I loaded the Mysticism panel.

In the end, I couldn't escape oatmeal porridge for dinner.

While stirring the pot, Evelyn solemnly announced that a corner of the family budget had already been eaten up by her gingerbread rabbit.

Brown sugar, cinnamon, good butter—none of them are cheap.

Her mother, Margaret, said from the side, "The cost of waste must be recorded," her tone somewhat indulgent.

Richard didn't care. In the past few months, his appetite had increased to the point that even his father was surprised. He could eat two large bowls of oatmeal porridge with pickled radishes.

[Eating] The body's ability to extract every last bit of nutrition kicks in, and even the blandest food is meticulously broken down by the body as if it were a treasure.

After finishing his porridge, he went back to his room and turned the gas wall lamp to its brightest setting.

Richard opened the leather case and took out the book "Divination and Vision: From Beginner to Expert".

The stitches along the spine of the book have been re-sewn, with fine and even stitches, showing the skill of the person who did the mending.

He turned to the first page.

The handwriting was so neat it was almost rigid, with each stroke aligned with the invisible grid.

This is a handwritten copy made by Mrs. Mary herself, starting with the definition of inspiration and listing them one by one.

Richard read half a page and almost yawned.

He flipped down.

Turn to the third page, and things begin to change.

The main text discusses the basics of "fixation".

It is said that the practitioner should "steadily attach to the target with inspiration, maintain constant contact, and prevent it from deviating."

A correct but meaningless statement.

But right on the right margin of this paragraph, another line of text is squeezed in.

It was written with a fountain pen, the ink was lighter than the main text, and the handwriting was much more messy.

"Don't try to 'grab' it. The harder you grab the bean, the farther it will bounce."

Like putting your hand into a sack of flour... relax and let it get on its own.

Richard stared at that line of text for a long time.

He practiced his spiritual vision countless times, observing the candlelight on the copper dish, the old wax in the cracks of the wall, the metallic stress inside the silver needle...

He always felt like he was keeping a close watch, using his inspiration to relentlessly pursue a single goal.

He shuffled the cards for the seventh time and applied stress for the twelfth time, relying entirely on a tenacious spirit that wouldn't let go.

But Mrs. Mary said, "Relax."

He tried to change the inspiration from "bite" to "stick" according to the meaning of that line.

Inspiration spread and landed on the edge of the copper dish on the table.

He stopped trying to pinch or press it, letting the inspiration linger there, allowing the faint remnants of ether in the copper dish to slowly rise on their own.

The stability of the fixation has quietly shifted up by one level.

Richard sat up straight.

The main text is a meticulously prepared outline copied word for word from his teacher by a highly skilled spiritual medium—a tradition that has continued for hundreds of years.

But the margins, the lines, every blank space are filled with annotations that Mrs. Mary herself accumulated over decades of fieldwork.

The ink varies in shade, some from fountain pens and some from pencils, and in some places it can be seen that it was later touched up with red ink.

Reading this book is like reading someone else's life.

Richard turned a few more pages.

The section on "reading stones" lists the standard interpretations of more than twenty rune stones, which Old Big had taught him long ago.

However, at the bottom of this entire page of text, Mrs. Mary wrote a sentence in pencil:

"Stones don't lie; it's you who's eager to hear good news who's lying."

Richard recalled the first time he consulted the oracle about whether his manuscript would be published.

He read the word "cost" with reluctance, wishing that less water could be poured from the pot.

He continued.

Mrs. Mary's metaphors are all simple, everyday examples: kitchen, pharmacy, needle and thread, clothesline.

Regarding preparations before fieldwork, she wrote:

"Tie your shoelaces twice before you go out; the first time for your feet, the second time for your heart."

Speaking of inspiration overload, she wrote:

"If too many wet sheets are hung on the clothesline, the line won't break immediately."

"When you see it sink, you should take two sheets off, before it 'thuds' down."

She wrote that new cards need to be nurtured:

"A new pot is just like a new pan; the first few times you cook anything, it will have a metallic taste."

Don't dislike it; use it to cook a few more times, and the fishy smell will go away on its own.

Even if you dislike it, it will taste the same to you for the rest of your life.

Richard laughed when he read this sentence.

As he read, he discovered something.

Reading this book itself is an enrichment of one's perception.

In the corner of the panel, the progress bar for [Perception] lv.2 was climbing faster than when he usually practiced fixation or did divination.

All of Mrs. Mary's annotations are about one thing.

How to "feel" something more subtly, slowly, and loosely.

The process of reading the annotations was like being personally trained by her, sentence by sentence, across decades and hundreds of miles.

His extensive knowledge allowed him to "store" the entire book in his mind.

Every word, every correction and red mark, every crease in the text is etched in my mind and can be recalled at any time.

This book is written by someone who, while not a top-tier writer, is certainly dedicated enough to meticulously record all the mistakes and losses she could have made and suffered throughout her life in tiny print in the margins.

Richard turned to the very last page of the book.

He tried reading two pages, and the density of the text suddenly changed, with layers of technical terms piled on top of each other.

[Extensive knowledge] allows one to memorize words, but [critical thinking] is somewhat lacking.

He could understand every single word, but couldn't piece together what the whole sentence was saying.

What's even stranger is one of the chapters.

The title of that chapter was covered up with ink.

It was painted over very thoroughly; the black ink completely covered the entire headline, not even revealing the outline of a single letter.

