I loaded the Mysticism panel.

When it was time for dinner, Margaret took out the cured meat she would use the next day and brought out two bok choy from the backyard.

Evelyn stood in front of the stove, stirring and giving instructions at the same time:

"Mom, don't put in so much water."

"The broth definitely needs to be thicker."

"But there's too little meat in this dish; it'll be too salty if it's too thick."

"Now you're telling me what to do?"

Evelyn raised the wooden spoon in her hand: "I'm a professional, I'm taking the exam next month."

When the food was served, Richard counted it.

Cured meat, cabbage, a dish of potatoes, and a small dish of dark sauce of unknown origin.

He pointed to the dish of sauce: "What's this?"

Evelyn looked at him expectantly: "You'll know once you try a small bite."

Richard took a small bite and found it sweet with a hint of coolness and the aroma of mint.

"This is honey and mint." The little girl put her hands on her hips.

"I don't know how that swarm of bees landed on our plum tree. I chased them for several blocks, tapping them with a cake mold."

"Beat the cake mold?"

"It will fly away if you don't knock it."

The mother added, "When she came back that day, her nose was swollen like a plum. The neighbors thought she had been in a fight outside."

Evelyn didn't seem to think it was a big deal: "I was indeed fighting."

"And I won!" she said excitedly.

Richard laughed so hard he almost choked on a potato.

After dinner, my father went upstairs to draw those drawings of the railway bridge structure.

Evelyn also took the notebook and went upstairs.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she leaned halfway out again: "Brother, you have to come with me to see the beehives tomorrow."

"OK."

Only the mother and child remained in the kitchen.

Margaret dried the bowl and put it back on the shelf, then sat down across the table. "Where are you going this time?"

Richard didn't go into too much detail: "I went with the professor to a village in the northern highlands to repair an old seal for them."

"Is it fixed?"

"Of course it's fixed."

Richard sat opposite his mother, silently operating the Mirror Condensation Technique, as still water spread out.

My mother's hands are much thinner than they were two years ago, with her knuckles sticking out, and there are still those empty, lingering loops in her body.

The darkened passageway connects to the lungs, causing the chronic, dull pain to seep out with each breath, but it's a little better than the last time I saw it.

My aunt would come for a massage every time she "passed by," and the medicine in the tin bottle at least kept my mother's condition from deteriorating further.

But it won't get worse. My pores have been accumulating for almost 3 months, and now I only need a little more before I can use them.

"What's wrong?" Margaret asked.

Richard shook his head: "It's nothing, you look better than you did around Christmas."

"Isabella has half a bottle of her medication left; she sent another bottle last month."

His mother suddenly looked at him: "By the way, did you get into any trouble with anyone in Beijing?"

Richard rubbed his hands on his knees: "A little."

"How big of a problem?"

"It's not too small... but Grandpa knows, and the professor knows too."

Margaret nodded and didn't ask for more details: "You know what I mean."

Richard sat with his mother in the kitchen for a while before going upstairs to his room.

He tidied up the table and took out the bronze paperweight and bronze balance scale.

These two strange items have been in his hands for a year since they came into his possession that night in Black Ditch.

He decided to look at the pendant first.

These were things he pulled out of the water horse's belly; he didn't even look at them closely, he was just busy stuffing them into his bag.

The silver on the pendant is of poor quality, and copper rust has seeped into it.

Richard first placed his palm on the surface to absorb the points.

Available points: 2.63...2.71...2.76.

Just as Professor McPhee had said, it stopped very quickly.

There was no mystical structure on the pendant, and the ether it contained offered no protection, so he simply absorbed it all before letting Saint Yi examine it.

The long beak tilted towards the pendant, and began recording the transaction as Richard's inspiration struck.

I first read out a name, the year was 1889, and the source was a regular pendant commemorating a church baptism.

A parish will issue a few dozen coins a year, and once they're all gone, that's it.

Richard used a scale to weigh things and captured some images.

When the pendant fell, the person wearing it was either still on the boat or on the shore; in any case, they were definitely not near the pendant.

The balance scale cannot measure what happened later; it can only measure the final scene.

