Chapter 247: The Debate on Traditions

Madam Marie cradled her teacup, taking a slow, deliberate sip.

Taking advantage of the pause, Richard finally asked the question he had been holding back.

"Madam Marie, that massive commotion in the city last night... what exactly happened?"

Madam Marie set her cup down.

She raised a hand and gave the center of the coffee table a very light flick.

The patch of warm yellow light on its surface condensed into a pool of water of indiscernible depth.

Images surfaced within it.

Richard recognized the technique.

The rippling images depicted a city block.

"Look at this area first."

At a specific moment, the entire street fell dead silent. The steam whistles, rattling chains, and human voices all vanished.

"This is where that foreign intruder walked last night."

"Wherever it walked, the reflections lagged half a beat behind.

"The people nearby heard their own names whispered ever so softly in the middle of the night."

Richard had heard it last night, too.

"Everyone in that area had the exact same dream last night,"

Madam Marie continued.

"They dreamed of an eyeless eye opening and staring at them."

Richard shuddered. Everything connected.

When Mrs. MacNeil drew the fourth card from behind the Chief Responder, it had flipped over on its own, revealing exactly that: a pupil-less, eyeless eye.

"Last night, this intruder was battling two local Virtuosos stationed here."

Madam Marie raised her hand, retracting the pool of water.

"I won't show you any more."

She spoke with a touch of teasing warmth.

"Your Inspiration is still a newly weaned babe. If I feed you too much at once, you'll get indigestion."

Amused, Richard felt the tension in his chest ease.

Madam Marie swirled the remaining tea in her cup, seemingly pondering where to begin.

"Since we are already on the topic..."

"This old woman might as well toss you a few extra words. You have no use for them now, but you just might need them down the line."

"You might know that upon reaching the Intermediate Rank, one must pre-select a tradition for the future. That is when the path forks."

Madam Marie held up two fingers.

"One is the Great Path.

"Those are the five recorded in your books.

"This road is paved perfectly flat, with signposts planted clearly one after another.

"Those who walk this path have it easy... people from past millennia have already filled in all the potholes for them. All they need to do is keep their heads down and walk."

"And the other?" Richard asked.

"The other is the Narrow Path.

"Those are the obscure, minor traditions without name or status. Walk this path, and no one will erect signposts for you.

"The ground is uneven, and you must find your way forward entirely on your own."

At this, she chuckled to herself.

"But these two paths, I hear... and I've only heard... look entirely different at the summit."

"The top of the Great Path is welded shut."

Madam Marie tapped her fingertip against the coffee table.

"No matter how brightly those on the Great Path burn, they can only ever reach the rank of Virtuoso.

"The door to the 'Master' rank above that is welded completely shut. They couldn't smash it open even if they battered their heads against it."

Richard listened with utter focus.

"As for the top of the Narrow Path, I hear... it isn't welded."

Madam Marie shifted the subject, diluting that bit of solemnity.

"Just look at me."

She picked up her teacup and pointed vaguely at the blurred, indistinct expanse of her own face.

"Things that even Virtuosos can't touch, yet here I am, an old Major Adept, telling you about them with such vivid detail, as if I've seen it with my own eyes."

"Just treat this as idle after-dinner chatter and forget it once you've heard it.

"One of us hasn't even reached Signature, and the other is just an old woman guarding her little acre on Flower Moon Street in retirement.

"Whether the doors of those figures in the sky are closed or not isn't something we should be worrying about."

"Then... which path are those two local Virtuosos from last night on?" Richard couldn't help asking.

Madam Marie didn't mind the question and continued.

"One walks the Sun, the other walks the Hearth. Both are on the Great Path.

"Last night was a trap they set.

"They planted bait in the city to lure that foreign guest out from where it was supposed to stay."

"Why lure it out?"

"They wanted to crush it before it could slip into a territory 'out of their reach'."

Madam Marie opened her hands in a faint shrug.

"And the result?"

"The result... they failed to crush it. That guest managed to slink back, covered in wounds."