It was clearly Mrs. Mary herself who made this stroke.

He looked at the foot of that page.

"You'll understand this chapter when you actually need it."

………………

Over the next few days, Richard settled into a reading routine.

Read for half an hour after a morning jog, and for two hours after dinner.

One of Mrs. Mary's quotes kept popping up in different chapters.

"A fortune teller is a detective, not a prophet."

The prophet asked, "What will happen?" The detective asked, "What has already happened?"

You can only ever read about what has already happened and what is happening now.

Anyone who promises you a "future" is either a liar, or... something far more terrifying than a liar.

Richard recalled the anonymous round table at the Theogony Salon.

What Hecate promised was the "future".

Without thinking too much, he started looking for cases in the book that he urgently needed.

There are two chapters in the middle section, with their titles placed together.

Chapter 1: How to Interrogate a Refusal-to-Speak Bound Object Through Divination

Chapter Two: Three Attitudes Towards "Cursed Objects": Coaxing, Deceiving, and Delaying.

The main text categorizes "cursed objects" and outlines three methods of dealing with them.

The margins of this chapter are denser with Mrs. Mary's annotations than elsewhere.

She wrote down a case from her youth.

That night, Evelyn stayed in his room and wouldn't leave.

My sister's gingerbread rabbit recipe has been updated to its fourth version.

I couldn't get the oven temperature right, which frustrated me, and I wanted to talk to someone.

"Brother, tell me a story." She sat on her brother's bed, hugging her knees. "Your tattered book must have something worth telling, right?"

"It's not a tattered book."

Does it have a story?

Richard thought about it.

"That is indeed true."

"Then tell me!" Evelyn rolled around on the bed, waiting for him to speak.

"Okay..." Richard took a moment to come up with an opening line.

Once upon a time, there was a fishing town by the sea.

There was a bride in town whose boat capsized on her wedding day, and she and her dowry all sank to the bottom of the sea.

Only her jewelry box was washed ashore by the waves.

Evelyn's eyes were fixed on his mouth.

"……Then what?"

"Then everyone in town said that whoever touches this box will be unlucky."

If a household touches it, their pots will burn, their cows will get sick, and their clothes hung out to dry will be blown into the mud by the wind.

So everyone chipped in and hired a very famous old lady to "clean" the box.

"Is the old lady impressive?"

"She was young and ambitious back then."

She thought, what's so difficult about this?

She set up a grand ritual to cleanse the box of all the "bad luck" in one go.

"Cleared?"

"Something big has happened." Richard lowered his voice.

That night, the mooring lines of the fishing boats moored in the harbor broke one after another, and the boats drifted out to sea on their own.

In the sleep of every household in the town, they could hear someone calling their names from the seabed.

Two men got up in the middle of the night and headed towards the beach. When they were stopped, the seawater was already up to their knees.

Evelyn exclaimed "Ah!" and buried her face in her knees, then immediately lifted it up again.

"Why is this happening? Wasn't the box supposed to be 'cleaned up'?"

Richard looked at his sister.

This was exactly the reaction he wanted to hear.

"Because... that box, it doesn't want to leave."

It lost its owner at the bottom of the sea, and was despised by everyone on the shore. It had no one left.

The old woman's elaborate setup was tantamount to saying to its face, "I'm going to drive you away."

It had nowhere to go, so it thought...if we're going to leave, we'll all leave together, and nobody will be left behind.

The room was quiet for a while.

Evelyn didn't move for a long time.

"...So what happened to that old lady afterward?"

Later she understood a principle.

Richard then recounted the lessons he had learned from the book.

"The more you try to drive something away that doesn't want to leave, the more it will try to drag someone down with it, and you can't drive it away."

"What should we do then?"

"You have to be more patient than it, don't chase it away, stay with it, and slowly wait for it to walk on its own."

Evelyn remained silent for a long while after hearing this.

Richard thought she had taken something to heart.

As a result, his sister looked up and stared at him with a serious expression.

"Brother, my oven is the same."

Richard was completely bewildered: "...What?"

"My oven." Evelyn held up her recipe book and pointed to a line of words that had been crossed out.

"I always complained that its temperature was inaccurate, and I kept thinking about 'curing it,' so I put towels on it and opened the door to let it cool down, and I messed with it."

As a result, it just kept going against me; the more anxious I got, the more mushy it became.

She put down the notebook, her tone resolute.

"I should stay with it, figure out its temperament, and let it be hot when it should be hot, and let it be cool when it should be cool."

If I don't go against it, it won't go against me.

Richard opened his mouth.

He originally wanted to tell his sister a story about "obsession" and "patience".

A principle about the ebony box that even he himself is still slowly digesting.

Evelyn then applied this principle directly to her oven.

"...More or less," he said finally.

"That must be it!" Evelyn had already stood up.

"I'll try again tomorrow. I'm not in a hurry. Bro, your book is quite useful."

Clutching her recipe book, she skipped and hopped downstairs, muttering to herself, probably trying to make peace with the oven beforehand.

Richard sat at the table, looked at the empty threshold, and smiled.

He was initially worried that his adaptation wasn't artistic enough, and that his sister might hear something else in it.

He's relieved now.

He lowered his head and continued reading his book.

I read a note where Mrs. Mary wrote:

"When you tell a case to a layperson, you'll find that they can always pick out things you didn't say."

Don't laugh at them; sometimes what they hear is more accurate than what you say.