He thought for a moment and then wrapped the pendant in a soft cloth.

Next up is that glass bead.

Yesterday he thought it was just a Viking-era trading bead.

In those days, people from the north plundered all the way here. Even if they didn't plunder, glass beads were the most useful hard currency. One glass bead could be exchanged for half a sheep.

It's not too surprising that such items would fall into the hands of hermits.

But looking at it now, it's clear that the ether brightness inside the glass beads doesn't quite match that of the trade beads.

Saint O's long beak turned away.

The origin was identified first: on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, 200 years before the arrival of the Vikings.

Richard had already roughly guessed this, and then came the circulation.

Richard's eyebrows twitched, realizing that the bead had passed through so many hands that it took Saint a long time to remember them all.

Merchant ships, markets, the baggage of a traveler who dies on the road, or a family division, a price paid for a life.

Then it arrived at this island.

Once we arrived on the island, the entire flow of traffic came to a complete stop.

Richard pushed the scales over, and this time the left side of the scales fell very slowly; he thought it was going to stop in mid-air.

The weighing results didn't include a price or year, only the number of times it was weighed.

People have come and gone, but the gestures they've used have never changed.

Every evening, the hermit who would bring the meal outside to the guest would first twirl the beads between his fingers; one twirl was one portion.

He leaned back in his chair, realizing that the hermits used the bead as a counter, once a day for 1100 years.

This bead was counted continuously until the last hermit died in the stone house and disappeared into the dust, at which point no one touched it again.

As a result, the dark blue glass bead takes a little longer to absorb points, but not by much.

Available points: 2.76 → 2.97.

Finally, we come to the hermit's stone bowl, which has held wheat cakes and wheat paste for 1100 years, and even raw wheat grains during the most difficult years.

He first turned the stone bowl over and held it up to the light of the lamp along the engraving. There are three characters here.

He had already seen those three characters on the island.

He couldn't read it at all at the time, until McPhee spent two days teaching him how to touch the Oganwen on the stone door frame, and then he slowly began to understand it.

Richard closed his eyes and slowly touched the edge; the edge was the boundary, and the boundary was where he should be.

My fingertip moved from bottom to top, touching the first letter, and then I made a horizontal cut across the ridge: "ailm, fir, letter a".

The second character is also cut horizontally with two strokes: "onn, thorn bean, letter o".

The third character has all five strokes on the left: "nion, 梣, letter n".

"a—o—n".

Richard opened his eyes and slowly struggled to speak.

"Aon" is the simplest word in Old Gaelic, meaning "one".

The person who carved it only cut three characters on the edge, and then stopped writing.

Richard pressed his palm against it and found that the deposited ether was thick and even, with no abnormal structure whatsoever, much like the oil at the bottom of an aged teapot.

Available points: 2.97...3.31...3.74...

He stopped after sucking down about half of the remaining amount.

Available points: 3.81.

After dealing with all three strange items, Richard put them all away in a hidden compartment under the bed, carefully wrapping the beads and pendants separately.

He sat back down at the table and looked at the entire panel from beginning to end.

【body】

Breathing lv.5

Eating lv.4

Sleeping lv.4

Walking lv.4

【wisdom】

Knowledge lv.4

Speculation Level 4

Perception lv.5

After looking at the panel, he was a little dazed.

At this time last year, he hadn't finished signing his name yet, and several items on his panel were still stuck at level 2 and 3.

Now, two out of the seven items have passed level 5, and the rest have all reached level 4.

Especially the [Knowledge] skill, which currently has the highest progress among level 4 skills.

Over the past six months, I've been copying books, deciphering texts, making rubbings, and working on Ogan script, adding progress item by item. Before I knew it, the progress bar was already halfway through.

Richard focused his attention on the "Breathing Lv5" section.

After the score reached 3, he suddenly had an idea.

Now that I've reached level 5, what's next for level 7?

按照他自己算法，lv3要1点，lv5要2点，lv7就大概在3点了。

He already had almost 4 o'clock in his hand, which was more than enough.

He wondered if he could preview it.

