Chapter 182: The Sephirot

Chapter 182: The Sephirot

Kiyori pulled the scarf that Mo Fei bought closer as she slowly stood. She got to know previously that there was a village ahead.

She finally answered. "I don’t know what the Sun Fox is, but my grandmother told me that it was a protective spirit used by my ancestor, Inari. I was going to the shrine and caught a cold."

Mo Fei’s thought shifted with multiple possibilities as he finally considered one. "Can it be a mythical creature like the Divine Serpent?"

"Mhm... it was given to her by a being called Sephirot. My grandma told me a few things when I was in the shrine. That Sephirot was also an Ascended."

A Sephirot? Mo Fei had never heard that term anywhere in the books he had read in the organization, but he did hear a thing called the Sephirot too... the ten attributes, emanations, or divine channels in Kabbalah mysticism, through which the infinite, hidden God revealed Himself and continuously created and sustained the universe.

That was all the religious texts of mysticism in his world. Although it seemed similar, it was also different... wait... Mo Fei’s eyes widened slightly as suddenly a thought came into his mind. "Kiyori, did the Sun Fox, Inari, and that Sephirot was connected to the Tree of Ages?"

Kiyori nodded as she remembered the words of her grandmother. Even though it was a residential story that Inari could order Tree of Ages, her grandmother didn’t tell her whether it was before the Sephirot came or later. "According to my grandma, the Tree of Ages acknowledged Lady Inari."

’Yes, I knew there was something... my world has distorted versions of these worlds. The main factual version is still unknown...’ Thinking this, he stopped a carriage and sat comfortably, but even then an unease crossed over the emotionless face of Murphy. "I got it now. The reality might have been distorted in various worlds... maybe what is known as Tree of Life in world 0 is Tree of Ages in world six... but then... Why is it called a timeless tree, blooming in the reversal river of time?"

Kiyori rubbed her face with her hands, feeling the cold winter as her face was red from it. "I don’t understand. Are you saying they’re different names for one thing?"

"No... it’s more complicated than it seems. Maybe the Tree of Ages is an independent entity, and the Sephirots are also not the Sephirots used in religious texts." He paused and added. "Tell me as soon as you reach the Sun Fox shrine. Also, take a one-day rest. You don’t have to move when you have a fever."

"I can’t stop yet; I also have to find shards before that demon finds it."

Hearing her reasoning, Mo Fei also had to confront her question. She was right, by her previous words, she had told him that it was taking all the shards before she could reach... his mind racing with ideas. "Kiyori, I have a plan."

"Hm?"

"Let him find the shards first... you have at least a dozen or more shards, right?"

"Yes, but why?"

"Eventually, that demon has to come to take your shards. By that time, you can also defeat him and take his shards; it’d make things easier for you." He replied, although it seemed logical on the surface even to her for once.

"Why didn’t I think of th — wait, no!" She said and coughed slightly from the cold. "Mo Fei, doing that would make the demon way stronger. We have no idea how strong he is right now."

"Right... we don’t know his capabilities to actually calculate whether those shards would make him stronger than us or not... Try to find Jim afterward, he may have collected at least a few shards."

"I will... oh, the village is near, Fei. Take care of yourself."

"You need to do it better yourself." Then he added with a low whisper that couldn’t reach her. "Don’t make me worry about you too much that I forgot my situation..." With a small sigh behind the mask of Murphy, he leaned back.

Suddenly he remembered something and muttered. "Did she seriously forget to ask me about Lenormand Club?"

The horse-drawn carriage clattered across the cobblestones, its iron-shod wheels echoing through the foggy evening of Ciradyl.

Murphy leaned his head against the glass window, watching the yellow halo of the gas lamps blur into long, ghostly streaks. His fingers unconsciously tapped against his knee — a habit of Murphy that he was beginning to develop whenever his mind was parsing through fragments of forbidden knowledge.

’A Sephirot...’

The word itself seemed to carry a strange heaviness that made his spiritual perception ripple. In the religious texts of World 0, the Sephirot were abstract manifestations of the divine creator... But in a world governed by strict supernatural laws, a Sephirot was highly unlikely to be a mere philosophical concept. Kiyori might not know the full things, she was also as clueless as him and was trying to find out about it.

’If World 0’s history is a distorted, romanticized projection of the real cosmic truth, then what is a Sephirot in its true form?’ Murphy’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. ’An anchor? A source of an Authority? Or perhaps... something like Primordial Perfects?’

The pieces were beginning to connect in a deeply unsettling way. Kiyori’s ancestor, Inari, was a priestess who held dominion over the Tree of Ages. If the Tree of Ages was linked to a Sephirot, then the "Sun Fox" wasn’t just a protective spirit or a mythical beast. It was an Embodiment of an Authority’s domain — possibly a mythical creature born from that specific Sephirot’s convergence.

Murphy recalled the fundamental rules Old Bai had hammered into him. ’Things of the same source will always attract one another. Maybe Inari worshipped the Sun Fox?’

His advice to Kiyori to let the demon gather the shards had been a logical deduction on the surface, but a dangerous gamble in reality.

The carriage grounded to a halt with a sharp hiss of mechanical brakes as the cabman called out. "We’ve arrived at the West District intersection, sir."

Murphy snapped out of his thoughts, tossed a few silver coins onto the seat, and stepped into the ground. He pulled his dark coat tighter around himself.

He walked down a narrow, secluded alleyway, stepping over puddles of greasy water until he reached the police station and entered the nearby large building of the organization.

As he entered the basement, pipes hissed along the ceiling, carrying steam to heat the subterranean labyrinth where the government’s occult enforcers worked to keep the city from sliding into madness.

Murphy quickly pulled the mask out and returned to his Mo Fei identity. He bypassed the clerk’s desk, his boots clicking softly on the flagstones. He made his way straight toward the library, a room buried deep within the secure zone, where the walls were lined with lead sheets to prevent external divination.

Pushing open the door, he found the bookshelves with the old scent of paper and ink rushing through the air.

Old Bai exactly where he expected him to be.

Suddenly, he heard a low tune of a piano... it was melodic enough that it almost made him move on his own.

His gaze lay on Old Bai whose body was twitching. His hand was holding a small box, trying to cover it with all his might.

Just then a shockwave erupted from the box, and the sound of the piano suddenly increased. Breaking through Mo Fei’s eardrum, the sound instantly stabbed his brain.

Old Bai glanced at Mo Fei, his expression shifting to horrified, and shouted at him. "Sherlock, hurry and move away, get out of the room!"

It was already too late, as both Mo Fei and Old Bai’s expressions turned different. That was the sound of an artifact that had managed to awaken from seals... a grade 2 sealed artifact...