I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Phillips drew the middle section of "On Friendship".

He walked up to the podium carrying a cup of tea that he had somehow gotten his hands on.

When he got to the podium, he realized he was still holding something in his hand, so he calmly bent down and placed the teacup on the crossbar at the bottom of the podium.

This gesture elicited a few soft chuckles from the audience.

His performance was mediocre.

The pronunciation is accurate, the rhythm is stable, and the rhetoric is handled appropriately.

Just like the tea in his hand, it was neither too hot nor too cold, and it wouldn't leave any impression after you finished drinking it.

After he finished speaking, he picked up his teacup again and took a sip as he walked off the stage.

On the other hand, Palmer indeed did not last until the third segment.

He paused at the end of the second segment, his lips moved twice but no sound came out, and then he bowed sincerely to the judges' panel:

"Doleo, sed memoriam non habeo."

(Sorry, but I can't remember.)

The audience couldn't help but laugh, including Montagu, who laughed very restrainedly, but his shoulders twitched a couple of times.

Palmer walked off the stage with a completely calm expression, exchanging a glance with Hutchinson.

Hutchinson was slightly better than him, and he finished reading the whole passage with some hesitation.

However, he stepped on almost all the accented notes incorrectly, which is equivalent to playing the entire rhythm of the song backwards.

After stepping off the stage, he patted Palmer on the shoulder: "Want to get some pies after the game?"

"go."

Nearly an hour had passed by the time it was Richard's turn.

"Number 23, Richard Williams, Greenwood High School."

When the host announced the school's name, there was almost no reaction from the audience.

Greenwood has virtually no reputation in academic circles, as evidenced by the performances of the two individuals mentioned earlier.

Richard walked from the contestants' section to the front of the stage.

He walked at a moderate pace, carrying nothing in his hands, leaving his schoolbag on his seat.

The platform is a stone lectern with a smooth surface and shallow laurel wreath patterns along the edges.

There were over 500 pairs of eyes in the audience, and six pens were ready on the judges' panel at the same time.

The Seven Sages on the dome also quietly looked down at everyone.

He stopped and took a breath.

The dome of St. Augustine completely suppressed the etheric field, and his internal microcirculation quietly lay dormant.

However, when the breathing function is working, the airflow during vocal cord vibration is stable and even.

He spoke:

"Quid enim Siculis facere potuit, qui omnia sua iam pridem amiserant?"

(What can the Sicilians, who have already lost everything, do?)

When the first sentence came out of his mouth, several people in the first three rows looked up.

Montagu's voice is a rich brass instrument, Catherine's voice is a sharp bowed string, and Richard's voice is something else entirely.

It is deep, but not dark; stable, but not rigid.

The [Breathing] skill gave him an extremely precise vocal apparatus.

Each vowel resonance position is naturally placed in the most suitable cavity, with open vowels expanding in the front of the oral cavity and closed vowels converging at the top of the nasal cavity.

Without conscious control, the body's structure will react instinctively after optimization.

Cicero did something very clever in "The Impeachment of Verus"—he didn't directly call Verus a robber.

He listed the stolen idols and ritual objects one by one, describing in detail how many generations had worshipped, decorated, and maintained them in the temple.

After describing them, he immediately changed the subject: Where are they now? In the private villas of corrupt officials.

Anger was suppressed beneath the details; every object name that was read aloud was a thorn in the side.

"Heraclio signum Dianae (middle omitted) ac dignitatem venerabantur..."

(The statue of Diana by Heraclius, the most beautiful and sacred one, is revered by all because of its antiquity and sublime majesty...)

Richard slowed down when he pronounced "pulcherrimum" (meaning "most beautiful").

It's not about showing off the pronunciation; it's about giving the beauty of the idol time to be seen.

His knowledge enabled him to understand the etymology, context, and rhetorical intent of each Latin word far beyond rote memorization.

The root word pulcherrimum, pulcher, comes from the Old Latin word for smooth and beautiful, and the suffix errimus is the superlative.

When Cicero used the highest honor to adorn a statue, he was telling the Senate:

The thing you once cherished most has been stolen by someone.

As Richard read out the names of these objects, certain images flashed through his mind, prompting him to find the most genuine emotional focus.

"...ea sunt ablata, iudices, e locis sacratissimis."

(...These things, Your Honors, were taken from the most sacred place.)

His voice deepened, resonating against the stone walls of the chapel.

The chest cavity became a resonating chamber, and the breathing of more than 500 people disappeared.

In the following passage, Cicero listed every statue, every ritual object, and every fresco that had been looted.

The rhythm has slowed down, and the space between each syllable has been lengthened, making the space more important than the words themselves.

"Nihil in aedibus cuiusquam, (middle omitted) nihil denique in loco quisquam relictum est."

(Nothing was left in anyone's house, not even in the town, not even in the public places, not even in the temple, not even with allies, not even with guests, nothing was left anywhere.)

This is the climax of the whole passage, a series of "nihil" (nothing).

Cicero was a master of using parallelism, and in this instance he used it to depict the desolate emptiness, adding another layer of despair with each repetition.

Six nihils, six progressions.

When he got to the last nihil, he squeezed those words out from between his teeth.

The lower you suppress it, the stronger your anger becomes.

After he finished speaking, only his breathing could be heard echoing through the dome of the chapel.

In the third row of the audience, Mr. Holland's fingers tapped unconsciously on his knees, the rhythm perfectly synchronized with Richard's.

He had been teaching students for twenty years, and this was the first time he felt that the time he had spent was so worthwhile.

The lady next to her took off her gold-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with a handkerchief... probably because a thin layer of fog had formed.

Mr. West stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his body completely still in the chair.

But he didn't bother to wipe the sweat dripping from his forehead, clearly listening intently.

On the judges' panel, pens moved rapidly across their respective papers.

The balding professor wrote half a page.

The white-haired professor next to me wrote even faster. When he stopped writing, he looked back at the grading criteria, probably to confirm whether a certain section should be given full marks.

The lady on the far right in the dark blue suit had her pen paused.

Isabella Ashford did not write anything on the rating sheet.

She glanced at the contestants' information and raised an eyebrow.

In the contestants' seating area, Montagu withdrew his hand from the armrest and placed it on his knee.

His posture was no different from before: calm, relaxed, and with his spine straight.

However, during Richard's speech, he slightly shifted his body weight forward once.

It's probably in the section where the six nihils progress.

Catherine sat further away, her red hair falling over her shoulders, her gaze never leaving the podium.

There was an extremely subtle curve at the corner of her mouth, indicating approval, but also resentment.

Richard's last words echoed slowly in the dome as they faded away.

The applause erupted and lasted for a long time.

Simon leaned closer as he sat back down: "I feel a lot of pressure sitting next to you right now."

"You did a good job too."

"I haven't gone up yet."

"Let's give each other a little encouragement in advance."

"...Thanks, but I'm even more nervous now."