I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The three options had already been decided, but he wasn't in a hurry to make a decision; there was still one thing he hadn't tried.

He made the shadows rise from behind the curtain.

The shadow solidified on the training room floor, the black mass even more solid than last week.

"Wear a mask."

The thought was passed on.

The shadow reached its hand into the other side of the curtain and pulled over the bronze Hermes mask.

The golden-winged twin snakes covered the shadow's face, which had no features, fitting together perfectly.

As soon as the mask was put on, the outline of the shadow immediately tightened.

Richard closed his eyes, using the spiritual connection to sense the mask's enhancement, and picked up the outline of the Corona Law again.

The second round of testing has begun.

A four-fold breathing framework is established, with the heartbeat as the foundation.

During the exhalation phase, the ether is pushed outwards...

The blockage is still there at the corners where the ribs and spine meet.

The blockage is still there, but this time it's bigger.

Richard pushed himself forward, and the Ether Stream bounced back from the corner, making his chest feel tight.

He pushed again, and the force that bounced back was even greater, carrying an indescribable heat.

His lips twitched.

The mask's bonus and the corona's magic are clashing.

Hermes governs crossing, traversing, and flowing; the ether within him is guided by the mask into a tendency to move in both directions.

The corona method requires the ether to radiate outwards uniformly, like the sun.

The sun shines in all directions, and Hermes has to run between two points.

One wants to disperse into a ball, the other wants to twist into a line; their directions conflict.

Richard stopped the Coronavirus.

The heat from the bite he had just taken still lingered under his collarbone, and it took him a long time to smooth out the excess heat.

"Rejection." He wrote this word in the blank space of the Coronal Law Outline, pressing the pen down heavily.

With the mask's enhancement, the Sun's traditional compatibility rating dropped from "usable" to "rejected".

He switched to deep reading, and the Ether's Seat of the Past flowed back.

The mask bonus came in along with it, and this time there was no conflict.

Hermes' etheric flow is already adept at traveling from point A to point B. Now, making it travel from the extremities to the Sun's Seat is like taking a fast track, making it both fast and smooth.

The density of ether in the Sun Constellation increased by nearly 30% faster than when the mask was not worn.

Two times... two and a half times... three times... the speed at which it was achieved was visibly brought forward.

The "reading" state is also clearer.

The communicative properties of the mask and the ability to read deeply resonated with each other.

Information transmission and language decoding are essentially the same thing.

Hermes is the god of language and writing, and classical traditions deal with words all day long.

The two paths not only did not conflict, but actually assisted each other.

But it still lacks that initiative; even with a better-fitting pair of shoes, the shoes won't walk on their own.

Finally, it was time for the condensation technique. Richard brought his breathing back to the tidal rhythm.

Holding your breath and pressing down, the ether fluctuations began to decrease from normal levels.

Eighty percent, seventy percent, sixty percent, fivety percent... When he reached that line, the mask boost gave him a push.

That push came very naturally.

Hermes governs boundaries and passages; the essence of the action of "reflection" is to allow external things to pass through one's own still waters.

The mask increased the efficiency of passing through.

The still water formed much faster, and the surface of the still water was almost twice as wide as when the mask was not worn.

More things came in.

The sealed inscriptions on the four walls of the training room were reflected in his senses one by one.

He noticed the subtle flaws in the direction, turning points, and joints of the inscription.

Goosebumps spread from my arms to my back.

Last time, my body was saying, "That's it!" This time, it's saying, "That's it!"

Richard opened his eyes and looked down at the thin outline of the Mirror Condensation Technique.

………………

On Monday, Richard knocked on the door twice, but no one answered.

He knocked again, and Isabella's voice floated out.

"Enter."

"The things are ready." My aunt put the custom-made box from the cabinet onto the table.

"It was two days faster than expected. The alchemist happened to have one order canceled these past two days, so he had an afternoon to finish it."

Richard walked to the table and used his intuition to push against the inner wall of the box, but nothing could be probed in.

He pushed it from the outside again, almost like pushing it against a soft wall.

"How's the craftsmanship?" Isabella picked up the cup of grapefruit tea that had gone cold from the corner of the table and took a sip.

"Very good." Richard opened the box lid and closed it again.

When closed, the edge of the lid fits perfectly against the body of the box, leaving not even a hair's breadth of gap.

The moment the seal closed, he heard a very soft "poof," the sound of air being squeezed out of the box.

There is an abbreviated monogram on the box.

Richard recognized it; it had the same marking as the incense packaging Clara had given him last time.

"Clara's cousin's cooking?"

Isabella put down her teacup.

"His schedule was full, so he outsourced these simple processing parts to apprentices in the workshop."

"Is this all an apprentice can do?"

"His workshop is very strict in selecting people, and the apprentices are not incompetent."

As Isabella spoke, she pulled a folded receipt from the drawer and pushed it over.

"The labor cost is one pound and four shillings, and the cost of materials is not collected."

He said the frost branch was brought by you yourself; they only provided refined salt for gluing and a little bit of silver powder.

Richard put the receipt and the box into his canvas bag.

"Please thank my senior sister for me, and also thank her uncle's apprentice."

"You can thank her yourself. Just slip one back with you next time Clara writes back."

After Isabella finished speaking, she returned to the main topic.

"Is the breathing test finished?"

"The test is finished."

Richard flipped to the pages in his notebook where the data was written.

Isabella looked at the three pieces of paper over and over again.

"How serious is it that the sun is rejecting us?"

"The ether was pushed to the corner of my ribs and bounced back. It took two days to settle down."

Isabella nodded.

"What about the classic texts?"

"Good adaptability, but not proactive enough."

"Proactiveness?"

Isabella frowned.

The outline, which she had annotated countless times, was dismissed by her nephew as "lacking initiative."

