I loaded the Mysticism panel.

After class, Richard returned to his dormitory and took out his key from his pocket to open the door.

He sat down at his desk and reached into the bottom of the drawer to pull out the leather bag.

The bag was opened, revealing all of his current stock of etheric condensate.

My maternal grandfather's share for this quarter: two medium-concentration, angular, grayish-white crystals, each wrapped in cotton cloth.

Baldwin brought back three pieces from Fran: all medium concentration, with a slightly bitter taste reminiscent of the battlefield.

The quality is not bad, but the base is rougher than my grandfather's. When I hold it in my hand, I always feel that there is something inside that has not yet dissolved.

The fieldwork assignment at the refugee camp was a medium-concentration area.

This piece was the smallest and lightest in color, wrapped in the standard brown oil paper of the branch office, with a numbered label affixed to it.

He hadn't had time to deal with the Flanders mud congealed stuff in this bottle yet.

On the table were test tubes that looked like they contained swamp water, with damp stains on the walls of the tubes from which the water had seeped out.

He also received a share of the mission in Heigou.

What remains are just a few scattered pieces of low-concentration material.

There were four or five pieces of varying sizes, the largest being about the size of a thumbnail, and the smallest being almost the size of a nail clipping.

After filling the table with food, Richard did some mental calculations.

The Sphinx lamp is used very little each day; its transformation depends on skill and time.

The condensate is a catalyst, but the lamp's appetite is very limited; the rest is all overflow.

The etheric condensate will slowly dissipate.

Low-concentration fragments dissipate the fastest; if left unused for a while, they turn into something intangible in the air.

It's possible to trade the money at the next Theological Salon meeting, but the meeting is in mid-December, which is still a while away.

Moreover, the trading of condensate at the salon is very unstable; when supply exceeds demand, basically nobody wants it.

Asking your aunt to use the academy's recycling system is the safest way, as the academy has established channels for purchasing clean condensate.

However, the recycling price has always been kept very low.

Richard picked through the few scraps and put them back.

He tidied up the things on the table one by one, preparing to do the last set of breathing exercises for the day.

As the breathing becomes more fluid, the whole person slowly sinks into the wave-like rhythm.

Inhale and let it stretch out like a long slope, the ether rising upwards.

Exhale and gather into a short wave; the ether recedes.

After several complete cycles, his breathing became so steady that he could no longer hear himself breathing.

Next up is the time for Shadow's daily training assessment.

He summoned the shadow from behind the curtain into the material world.

Richard had it practice armoring.

The shadow extended its right arm, and ether spread outward from the core along extremely fine microcirculations, condensing into a thin shell on the forearm.

The shell is much thicker than before, and its shape is much more regular.

Richard nodded in satisfaction, preparing to switch the shadow to Moon Nail practice.

In the brief moment between his thoughts, his hand subconsciously prepared to tidy up the table.

The shadow moved.

Before Richard could move the scraps in his hand toward the hidden compartment, the outline of the shadow shifted slightly toward the direction of his hand.

His hand stopped.

When Richard scanned the area with his intuition, he saw something he had never seen before.

The core inside the shadow, composed of two strands of spirit, was oscillating at an extremely faint frequency.

The frequency is so low that it would be completely unnoticed unless he had laid out his inspiration in a sufficiently dense and detailed manner.

The vibrations were directed at the solidified substance in his hand.

Richard put the scraps back on the table and took a step back.

He used "contemplation" to spread out the still water and looked at the reflection from head to toe again.

The shadow stood motionless in front of the table, its armor plating had come loose, and its right arm hung down at its side.

But from the edge of its entire mass of black mist, a few extremely thin tentacles extended out.

They all pointed in the same direction, towards that piece of low-concentration fragment.

[Reflection and Inner Awakening] It is time to start doing things.

Has the shadow ever reacted this way before? No.

Before the spirit was infused, the shadow was just a puppet being led by strings, and it would not actively move towards any external things.

After the spirit was infused and the two spirits merged, the core gained the ability to operate independently.

The shadow began to be able to do two things at the same time, developing its own microcirculation and breathing rhythm.

And for a living, metabolically active creature... hunger is inevitable sooner or later.

Richard didn't rush to hand over the condensate.

He put his hands behind his back, stood in the gap between the desk and the bed, and watched the shadow's reaction.

The shadow's tendrils floated in the air for about ten seconds before slowly retracting after failing to hit their target.

"You're hungry." Richard raised an eyebrow.

The shadow, of course, couldn't understand those words.

