I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The pyramid turned once more in the black tide.

After turning around, it was still a little uneasy.

It drew out an extremely fine wisp of shadow from its own body and released it towards the material world.

It must walk the path Elena pointed out on its own.

Deep within the curtain, the black tide continues to turn as before.

The direction it can rotate is different from before.

………………

Richard woke up and turned to look at the pocket watch on the bedside table.

It was just past six in the morning.

The level 4 [Breathing Healing] skill never stopped while he was asleep.

He sat up, and the blanket slipped down to his waist.

The tree of light in the Sun Throne on the chest is intact, with all its branches and leaves intact.

But he could sense that there was something tiny on one of the tips of the tree canopy.

That thing is different from the "Shadow Reversal" that the seed gave you the first time.

Shadow Reversal is like a tool that you can pick up and use at any time. The operation method is clearly explained: whatever you input will be reversed.

He reached out and picked up the Sheng'er copper paperweight from the bedside table.

The ether on the bronze surface was smoother than it had been a few days earlier when the ritual was completed.

It completed its task.

But when he held it in his hand and squeezed it, the warm touch of the copper surface was still there.

"Thanks," he said to the paperweight.

Then I put it back on the bedside table, alongside the gargoyle and the sphinx lamp.

Three animal-shaped objects, each with a different appearance, were perched at the head of the bed.

The gargoyle's mouth was agape, the sphinx's eyes were half-closed, and the sacred bird looked down at the ground.

The fierce is fierce, the quiet is quiet, and the gentle is gentle.

It was more like three gatekeepers with completely opposite personalities who had taken his place for the night.

Richard folded the blankets, put on his shoes, and headed to the bathroom.

The cold water splashed on my face washed away the last bit of sleepiness.

He wiped his face while making plans in his mind.

Naming is something that can't be rushed.

For his first time using it, he planned to test it on inanimate objects.

Stone, metal, wood... these simple things are essentially singular, and it is easy to fully analyze them.

Start with something simple to practice, get a feel for it, and then expand to other areas.

He hung the towel back on the rack and glanced out the window.

The skylight in the capital had changed from gray to pale gold.

Most of the leaves on the old sycamore trees by the Petrie Building had fallen, leaving their bare branches stretching out in the morning breeze.

Today is Tuesday.

In the morning, there were inscriptions and ceremonial texts; in the afternoon, the editing team had a batch of urgent documents from the front lines to complete.

Also, the time for the gathering is almost here.

He took his coat out of the closet and slung his bag over his shoulder.

When I pushed open the door and went out, the corridor was empty.

As he walked out of the dormitory building, he ran into Edith under the porch.

The girl, clutching her ever-present book, squatted beside a stone pillar on the porch, tying her shoelaces.

"Good morning," Richard greeted her.

"Good morning." Edith looked up, her cheeks flushed from the cold wind.

She tied her shoelaces, stood up, and followed Richard toward the teaching building.

The two walked for a while without speaking, until Edith suddenly spoke.

Richard, you seem to be in a good mood today.

She tentatively stopped using the suffix in her address and then carefully observed the other person's reaction.

"Really?" Richard certainly didn't mind.

"Hmm." Edith seemed to breathe a sigh of relief: "Your lips were always turned up when you walked."

Richard reached up and touched the corner of his mouth; it was indeed turning up.

"It's probably because..." He thought for a moment, trying to find the right words, "I had a really nice dream last night."

"What kind of dream?"

I dreamt of a bird.

"What kind of bird?" Edith asked, intrigued. Her passion for birds far surpassed her passion for people.

"A bird with a long beak wrote me a very long note in my dream."

Edith tilted her head and thought for a moment.

"A long beak...is it a sacred oar?"

"It seems so."

"The Sacred Bird is a divine bird in the Black Earth River Valley." Edith's eyes lit up. "It is the incarnation of Thoth."

"Do you know what Thute is in charge of?" Richard asked deliberately.

"Keeping records," Edith blurted out. "And writing, weighing, keeping accounts for the dead."

After she finished speaking, she suddenly tilted her head again.

"You, a scholar, dreaming of Thoth's bird... might be a good omen."

"What do you mean?"

"An old book says that whoever's windowsill Thoth's bird lands on will...."

She flipped through the notebook and found a certain page:

"...gain the ability to 'say the correct name'."

Richard smiled in the morning breeze.

"Edith, you're right, it is indeed a good omen."

………………

The second period in the morning is a lesson on ritual language.

The lecturer's name was Pollock, he was in his forties, and he had an old scar on his forehead, which was said to have been from when he was young and doing fieldwork.

