I loaded the Mysticism panel.

In the afternoon, on the third floor of the Petrie Building.

When Richard entered, Mortimer was clipping newspaper articles.

The stack of newspapers beside him was already higher than a teacup, with the cut strips laid out on his lap in order.

"professor."

The old professor didn't even look up: "Here we go. Let's start with the stack under the windowsill today."

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

After copying for about twenty minutes, he couldn't help but look up.

What are you cutting?

A collection of jokes.

Richard didn't reply, and continued copying with his head down.

This stack contains classic books and traditional volumes.

He copied the fourth book, a blue cloth booklet with a line of large, gold-embossed characters: "Records of Great Achievements Throughout History: Classics Volume".

Richard immediately became interested and flipped through the pages one by one.

The first was a scribe from the third century who proofread forty-seven copies of a scripture in his lifetime;

The second was a 9th-century abbot who rearranged the fragments scattered across countless countries.

The third, the fourth... keep flipping to the last page.

The last year is 1773, and the page is empty after 1773.

Richard turned the page over; the back was also blank.

He carefully considered his words and decided to start by asking questions on topics that seemed least like serious matters.

"professor."

"Um."

Richard said very sincerely:

"If you become an expert someday, we students will be able to do whatever we want in the empire."

Mortimer didn't even look up.

"The ones that walk sideways are crabs."

"What's wrong with the crab?"

"The crabs are destined to be steamed."

Richard had been feeling quite bored while copying this afternoon, but suddenly he perked up.

"Professor, I'd like to give you a feasibility report."

"What are you doing?"

"Promotion Feasibility Report"

Mortimer took off his reading glasses, and a hint of interest appeared on his face.

"Speak."

"The first thing is connections," Richard said, counting on his fingers.

"Professor McFee is an old friend of yours. The former president of the Royal Anthropological Society is acquainted with you. The one on Strommar Island is a fellow student of Professor McFee."

So you know two experts, and of course, I'm sure you know more than two.

"And then there's the collection of books." He glanced at the three stacks on the windowsill.

"I've been copying all these books in this room for so long, yet you always seem to have a constant stream of new ones. You have everything that the department's archives don't accept."

"In terms of rank and seniority, you are a full professor of the Department of General Studies, the most senior in the department. Even the board of trustees have to serve you tea first."

"Oh, by the way," Richard thought for a moment, "you can even fish out the water veins at the bottom of the canal."

Mortimer put his reading glasses back on his nose.

"Finished?"

"It's over."

"Then I'll analyze it for you point by point." The old professor picked up the cup of pale, colorless tea.

"The connections belong to other people."

"Book collections belong to the dead."

"Expert friend..." he scoffed, "You're just here to mooch off my tea."

"The last time Old Mike sat in that chair, he drank half a can of my good tea and left saying, 'Your tea is alright.'"

"All the fish I caught were bought from other people," Mortimer said, putting down his teacup.

"I would sit by the canal alone for an entire afternoon each time, and buy two bass on my way back."

Richard was somewhat stunned.

"...Bought it?"

"The old man by the river sells fish for four pence a fish," Mortimer said without a hint of shame.

"When I brought it back, I passed by the department office, and Pendleton asked me where I had fished it. I said downstream of gate number three."

"He believed it?"

He even asked me what bait I used.

Richard laughed so hard his shoulders shook.

After laughing, he picked up the blue cloth booklet again, flipped to the last page, turned it around, and pushed it to the middle of the table.

"Professor, this is actually what I wanted to ask."

The scissors stopped, and Mortimer looked down at the blank page.

"You went through all that trouble just to ask me this one question?"

"I'm afraid if I ask directly, you'll say I'm too old."

"I am indeed getting old."

The old professor placed the scissors on his lap.

"But I can talk about a little bit today."

"You read in 'On Climbing Behind the Curtain' that a master is someone who has reached the end of a tradition and touched that milestone."

"The number of experts is limited," Mortimer said.

He reached out and pulled over the blue cloth booklet, flipping to the last page.

"The book that this old gentleman edited in 1773 is still in use today."

The Alexandrian school's comparison chart you have, going back five generations to the first edition, that's it."

"He succeeded?"

"It's done. The last one in the current classical tradition."

"And then?"

"The next 140 years." The old professor closed the booklet.

"Many good scholars have emerged from the classics, a group of great experts have emerged, and three people have re-edited that general catalog."

