I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"What level of the Abyss Throat Technique have you reached?" Barnaby asked.

"I've stopped counting."

"We have to count them."

"Counting won't work either," Phillips said. "The more you count, the more you want to speed up."

Barnaby smiled and didn't try to persuade him further.

Few people on this road can persuade anyone else.

They grow fast, they get strong fast, they can't stop... These phrases are printed in every serious book, and for hundreds of years people have been jumping into them every year.

Barnaby stood up from the edge of the platform and brushed the dust off his trousers.

"That young gentleman from tonight, would you like to invite him down for a visit sometime?"

There was a two-second silence on the stage before Phillips put down his cup of tea.

"His family is all there."

His mother and sister call him twice a week to ask if he has eaten, what he has eaten, and if he has enough clothes.

His aunt teaches at a university in Beijing and gives him extra tutoring every day.

"Those who go down should not have so many worries on their shoulders."

Barnaby draped his coat over his arm.

"This road is for people who don't plan to come back," Phillips said.

He plans to come back.

Barnaby said "Oh" and didn't try to persuade him further.

He walked to the side of the curtain and glanced back.

"By the way, another one has recently come down from the capital."

"I heard she's a young girl, even younger than you, but she's progressing faster than anyone else on this path."

Phillips did not look up.

"Walking fast isn't necessarily a good thing."

Barnaby smacked his lips and put on his coat.

"Remember to turn off the lights when you lock the door; gas is charged by the hour."

The footsteps faded away at the end of the corridor, leaving Phillips alone in the entire theater.

He picked up the teapot and poured the last cup.

………………

On Monday, Isabella noticed something was wrong as soon as she entered the office.

The mint plant on the windowsill has turned green.

She put her briefcase on the desk and went over to look at it.

This pot of mint is a cutting that Clara brought back from the botanical garden greenhouse two years ago.

It withered five times in two years, each time until only the stalk remained.

Isabella would pour a large pot of water into it each time, and then forget about it for several days afterward.

It hung there, half-dead.

Now it has grown to half the height of the window frame, with its leaves turning outwards in layers, the top few still covered in fuzz.

Isabelle reached out and pinched off a piece, then brought it to her nose and found the smell to be very strong.

She placed the leaf on the writing desk, sat down, and pulled out a blank sheet of paper.

At the top, she wrote: Mint Observation Record.

Then she began to recall when she had last watered the plants.

If she couldn't remember, she would flip through her planner back to the beginning.

The schedule was filled with document review, departmental meetings, and seal revisions; not a single word about Mint.

She called the cleaner in.

Has anyone touched the mint plant on my windowsill this month?

"No, Associate Professor, you said last time that no one was allowed to touch it."

Did I say that?

"Who's responsible if someone gets hit and dies?"

Isabella sent the man away.

At noon, the department office posted the list of seconded personnel for this month.

Isabella has been waiting for this paper for the past two weeks.

The last group to be removed were two lecturers from the Department of Classics and a teaching assistant for the course on dating; the reasons for their removal were never given.

She read the list from beginning to end, but her name wasn't on it.

On the other hand, it's also strange that Vincent has been winning so much at cards these past few days that no one in the whole company wants to sit with him anymore.

Vincent had a bad run of luck in the first round and lost by two pence.

He won back the two pence in the second round;

In the third round, he had such a bad hand that he almost laughed at himself, but he played to the end to save face, and when the cards were finally revealed... the lieutenant opposite him was even worse than him;

In the seventh inning, he began to feel something was wrong;

In the eleventh round, the lieutenant slammed down his cards, stood up, and said he was going to check the sentry post.

In the fourteenth inning, the remaining two players also said they were going to check the sentry post.

"Where did all these sentries come from for you to check?" Vincent shouted.

No one answered him.

The next day, a different group of people were used, and he won again.

On the third day, he deliberately played his good hand badly, but still won in the end.

On the fourth day, someone suggested changing it to rolling dice, and he rolled six times and got all six big.

"You cheated!" The lieutenant finally couldn't hold back anymore.

"Do I need it?" Vincent pushed the dice in front of him. "Roll them yourself."

The lieutenant rolled a two.

Vincent took the throw and rolled six.

"...You roll it again."

six.

"Throw again."

six.

The bunker remained quiet for a long time.

Later, the lieutenant pulled the blanket over his head, turned over, and went to sleep. Before falling asleep, he said something.

"Hey kid, stop winning all the time!"

Why?

"Back in the New World, my uncle had a guy who won at the card table for half a month straight."

"And then?"

The lieutenant ignored him and started snoring.

Vincent gathered up the cards, neatly stacking them one by one and stuffing them into his breast pocket.

