs. McNeil casually handed it to him during a chat, and a line of small print inside has stayed with him ever since:

Those receiving parish relief must sign the register to confirm their unemployed status.

Those who receive payment for 28 consecutive days will have their names transferred to their permanent files.

The permanent archive is a card book with a blue cover, arranged by religious district.

Once someone is on the card list, they are crossed off the labor market.

Burns cannot be on that list.

This is what is known as the "subordination principle".

Those receiving relief must live worse than the lowest-paid workers, otherwise no one will be willing to do the hardest and most tiring work.

This principle is written openly and honestly in the interpretation of the Poor Law, without any attempt to conceal it.

The real goal of the entire poverty relief system is to maintain this cheap labor force and prevent them from stopping.

This makes people who cough up blood afraid to see a doctor;

People who are sick dare not stop working;

Those who stopped working dared not register;

Those who registered were unable to return to the labor market.

The machine is very successful in achieving its own objectives.

The entire mechanism fits together perfectly, and each process has a name.

The Poor Relief Act, permanent records, and the corvée labor system—every step of the process was written in black and white as "for the benefit of the needy."

Once the system is running, the trapped person can only go down, not up.

I heard my younger sister's voice coming from downstairs. She was discussing with our mother whether or not to go to the market to buy butter tomorrow.

Richard stood up and stretched his shoulders.

In the next section, he wanted to write about the almshouse.

The Briston North End Home for the Bitterlings is located at the end of Morton Street. It is a three-story gray brick building with its iron gates often half-closed.

There is a bronze plaque at the entrance that reads "House of the Poor, erected in 1867".

He passed by once last year and could see people queuing at the entrance.

The group consisted mostly of women holding children, and also included two middle-aged men who appeared to have disabilities.

Richard didn't look at it much at the time.

But now he remembered that there wasn't a single man in the group who was physically intact.

According to regulations, non-disabled men who enter the shelter must participate in "labor" every day, such as dismantling ropes, breaking stones, and sweeping public roads.

The labor was unpaid, in exchange for only two meals and a bed.

Richard wrote this relationship on the edge of the manuscript and connected it with an arrow to the main text paragraph.

From a mystical perspective, Burns' story is not simply a social issue.

A person crushed by despair and resentment may become a wandering spirit after death if they have a potential escape route; if they have no escape route, they will still leave behind a sound of death.

When the sounds of death accumulate, various minor anomalies will appear in the vicinity: echoes inside the house, knocking on the window at midnight, and nightmares while sleeping.

If the density of death sounds continues to rise in a certain area, evil creatures will be attracted to it, because death sounds are their favorite food.

Richard suddenly realized that since the Industrial Revolution, the noise density in industrial cities has been increasing every year.

The workload of the branch offices has doubled, not only because the curtain itself is thinning, but also because the mortality density of the lower-class population is increasing.

For every additional Burns who dies alone on a wooden plank bed, the branch office's reinforcement budget for the following year will increase.

Wentworth had previously complained about tight budgets, Bige had complained about rising costs of enchanted ammunition, and Captain Field had complained that the number of field missions across the North had doubled compared to five years ago.

Everyone is complaining about the numbers on the books, but no one is looking into the root of the problem.

Richard didn't write too much on the manuscript paper.

What happens behind the scenes can't be included in a magazine like World of Fashion, but the skeleton can be left behind, and then covered with a new layer of skin when the right language is found.

The skeleton is an elderly person living alone who coughs up blood but doesn't go to the hospital because the whole system is specifically designed to prevent him from stopping.

The system prevents him from stopping because someone who stops would become a burden.

But the price he paid for not stopping was that one day he would suddenly collapse on the stone steps of the dock and breathe his last into the river.

The last breath will make a sound, but people in the outside world cannot hear it.

The money that coal mine owners and textile factory owners earned from exploitation went into their private accounts.

After the leak of the sound of death brought out the evil spirit, the bill for cleaning it up was included in the national expenditure and was shared by all taxpayers.

Furthermore, this allows the budget for the branch offices to keep increasing every year.

If the Burns and their ilk were all living decent lives;

If in the industrial area at night, no one will take their last breath alone anymore;

The sound of death will decrease, and evil spirits will become rarer.

Old Biggs' salary will be cut, and Captain Field's field allowance will be cut as well.

The Ashford family's ranking in the capital will be further reduced.

The entire mystical system is actually a beneficiary of this injustice.

Even those who are passive beneficiaries.

Richard took a deep breath through his nose as he thought about this.

No matter how deeply a scholar studies, he cannot touch the monthly profits in the factory owner's ledger;

No matter how fast the hunter's axe is, it can't split open the heads of those old men in the parliament;

So many incredible forces behind the curtain are powerless when they come to the true source.

As for those at the highest levels of expertise and above, perhaps they themselves also benefit from this system?

Richard dared not speculate any further; his intuition had already begun to warn him…