I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Grey sat on a high stool by the window, a baking cookbook spread out on her lap.

The cookbook was used by her mother when she was young, with several handwritten notes tucked between the pages, containing her tips on making minor adjustments to the recipes.

Grey's kitchen was about the same size as Williams's one-story house.

Copper cookware covered one wall, the stove was cast iron with six burners, and there was a brick oven next to it.

The girl was thinking about what to bring to school next time.

I've made lemon scones, butter cookies, and fruit tarts.

Repeating the same varieties can seem unoriginal, but changing them too frequently can seem too deliberate.

She turned to the "caramel pudding" page of the recipe and quickly moved on.

Pudding needs to be refrigerated. It takes a 20-minute carriage ride from home to school, and then it has to stay in the classroom for the whole morning.

If you take it out at lunchtime, the taste and appearance will be greatly diminished.

Turn the page further down, and you'll find a walnut pound cake.

It can be stored at room temperature, has a firm texture, is not easily broken, and is suitable for men's tastes.

The oil from walnuts seeps into the cake during baking, making it even more fragrant the next day than when it's fresh out of the oven.

She made a mark on that page with a pencil.

I turned a few more pages and came across the cinnamon apple roll.

This is also good, but the cinnamon flavor is quite strong, and many people are not used to it.

Grey put on her apron, rolled up her sleeves above her elbows, and began to work.

She likes baking.

From the age of seven or eight, she learned from the cooks at the manor. She could not eat much of the pastries she made herself, so she would bring them to school and share them with the people at the lunch table.

The cook smiled and said, "Miss, you put more effort into making the desserts than I do."

Grey thought that was wrong; the cook was making desserts for work, and she was doing it for fun.

Catering to someone's tastes is just a convenient thing to do.

At least that's what the girl herself thought.

………………

At lunchtime, Greenwood's restaurant was as noisy as ever.

The gentlemen in the painting look particularly serious, and seem rather dissatisfied with today's menu.

When Richard walked over with the tray, Warren was already sitting in his usual spot.

The plate in front of me is the standard setup for today:

A steak seared to a crisp with slightly curled edges, a bowl of creamy soup, a baked potato cut into quarters and arranged on the right side of the plate, and a butter dish placed next to the soup bowl.

Warren gestured with his fork: "Sit down. The steak was cooked by a different chef today, and it's a little thicker than yesterday."

"You can even tell the thickness by taste?"

"I've been eating this for a semester, of course I can tell."

Richard sat down in the chair and pushed the tray aside.

Grey was already seated to his left, with a plate of salad and half a glass of milk in front of her, and a square cardboard box wrapped in checkered cloth on her lap.

She opened the box, inside were stacks of walnut pound cake.

"I made too much dessert again today."

Grey pushed the cardboard box towards the center of the table.

Warren's eyes lit up, and he reached out to take it.

"Wait a minute." Grey blocked his hand with her fork. "Let Richard take it first."

Warren's hand hung in mid-air, his expression hurt: "I've been sitting across from you for several semesters."

"Even if you sit across from me for a hundred semesters, it will still be the same order."

Mason laughed gleefully from the side.

Richard took a piece of cake and took a bite.

The sweet and salty ratio is just right, and the rich aroma of walnuts spreads in the mouth.

"tasty."

Warren was finally allowed to take a piece, which he put in his mouth, chewed a couple of times, and swallowed.

"Grey, your cooking skills are so good you could open a shop."

"Running a shop is too tiring."

"So what do you plan to do in the future?"

"I haven't decided yet." Grey didn't seem inclined to elaborate on the topic.

Just then, two unfamiliar faces appeared beside the table.

"Excuse me... is Williams here?" the girl with the high ponytail asked.

"That's me."

"Great!" She turned to a page in her textbook and pointed to a line of Latin text:

"We have a question about the subjunctive mood conjugation in this clause. We've discussed it for ages but still can't figure it out..."

As she spoke, her body naturally leaned towards the edge of the table.

The short-haired girl was more direct; she pulled up an empty chair next to her and sat down.

As she sat down, she placed the brown paper bag that was under her arm on the table.

The paper bag wasn't sealed, revealing two sandwiches inside, wrapped in parchment paper, with a small bag of cookies and two apples tucked in beside them.

"Oh, this is the lunch we brought."

The short-haired girl smiled and pushed the paper bag towards Richard: "If you can't finish it, take whatever you want."

The push was precise, stopping right next to Richard's plate.

Warren slowed his chewing of steak, his gaze sweeping back and forth between the two girls and the paper bag.

