I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Back in his room, Richard locked the door and drew the curtains tightly.

He placed the brass fragment in the center of the table, and before he could even sit down, the black mass beneath his feet floated up on its own.

The shadow was so thin it was almost translucent.

Richard pulled out all the condensate he had accumulated over the past three months from the hidden compartment.

The batch Demeter sent quarterly, the small bag Hercules used to settle accounts each time, the black stone Coleman sent back...

He held the black stone in his hand for a moment, then put it back in the box.

The rest was poured onto the table, piling up into a small mountain.

The shadow's tentacles almost pounced on it.

One stick after another, they pounced on the top medium-concentration one, grabbed it, and sucked it in.

He was sucking so hard and loudly that Richard couldn't help but glance at the door.

"Slower."

The shadow ignored him.

When the second piece was put down, the black mass bulged upwards.

When the third piece was used, all the loose burrs on the edges were removed.

When it ate its fifth piece, Richard reached out to collect the rest.

The tentacles quickly wrapped around his wrist and wouldn't let go.

"...Let go."

The whiskers tightened by half a circle.

"I didn't say I wouldn't give it to you."

Richard was both amused and exasperated, and touched the dark mass with his other hand.

He pulled his hand out and pushed the whole pile over.

"Eat up, eat as much as you want, there's plenty."

While Shadow was eating, Richard sat back down at the table and picked up the piece of brass.

Even after being handled by the Hunter, there was still a considerable amount of residual etheric contamination inside.

He placed his palm on it, and the ether flowed directly into it through the conduction pathway.

Available points: 0.11...0.34...

This time he didn't stay.

The rule he set for all the artifacts that year was to stop when they were 95% absorbed, with the remaining ether serving as camouflage.

He didn't need this part; he was afraid that the newly promoted expert would use the remnants on the artifact to find him.

He kept inhaling until the very end.

Available points: 3.17.

The fragments cooled in his palm, turning into a pure, unremarkable piece of bronze.

Just as Richard was about to exclaim, "As expected of a fragment of a rare artifact signed by an expert," the panel moved again.

Structured etheric nuclei detected... Analyzing...

[Nucleocondensation property: Seed]

[Seed Source: Arcane Embers (Not Yet Landed)]

【Characteristic Tags: Quantity, Boundary, Gift】

【Whether to extract? 】

Richard composed himself, feeling a sense of expected surprise, and selected "Yes".

Extraction complete.

[Planting Requirements: All four physical attributes must reach level 5.]

He finished reading that line and scrolled down.

[Note: The maximum number of nuclei that can be condensed is three; currently, it's 3/3.]

[To incorporate new nuclei, existing nuclei must be integrated.]

[Fusion requires the holder to reach the Great Mastery rank.]

Richard leaned back in his chair and looked out the window at the sky washed clean by the rain.

The limit of three is already reached.

The first one was extracted from the seal of the Sphinx Lamp and given to him [Shadow Reversal];

The second one was pulled from the ashes of the Black Soil River expert and given to him as the "Recorder's Pen";

This one is lying there, the condition is that all four items of [Body] are at level 5.

He's currently at level 5 in breathing, level 4 in sleeping, but level 3 in eating and walking—still a long way off.

He kept thinking about those three keywords over and over in his mind.

Quantity, boundary, bestowal.

The quantity is how much, the boundary is where it ends, and the gift is what is given out.

He recalled the deadlock regarding "eating": to unlock the level 5 "corruption reduction" skill, one must first actively ingest a product from behind the curtain and metabolize it completely.

Without the "decomposing" substance, he wouldn't dare eat it.

How much of something is considered beneficial, and how much is considered harmful?

The same thing can be medicine for one person, but life or death for another.

Where that line is drawn is always predetermined by the rules.

Richard put down his pen and stopped thinking about it.

That's enough for now. There's no point in thinking any further. Just wait and see.

Another line appeared on the panel.

It is not in the body, nor in the intellect, nor in the spirit.

It hangs alone at the very bottom, with nothing in front of or behind it.

[Logistics: Not yet recorded, cannot be categorized]

Richard tried to use it as points, but couldn't get it to work.

I tried pouring it into the [spirit image], but it wouldn't go in.

Try pushing it outwards like you would a Sphinx lamp; it hovers in your palm for a moment before sliding back.

In the afternoon, he went to the third floor of the Petrie Building.

Professor Mortimer remained nestled in his old armchair, a half-cut newspaper spread out on his lap.

"They're here."

"professor."

"Which stack should we copy today?"

"The top stack."

Richard sat down by the window and arranged the ink bottle.

When he got to the third book, he turned to the middle of the agricultural book and pulled out the few pages that had been sewn together with needle and thread.

"professor."

"What is the purpose of the column of times below the wind direction and moon phase on these pages?"

"I don't know," the old professor said. "I'm too old."

"Then let me rephrase the question." Richard put down his pen.

"Where should I put something I got from the Wild Hunt that I can't use right away?"

The scissors stopped.

Mortimer pushed his reading glasses up his nose and glanced at him slowly.

"You've been copying books for so long, and this is the only question you've come up with?"

"Yes."

The old professor placed the scissors on his lap.

"Those people up north call this #039 a portable talisman #039."

He neither said the word nor wrote it down.

"It's different from money; you won't earn interest if you put it in the bank."