"Mirror." She pulled out the last one and glanced at the one that "fits perfectly."

"Have you made up your mind?"

"almost."

"Almost?" Isabella raised her eyebrows:

"It's either yes or no! I've always told you, the worst thing we can do in academia is to be ambiguous..."

Richard smiled and said, "Yes, all that's missing is your nod."

Isabella's well-intentioned lecture was cut off, and she leaned back in her chair.

After a while, she lazily spoke up: "You know which one I most want you to choose, right?"

"Know."

Isabella continued to persuade her.

"The solar tradition has been accumulated over hundreds of years, and every pitfall, from beginner to expert, has been marked by predecessors."

"The classical traditions I follow are not as complete as those of the sun, but at least Sophia and Clara are ahead of you."

I walked ahead of them; we knew exactly which bricks on the road were loose.

Her gaze finally returned to her nephew's face.

"There are only about a dozen people in the Mirror Traditional Empire, scattered all over the world. Where are you going to find someone like them?"

Richard sat in a chair with his hands on his knees.

He knew his aunt was worried about him, and her worries were genuine.

"Auntie, I walked from Briston to the capital, and along the way I met Mr. Hutton, you, my grandfather, and Mrs. Mary."

"But I took those first few steps myself."

He spoke very slowly.

"I had a particularly difficult time deciphering the first few books. I was groping around in the dark, and it took me quite a while."

Isabella's finger stopped on the red pen cap.

"Your senior Hutton was right next to you at that time."

"He's right there, but he can't decipher it for me," Richard said, looking at her.

"There are twenty-six books on the third-floor bookshelf, and I read them all by myself."

The reference chart was given to me by him; the teeth grew in on their own.

Isabella stared at him for several seconds, then sighed softly.

He pulled out a piece of parchment that he had prepared long ago from the bottom of the drawer.

"From beginner to intermediate proficiency, a complete path to spiritual practice."

Isabella pushed the pamphlet to the center of the table.

"These are all the channels I have."

"Once you truly reach the level of minor expertise, your channels and connections... should be enough for you to find the things that follow on your own."

She screwed the red pen cap on, very slowly.

"You chose a path that I can't tread."

Richard reached out and took the booklet.

Turning to the first page, the handwriting was neither my aunt's smooth, cursive script nor Professor Mortimer's messy, illegible handwriting.

Each letter was pressed extremely flat, and the horizontal strokes were particularly long, suggesting that someone had copied them stroke by stroke while lying on a table.

"I retrieved this handwritten copy from the department's archives," Isabella explained.

"The original is on a closed shelf on the third floor of the Imperial Capital University Library. The copyist is unsigned, and it dates back to about a hundred years ago."

She then took a small paper packet from the drawer, opened it, and found a toffee inside.

"Here you go." She pushed the paper package to Richard's side.

"I'll give you one of the last two."

Richard accepted the toffee.

Isabella's gaze fell on the nearly withered mint on the windowsill.

"I can't help you with the path you're on, but I can help with the parts you can. You can come to me anytime, I'll be in this office."

"Thank you, Auntie."

"Get lost."

Back in his dorm, Richard didn't rush to read the complete breathing technique.

He opened the prepared frost branch box.

It is palm-sized, with extremely thin walls, and lined with a natural quiet zone that doesn't even need salt sealing.

Richard tried putting in several of the most sensitive documents, such as the rubbings of the silent variant and the breathing technique, as well as the few newly delivered unidentified items.

Once the lid is closed, the inspiration sticker makes it impossible to feel what's inside.

He then took out the registered ear of grain that Demeter had commissioned to be authenticated.

A bronze paperweight and a bronze balance scale are placed side by side on the table.

He let the Holy Wheat Ear "look" over the registered ears of wheat first, its long beak tilting towards the ears of wheat, and those miniature faces lit up one by one under the spiritual vision.

Then the balance scale was used to weigh the items, and the initial conclusion was reached.

Those who died within the registered area of ​​the wheat ears were not considered jinxes.

Those faces were all etheric imprints left by people who had recently died, which were automatically attracted to the ears of wheat.

The act of registration itself is passive; the wheat stalks are not actively "demanding" anything, but are simply recording.

Richard copied the surface report into his notebook.

Why do we need to register?

He accessed all the knowledge in his mind related to the Valley God pantheon.

The goddess of harvest is in charge of planting, harvesting, and nurturing, but her oldest function has never been to bestow a bountiful harvest.

In the granaries of the Black Soil River Basin, the lowest layer of grain is always mixed with the ashes of a recently deceased person.

In a mystical context, this is the standard procedure for agricultural rituals.

The Greek version is more straightforward: during the six months that Persephone spent in the underworld, no grains grew.

The daughter of the god of grain serves as Hades' bride for half the year, exchanging her existence for the following year's harvest.

Those six months were winter on the surface, and also a period of accounting underground.

The dead return to the earth, the earth produces grains, and the grains nourish the living.

The underworld is counting how many people have "returned to the earth" this year.

After counting, multiply the number by the coefficient to convert it into next year's output.

The more deaths, the higher the output.

As the curtain thinned, Demeter's instincts awakened.

Tian is registering this year's "offering to the earth" so that he can digest the offerings.

The war has been going on for four months, and the death toll across the Old World is breaking records every day.

These traces of death spread from the front lines to the rear, seeping into every inch of soil through the thinning veil.

Richard finished writing the report and sent it out using a spirit messenger.

Demeter's reply arrived a day later.

The letter was very short, containing only one sentence.

"If all the fields on the continent were like this, next year's harvest would be frighteningly good."

An additional half-sentence was added at the end of the letter:

"The seed pods in my field are more plentiful this year than in previous years."

When the wind blows southeast, the seeds will roll in that direction on their own.