I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"Come upstairs with me."

Gerald walked toward a small door with iron rivets embedded in it on the left side of the backyard.

Richard hadn't noticed this door during his several stays at Ashford House.

It was half-hidden by holly and a section of old vine.

Behind the door is a narrow stone staircase, barely wide enough for two people to pass through, spiraling upwards.

The passageway leads to a small room on the west side of the second floor.

Richard had never been to this room either.

Unlike the large study on the first floor, which was used to properly receive guests, this place was much smaller, with only one window facing the backyard.

The furnishings inside the house were very simple.

A sturdy oak table, with a locked metal cabinet to its right.

There is a photo frame on the wall with a group photo inside.

The photo was taken a long time ago, and the edges are yellowed.

There are four people standing in the photo.

The leftmost picture shows Gerrard in his thirties, at the peak of his strength, wearing a field overcoat and a sword at his waist.

Standing next to him was a man of even greater stature.

He was half a head taller than Gerrard, with thick eyebrows and a square face, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

The third person stood on the far right. He was shorter and wore a felt hat with the brim pulled low, making it difficult to see his facial features.

There was a girl sandwiched between the three of them.

The girl was about seven or eight years old and was wearing a dark dress with a high neckline.

Her hair was braided into a thick braid and draped over her shoulder. She looked very reserved, as if it was her first time taking a photo and she didn't know where to put her hands.

Richard recognized a resemblance to his mother in that face.

Gerald unlocked the metal cabinet, turned his back to him, rummaged through it for a while, and took out a velvet bag from deep inside.

Gerald untied his pocket and poured something into his palm.

It was a bone needle.

The needle was engraved with extremely fine inscriptions, so fine that Richard could barely make out the strokes even with his spiritual vision.

Predominantly curved lines with sharp angles at the end, each stroke carries the sharp force of cutting through skin.

"This thing." Gerald placed the bone needle on the table.

"It was left to me by my father."

Richard lifted his gaze from the bone needle and met the old man's eyes.

"Your great-grandfather."

Gerald sat down on the wooden chair opposite the table.

"He follows the Moon Hunting tradition, the Great Master, the last Great Master of the Ashford family before me."

Richard thought of the group photo on the wall.

"The person standing next to me in the photo is your great-grandfather."

Gerrard's gaze shifted to the group photo on the wall.

"Hunters will experience physical problems as they get older."

They shine brightly in their prime, but their decline is faster than anyone else's; even reaching mastery can only delay this process.

Gerald gently turned the bone needle so that the inscription was facing upwards.

He was seventy-one years old when he passed away.

By hunters' lifespan standards, this is already quite long.

"Before he left, he did one last thing."

He pointed to the bone needle.

"The hunter's body has been soaked in ether for decades."

At the stage of mastery, the infiltration extends from the skin to the bone, rewriting every single hematopoietic stem cell in the bone marrow.

Gerald looked at his grandson.

"Therefore, the remains of a master hunter are excellent alchemical materials."

Richard looked at the bone needle on the table.

"Before your great-grandfather passed away, he asked an alchemist to take some of his bones."

"Only a portion was taken; the rest of the remains decayed on their own."

Richard searched his memory bank for relevant information.

The self-destruction indicates that before his death, my great-grandfather used his last strength to ignite all the etheric residue accumulated in his body over decades.

His bones, flesh, and all the rewritten tissues turned to ash in the ether he himself ignited.

Why did he...?

"Don't give others a chance to take advantage."

Gerrard used a very brief statement.

"The value of the remains of the great master is too great."

Over the past few centuries, countless incidents have erupted in the struggle for the remains… feuds between families, assassinations within guilds, and even confrontations between the government and the people.

"My father didn't want his bones to become a bargaining chip for others to fight over."

His fingers were removed from the bone needles.

"If it's burned to ashes, no one can take it."

"Only a few were left, and they were all made in advance to protect future generations."

Gerald pushed the bone needle to the middle of the table.

"I had already arranged to give this to you before I went to Fran; it has nothing to do with the technique you took out today."

Richard stared at the bone needle on the table, momentarily at a loss for words.

Let me tell you about its effects first.

Gerrard's tone returned to its businesslike manner.

"The bone needles will automatically activate when anything attempts to attach, parasitize, or replace the wearer."

"Upon activation, it releases a purification pulse from the traditional Moon Hunting tradition, burning away any traces of ether that do not belong to the wearer."

"You don't need to actively control it; it will make its own judgment."

Gerrard held up one finger.

"It also has a single-use purpose."

"You can activate the bone needles yourself. I'll tell you where the activation mark is later."

Once activated, it can unleash the full power of your great-grandfather, the master hunter of the Moon Hunting tradition.

"It's only for once; once it's used, it's gone."

Richard reached for the bone needle.

There was a human presence in the bone needle.

The ether contains not only power, but also traces of a person's life over several decades.

Richard held the bone needle in his palm and closed his fingers.

"Thank you, Grandpa."

"Don't thank me." Gerald stood up.

"These all belong to your great-grandfather."

He took two steps toward the door, then stopped.

"This must not be known to anyone."

He turned around and looked into his grandson's eyes.

Vincent didn't know, and Baldwin and the others certainly wouldn't know either.

Your aunt has one too, but she won't tell you, and you absolutely shouldn't ask her about it.

Richard nodded.

Gerald pushed the door open.

"Keep this locked away in your heart."

The old man walked into the passageway.

"Once it's locked, don't open it again."