He wasn't happy either.

His favorite thing is to take on a challenge.

My cousin once said that he looked impressive when he cut a turkey. He could switch the knife from his left hand to his right hand in front of a room full of people at the Christmas table, and after he finished cutting, he would turn the knife over to show everyone the cut.

Winning effortlessly is like cutting a boneless goose – it's pointless.

………………

Gerald went up to the small room on the second floor, which was studded with iron rivets, and the sewing kit was placed on the top shelf of the tin cabinet.

The old man picked up a needle and was about to close the lid when the piece of velvet slipped, revealing a gap.

He lifted the entire velvet cloth.

There was a thin wooden board underneath, with one corner of the board sticking out.

He scratched it twice with his fingernail and pried it open.

There was a piece of paper lying in the interlayer, and Gerald took it out.

There is a painting on the paper.

The charcoal pencil, with its crooked and uneven lines, depicts the profile of a man.

The man's nose was drawn fairly neatly, but his eyes were uneven, one higher than the other, and his chin made his face look half an inch longer.

She probably got tired of drawing the hair, so she simply used a charcoal pencil to scribble it back and forth dozens of times, turning it into a black blob.

Gerald, clutching the paper, sat down in the chair behind the table.

He held it up to the light, turned it over, and found a line of small print on the back: "A return gift for you."

Gerald placed the paper on the table and reached out to smooth it out.

When the housekeeper came upstairs, he knocked on the door twice.

"master."

"Enter."

"Emails from this afternoon."

At the top is the bill, printed with the letterhead of a shipping agency, located in Liverpool.

Another address was printed below the heading, which was for the New World.

The card had only a few lines of text, typed on a typewriter.

"As instructed by the client, a batch of items, totaling fourteen boxes, have been prepared for your safekeeping."

Freight, insurance, and storage fees have all been prepaid.

"The delivery date for this batch of deposited items is set for November 2nd of this year or thereafter."

"Client: Lauren Ashford"

Lauren, that's his eldest son's name.

Gerald picked up the card and turned it over to look at the back.

The back is empty.

"No letter?"

"There's no letter, sir, just this one."

"Bring up that atlas from the study, the one about the New World."

The housekeeper went downstairs.

………………

Early in the morning, when Richard came out of his dormitory, the newsboy's voice was calling out at the main intersection.

"The Tania has sunk! 1,200 people on board!"

Richard handed over a penny, stood against the wall, and finished reading the newspaper.

The ship appeared to be an unarmed merchant vessel. After it was sunk by an enemy submarine, it was found that many of the dead were civilians from neutral countries, as well as infants under one year old.

Richard folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm as he walked toward the college area.

After finishing his class, Richard returned to his dormitory and found a group of people pouring out of an alley two streets east of the college area.

The leader was carrying a half-section of iron railing, which he had broken off from the church cemetery fence.

They stopped in front of a bakery whose sign read "Schmidt & Son".

"Smit!" the leader shouted.

The person in the shop peeked out from behind the counter.

He was in his sixties, his apron was covered in flour, and his hands were still covered in raw dough.

"Sir, this is Smith."

He wiped his hands on his apron and pointed to the sign.

"Smith, the horizontal line on the sign is peeling off."

"Is the paint chipped off?"

"It fell off three years ago, and I've never repaired it."

"Then just fix it, that'll solve the problem."

"...Sir, it costs eight shillings to repair it once."

Someone in the crowd chuckled, and the laughter was unpleasant.

The shop window shattered in the middle, and the iron bars crashed in, causing the row of freshly baked bread inside to roll all over the floor.

Someone stepped on it, crushed it, and then stepped on it again.

Old Smith stood behind the counter, not daring to stop them, his hands resting on the countertop, his fingers still covered in dough.

After everyone had left, he bent down and picked up the ones that were still intact from the ground, one by one.

Richard was standing across the street when he saw two policemen at the street corner.

One of them had his hands behind his back, and the other had a baton tucked under his arm; they were less than eighty yards from the bakery.

The man leading the group carrying the iron railings nodded to them as he passed by.

The policeman with his hands behind his back also nodded.

The older man spoke to Richard, who was passing by.

"Sir, don't go to those streets to the east today."

Why?

"The higher-ups' order is to prioritize police resources for key areas."

By evening, the matter had spread beyond just one street.

Two fires broke out in the eastern district, with thick smoke rising from behind the rooftops.

The news from Liverpool and Manchester City didn't arrive until the next day; the situation there was even more intense than in Beijing.

The newspaper later reported that more than 1,900 shops across the country were vandalized that week.

Among those who were hit were Germans, Rus's, Sami, and Iberians.