After the tentacles retracted, the core's weak oscillation frequency decreased, changing from "hunger" back to "standby".

Richard thought of the transformation process of the Sphinx lamp.

The transformation of a lamp depends on the growth of craftsmanship, and the condensate acts as a catalyst.

The lamp needs to be fed a little condensate every now and then to catalyze the transformation process, but feeding it too much won't help, as its appetite is limited.

The shadow is a product of the lamp, an extension of his signature ability "Ferrying Shadows".

Condensate acts as a catalyst for light... but what about for shadows?

He picked up the smallest, low-concentration fragment from the table.

This time he placed it on the table about half an arm's length away from the shadow, then stepped back into his chair and sat down.

The shadow sensed that the target was getting closer.

The whiskers reappeared, longer than before.

Several extremely fine black threads adhered to the surface of the congealed substance.

Richard stared at it with his spiritual vision.

The condensate was absorbed bit by bit by the shadow's tentacles.

The absorption method is completely different from Richard's own process of converting the rare aether through the panel.

His absorption of the wondrous ether is a process of extraction, pulling the ether out of the carrier and converting it into usable points on the panel.

The shadow's function is more like "digestion".

It followed the structure of the condensate itself, peeling off the outer shell layer by layer, swallowing it along with the shell into its body, leaving nothing behind.

Ten minutes later, Richard measured the size of the condensate, which had shrunk by about one-third.

The shadow's tentacles stopped; it ceased eating.

Richard probed his inspiration into the shadows.

The change was subtle, but he could see it; the overall solidity of the shadow had increased significantly.

"It really feels like raising a child." Richard had a strange sense of déjà vu.

He squatted in front of the table, watching the shadow obediently stand in place to digest after finishing its first meal, and felt a strange feeling.

Evelyn used to have a tortoise that she kept for two months when she lived in Briston.

The turtle eats cabbage leaves, and after it finishes eating, it retracts its neck and remains motionless, just like a half-piece of intricately patterned stone on the windowsill.

Evelyn's expression as she squatted by the windowsill watching the turtle digest was similar to his own.

Over the next few days, Richard compared the other types of condensate one by one.

He repeated the experiment with low-concentration crushed materials several times.

It took twenty minutes to process the first shadow, and its outline had thickened considerably.

The second digestion time was about the same, but the improvement was significantly reduced.

The third shadow's tentacles hesitated for a long time after touching the surface before sticking on, and it ate intermittently for half an hour.

It stopped after eating less than a quarter of the food, and the rest was pushed away, with all its tentacles retracting.

The efficiency decreased, and by the time I ate the third piece, I was almost full.

Low-concentration shredded ingredients are as easy to digest as porridge, but they don't provide much of a substantial base.

Richard noted the data in his notebook and switched to a medium-concentration condensate.

He chose the cleanest piece, which was given to him by his maternal grandfather.

When the cotton cloth was untied and the crystal was placed on the table, the shadow reacted much more strongly than when the fragments were placed.

The digestion process is much slower.

As the shadow consumed the medium-concentration condensate, Richard could feel the pressure on the core increasing.

The outline also showed slight fluctuations, the edges were no longer smooth, and occasionally a small section of burr would appear and then retract.

Richard watched intently from the side, his pocket watch ticking the time.

It took a full hour for Shadow to finish half of the medium-concentration condensate.

The growth rate is several times that of low concentration, but the core oscillation frequency takes about ten minutes to slowly return to the standby level.

For the next ten minutes, Shadow couldn't do anything. Just like after having a lavish buffet, he was leaning against the wall, barely able to breathe.

Richard drew a horizontal line in his notebook and wrote "digestion cycle" under the line.

Low-concentration crushed food has almost no recovery period after digestion; you can move around right after eating it.

If you eat a medium-concentration one and then immediately stuff a second one... Richard didn't try it; he was afraid he'd really stuff Shadow to death.

The third type is Flanders mud deposits.

Richard unscrewed the cap of the glass bottle and placed it on the table about half an arm's length away from the shadow.

The shadow's tentacles stretched out, reaching towards the bottle's opening.

The moment the first tentacle touched the top of the bottle opening, the entire tentacle abruptly retracted.

It rejects the layer of deathly energy that surrounds the ether.

"It needs to be purified first." Richard screwed the bottle cap back on.

Similar to how we dealt with the curse on the bronze mirror, this bottle needs to be thoroughly cleaned before use.

The bronze paperweight and bronze balance scales came in handy.

