I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 183 Selecting Bones to Weave Clothes

After dinner, Richard sat back down at his desk and brought up the control panel.

[Knowledge] The progress bar for Lv.2 has reached 89%. With the continuous input of knowledge related to occultism, the progress is indeed increasing rapidly.

He put the panel away, pulled a piece of paper from the drawer, and began to list the things he needed to digest next.

Annotations and translations were made for the twelve sets of rubbings of the boundary stones.

A paired study of bronze flakes and parchment scrolls;

The four batches of materials my aunt mentioned—double copying practice materials, Gaelic rubbings, Latin commentaries on church rites, and an expanded comparison table of the Alexandrian school—arrived one after the other.

The deadline for submissions to *Northern Literature Review* is February 15th.

The Dawn family's tutors never missed a Saturday morning;

Moon Nail Precision Training, as well as Stone Armor and Shadow Armor;

Daily care for Sphinx lamps;

Vision and Stone Reading;

Etheric massage for my mother, once a week;

The second meeting of the Theological Salon was held in mid-February.

In the end, he put down his pen and read it over from beginning to end.

Academic advancement, the progress of authorship, the impressive credentials one can present at parties, the rate at which one's mother's circulation declines, and household expenses—all these are closely intertwined.

Richard hesitated for a moment and then added a line at the very end.

Fighting club.

After finishing, he put the pen down again.

The fighting club is different from the ones mentioned above.

Each of these items is either related to further education, safety behind the scenes, or family.

The fighting club is not connected to either side.

He joined the fighting club because the "Breathing Healing" technique raised his physical ceiling, and he wanted to take the opportunity to solidify his foundation.

After half a semester, I can do more than a dozen pull-ups and jog 1,000 meters without getting out of breath or red in the face. I have achieved most of my goal.

As you continue practicing, the rewards will become less and less, while the time consumed will increase.

Richard drew a line across "Fighting Club" and crossed it off the list.

Even if you cross it out, you should still tell them in person if you want to ask for leave.

The next day after school, before going to see Mr. Hutton, Richard first went to the fighting club behind the gymnasium.

Pushing open the door, Frazier was bent over next to the sandbag near the door, helping a new student with a hand-grinding exercise.

"Keep your thumb on the outside, don't tuck it in."

He grabbed the newborn's fist and swung it:

"If you're wrapped up inside, you'll break your own thumb the moment you punch someone, while the other person will be fine."

The new student said "Oh," gripped the sandbag again, and punched it, making it wobble.

"Okay, it's starting to look good."

Frazier patted the sandbag, turned around, and saw Richard standing in the doorway.

"Fraser," Richard walked over, "I came to tell you that I need to take a long leave from the club for a while."

Frazier simply said "oh" and didn't ask for a reason.

"Are you busy with college applications?"

"Yes, there's a lot going on after spring."

"Then go ahead and do your thing."

Frazier patted Richard hard on the shoulder:

"Williams, you are different from us."

You're a promising person. If you study hard, then we good-for-nothings can use you to brag about in the future.

Richard smiled knowingly.

"When you come back, I'll save the sandbag for you."

Frazier withdrew his hand and looked at the freshman who was still struggling with his thumb:

"Hey, I've only been talking to someone for a couple of minutes, why are you..."

Richard turned and walked towards the door.

As he walked to the door, he looked towards the innermost corner of the room.

Coleman was hitting the sandbags at the very back.

The way he hits the sandbag is different from everyone else's.

The two sandbags in the center of the room, which were being pounded in turn, were swinging high, while the one in front of him was almost motionless.

Richard glanced at it a couple more times.

Coleman always hit the same spot.

Punch after punch, all of them hitting that oval, with no deviation of more than half an inch.

He understood.

This is the virgin training method of the Blood Burning Path.

In addition to ice water, holding your breath, carrying heavy loads, and pain tolerance, you also need to train your body to be a weapon that can only exert force in one direction and at one point.

Coleman looks like he has eyes on the back of his head.

He lowered his fist, wiped his face with a towel, and called out to Fraser, "I'll see Williams off."

Richard nodded to him, and the two left the stadium one after the other.

The snow outside has stopped, but the sky hasn't cleared up.

The path leading from the stadium to the side gate was covered with a layer of compacted snow crust, which crunched underfoot.

After walking about ten steps, Coleman spoke.

You've been very busy lately.

"Um."

Richard glanced at him sideways.

The conversation sounds like casual chatter, but the underlying message is anything but.

"I have a lot of things to do with my studies," he gave a vague answer.

Coleman kicked away a piece of frozen snow crust from the roadside.

"Are you stuck on your mystical studies?"