"There wasn't a single expert among them; all they did was re-edit."

Mortimer pushed the booklet back.

"Correcting mistakes, adding new discoveries, and streamlining the format... these are called contributions in academia, but traditionally they are nothing."

Richard lowered his head and looked at the closed booklet.

"Where will the new expert positions come from?"

Mortimer placed his hands on his knees.

"The first type is where the curtain changes on its own."

"Something has appeared that has never happened before: new weaknesses, evil creatures, new ways of dying. This has been rare in the last few hundred years."

He paused for a moment.

"But this has been increasing in the last ten years or so."

"There is another kind, where people go to places that no one has ever been before."

"West of the central mountains of the New World, the Deep Boundary, the Extreme Point."

Many people go in, but few come out; those few who do come out accomplish great things that others have never achieved.

Richard now understood why the scientific expeditions to the New World and the North and South Poles, which brought no obvious benefits but were fully supported by major powers, now had an explanation.

"So...you've never thought about it?"

Mortimer spread his hands on his knees.

His hands were dry and withered like skeletal claws, and there was a thick callus on the inside of the second joint of his right index finger, which was caused by holding a pen.

"I thought about it, I thought about it when I was thirty."

He withdrew his hand and picked up the teacup again.

"Little Richard, I have something to tell you."

"Please speak."

"My nanny has a grandson who is six years old this year," the old professor said.

"The child called me Grandpa. He came to my house last month, and I showed him my copy from 1432. He asked me why it was covered with worms."

Richard did not respond.

"I go to the dentist every Wednesday afternoon," Mortimer continued.

"The third tooth on the bottom right side, the dentist said it couldn't be saved, but I said even if it can't be saved, I'll keep it."

He said it would hurt if he left it on, and I said, "If it hurts, it hurts."

He paused for a moment.

"And... I also remember which shoes my mentor was wearing the day he died."

Richard raised his head.

"Black laces, and a scratch on the toe of the right shoe."

He was revising a manuscript that afternoon, and on the fourth page, his pen slipped from his hand.

The room remained quiet for a long time.

"We scholars spend our lives doing one thing—memorizing things."

"Remember what others can't remember, refuse to remember, and what no one thinks is worth remembering."

"If it were for the sake of taking a step up..." He slammed his teacup down on the saucer.

"First, forget everything you've remembered."

"Then what would I do up there?"

Richard sat there without moving.

He recalled what his aunt had said in room 314 about the two choices available after a successful candidate was promoted.

At that time, he thought it was a "technical route".

Now he understood that for some people it wasn't a matter of route at all.

"That's one aspect, and another aspect..." The old professor took the book "Records of Great Achievements Throughout History" from his hand and turned to the last page.

"The tradition of classical texts is not among the five major traditions."

"But it has existed for no less than any major tradition. Wherever there is writing, there are people copying books. Wherever there are people copying books, there are people proofreading them. Wherever there are people proofreading books, there are people arguing."

"Therefore, in this category, our predecessors have erected every stele they could."

"Copywriting collation, cipher text systems, schools of encryption, script dating, etymology of ritual language..."

"I thought about it when I was thirty, and I figured it out when I was forty."

"What have you figured out?"

There's no place for me anymore.

He put the book on the table and pushed it back in front of Richard.

Richard looked down at the page he had only copied halfway through, and suddenly put down his pen.

"What do you know about what happened on the night of April 30th?"

Mortimer looked up.

"Those published in the newspapers?"

"The newspapers ran the headline 'Enemy troops use asphyxiating gas that violates civilized norms,' but after three days they changed it to an equestrian competition."

Which one are you talking about?

"The newly promoted one who uses poison gas."

Mortimer stopped holding his teacup.

Richard said, "When he opened the valve, tens of thousands of people vomited everything they had in their lungs at the same time."

"People a hundred years ago couldn't have done this."

He looked up: "There were no seamless steel cylinders a hundred years ago."

"There was no railway that could transport six thousand bottles from the Rhine to Flanders in three days, and no weather station that could calculate the wind speed and subsidence over an eight-kilometer front at once."

Mortimer placed the teacup on the edge of the table.

"Professor, I have a stupid question."

"ask."

"What would it have taken to have tens of thousands of people doing the same thing at the same time?"

Mortimer thought for a moment and then said something.

"It requires a war, or a plague."

"What do we need now?"

The old professor opened his mouth, but did not answer immediately.

