I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The whole process has been done several times already, so there's no need to say more.

Receive the needle, guide the breath, and insert the needle; the needle cluster explodes in the fullest part of the main circulation.

Coleman grunted, then swung his left arm twice into the air.

"I've never felt so relaxed before," he sighed. "Like I've just taken a hot bath."

"What about near the breakpoint?"

"...It has extended a little further outwards than the previous times."

Coleman carefully felt it:

"At first I thought it was my imagination, but I was sure after the third time I was stabbed."

"Exactly how much has it been extended outwards?"

"The break point was originally stiff, but now... I can feel a slight numbness in the area next to the break point."

Richard kept this in mind.

"Don't get too cocky, doing it repeatedly might cause problems."

"I know." Coleman pulled his sleeves down.

After finishing their practice, the two sat on the stone steps in the backyard for a while.

Coleman suddenly spoke up: "If I really cure you, the first thing I'll do is treat you to dinner."

"What do you want to eat?"

"...I don't know either." Coleman thought for a long time.

"Anyway, my Collie at home has been eating better than me lately, so order whatever you like."

Richard laughed out loud.

It was nearly dusk when I got home.

Gas lamps were lit in the windows of the few houses at the east end of the slag alley.

Evelyn's plate of "Mr. Rabbit" from this morning has been mostly devoured.

She wrapped the remaining two up and placed them on top of the cupboard, with a crookedly written note next to them.

"My name is written on it. If you dare to eat me, I'll make you pay. —ew"

Richard held the note in his hand for a while, then put the two gingerbread cookies away.

After dinner, he went back to his room and turned the lights up a bit.

Two items are laid out on the table.

An ebony box and a palm-sized bronze mirror.

Richard first pushed the box into the shadows at the corner of the table.

The image of the tower card is still fresh in his mind; he doesn't plan to touch it for the time being.

The bronze mirror remained under the lamp.

The High Priestess (Upright) and The Moon (Upright) were the two cards I drew last night.

Richard used his spiritual vision to press it against the mirror, slowly moving along the shallow relief of the "Line of Fate" around the edge of the mirror.

The mirror surface is black and no reflection is visible, but the seal on the mirror body can be read.

He recognized the sealing technique; it was an early method from the traditional web-weaving tradition.

I also want to thank my aunt for the supplementary information she provided.

The seal intertwines the two intentions of #039 refusing to be read and #039 refusing to be compared with #039, and embeds them in the shallow relief around the frame. The seal is not very strong.

Richard first mentally went through the procedure he had followed when dealing with the Sphinx lamp incident.

He took out a few sheets of toilet paper from the drawer and placed the mirror face down on top of the toilet paper.

Press a small pinch of coarse salt under the toilet paper.

Salt cannot completely isolate the flow of ether, but it can slightly deflect the flow.

Richard's quadruple breathing sank into the third cycle.

Every inscription has a beginning stroke.

The first stroke is the thinnest part of the entire seal.

It took him about twenty minutes to find it.

At the fork of the third "Line of Fate" in the relief on the back of the mirror, there are dots about the thickness of a hair.

The engraver made his first stroke here.

Richard repeatedly applied stress along that dot.

It's not heavy, and it's not urgent.

After each application, pause and rest for a few breaths before applying the next one.

On the seventh time, the relief near that dot trembled slightly.

Just like last time, he waited until his family was asleep, then quietly went out and found a secluded place to continue the lockdown.

On the twelfth time, a very faint grayish-white vapor seeped out from the dot.

The grayish-white vapor left the mirror and was immediately captured by the panel.

[Available Points] Start crawling from 0.

Richard did not stop.

He continued at the same rhythm, applying stress every few breaths.

The goal is to prevent the dot from self-repairing and closing up, while also preventing the crack from becoming too large.

This bronze mirror indeed contained more than just simple remnants of ether.

The gray mist contained even finer particles, so fine they were almost undetectable, yet they were detected by the inspiration thread.

Richard used his clairvoyance to see those things and saw some "whispers" that had been chewed over and over again.

The whispers couldn't form complete sentences; they were just fragments of words with their beginnings and ends cut off.

"……remember……"

"...The one in the mirror..."

"...You once did too..."

The whisper was so soft that it dissipated less than a meter away.

Richard didn't listen to them.

[Bowen] immediately retrieved the database of similar fragments for him, one of the low-level curses in the Weaving Web tradition, called #039 Comparison Curse #039.

This curse causes the cursed person to have a sense of doubt every time they look in the mirror, thinking, "I shouldn't look like this."

As doubts accumulate, one day the cursed person will pick up whatever is most convenient and smash the mirror.

After smashing it, the "self" in the mirror will be released and attached to the original owner of the mirror.

The old owner was replaced by a new owner, and no one else noticed.

The bronze mirror was probably originally designed to deal with a powerful family heir.

The #039 in the mirror, a reflection of the #039 curse, is already quite worn from being burned.

Based on the fragments of the whispers, the target of the curse may have died naturally several hundred years ago.

The curse, having lost its target, spun aimlessly in the mirror for hundreds of years, its intensity diminishing with each spin.

Today, only some whispered remnants remain.

Richard confirmed that there was nothing he couldn't control at the moment, so he continued to smoke.

The points on the panel steadily climbed.

0.13...0.27...0.45...

When it reached 0.74, the rate at which the grayish-white vapor seeped out of that dot began to slow down.