Richard considered it carefully.

Moon Spike is an old technique from the Moon Hunting tradition, which is inherently biased towards the hunter's lineage.

Coleman had trained at the military academy for more than two years and was probably more familiar with throwing techniques than this self-taught scholar.

"There is indeed a throwing technique that I've reached a bottleneck in."

"The shape is fine, but the accuracy is off. It can hit a fixed target, but if the distance increases or the target moves, it will drift."

Coleman hummed in agreement.

"If you practice throwing at a dead target, you'll never get the same result, no matter how long you practice."

"In military academies, when training in throwing needles, throwing blades, and explosive projectiles, new recruits are never allowed to stab wooden stakes."

No matter how accurately you drive the stakes, once you're on the field, the opponent won't just stand still and wait for you to drive them.

"I'd like to find a moving target, but I can't," Richard said, somewhat helplessly.

"Now you've found it."

Richard stopped in his tracks.

Coleman also stopped.

"You're going to be the target?"

There's an old saying in military academies: "Statues can't teach you moves; only moving statues can."

"I'll be the moving statue."

Richard frowned.

"Your return path..."

"It's broken." Coleman raised his right hand and clenched his fist.

"The escape route is broken, but my body isn't. I can dodge it and withstand it."

"With the force you're using now, if it really hit me, I'd be fine in a few days."

He lowered his hand.

"Besides, aren't you scholars the best at 'analysis'?"

"When you really become a big shot someday, maybe you'll be able to cure my problems."

Even so, Richard still asked the most important question.

"Does your family agree?"

Coleman didn't answer "home" and started talking about other things instead.

"My family has a small house in the west of the city, with a big enough backyard to move around freely."

The wall was built by my grandfather's generation, and it's thicker than most houses.

Coleman became somewhat dejected at this point:

"His family relied on this skill for a living back then, but later..."

Richard did not ask any further questions.

"Okay," Richard agreed. "Saturday afternoon, write down the address for me."

Coleman pulled a pencil stub and a crumpled piece of paper from his coat pocket, wrote an address on the brick wall of the gymnasium, tore it off, and handed it over.

Richard took it, glanced at it, and memorized the address.

"Then Saturday it is." Coleman said, turning and walking back towards the stadium.

He hasn't had enough.

Richard then turned and walked towards the teaching building.

When he entered the office this time, Mr. Hutton had already rearranged the desk.

There are two copies in the center: one is a copy made by Mr. Hutton himself, and the other is a draft that Richard drew on the train during his winter vacation.

The part about the real name is covered by a waxy black sealing line on the copy.

"You'll be the lead writer," Mr. Hutton said, sitting down at the other end of the desk. "I'll adjust the direction from the side."

Richard turned to a new page in his notebook.

Richard recognized the four set phrases at the top.

"With oak as the bone."

"Clothing in the mist."

"By blood oath"

"The answer is water."

"These four lines form the 'four symbols' structure of Celtic rituals."

Mr. Hutton drew a cross on the edge of the manuscript.

"The oak tree corresponds to the skeleton, and is the physical carrier of the object being sacrificed."

"Mist corresponds to the skin, and is the form of the object being sacrificed on the veil side."

"The blood oath is the medium through which the sacrificer and the sacrificed are made to reach an agreement."

"Water is the medium through which the object of the sacrifice responds from behind the curtain."

"Only when all four symbols are present is the entire ritual structure complete."

Richard listened while making notes in his notebook.

Following the set phrases, the next step in deciphering the ritual is the first step – bone selection.

This section occupies an entire column on the parchment scroll, and there is a corresponding record on the back of the bronze plate.

By comparing the two samples, Richard was able to roughly piece together the entire outline.

But when it came to the details, he was blocked by a set of recurring symbols.

"gentlemen."

"Um?"

"This set of symbols," Richard tapped his fingertip on the manuscript paper, "appears seven times on the parchment scroll and five times on the bronze tablet."

"Um."

"The meaning of the sentence before and after it is slightly different each time it appears."

Mr. Hutton came over and took a look.

How do you pronounce it?

"I read 'select,' but each time the object of the 'selection' is different."

"Continue reading."

Richard buried his head again.

He suddenly stopped writing when he was breaking the paper for the sixth time.

"...not 'select'."

"Um?"

It's 'claiming'.

Mr. Hutton was pleased to be behind him.

"You do these things much faster than I did back then."

"A month before the ceremony, the Celtic priests would enter the forest and select an oak tree as the framework for the ceremony."

Richard wrote and spoke at the same time:

"After the 'claim,' from that day onward, this oak tree was incorporated into the ceremony."

"Um."

