I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Hand-copying is ultimately inefficient.

Fortunately, the improvement in physical fitness brought about by activating the three "body" skills at the same time has begun to show in the past few days.

Improved sleep depth elevates the brain's daytime performance, most directly impacting memory.

The memory enhancement provided by knowledge itself, combined with the improved blood supply to the brain due to improved physical condition, results in a significant effect.

If you can't copy everything down, just memorize it. Write down some keywords in your notebook, and you can slowly reconstruct and organize it when you get back to Bristol.

When his wrist started to ache from writing, he looked up at the window.

The sun had already passed overhead and shifted considerably to the west.

It was probably past one o'clock in the afternoon.

He put down his pen, rubbed his wrists, and walked to the window to relax his eyes.

Two old men were playing chess on a bench outside the window, each taking a long time to think before making a move.

Two cups of tea sat beside the chessboard, the steam from them long since dissipated, but neither of the two old men reached out to pick them up.

When he turned back from the window, he noticed that there was an extra person in the reading area of ​​the lobby on the first floor.

The person was sitting near the south window, with a porcelain cup and a plate of biscuits in front of him.

The signs inside the building clearly state "No eating or drinking".

The elderly woman who managed the store glanced at the man from behind the counter, frowned, and said nothing.

Richard recognized the person's profile.

Phillips, the one from Harrow School, fourth place in the Cicero Cup.

He's also the one who can always get his hands on tea.

He leaned back in the soft leather sofa, holding a teacup in his right hand and flipping through a book with his left, looking as relaxed as if he were sitting in his own living room.

In contrast, Richard had been lying on the second floor all morning, his cuffs were covered in pencil dust, and his hair was probably a mess.

If someone saw them at the door, they would probably think one was an ascetic monk who came to do academic research, and the other was a gentleman who came to vacation.

And that is indeed the case.

Richard returned to the second floor to continue working.

He copied for about two more hours, and his notebook was already more than half full.

As he got up to change his books at the bookshelf, he bumped into Phillips, who was walking up the stairs, at the corner of the stairs.

Richard stepped aside to make way.

Phillips stopped on the stairs and recognized him.

"Williams?"

There was a hint of surprise in his tone, but not much; it wasn't unusual to run into anyone, anywhere.

"Phillips." Richard nodded.

"You're here to read too?"

"Um."

Phillips glanced at the worn-out old book in his hand, then at the pencil ash stains on his cuff.

"You...have you been here since this morning?"

"Around seven o'clock."

Phillips glanced down at his pocket watch.

It's 3:30 now.

"Um."

He smiled slightly, like a cat watching another cat digging in the rain, not understanding why the other was working so hard.

Have you had lunch yet?

"I forgot."

This time, Phillips' smile was more pronounced.

"There's hot water on the first floor, and you can borrow a cup from the old lady at the counter. I brought my own cookies, if you don't mind..."

"Thanks, but no need."

"Oh well."

Phillips continued upstairs with his teacup, his steps slow and almost imperceptible.

Richard could tell from his demeanor that he probably wasn't looking for any steganographic passages or encrypted inscriptions.

A person leisurely flipping through a book in the library with tea and cookies is on a completely different wavelength from someone who has been lying in bed from dawn till dusk, their hands covered in pencil dust.

Richard was indeed curious about what Phillips was looking at.

………………

About an hour later.

Richard finished copying the key paragraphs and closed his notebook.

My wrist is so sore, if I keep writing my handwriting my handwriting will become distorted and make it harder to read later.

He stood up and stretched, his joints cracking several times, which sounded particularly clear in the quiet second-floor corridor.

At the far end of a row of bookshelves, Phillips was leaning against the windowsill.

The teacup sat on the windowsill, the book lay open on his lap, his posture almost unchanged from an hour ago.

As Richard walked over, he unconsciously glanced at the contents of the book.

The Latin text is arranged in verse, with the left edges of each line uneven, which is the rhythmic line break of the hexameter.

Virgil's Aeneid, the ancient Roman epic poem that Montagu quoted in the Cicero Cup.

Phillips probably noticed his gaze and looked up.

"Do you recognize him?"

"It was written by Virgil, of course I've read it," Richard said.

"Hmm." Phillips traced a line on the page with his thumb:

"What Montagu read on stage was actually the most superficial layer."

He flipped back to the first few dozen pages of the book and pointed to a certain passage:

"The truly interesting part of the entire Aeneid is not the phrase 'forgive the subjugated, punish the proud.'"

"Where is it?" Richard asked.

Phillips turned to Book Six: "Have you read Book Six?"

"I've read the whole book."

"Then you should remember that Aeneas met his father Anchises in the underworld."

"Yes, Anchises awaits him in the blessed land of the underworld."

"Yes." Phillips picked up his teacup from the windowsill and took a sip.

The tea wasn't very hot, probably because it had been cold for a long time, but he drank it without changing his expression.

"Before Aeneas descended to the underworld, the Sibyl, the priestess, said something to him."

Phillips didn't turn to that page; he recited it from memory:

"Going down to the underworld is easy; the gates of the underworld are open day and night."

His Latin pronunciation was slightly more relaxed than when he spoke the Cicero Cup, and closer to the rhythm of everyday speech.

Richard raised an eyebrow and continued the sentence:

"But the real difficulty and the real test lie in returning to the human world."

"Going down is easy, coming back up is hard." Phillips nodded, closed the book, and placed it on his lap.

"I've always felt that this is the most central line of the entire epic."

On the lawn outside the window, two old men were still playing chess.

"The quote Montague used, 'Forgive the subjugated, punish the proud,' was spoken by Anchises to Aeneas in the underworld when describing Rome's future mission."

"Empire, conquest, glory, a very grand narrative."

He paused.

"But before that, Aeneas had to go down to the underworld."

Even earlier, he had lost Troy, lost his father, and lost the people he loved.

"Only after he went through all that was he qualified to hear his father speak those words about the future to him from the underworld."

Phillips ran his thumb along the spine of the book, as if touching something old but too precious to throw away.

"Most people who read the Aeneid remember only the glorious prophecies at the end."

"But it was not those prophecies that made Aeneas Aeneas Aeneas."

Richard leaned against the bookshelf, his hands in his pockets.

Phillips spoke these words with a completely different demeanor than when he gave his speech at the Cicero Cup.

During a match, Phillips is like a cup of tea at the perfect temperature—not too hot, not too cold, and leaving no lasting impression after you finish drinking it.

Now Phillips put down the cup, no longer concerned about the water temperature or taste, and said what he really wanted to say.