The whispers deep within the mirror became even fainter, until finally they were completely inaudible.

Richard stopped taking the drug once the count stopped at around 0.78.

He planned to keep this bronze mirror for future research purposes, hoping it might even be able to restore the curse.

Back home, Richard resealed the mirror.

After doing all this, he took a breath at the table.

The available points finally stopped at 0.78.

We are 0.22 away from completing the next 1.

Richard put the bronze mirror into the drawer and locked it, then looked at the ebony box in the shadows on the corner of the table.

The box sat there quietly.

The terrifying aspect of the Tower card is its "irreversibility"; it doesn't necessarily have to be "completely resolved" before it will befall him.

If the thing inside the box is the kind that, if even the slightest leak is detected, will flow back through that leak...

He couldn't even make a slit the size of a needle eye.

That box needs someone of a higher rank to confirm it before it can be moved.

Richard wrapped the box in oiled paper and then in coarse salt, and placed it in the secret compartment under the bed, locking it in the same place as the gargoyle.

………………

He arrived at the branch office on Sunday morning.

The reception area was quieter than usual today.

The person on duty was a young clerk whom he hadn't had much contact with, who was only a few years older than Richard.

"Is Old Big not here today?"

"Yes." The young clerk turned a page back in the register: "In the underground autopsy room."

Richard thanked him and went down to the ground.

The passageway was quieter than usual.

The thick wooden door to the autopsy room was ajar; he knocked three times.

"Come in," Old Big's voice came from inside.

Richard pushed open the door and went in.

There were no corpses on the worktable today, only tall stacks of file folders.

Old Big, wearing reading glasses, sat at his worktable, a document in his hand, his brow furrowed.

He looked up and saw Richard, then pushed his reading glasses up his nose.

"You're here?"

"Um."

"My senior sister left a few days ago." Old Big put down the document. "She still had a lot of things to take care of."

"She asked me to tell you to practice on your own for a while first."

Old Big pulled an old leather box from a pile of things at the other end of the workbench.

He pushed the leather case in front of Richard.

"Left by my senior sister."

Richard opened the leather case.

Inside was a thick book, the words on the cover having been repeatedly rubbed by fingernails countless times.

Divination and Vision: From Beginner to Expert

The author's name is listed as: Marie Viktoria.

"……This is?"

"It was borrowed from the teacher by my senior sister back then; it's a handwritten copy made by the teacher himself."

"Almost every problem my senior sister encountered in her fieldwork throughout her life could be solved by finding a solution in this book."

Old Big's gaze fell on the book.

"She lent you this book so you can practice on your own first."

"I'll keep practicing until I go to Beijing in June."

"Once you get to the capital, your teacher will take some time to teach you a short passage."

Richard's shoulders tensed.

"Does Mrs. Mary have time?"

"Um."

It's a rare opportunity to be taught a skill by a highly skilled medium.

He silently did the math in his head.

It's almost the end of February, and there are still more than three months until the summer training program in June.

He had more than three months to learn as much as he could from the book.

Once they arrived in the capital, even if Madame Mary only spent an hour or two talking to him, how much he could understand in that time would depend entirely on his foundation built up over the past three months.

"...I'll read it carefully." Richard put the book back into the leather case and carefully closed it.

"I knew you could," Old Big waved his hand.

He took off his reading glasses, rubbed his eyes, stood up from behind the worktable, and poured himself a cup of tea.

"Please sit down, I still have some work to do here."

"What business do you have here today?"

"Request a few things from Team Leader Wentworth."

"Oh, that's not my problem." Old Big waved his hand. "He's on the third floor."

Richard stuffed the book into his shoulder bag and was about to get up when old Big suddenly put down his teacup.

"...Don't leave in a hurry."

"Um?"

"Let me chat with you for a bit."

Old Big picked up the teacup again.

"After what happened a few days ago, I've been going through the death register lately..."

"Finished translating?"

"Finished translating."

Old Big gently swirled the tea in his cup.

"I've flipped through the registration books for the North District from beginning to end for the past five years."

The man's brows furrowed again.

"Based on the average of previous years, about 110 people leave the North District each year."

"One hundred and forty-two people left last year."

"One hundred and thirty-one the year before last."

"One hundred and twenty-six people two years ago."

"...more every year." Richard's voice softened.

"Um."

Old Big put down his teacup.

"I divided the extra portion according to the cause of death."

"Work-related accidents account for a large portion, and that portion is real."

In recent years, the machines in the factory have become increasingly faster, and every year more workers are struggling to keep up.

"It's true that a significant portion of the people in the workhouse died."

The workhouse started cutting its food budget this year, resulting in inadequate nutrition; the elderly won't survive the winter.

"That extra section that's truly inexplicable..."

Old Big tapped his finger on the table.

"About a dozen or so each year."

"Of these dozen or so people, half are middle-aged men or women."

There was no obvious medical history; the family members said the body was perfectly fine the day before when they came to identify it.

"The other half are homeless people and dockworkers, whose families don't come to identify the bodies."

"...which fits the description of someone who is selective about who they respond to."

"Hmm." Old Big nodded. "I dug out the old files on these corpses and compared them with the thirteen points on the canal map."

"More than 80% of the bodies died within 300 yards of the nearest point."

Richard listened, sensing that things were spiraling out of control.

Old Big took a sip of tea.

"I have already submitted this revised report."

"The branch office reports to Manchester according to procedure, and Manchester then reports to Beijing according to procedure."