【Insufficient conditions】

[Requires 5 available points]

[Insufficient points available to preview]

Richard frowned, then clicked on [Perception] again, only to find it was still exactly the same.

[Insufficient resources, 5 points required]

It takes 5 points to advance to level 7, not 3.

Richard leaned back in his chair, somewhat deflated.

The sequence of numbers 1, 2, 5 is neither an arithmetic nor a geometric sequence, clearly indicating that there is an additional threshold at level 7.

An additional line of prompts appears at the bottom of the panel:

[Note: When all seven attributes reach level 7, "Spirit" will unlock new functions again.]

Upon seeing this line, Richard's initial disappointment completely subsided.

Point 5 indicates that level 7 is a significant dividing line.

He began to calculate the rate at which he was accumulating points: a genuine rare item would take about 0.3 to 0.8 points, while a slightly better one would take a little over 0.8.

Items like the Sphinx lamp or rare fragments signed by experts are rarer and more likely to be found, and these cost between 1.5 and 3 points.

He calculated that if he wanted to reach 5 points...

Even including the points used along the way, two years should be more than enough.

Once he has collected 5 points again, his breathing ability will probably be around 100% at level 6.

After two years, he felt he should have reached the threshold of minor proficiency.

By then, he will be able to access Donald's shop and the channels on Flower Moon Street;

At the table in the Divine Salon, nearly half of the people owed him favors.

Clement's line was broken, but the gates of the capital were wide open.

The rare items I can access once I break through to the minor mastery level will be on a completely different level from those I can access now.

Perhaps once you reach the advanced level of minor mastery, 5 points won't seem like much anymore.

Reaching level 7 is roughly equivalent to minor mastery. So what if all seven skills were pushed to level 7?

[Spirit] Can it be opened again? Perhaps, I will be able to touch the threshold of mastery then?

Thinking about this, he smiled to himself, realizing that thinking about these things now was still a bit too far ahead.

Richard began to think about his next goal: to reach level 5 in all four aspects of the [Body] skill.

[Breathing] has been achieved. The remaining three items each require 2 points, which adds up to 6 points.

Regarding the unlock conditions, the unlock conditions for [Sleep] were already met back in April.

"During a sleep, I naturally had a dream that was later confirmed to be real."

That night he dreamed that his grandfather turned back at the end of the procession and made the gesture of giving him the hunting ground.

Although I managed to pull myself out of it, it was undoubtedly a precognitive dream.

[Walking] Requirement: "Evade the pursuit of someone of a higher rank than yourself."

During the great battle in Flanders on April 30th, the Black Earth River Master separated himself from the mirror image, completing the condition for [Perception] along with it.

The most troublesome thing is still [eating]: "Actively ingest a product from behind the curtain and metabolize it completely."

It's the same old chicken-and-egg problem: without the "decomposed substance," he dares not eat it, but if he doesn't eat it, he can't get the "decomposed substance."

This matter requires further consideration.

Richard opened the Frost Branch Box, inside which were several pieces of black moss that he had taken from the sea behind the curtain a few days earlier.

This subspecies of multi-eyed black moss has smaller and denser eyes than the terrestrial variety, and its toxicity and effects are relatively reduced.

If we add the level 4 [Filter] as a safety net... Richard felt he didn't need to be in such a hurry; he was still a long way from reaching the level 4 maximum.

He closed the box and tidied up the notebook.

Lying back on his old bed, Richard noticed that the crack in the ceiling was still the same.

………………

On June 3rd, the sky was overcast.

According to past practice, the graduation procedures for secondary school students should not be issued until July.

Evelyn, however, applied to the Imperial Culinary Academy in Beijing through the technical college route and will be going there in mid-June.

The Royal Culinary Institute requires a stamped graduation certificate and a copy of the transcript; they won't enter the data if either is missing, so you need to come in advance to get them.

As Evelyn left, she was still being defiant, asking him, "Why did you follow me?"

"I'll go with you to complete the formalities."

"Why do I need you to come with me to complete some paperwork?"

"Alright then, I won't go."

"No, you still have to go." She held her brother's hand.

"Anyway, you're just sitting at home doing nothing."