Richard answered for him.

"A newspaper."

Richard then stretched out his hand and pointed out the window.

In the distance, several factory chimneys were spewing ash into the sky.

"Railways, telegraphs, phonographs, photography, newspapers, assembly lines..."

"Professor, these are creating unprecedented ways to die."

In that instant, a light shone in Richard's mind.

[Reflection] The earliest thing I gave him in the past year or so was the side light. In other people's papers, he could clearly see which beam was a load-bearing beam or which flower was pasted on.

Later, the lamp at level 3 was taken back from outside and shone on him.

Every idea that just peeks out is turned over to show him the other side.

Today, that lamp brought to life the table in my mind that I'd always used to lay things out side by side and compare them one by one.

He hung up all the odds and ends he had accumulated over the past year, putting them back in their proper places.

After they were hung up, lines grew out of the middle of them on their own.

The wires were connected one by one, quickly and accurately, until a skeleton was formed.

[Critical Thinking Level 3, Progress 100%]

[Critical Thinking Level 3 → Level 4]

Richard looked up, his gaze passing over the table and landing on the stack of newspaper clippings on the old professor's lap.

That stack stood up in his eyes:

Four family members of a chemist in Durham died, the cause of death determined to be neurasthenia;

Gas explosion in the North District, 39 people injured;

Mirrors shattered overnight in a town south of Ypres; residents say it was caused by the earthquake.

A large group of rats has migrated south along a section of railway; the railway bureau is taking note.

A second lieutenant at a field hospital in the rear had his shaving glasses shatter in his hand, but no one was injured.

Organize them by date, one after another, without any confusion.

Richard went on to state his reasoning.

"Industry and modernization are creating new ways to die, and also new ways to spread."

"So...they are also creating new spaces for great achievements."

"The old traditional stele forest is already full, and the new foundation has just been poured."

Mortimer sat motionless in the old armchair.

The old professor raised his hand and, unusually, said something harsh.

"Don't express similar views in the department again."

Richard tightened his grip on the pen.

"It's because..."

"Because you're absolutely right."

People will laugh at someone who says the wrong thing.

People will try to remember those who say the right thing.

Richard lowered his head and finished copying that page.

After copying, he blew on the ink and closed the booklet.

Mortimer spoke again.

"Little Richard, I have something else to ask you."

"Please speak."

"What's the hardest thing for an expert after they've been promoted?"

Richard recalled what his aunt had told him in room 314.

"Anchor point?"

"Yes." Mortimer placed his hands on his knees.

"If there are too few anchor points, you won't be able to come back once you go down; if the anchor points are too concentrated, someone can cut them all off at once."

"What if...a person has a thousand anchor points?"

Richard's breathing slowed down.

"Some of those anchor points were at the coroner's office in Briston, some at a ranch in Whitcomb, some at a herbalist's shop in Manchester, and some were doormen at a funeral home in the countryside."

"Most of them never become masters in their entire lives. They just do small business in their own small town, such as seeing off guests, collecting souls, or watching over the well in someone's home."

"They don't even realize they are the anchor point."

Mortimer pulled his hands back from his knees.

"Who can pull it?"

"Who can count them all?"

Richard sat behind the table by the window, remaining silent for a long time.

The old professor suddenly pushed his reading glasses up his nose and looked at him over the top of the glasses.

"That woman has been casting a wide net to take on apprentices for decades; do you think she's simply kind-hearted?"

"If you still try to discern any sincerity or scheming in those who have reached the top of this group... then you will never understand them."

He stood up and took the dusty old overcoat off the back of the chair.

"Finished copying?"

"Finished copying."

Mortimer tilted his hat up to his head and said, "Let's go then, let's go home early today."

Richard screwed the ink bottle cap on and followed him toward the door.

As he reached the door, the old professor suddenly stopped.

"Oh, right."

Mortimer said slowly, "I'll reduce your book-copying assignment by one stack next week."

Richard was somewhat surprised: "Why?"

"Because you reminded me of something this afternoon."

"What is it?"

The old professor pushed the door open.

The wind blew in from the corridor, scattering the sycamore fluff from the table all over the floor.

"When I was forty, I realized that I didn't have a place for myself, and I actually felt a sense of relief."

"After I breathed a sigh of relief, I never looked in that direction again."

He pulled his hat brim down a little.

"What you said today reminded me of the feeling I had when I was young."