Mason had buried his face in the soup bowl, and his shoulders were shaking.

Grey continued eating her salad, poking at the lettuce leaves in the dish with her fork, without any particular reaction.

Richard glanced at the question about the subjunctive mood, wrote two lines of conjugation in the blank space of the textbook with a pencil, and finished explaining in thirty seconds.

The girl with the high ponytail felt a little awkward.

She had prepared at least five minutes for "asking for advice," but the question was answered instantly, rendering all her subsequent topics useless.

"Ah... thank you, I see."

She flipped through her textbook, trying to find the second question.

Another thirty seconds.

The short-haired girl next to her kept giving her companion meaningful glances, roughly meaning, "Ask one more question, ask one more question."

The girl with the high ponytail closed her textbook.

"Thank you, Williams, you explained it very clearly."

"You're welcome."

The two girls exchanged a glance, and the one with short hair pushed the paper bag forward again.

"I really can't finish this sandwich, you can keep it."

"Thank you, but no need, I have enough to eat here." Richard pointed to the steak Warren had ordered and the cake Grey had brought.

The short-haired girl's gaze lingered on the steak and walnut cake for a second, then she looked at Grey, who was sitting quietly eating her salad to Richard's left.

Grey raised her head and met her gaze calmly with her blue eyes.

The short-haired girl took the paper bag back.

"We'll be going now. We'll come back to ask you questions next time."

"OK."

Mason finally looked up from behind his soup bowl: "Richard, haven't you been getting a lot of 'Latin consultations' lately?"

"They did come to ask questions."

"I finished answering the question in thirty seconds, but I did bring two sandwiches."

Warren wiped his mouth with a napkin:

"Now I finally understand what my dad meant when he said 'invest early'."

"What do you mean?" Hugh peeked over from the side.

"It means I started inviting him to dinner a long time ago, and now these people are only arriving, it's too late."

Grey took another piece of cake from the box and placed it in the middle of the table.

"The last piece, anyone want it?"

Mason and Hugh reached out at the same time.

Grey looked at the two of them: "Rock, Paper, Scissors."

Mason played paper, and Hugh played stone.

He contentedly stuffed the last piece of cake into his mouth.

………………

After lunch, Richard went to the school library.

Greenwood High School's library is not large, but it has a wide range of contents.

The special bookshelves on the third floor contain Mr. Hutton's secret teaching materials, while the first and second floors house the regular collections available to all students.

He walked back and forth between the "Religion and Mythology" section and the "History" section on the second floor several times.

In the end, only three books were found.

One is a general knowledge book about the funeral traditions of the Black Soil River Basin.

The cover features a profile of a mummy wrapped in linen. The publisher is a popular science publishing house in Beijing that targets the general public. The text is easy to understand and includes many illustrations.

One of them was an excerpt from "The Hermes Collection" compiled by a professor, and the cover was worn and frayed from being touched so much.

This book is much more serious than the first one, but the translator has obviously given artistic treatment to the most obscure passages in the original text. It is readable, but its professionalism is just so-so.

The third book left him somewhat bewildered.

It was a children's edition of a collection of myths and legends from the Black Soil River Basin.

The cover features a cartoon pharaoh and a smiling Anubis dog head, the colors so bright they're almost blinding.

This is the third book in the library related to the Black Soil River Basin; there are no others.

As he squatted in front of the bookshelf and opened the children's book, a younger student next to him gave him a strange look.

Richard, without batting an eye, tucked the book under his arm and walked to a corner of the reading room to sit down.

Over the next hour, he extracted key information from the three books.

The first book is a general introduction to funeral traditions.

The Black Soil River civilization believed that the soul is not a whole, but is composed of multiple independent parts.

Among the most core concepts:

Ka – life force, bestowed at birth and requiring offerings to sustain it after death;

Ba – personality or spirit, usually depicted as having a human head and a bird's body;

Akh – the complete soul after resurrection, the final form of the union of Ka and Ba.

Beyond these well-known components of the soul, there are also parts that are often glossed over in popular reading.

Sheut – shadow.

People in the Black Soil River Basin believe that shadows are an independent component of the soul.

It is neither a physical appendage of the body nor a physical phenomenon caused by light.

A shadow has its own existence and its own meaning.

A person's shadow does not disappear after death.

It will remain in the underworld and continue to exist.

In some funeral texts, shadows are even considered to be the "vessels" through which the deceased moves in the underworld.

When the physical body decays, the body flies away, and the body remains in the tomb awaiting offerings, it is the shadow that walks in the darkness of the underworld.