I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 187 The Secret of the Abyss

Sunlight streamed in through the window, falling on the stack of documents in the center of the desk.

Richard put away the text that taught people how to encrypt, stretched, and his shoulder blades rubbed against the back of the chair with a dull thud.

The thin booklet at the very bottom has a simple title: "The Secret of the Abyss".

My aunt added a line of small pen writing at the end: "Richard, read the attached note before opening the book."

The attached strip is folded separately and placed between the cover and the title page.

Richard unfolded it to look.

"Just so you know, this book was reviewed by your mentor and me together. Mr. Hutton selected the chapters, and I projected them."

Drink a glass of warm water before starting the book and stop performing any procedures you are currently performing.

After reading each one, pause for a moment before turning to the next.

"After reading it, do not read it a second time."

On the back of the title page is a circle drawn in silver thread.

There is a blank space in the center of the ring, leaving an outline for someone to place their hand in their palm.

A sweep of spiritual vision revealed the direction of the etheric energy dormant on the ring.

Richard recognized this structure.

Projection techniques.

Occasionally, there will be rare copies of this type, which, when combined with the technique, can be made into a "readable and observable" two-layered text.

Newcomers can create a movie-like experience in their minds by inputting a very small amount of ether.

Ordinary projection techniques can only maintain an image for a few seconds; to achieve the size of an entire book requires the skill of a master of secrets.

Richard held the attached strip.

The two elders reviewed the entire booklet, including the pictures and text, and then handed it to him.

He folded the attached strip and put it back on the corner of the table.

The muffled sound of the oven door closing came from downstairs.

With her mother saying, "Evelyn, don't get so close," followed by her younger sister saying, looking aggrieved, "I just wanted to take a look."

Richard walked to the door and turned the key.

Return to your seat at the table, take three deep breaths, and bring the microcirculation you've been maintaining back to the center of your chest.

The leaves of the light tree closed up, and the etheric flow throughout the room returned to its own boundaries.

He turned to the first page.

Richard placed his right palm on top, and following his aunt's guidance, squeezed out a wisp of ether, which flowed along his fingertips into the silver thread ring.

The silver thread woke up.

The lights in the entire bedroom dimmed first, then dimmed even more.

External sounds, temperature, and smells were all gently enveloped by an extremely light gauze.

The first name in the booklet on the desktop appeared.

"The following three are dedicated to those who have heard the sound of water behind the door."

Richard put down his pen.

A layer of the room in front of us was gently peeled away, revealing another scene underneath.

Before me stretched a wheat field.

The wheat was pressed into waves by the wind, and in the distance stood a small church with a pointed roof, on which two crows perched.

There was a sweet smell in the air.

...but not the sweet aroma of ripe wheat, but a fishy sweetness that rises to the throat.

A childish voice rang out.

Richard couldn't tell where the sound was coming from; it was spread out flatly over the entire wheat field.

Once upon a time, there was a very well-behaved child in the village.

A child walks out of the picture.

At seven or eight years old, he was barefoot, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, and clutching a blade of grass in his hand.

"He was better behaved than the other children. The other children learned to whistle, climb trees, and stuff frogs into girls' baskets."

He doesn't learn those things; he only learns one thing.

The child stood still in the wheat field, threw away the foxtail grass, and closed his eyes.

"He's learning to breathe."

When that childish voice uttered the word "breath," the waves of wheat in the field paused for a moment.

The village elders taught him to count to four when inhaling, count to four when holding his breath, count to four when exhaling, and then count to four when holding his breath again.

This is called a good child's breathing.

The child learns very quickly. The old man patted his head and said he would be the most promising child in the village.

Richard recognized this passage: the Fourfold Breathing Technique, the introductory chapter of the Golden Path.

"But the child is not satisfied."

The voice pronounced "dissatisfied" in a soft, gentle tone, and she even chuckled softly after finishing.

The child said that the breathing method taught by the old man was too slow.

Inhaling four times is too slow, holding your breath four times is too slow.

I want to learn a fast way to absorb all the good things in one go.

In the picture, the child's mouth is open.

He stopped counting to four and opened his mouth wide, as if he wanted to suck in the whole wheat field, the whole church, and even the two crows on the bell tower.

As he inhaled, Richard saw the sweetness in the air being drawn into his mouth, strand by strand.

The wheat stalks fell toward him, and a crow fell from the clock tower, crashing into the wheat field and never taking flight again.

"The child has learned it!" The voice was very happy. "The child has learned to absorb all the good things in one breath, and he's growing very fast."

This should be the breathing technique of the Blood Burning Path; Richard has also learned a bit about it.

The child has grown taller.

While Richard was watching closely, the child, who was seven or eight years old, suddenly grew to the height of an adult.

