I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

On his last day before leaving the Imperial Capital, Richard woke up earlier than anyone else in his family.

The sky had yet to fully brighten, and only the butler was in the dining room, setting the table.

"Young Master Richard, what would you like for breakfast this morning?"

"The same as yesterday will be fine, thank you."

The butler gave a slight bow and retreated toward the kitchen. He had maintained that perfectly measured attentiveness for several days now—never more, never less.

Once his breakfast was brought out, Richard quickly finished his fried egg and toast, drank his tea, and stood up from his chair.

He slung on his bookbag, walked through the hallway, and left through a side door.

The early morning streets were mostly empty, with only the sound of a milk cart’s rumbling wheels and the hourly chime from the Bell Tower.

By the time the sixth bell finished tolling, he had already reached the bus stop at the street corner.

After a wait of about ten minutes, a double-decker bus approached from the east.

He went up to the second floor and found a window seat.

The bus traveled through the Imperial City District, heading from west to east before turning northeast.

The scenery outside the window constantly changed: rows of shops, churches, parks, bridges, and then increasingly wide-open fields and sparser buildings.

The engine began to roar with effort every time they went uphill, and the thick smell of gasoline billowed up from under the bus.

Richard covered his nose and mouth. ’For the first time, I’m thinking the school bus at Greenwood was practically first-rate.’

About thirty minutes later, the bus came to a stop at the final station.

The driver pulled the handbrake, and the brake pads shrieked against the steel rims as Richard jumped off the bus.

As his feet touched the pavement of the Academic District, his first impression was of the quiet.

The background noise of the Imperial City District—that mix of car engines, street vendors’ cries, and factory whistles—was gone.

Richard walked down the main street. The main gate of Imperial University was located midway down it.

The school motto was carved on the lintel in Latin. The characters had been washed by rain for several hundred years, their strokes worn smooth and round.

He glanced at it as he passed by:

"Tempus fugit, scientia manet."

(Time flies, knowledge remains.)

When he reached the university gate, Richard took out his letter of recommendation from the Classical Society.

"I’d like to use the library."

The gatekeeper took it, glanced at it, and handed it back to him, then pulled a temporary pass from a drawer.

"The library is on the east side of Bell Tower Square. Go in here, follow the main road to the second intersection, and turn left. You’ll see it."

He wrote the date and expiration time on the pass, and added as he handed it over:

"No food or drink is allowed inside. Access to the third floor and above requires a separate application."

"Thank you."

Richard took the pass and walked through the school gate.

After about twenty paces, the warmth within his Throne of the Sun suddenly pulsed.

Richard didn’t stop walking, but his breathing rhythm automatically shifted to Quadruple Breathing.

As his range of Perception expanded, information began to flood in.

On the walk from the archway to Bell Tower Square, a distance of about six hundred paces, he perceived at least seventeen different Ether nodes.

The density far exceeded that of Huayue Street.

The Ether Field on Huayue Street was like a hidden river flowing beneath the floors of the shops and taverns, with an occasional spray of water bubbling up from the cracks.

The Ether Field at Imperial University was more like an entire groundwater system. The whole town was steeped in it, the foundation of every building sunk deep into the Ether Layer.

’No wonder the gatekeeper had no particular reaction to me.’

’In a town so full of Ether nodes, all sorts of visitors must be commonplace.’

’Everyone has a tacit understanding: you don’t ask where I’m from, I don’t ask what you’re doing, and we all keep our distance.’

The library was on the east side of the square.

Although it covered a large area, the building itself was plainer than he had imagined—a three-story stone structure with a row of high windows across the front.

At the entrance counter, an old woman with completely white hair was writing on an index card with a steel-nibbed pen.

Richard showed her his pass.

After confirming it, the old woman took out a thin booklet from under the counter and handed it to him.

"This is the collection index, categorized by subject.

The first and second floors are open for reading. Books cannot be taken out of the library, but you may copy them by hand inside."

"If you need any help, you can ask me."

"Thank you."

Richard took the index, found an empty table by a window, and sat down. He then flipped through the index from beginning to end.

The classifications were extremely detailed, ranging from literature to archaeology to natural philosophy.

Each major category was divided into a dozen or so subcategories, which in turn had their own subdivisions.

His objective was clear: the theory of Seals.

’Of course, the index wouldn’t have a category called "Theory of Seals," just as the Greenwood Library wouldn’t have a row of shelves labeled "Mysticism."’

’But his experience at Greenwood had taught him one thing: knowledge hides in the cracks of the framework.’

He began searching the index, following three lines of inquiry at once.

The first line of inquiry was Epigraphy.

The core of a Seal is its Inscription, and the grammar of the Inscription determines the Seal’s function and structure.

The books on the third floor of Greenwood had given him a basic framework, but it was far from enough.

He needed a more systematic understanding of Inscription grammar, especially concerning the dissolution and reconstruction of Seals.

The second line of inquiry was alchemical literature.

The mediums used in Seals—silver, copper, wax, Holy Water—were all basic materials within the scope of Alchemy.

Only by understanding the mystical properties of these materials could he understand why a Seal used one material and not another.

And from there, he could deduce what would happen if the materials were changed or removed.

The third line of inquiry was ritual studies.

Creating a Seal was itself a minor ritual, and dissolving one likewise required following ritualistic logic.

He had never found a method for dissolving Seals on the shelves at Greenwood, partly because introductory materials teach you how to prevent fires, not how to start them.

But the depth and breadth of the Imperial University Library’s collection were on a completely different level.

A firefighting manual won’t teach you arson, but an engineering textbook will certainly contain the principles of demolition by explosives.

At a high enough academic level, "construction" and "deconstruction" were two sides of the same coin.

Richard quickly jotted down the index numbers in his notebook with a pencil, then got up to find the books on the shelves.

The open collection on the first floor consisted mainly of general academic literature. After flipping through a few books, he confirmed that the truly valuable materials were on the second floor.

Up on the second-floor gallery, the light was a shade darker than on the first floor.

The bookshelves were packed more tightly together, the aisles between them so narrow that one could only pass through sideways.

He didn’t have time to go through them one by one.

First, he did a quick filtering based on the titles and publication years on the spines, eliminating anything obviously irrelevant to his goal.

This left about forty potentially valuable books.

’Forty books. In a single day, let alone reading them all, even just opening each one would take a long time.’

But there was something else he could do: quickly screen the table of contents, foreword, appendix, and footnotes of each book.

He had to determine which books were hiding something and which were purely academic texts.

The filtering process he had honed at Greenwood could now be put to efficient use on a much larger collection.

The first round of screening took about an hour.

’Deciphering them here in the library is completely impossible.’

’I don’t have reference books or enough time to sit and deduce, and other readers are occasionally passing through the aisles.’

Richard made a pragmatic decision: don’t decipher, just record.

Opening his notebook, he began copying down the suspected passages of hidden writing, character by character.

The transcription work was extremely tedious.

Some passages had an appallingly high character density; the strokes of the letterpress print were crammed together, and he had to lean in close just to make them out.

His pencil flew across the notebook, his handwriting growing smaller and smaller as he squeezed the maximum use out of every page.

One book in particular tantalized him. On its title page was a line of small print:

"For internal teaching reference by the Imperial University Classics Department only. Loaning to outside parties is strictly prohibited."