It's not about strength, that's too intangible for you to lift; you need something to hold it in place.

"What exactly constitutes entrusting something to someone?"

Mortimer counted them one by one.

"Bloodline, it follows you. It exists as long as you live, and it dissipates when you die, so that those who share your bloodline may benefit."

Richard stood up and screwed the cap back on the ink bottle.

"Professor, I'll make up for today's stack tomorrow."

"what ever."

As he reached the door, he heard a dry, hoarse voice slowly add a sentence behind him.

"You can slow down the copying process a bit."

Back in his dorm, Richard pulled up the holographic technique.

The line at the bottom of the panel then appeared.

[Logistics: Not yet recorded, cannot be categorized]

He entrusted it to someone else.

The thing that was pulled out had no shape and no weight.

Richard repeated the surname twice in his mind.

Williams, then found it had no effect.

His lineage comes from Ashford blood, and to be recorded in the bloodline ledger, he must use that surname.

After reciting Ashford's name, "Luck" sank down.

It didn't fall on Richard, nor on any of the objects on the table.

It sank down along Richard's blood, down to the line that had been passed down from his mother and then from his grandfather.

It even sank to the other end of the line... to those who haven't been born yet, those whose names haven't even been thought of.

As it sank, the lamp in the room dimmed slightly before straightening up again.

Luck doesn't appear out of thin air.

The hunter seizes the prey's luck, and the prey's dying bite is also a kind of luck; whoever catches it gains a bit more.

Richard thought about how his share had been taken from 4,967 people.

The next day, he went to Chelsea Road.

"I need a list."

Gerrard was loosening the soil around the row of holly bushes, his shovel stuck in the mud.

Which one?

"On the night of April 30th, the list of the dead from Longermark to Willow Stump must include the copy with their place of origin and the address of their surviving family members."

"What do you want it to do?"

Luck is a zero-sum game; the share he received was taken from those five thousand people.

Richard, through the Ashford family's connections, provided compensation to the deceased's family.

A widow's compensation was inexplicably approved;

A child was picked up by a relative with whom they had never been in contact;

A veteran who had never won a prize before won seven pounds at the racecourse...

………………

On May 2nd, the lilacs in Durham were in full bloom.

The legal officer stood in the center of the courtyard.

He held the paper up to his eyes and looked at it once, mentally reviewing the three lines before speaking.

"He who lies hidden in a windless hollow, breathing with the stagnant air."

As soon as the first sentence was uttered, the wind on the entire street stopped.

On the other side of the courtyard wall, the leaves of a white ash tree were held high in the air, and they remained there for a long time without falling.

The air refused to move.

The legal officer moved the paper down one line.

"He once drowned an army of ten thousand men in a single breath..."

This passage and the one written by the author of "The One Who Made People Vomit Their Lungs All Over the Night" in Heituhe are about the same thing. The difference is that the latter describes the manner of death, while the former describes the achievements.

The defamation carried out by the Black Soil River expert has been erased.

After reading the middle part, the legal officer's knees buckled slightly.

He gripped the paper tightly, a metallic taste rising in his throat.

It was spit out and was dark red, spreading out in a small patch on the stone slab.

"His body has been given up, his bones have turned to dust, only his poisonous breath remains forever in the world."

Ten seconds later, the clump of lilacs was still standing there, its shape unchanged, but it was no longer green.

As dawn broke, the Hohenheim family's neighbors were the first to realize something was wrong.

His cat would sit on the wall at night, and before dawn it would jump down and run south, but once it reached the street corner, it would never come back.

The police officer arrived quickly, covering his face with a handkerchief before entering the house.

After coming out of the cellar, the youngest one squatted by the flower bed and vomited for a long time.

The investigation record was very brief, with no signs of forced entry and the doors and windows intact.

Under the section for personal belongings, the police officer registered each item according to the rules.

Then two trucks arrived.

Eight people got off the first vehicle. They wore gray-green rubber jackets with lead-lined aprons over them, and their hoods had only two windows at the eyes.

After getting out of the car, they didn't say a word, but first blocked off the street intersection.

The second car that got off was full of Ming Shi.

They first sprinkled salt, spreading it around the courtyard wall and then around the threshold, completely enclosing the entrance hall, kitchen, and stairwell.

Then nail in copper nails, and after that, string them together one by one with silver thread.

After finishing the recitation, Master Ming squatted at the top of the stairs and recited a passage.

The young police officer couldn't understand what was being recited.

All he knew was that after he finished reading, the scent of cloves in the whole house disappeared.

The man from the special department called him into the courtyard and handed him a piece of paper.

The top line on the paper was highlighted in bold: Those who have not met the professional threshold are not allowed to enter.

"Sir, we haven't finished recording yet."

"Stop recording for now."

"I do not understand."

"You don't need to understand," the man said.

"Just know that if you go inside now, your mother will be arranging your funeral tomorrow."

"And what about you?"

The gentleman held the hat in his hand, quite calmly.

"I'm not qualified even if I'm standing outside the door."

........................

After the news got out, the Imperial Evening News published a small print ad on page seven.

"A family member of a Germanic chemist committed suicide; police have ruled it as neurasthenia."

The paper was very thin, and the ink wasn't pressed deeply enough; you could see the equestrian competition results on the back through it.

A gentleman waiting for someone in a coffee shop read this line and turned the newspaper over.