It surged upwards again, the bones cracking under the skin, and its arms, fingers, and neck were all stretching.

"Everyone in the village says, 'Wow, whose child is so good-looking, tall and strong, he's bound to have a bright future.'"

The child's face is still the same as when he was seven or eight years old.

Its face hadn't grown yet, remaining at the age of seven or eight, but its body had grown to the height of a roof beam, requiring it to bend over to stand in the wheat field.

"But the child is hungry."

That childish voice made the word "hungry" sound drawn out.

One sip isn't enough.

The child would take two or three breaths, trying to inhale all the sweetness of the village.

He wanted the sweetness of wheat, the sweetness of well water, and the sweetness of freshly baked bread!

In the image, the color of the steeple church begins to fade.

First the stained glass windows faded to gray, then the walls, and then the clock tower.

Something was pulled away from one end of the entire village, and the colors faded inch by inch until finally only a colorless gray remained.

The child is still growing.

His face still looked like that of a seven or eight-year-old.

But on that seven or eight-year-old face, the area around the eyes began to bulge outwards.

It bulged out and then split open, and new, smaller eyes grew from the split opening, and even smaller ones split open from the new eyes.

His mouth stretched all the way to behind his ears, and where it opened, there were no teeth, just concentric circles of flesh the same color as his throat.

That childish voice was still reciting nursery rhymes in a childlike tone.

"The child is so tall!"

No one in the village could see his face anymore, because his face had grown into the clouds.

But the child was still hungry.

The child said, "Mommy, I'm so hungry."

The child said, "Mommy, there's no more sweets in the village, so I sucked them all up."

In the center of the gray village in the picture, there is a smaller human figure with its head tilted back; it is the child's mother.

"Mommy said, 'Sweetie, Mommy will make you bread.'"

The child said, "Mom, the bread isn't sweet either."

The child said, "Mommy, but you have it on you."

The voice stopped there.

The entire projection screen fell silent.

The wheat fields stood still, the gray village stood still, and that long, thin thing with its face reaching into the clouds bent down.

The childish voice rang out again.

This time it was spoken very softly and gently, like the last words before putting someone to sleep.

"Later, there was no one left in the village."

There's no wheat left, and no sweets either.

Only one tall, good child remained, who had learned to breathe a new way.

He was still standing there, still hungry.

"He will continue to be hungry because he has sucked up everything he could."

But he couldn't stop; new breaths don't teach you how to stop.

"The story ends here... Little friend, do you think that child was the most promising child in the village?"

The screen went back to normal.

Richard found that the pen in his hand had fallen onto the table, and the ink had smeared a small black blot on the edge of the copied manuscript.

The room was quiet. The list of thirty-six books on the wall was still pinned to its original spot. Evelyn was humming a tune that was out of tune.

He sat for a while before picking up the pen.

The voice, in the tone of a nursery rhyme, combined with the imagery, demonstrated the general effects of the introductory breathing technique of the Path of the Abyss.

It absorbs all the ether in one go, grows fast, becomes strong fast, and can't stop. In the end, it absorbs everything around it, and then absorbs itself.

Following the nursery rhyme text is a detailed explanation of the principles of mysticism.

He obediently copied it onto the manuscript paper, intending to digest it slowly later.

While I was copying it, the drawn-out final syllable of the word "hunger" was still swirling in my mind.

Richard rubbed his temples, rested for a while, and then began pushing down to the second section.

The shape of the guiding symbols at the beginning of the second paragraph is slightly different from that of the first paragraph.

The circle that was only half-drawn was now drawn more completely, with the gaps smaller.

He drew out a wisp of ether and pushed it in.

Another layer of the room was removed.

This time it's a battlefield.

One after another, the black soil was turned up, and buried in it were broken cart shafts, burnt-through flags, and corpses that were hard to tell whether they belonged to people or something else.

The sky was iron gray, and a city was burning in the distance, the flames licking the clouds a dark red.

A voice rang out.

This time, the voice belonged to an older man, his throat thick with a layer of grime, and he had to clear his throat gently after each sentence.

"I'll tell you about someone," the old man's voice echoed across the battlefield, "a man who has never lost."

In the scene, a shadow walks over from the other side of the black soil.

Richard couldn't see his face clearly.

Everything else in the projection was clear, except for this person, whose face was blurred by a stroke of a thumb across the image.

He was wearing a hunter's short jacket, with an oddly shaped axe tucked diagonally behind his back.

By this point, he understood that this passage was about the combination of the Abyss tradition and the hunter.

"He's a hunter," the old man continued.

"I went into ice water at thirteen, had my first etheric outburst at fifteen, and became a practitioner at twenty."