He has a habit when lecturing: he always twirls the chalk on his finger twice before speaking, making sure it's steady.

The chalk spun around three times before stopping today.

"I'm going to talk about something that's not widely known today."

Pollock wrote a line of text on the blackboard with chalk.

exorcizo te, immunde spiritus.

"You've all seen this sentence in the church mass." He put the chalk back in the chalk tray.

"I banish you, unclean spirit."

"You've listened to the pastor recite for over a decade, his lips are calloused from it all, have you ever thought about this?"

He glanced around at the students below.

"Why has nothing happened even after I've repeated this sentence so many times?"

The students in the audience looked at each other in bewilderment.

Pollock put his hands in his pockets and paced back and forth a couple of times.

"Because the church has been doing one thing for the past few hundred years."

He went back to the blackboard and sketched a row of teeth under the line of text.

It's a terrible drawing, but it conveys the meaning.

"They pulled out those truly lethal ritualistic phrases, one by one... their teeth."

"After the teeth are extracted, only the gums are left for the believers to chant."

The classroom fell silent.

"The believers recited those words and felt that they were praying, exorcising evil spirits, and talking to God."

In reality, they had a row of dentures in their mouths and couldn't bite anything.

Pollock pulled a yellowed rubbing from under his lecture notes.

"This is an old prayer from an exorcism ritual in the countryside of Albion, a 13th-century copy."

The original text is a mixture of Celtic and ecclesiastical Latin.

He placed the rubbings on the wooden shelf and marked the rows with white chalk.

"The phrase 'exorcizo te, immunde spiritus' is preserved in the Church Mass, and it is followed by three more phrases."

The first sentence points east.

The second line refers to the west.

The third sentence refers to... below.

He underlined the word "under" with a thick line for emphasis.

The church deleted the phrases "pointing east" and "pointing west" at the end of the twelfth century, saying that the wording was too harsh and improper.

In reality, those two sentences correspond to two actual medium-sized weak points in southern Albion, and reciting them will create a directional resonance at the etheric level.

"The third sentence of the 'below' section survived longer, remaining until the fourteenth century."

Pollock pulled his hand out of his pocket.

"It points to a major weak point."

When the church deleted it, the reason given in an internal memo was, "This passage of Latin grammar is incorrect and must be corrected."

"There's a grammatical error," he scoffed with a contemptuous laugh.

"Do you think it's reasonable for a group of priests, who are most proficient in Latin grammar, to suddenly discover grammatical errors in a prayer that has been used for hundreds of years?"

Someone below burst out laughing.

Pollock pulled the two texts side by side onto the wooden shelf.

"Classwork: on the left is the current version of the Mass, and on the right is a 13th-century manuscript."

Compare the two sides yourselves and find where the extracted tooth is.

Richard turned to a blank page in his notebook and began to compare.

He felt very relaxed.

The seed trial has just been completed, and I have gained the ability to name things. The excitement in my mind has not completely subsided.

Pollock stood on the podium, pointing to each piece of chalk one by one.

Here the church removed a qualifier, and there the original imperative voice was replaced with a gentle, supplicative one.

Every modification was extremely minor.

Looking at any one instance individually, it can only be considered a wording adjustment.

However, when dozens of parts are added together, the entire prayer text transforms from a dagger capable of drawing blood into a toy-like plastic knife.

Richard stared at the two documents for a while, his pen tip sliding across the margins.

He wrote a line:

"Putting teeth into something that has no teeth is the same skill as pulling teeth out something that has teeth."

After writing it, I read it through and then added half a sentence at the bottom:

"The difference is whether you're on the dentist's side or on the teeth's side."

During the break, Edith prepared to go to the next class.

She was carrying an animal encyclopedia when she glanced at Richard's notebook as she passed by.

"Did you come up with this yourself?" She looked at the line of text.

Richard moved the notebook closer to her. "I guess so."

Edith tilted her head and stared for several seconds.

"If you put teeth on a gull, will it turn into a crocodile?"

Li found it somewhat amusing; this girl's thought process was rather abstract.

"...It won't turn into a crocodile." Richard suppressed a laugh. "It'll turn into a crane with an exceptionally hard beak."

"A stubborn crane," Edith thought for a moment, "isn't that just a pelican?"

"Pelicans don't have tough beaks, they just have big beaks."

"Is having a big mouth considered a type of tooth?"

"...Edith, having a big mouth and having teeth are two different things."

The girl nodded as if she understood, then walked away with her animal encyclopedia.

Richard rewrote a sentence in his notebook.

"Naming is like installing a tooth, deconstructing is like extracting a tooth; the two are the two sides of the same pair of pliers."