Gerald led Richard down the spiral stone steps and back into the backyard.

Vincent and Baldwin have already started pushing each other.

Vincent used his left hand, and Baldwin let him use only 30% of his strength.

The two people were pushing each other back and forth next to the training column. The movements were not large, but the footwork was very particular.

"Let Richard pick out the things," Gerald beckoned to the butler.

The butler carried an outrageously large black leather suitcase out of the house and placed it on the stone table in the back porch.

The box clasp is made of brass and is engraved with the Ashford family's oak tree and standing lion.

Once opened, the inner layer is padded with dividers, and the items are arranged neatly in each compartment.

Richard glanced at it.

There are quite a few things inside.

Several copper coins, and several irregularly shaped dark crystals;

Several rolls of something wrapped in oiled paper;

A small, sealed glass bottle containing a dark brown, muddy substance.

There are other odds and ends as well.

"These things," Gerald said, standing next to Richard.

"Some of them were brought back from my trip to Frankfurt, and some were accumulated by my family over the years."

"You choose."

"Pick what you can use, don't be shy."

Richard first laid out his spiritual vision.

His gaze slowly moved through the box, lingering on each item for two or three seconds.

Some of these things were too good but heavily polluted, brought back from the front-line trenches.

Some things don't align with the direction he's heading.

There are also some that are pure gold refining materials, such as those two crystals, which are of extremely high quality, but Richard himself does not have the ability to process them.

He picked two items.

The first item was that sealed glass bottle.

The contents of the bottle were etheric concretions from Flanders mud.

The death density in the front-line trench area was extremely high. The death aura seeped into the soil, and even the trace amounts of natural ether in the soil were compressed and condensed into a crystalline state.

The quality of this condensate is far superior to that collected anywhere during peacetime.

Richard unscrewed the bottle cap and took a sniff.

A pungent, rusty smell mixed with an indescribable bitterness wafted up from the bottle opening, making his eye twitch.

The air was thick with death; tens of thousands of lives were trapped in the mud, unable to freeze in winter or thaw in spring.

The second thing he found was something at the bottom of the box.

It is a small bronze statue, about the size of a palm.

Statue of a saint.

The figure depicts a person in a long robe, holding half a cross in their right hand (the upper half of the cross is broken off), and a half-open scroll in their left hand.

The workmanship is exquisite, and the folds on the robe are clearly visible.

Even the words on the scrolls were engraved on them... Of course, the words were too small, and to the naked eye they were just a row of blurry engravings.

Richard attached the psychic vision to it.

Using Tai Chi as an old man is also excellent.

The kind of feeling that comes from thousands of years of church prayers.

It has been "preserved" by generations of believers through prayers, hymns, kneeling knees, and trembling lips, century after century.

Its quality is so good that it ranks among the top three of all the rare items he has handled.

He flipped the base over and looked at it.

A very small inscription is engraved on the base.

Richard's "Erudition" brought up all the character comparison databases he had ever read—Carolingian cursive script.

The script used during the Carolingian dynasty.

Richard held the saint's image in his hands, turning it over and over, until finally his gaze fell on the engravings on the scroll.

This is a genuine inscription, deliberately carved onto a palm-sized bronze statue.

He hasn't had time to decipher the inscription yet.

But the mere fact that this inscription exists makes the saint's statue worth far more than just points.

Points will run out, but knowledge will never run out.

"Just these two." Richard placed the glass bottle and the saint's image on the table.

Gerald glanced at what he had chosen and said nothing.

Vincent and Baldwin, however, came over to join in the fun.

Baldwin first looked at the bottle of congealed mud and smelled the fishy, ​​rusty odor.

"You actually dare to touch this kind of thing."

"It'll be fine after purification."

"You have the ability to purify the mud of Flanders?" Baldwin asked with some skepticism.

"I have the tools," Richard said, without going into details.

Vincent's attention fell on the statue of the saint.

He picked up the bronze statue, turned it over a couple of times, and then held it up to the light of day to examine the row of engravings on the scroll.

"...What does it say on it?"

"Haven't read it yet."

"The print is so small, all I can see is a blurry line."

Vincent handed the bronze statue back, with an expression that said, "I can't participate in your academic world."

Baldwin snatched the statue from Vincent and looked at it.

"You want something like this too?"

He turned the bronze statue upside down.

"The cross is broken in half; if you take it to a museum, they'll think it's too damaged."

"Uncle Baldwin." Richard took the bronze statue back.

"The inscription on this thing might be worth more than the entire church."

Baldwin opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Vincent patted his uncle on the shoulder.

"Scholars' perspectives are never on the same wavelength as ours."

Richard wrapped the two items he had chosen in oil paper and put them into his canvas bag.

Gerald walked into the house.

"Go back to school early after dinner, you still have classes as usual tomorrow."

After finishing his meal, Richard handed the manual to his maternal grandfather and boarded the carriage to return to Imperial University.

The carriage headed along Chelsea Road toward the college district. Richard leaned against the carriage wall and put his right hand into his coat pocket.

The bone needle is right there.

With the master hunter's all-out attack, he must have a real trump card to win, right?

The carriage stopped in front of the dormitory building.

Richard went back to his room, took off his coat, sat down at his desk, and began studying the statues of saints.

The letters of Carolingian cursive script began to appear one by one in his mind, lining up in rows.

A long, drawn-out whistle came from afar.

It was probably a night train passing by, carrying another batch of reinforcements towards the harbor.