Use that "one mark, one weigh" purification process to strip away the dead energy, and once it's completely removed, the high-quality ether underneath will be revealed.

However, purification takes time. He roughly estimated that it would take three to four rounds to wash the shadow to a level that it could accept.

Fourthly, he turned his gaze to the small bottle on the corner of the table.

I've never used the etheric liquid that Prometheus gave me.

The shadow reacted dramatically when he took the bottle in his hand.

The whiskers almost "splashed" out.

Seven or eight black threads stretched out toward the bottle together, with the first one grabbing his wrist and sticking to the bottle wall through his fingers.

Richard quickly stuffed the bottle back into the hidden compartment and blocked the drawer with his body.

The shadow's tentacles clung to his sleeve, refusing to let go, before reluctantly retracting one by one after several seconds.

The intensity of that "desire" sent a chill down Richard's spine.

Ether condensate is a potent medium, equivalent to adrenaline in the human ether circulation.

For Shadow, it meant pouring high-purity aviation fuel into the fuel tank of a civilian car.

Can it run? Yes, it can run.

How far should we go? Until the engine explodes.

He decisively crossed the condensate off the Shadow's recipe.

At least for now, we can't touch it. We have to wait until the core resilience of the shadow continues to grow until it can withstand that intensity.

Just like raising a child, an infant can only drink milk.

At a pace of two to three low-concentration tablets per week and no more than two medium-concentration tablets per month, the current inventory can last for about four months.

My maternal grandfather's share for the next quarter will arrive in January. Combined with his fieldwork fees and income from appraisal work, the business can continue operating smoothly.

The shadow stood in front of the table, and the core oscillation frequency had completely returned to the standby level.

"Go back and practice your skills." Richard gave it a push.

The shadow reluctantly sank down, slid across the floor, and disappeared behind the curtain.

Richard tidied up the things on the table, sorted and wrapped the few unused pieces of condensate, and stuffed them back into the hidden compartment.

Charlotte recently sent him a letter.

There were only two lines of text on it, written hastily with long, trailing strokes.

The editor-in-chief asked if you were still going to write.

The deadline for the next issue is January 15th. If you have new manuscripts, just send them directly to the editorial office.

Another half-line was added below.

"P.S.: The Poor Committee has changed its leadership, and nobody mentions that article anymore."

Richard put the note aside.

The cost of the Star Card was already becoming apparent when that essay was published more than half a year ago in Briston.

He was indeed remembered.

Because of his maternal grandfather's relationship with Professor Mortimer, he was remembered when the Poor Committee had a new group of people.

The newcomer went through the old files, reclassified the cases that had been hurt by his words, and put them into the "properly handled" folder.

Then, nobody mentioned it again.

Burns died.

Mrs. Rosalyn is still doing laundry for people.

Even in December, the chimneys of those poor families at the east end of the slag alley still emitted choking coal smoke, and the family would huddle around half a coal briquette to get through the winter.

The article is finished, you've become famous, and then what?

Richard leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs under the table.

The rain is still falling outside the window.

He thought of the refugee camp. He had done his part, but the 261 people had been preordained to die.

Richard turned his gaze from the window to Charlotte's letter.

The previous essay satirized the system.

But what's the point of being sarcastic?

The satire is over, but the system remains the same; only a different person sits behind the same table doing the same thing.

His mother taught him: "Just write stories, let the stories speak for themselves. Don't make appeals, don't propose improvements."

His mother was right, but she didn't teach him where the listeners should go after the story was over.

The previous essay made people realize "how awful this world is".

So what if I know?

Knowing that Burns would cough himself to death by the stove, those who didn't know what to do still didn't know what to do.

He picked up his pen and drew a horizontal line at the top of the blank page in his notebook.

Below the line, he wrote two words: "Alive".

Then he put the pen down again.

Evelyn said on the phone last time that Mrs. Weil's daughter had never celebrated her birthday before she got married because the flour for birthday cakes was too expensive.

Evelyn's voice was muffled when she said this.

"If I open a shop in the future, I'll give her a discount if she comes to buy from me."

After saying that, my sister changed the subject and started talking about the orange cat that stole the almond cookies.

But Richard remembered it.

Evelyn's desire to do something small is small.

I'll give a discount to a girl who's never had a birthday cake before.

But it's precisely this kind of thing that his articles should be about.

He doesn't need to tell everyone how dark that cloud in the sky is; anyone who looks up can see it.

He should tell the person standing in the rain that there is a roof three steps to the left.

The eaves aren't big, so they don't block out much rain, but at least you're not standing in the open waiting to die.