"The criteria for selecting oak trees are in the next paragraph."

Richard continued breaking down the chain.

The next column is easier to break than the previous one; the symbol structure is standard and there are almost no variations.

"The trees must be at least one hundred years old."

"There must be no scars left by biological struggles on the tree."

"There should be no signs of ant nests or other higher social insect activity within 30 feet of the tree."

"After digging up the soil under the tree roots, a moisture-laden, earthy smell must seep out."

After Richard finished copying the four lines, he stopped and glanced at his guide.

"The last one... is it a marker for a water vein?"

"Hmm." Mr. Hutton nodded: "There are water veins within three feet underground, and the soil will seep out moisture after it is turned over."

Celtic priests believed that only the oak tree beneath the water vein could 'hear' the response from the other side of the veil.

"How did they know?"

"We figured it out through trial and error," Mr. Hutton said casually.

"They tried several times with an oak tree that had no water veins, but the ritual failed, and the cost of failure was that the entire tribe suffered a disaster the following year."

Richard remained silent.

"Continue on." Mr. Hutton didn't let him linger on this section for too long.

After selecting the oak tree, Richard paused and continued explaining the next steps.

"This part... I read 'record'."

"Record what?"

"Record death."

Richard put down his pen.

"From the day it was claimed, the etheric flow of this oak tree began to shift toward the direction of sacrifice."

"The direction of the shift is from 'growth' to 'recording'."

"What it records is all the deaths that have occurred in this forest over the next month."

Mr. Hutton remained silent.

Richard's fingers pressed on the manuscript paper.

"Every rabbit that gets eaten by the fox."

"Every field mouse that gets snatched away by an eagle."

"Every chick that starved to death in the nest."

"The death of the entire forest was recorded by this single oak tree that was 'claimed'."

"The recorded deaths are the capacity of this oak tree as a 'skeleton'."

"On the day the ceremony begins, the oak tree is opened up to serve as the fulcrum for the entire ritual."

Richard felt a chill run down his spine.

"...These rituals are interconnected, and it's hard to imagine how they figured them out under the circumstances and conditions of that time."

Mr. Hutton made a comparison.

"Today, when we perform the sealing, we need to use blessed silver ribbons, salt, rice wine, and rosemary. The entire process involves materials costing pounds."

"Celtic priests do not need to purchase any materials from outside sources."

"They used the death of the entire forest as the material basis for their rituals."

"On the morning of the ceremony."

"...Thick smoke formed a layer of fog in the sacrificial site."

The density of the fog was controlled by two assistant priests using two large fan-shaped pieces of bark; one fanned the air to disperse the smoke, while the other pressed down to gather it.

"Um."

"Do they want to keep the fog concentration within a certain range?"

"Yes." Mr. Hutton nodded: "If it's too thin, it won't be able to hold the following incantations; if it's too thick, the high priest himself will get lost inside."

Richard's pen continued to move forward.

"In the second part, 'Weaving Clothes,' after the fog formed, the high priest began to move around."

"He would scatter a handful of crushed herbal powder in his hand after each lap."

Richard used his spiritual vision to fixate on that set of symbols.

Mr. Hutton chimed in from the side.

"That's the Celtic's 'Foggy Orchid'."

"Mist Orchid?"

"It is also a plant that grows in areas polluted by ether, but it is rarer than Grey-flowered Grass."

"There are supposedly several wild communities in the northern Gale Heights, but no one except Professor McFee's generation knows the exact locations."

Richard noted this down.

Mr. Hutton continued his explanation.

"When mist orchid powder is sprinkled into the mist, the properties of the mist change."

"This layer of mist will gradually be 'woven' into shape as the high priest chants his incantations."

"That is the form of the object of sacrifice on this side of the veil."

Richard's pen stopped on the manuscript paper.

The skeleton was assembled, and the clothes were put on.

The object of the sacrifice was "made" step by step from the other side of the curtain.

When Richard reached this part, the leaves of the tree inside his chest trembled slightly.

He withdrew his spiritual vision and calmed himself down.

The sound of gas lights being turned on came from outside the office, and one by one, the lights along the corridor lit up from the outside in.

The old man glanced at his watch.

"That's all for today. Go back and organize your thoughts on today's decryption and summaries."

Richard neatly folded today's deciphered manuscript and placed it in the center of the table.

Mr. Hutton took out another small box from the drawer, the bottom of which was also lined with salt.

He put the deciphered manuscript into the box and closed it.

"From now on, I'll save all my drafts like this every day."

"Should I put it here?"

"Put it here with me."

Richard nodded.

As he walked out of the office, he heard the sound of a cleaner sweeping his broom at the other end of the corridor.