Madam Marie looked at the boy before her, pushing down something she hadn't voiced.

The Abyss Tradition was an exception.

Walking the deepest, most treacherous, most seductive of the Narrow Paths—its door was not welded shut. It was fast, and it was strong.

But she had no intention of pulling back that curtain for the boy in front of her.

She had seen too many promising talents ruined simply because someone had pointed out that fast, strong, unwelded path too early.

They could never stop themselves after that. They plummeted all the way down, burning themselves up into tragic cold cases no one was willing to mention again.

The cycle he nurtured was so clean, his resonance with the supernatural item so deep—he was a rare, exceptional talent.

Precisely because he was so promising, she couldn't allow him to go astray.

"Alright," Madam Marie said. "I've said enough for today."

Richard fell silent for a moment before finally voicing the matter pressing heavily on his mind.

"Madam Marie, Old Biggs... Mr. Bigelow. He's in Briston, and he's been investigating something lately."

"I was thinking, since you are his teacher, if you could..."

"Little Richard," Madam Marie said softly, cutting off the rest of his sentence.

"Bigelow's affairs are not for you to worry about," she said.

"Are you... not worried about him?" Richard still had to ask.

Madam Marie held her teacup, looking at him.

On that blurred, indistinct face, Richard couldn't read a single emotion.

"My students are scattered across more than half the Empire, from the Imperial Capital heading north.

"I took in every single one who came. I refused no one."

Richard listened quietly.

"Over the years, the ones who went missing, the ones who never came back, the ones who laid down and never got back up... I can't even count them all."

"For the first few, I couldn't sleep at night," she said.

"Later, I slowly came to terms with it.

"If I agonized and tore my heart out for every single one of them...

"...my old bones would have fallen apart years ago. How would I still be sitting here, pouring you tea?"

She took a sip of tea.

"There is only one thing I can teach them: how to live a few more years in this line of work.

"I have finished teaching that.

"The path ahead is one they must walk step by step on their own.

"I cannot see them off, nor can I walk it for them."

Richard had nothing more to say.

He stood up and slung his satchel over his shoulder.

"Thank you for your guidance today."

He offered a solemn bow to the ageless woman sitting behind the coffee table.

"I've memorized the blackened-out chapter."

"Mhm," Madam Marie acknowledged.

"Go back and chew on it slowly. If you can't swallow it all at once, keep it in your mouth and chew it a few more times.

"Once you've chewed it through, then, when you actually run into something stronger than you, you'll be able to open your mouth and speak."

"Yes."

Richard turned and walked toward the copper-plated door.

As he stepped to the entrance, the door melted open on its own, letting in the soot-stained daylight from the outer stretch of Flower Moon Street.

Right before stepping out, he couldn't hold back; he glanced back at the woman one last time.

She was still holding her warm cup of tea, sitting behind the table.

Through the room's warm yellow glow, her face remained just as blurred and indistinct.

The stunningly beautiful portrait of the woman in the newspaper;

The woman before him, whose facial features couldn't even be pieced together;

And the face seen across this very coffee table by the ordinary clients who came seeking her...

In the end, which one was the real one?

Or were they all the same person, simply wearing different masks in the eyes of different people?

Richard didn't dwell on it any longer. He still had to hurry back to the Ashford Residence.

In the afternoon, he still had makeup lessons with his aunt.

There were only two days left before the seminar began.

...

After Richard left, Madam Marie sat alone behind the coffee table for a long time.

The mirrors filling the room reflected one another, yet uniquely failed to cast the reflection of the person sitting right in the center.

She raised her hand and directly manifested her Tarot Cards.

She didn't think of the boy named Richard, nor did she think of the student trying to build a temple.

In her mind, she thought of someone else: her most unremarkable disciple.

Her tutelage had produced once-in-a-decade geniuses, but it had also produced people like him: diligent and hard-working, yet cursed with mediocre aptitude.

Madam Marie began to shuffle the deck.

Her method of shuffling was no different from the one she had taught Richard and every other student who entered her door.

First, thoroughly ponder the question to be asked.