Up to this point, he's no different from any other good hunter.

The man with his face smeared walked into the center of the battlefield.

A swarm of things surged up from the opposite side. Richard recognized them as mutants deeply contaminated by the ether. They were in groups, without any formation, relying on sheer numbers.

"But he wasn't satisfied." The old man cleared his throat.

"He thought the hunter was too slow, chopping away with one axe at a time and firing one enchanted bullet at a time, he thought it was too slow."

He wanted a method that could wipe out the entire enemy force with a single gesture.

So he went down.

In the video, the man didn't lift the axe.

He made a very subtle movement, pulling something out of his chest.

The black soil around him grew even blacker.

Li realized that if he stepped in, he would sink deeper and deeper, with no bottom in sight.

The swarm of pollutants that surged up stopped first when they touched the black soil, then softened and disappeared.

It's like someone has taken away the little thing that allows them to stand up.

Layer upon layer, from near to far, everything that could move on the entire battlefield went limp.

"Look..." The old man's voice betrayed no joy or anything else; he was simply stating a fact.

"He won, he won with just a flick of his wrist."

From then on, he won every single battle.

The pack of bone hounds to the north cleared a valley in half a day.

The filthy things in the southern swamp, he stood on the bank, and the other side of the bank became quiet on its own.

He was praised for his achievements, but eventually, the higher-ups didn't know how to best record them, because no other hunter could do what he did.

The scene sped up, showing battle after battle.

In each battle, the person with the smeared face stands in the center, making a light scooping motion towards his chest, and the surrounding area softens and quiets down from near to far.

"Among those of the same rank, no one can fight him."

Even among the most skilled players, very few are willing to fight him.

Some have calculated that he alone is equivalent to an entire squadron of professionals in the field.

The old man cleared his throat in the air above the battlefield.

"Watch closely what happens after he wins a battle."

The scene slows down.

A man with his face smeared stood in the center of a battlefield that had just quieted down.

He looked down at his hands.

After each battle, things change a little bit.

After the battle, his fingernails faded to the same color as the black soil.

After the next battle, lines appeared on the back of my hand, as if something was crawling along the blood vessels under the skin.

In the next battle, when he raised his hand, Richard noticed that the forearm peeking out from his sleeve no longer looked like a forearm.

"Every time he reached down, he pushed himself a little further in."

"The power behind the curtain is not free; it is lent to you, and you use it to win."

Every time you win, it takes something back from you; what it takes is up to it.

In the scene, the man with his face covered in smears stands in the center after a battle, no longer looking down at his hands.

This time, he looked up at the sky.

Richard finally got a clear look at his face.

There was nothing else on that face except hunger.

Just as hungry as the child in the first story who learned to breathe new.

"And then..." the old man's voice slowed down.

"He no longer needs to go to the battlefield; wherever he goes, there is peace."

He passed through a village, where the livestock stopped mooing, and the well water became undrinkable.

The people living there all started having the same dream every night: they were falling into a bottomless abyss.

He didn't lift a finger, he did nothing, he was just passing by.

In the picture, the person is walking on a country dirt road.

With each step he took, the grass on both sides of the road would bend down, and once it was down, it would never rise again.

He left behind a soft, quiet trail that faded into the distance.

"He became a walking filthy thing."

The old man cleared his throat, this time taking a little longer.

"Do you understand? He still remembers his name, remembers that he is a hunter, and remembers that he won every battle."

But wherever he stood, that spot started to rot, and he himself became filthy.

"When the higher-ups were banning him... they sent out a top expert."

The image receded into the distance.

On the entire land, the walking source of pollution was surrounded in the center, with an indistinct, extremely tall shadow standing on the outer ring.

The shadow raised its hand, and nine layers of stone rings rose out of thin air from the ground, one inside the other, receding from the outside in.

As the innermost layer fell, the person with the smeared face raised their head and looked in the direction of the expert.

The old man read aloud the last words that person had said.

"I won every single battle."

"The stone ring has been closed, and that area is still sealed off."

Twice a year, in spring and autumn, someone goes to reinforce it. Those who go to reinforce it usually come back quiet and don't talk much.

The screen went back to normal.

Richard's palms were sweaty.

He wiped the sweat off his pants and picked up his pen again.

There was the sound of a car rolling over the icy road outside; it meant Father had returned.

He heard the door open downstairs, Evelyn's footsteps rushing down, and that standard interrogation:

"Dad, are you hungry?"

I'm not hungry.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"...A little."

"Don't touch the top shelf of the cabinet!"

Richard sat upstairs, listening to the bickering downstairs, and the tightness in his chest eased a little.

He lowered his head and copied the mystical explanation corresponding to the second etheric text word by word onto the manuscript paper.