Madam Marie stopped shuffling on the seventh pass.

She cut the deck and drew the first card from the very center of the pile.

Upon flipping it over, the card didn't settle immediately.

Under Madam Marie's gaze, the painted human figure on the card began to move at an agonizingly slow pace.

It felt as if several heavy layers of deep water were pressing down on it, and only after countless transfers and translations did that faint outline manage to seep through.

[The Hermit - Upright].

A cloaked old man stood alone in the dimness, carrying a lantern.

Madam Marie read that lantern.

He had walked a solitary path entirely on his own for his whole life.

Now, he was going to take the lantern he had always carried to illuminate himself, and set it down elsewhere to cast its light.

Who it would shine upon, or what it would illuminate, the card did not say.

The card only said that he was shifting that bit of light away from himself.

Madam Marie gently laid the first card on the table.

She drew the second card.

The second card was even more sluggish and harder to discern than the first.

She concentrated, waiting for those heavy layers of deep water to clear just a fraction so she could make out the image on the card.

[The Hanged Man - Upright].

A man hung upside down from a tree by a rope.

One foot was bound, while the other rested loosely over it.

His head pointed downward, the tips of his hair dangling.

Madam Marie read this card very, very slowly.

The Hanged Man spoke of suspension and sacrifice.

Turning oneself entirely upside down, viewing this right-side-up world from an angle no one would ever expect.

The crucial part was his suspended posture.

In this card, the Hanged Man had slipped his own foot into the noose.

He had willingly hung himself upside down.

The rope was tightened by another's hand.

But the act of slipping his foot inside—that was all him.

Madam Marie held her focus and stared at it for a long time.

Beneath the heavy layers of deep water, no other outlines were willing to surface.

She couldn't see it.

She could only read that the man was going to hang himself upside down; she couldn't read when he would do it, how he would do it, or for whom.

A detective could read that a person was marching to their death, but couldn't read what time they left the house, which street they took, or whose blade they ultimately died upon.

Madam Marie laid the second card beside the first.

She drew the third card, and her hand instantly froze.

It was [Judgement - Upright].

An angel leaned out from the clouds, blowing a long trumpet.

Beneath the blast of the trumpet, the dead who had been lying flat sat up from their coffins, one by one.

The dead sat up, and the dead spoke.

Madam Marie read that trumpet, and she read the dead sitting up.

The Judgement card spoke of summons and reckoning, an echo that only fell after death.

What needed to be heard was finally heard;

The debts that needed settling were finally dragged into the light.

The all-important trumpet blast was blown from the outside;

Yet the ones who sat up and opened their mouths were the dead themselves.

Madam Marie read the meaning of this card.

He had spent his entire life, decades on end, reading corpses in the morgue.

This time, he was going to let himself speak.

In the gloom of the card's face, something surfaced on the visage of the dead man sitting up to speak.

Madam Marie saw it clearly: it was a smile.

She was far too familiar with this smile.

Those disciples of hers who spent their whole lives cowering in the corner, looked down upon by everyone...

...this was exactly how they smiled when they finally did one thing right.

There wasn't a trace of fear in that smile.

The trumpet blast faded, and the dimness closed back up.

All three cards were Upright, yet they led to the ultimate end of death.

Madam Marie sat there. She did not draw the fourth card.

The fourth card would be for asking about the things she couldn't see.

Drawing it would be entirely pointless.

That was the work of Prophets.

She was no Prophet.

She spread the three cards out side-by-side on the coffee table.

The Hermit had taken out his lantern.

The Hanged Man had slipped his own foot into the noose.

Judgement saw the dead speaking for themselves.

Sitting amid a room full of mirrors that reflected no one, Madam Marie gathered the cards back up, one by one.

Back then, she had repeated the same phrase to every single student who crossed her threshold.

One student had taken those words straight into his bones.

Not a single corpse he had examined in his entire life had anything to do with him personally.

Now, the one he was going to examine was his own.

He was going to turn himself into a piece of evidence.

"...What a foolish child."