Chapter 370: The Sacrifice of the Returned

A winner had already emerged from the three options, but he didn't rush his decision. There was still one thing left to try.

He called the shadow up from behind the veil.

The shadow materialized on the training room floor, its inky mass a fraction more solid than it had been last week.

Put on the mask.

He projected the thought.

The shadow reached into the other side of the veil and retrieved the bronze Mask of Hermes.

The golden wings and twin snakes settled over the shadow's blank face, forming a seamless fit.

The moment the mask went on, the shadow's outline shrank and tightened.

Richard closed his eyes. Bridging the connection with a wisp of his spirit to gauge the mask's enhancement, he picked up the Solar Corona Method outline once more.

The second round of testing began.

He established the framework of Fourfold Breathing, using his heartbeat as the foundation.

On the exhale, he pushed the ether outward...

The blockages at the junctions of his ribs and spine remained.

Not only were they still there, they had grown larger.

Richard forced a breath through. The ether flow slammed into the junctions and rebounded instantly, leaving a suffocating pressure in his chest.

He pushed again. The rebounding force was even stronger, carrying an inexplicable, scorching heat.

His mouth twitched.

The mask's enhancement was clashing with the Solar Corona Method.

Hermes governed crossing, traversing, and flowing. Inside his body, the mask was guiding the ether toward two opposite ends.

The Solar Corona Method required the ether to radiate outward evenly, like a sun.

A sun radiated in all directions, while Hermes sprinted between two points.

One tried to scatter into a sphere, while the other tried to twist into a line. Their directions completely conflicted.

Richard halted the Solar Corona Method.

The scorching heat from that rebounded breath still lingered beneath his collarbone. He had to apply Healing for quite a while to soothe the overheated sensation.

He pressed his pen down hard, writing a single word in the margins of the Solar Corona Method outline: 'Rejection.'

With the mask's enhancement, the Solar Tradition's compatibility rating plummeted from 'usable' straight to 'rejection.'

He switched to Deep Reading, and the ether flowed back toward the Ether Seat of Days Past.

The mask's enhancement surged in alongside it. This time, there was no conflict.

Hermes's ether flow excelled at traveling from point A to point B. Directing it from his extremities straight to the Seat of the Sun was like giving it a high-speed lane—fast and unobstructed.

Inside the Seat of the Sun, the ether density spiked nearly thirty percent faster than without the mask.

Double... two and a half times... triple... The time it took to reach three times the normal density was visibly shorter.

His 'reading' state grew noticeably sharper as well.

The mask's messenger properties were resonating with Deep Reading.

Information transmission and language decoding were, at their core, the exact same thing.

Hermes was the god of language and writing, and the Classical Records Tradition dealt with texts day in and day out.

Rather than conflicting, the two paths actually reinforced each other.

Yet, it still lacked initiative. He was wearing a better-fitting pair of shoes, but the shoes couldn't walk on their own.

Finally, it was time for the Mirror Condensation Method. Richard shifted his breathing back to the tidal rhythm.

He held his breath, forcing the ether fluctuations to drop from their normal levels.

Eighty percent, seventy, sixty, fifty... Just as he hit the threshold, the mask's enhancement gave him a sudden push.

The push felt incredibly natural.

Hermes governed boundaries and traversal. The very essence of 'reflecting' was allowing external elements to pass through his layer of Still Water.

The mask vastly improved the efficiency of that passage.

The Still Water formed significantly faster, and its surface area was nearly double what it was without the mask.

More details flooded in.

One by one, the sealing inscriptions hidden within the training room's four walls reflected into his Perception.

He could see the flow of the inscriptions, their turning points, and the microscopic flaws at their junctions.

Goosebumps spread from his arms down his back.

In the previous round, his body had been saying, That's close. In this round, his body was screaming, This is it!

Richard opened his eyes and looked down at the thin outline of the Mirror Condensation Method.

...

On Monday, Richard knocked twice on the office door. No one answered.

He knocked again, and Isabella's voice drifted out from inside.

"Come in."

"It's done." His aunt pulled a custom-made box from the cabinet and placed it on the desk.

"Two days faster than expected. The alchemist had an order canceled recently, so he had a free afternoon to rush this out."

Richard walked up to the desk and prodded the inside of the box with his Inspiration, but nothing could penetrate it.

He prodded it again from the outside. It felt like pushing against a soft wall.

"How is the craftsmanship?" Isabella picked up a cup of completely cold citron tea from the corner of her desk and took a sip.

"Excellent." Richard flipped the lid open and closed it again.

The edges of the lid and the body aligned perfectly, not leaving a gap wide enough for a single strand of hair.

The exact moment it shut, he heard a faint 'poof' as the air inside was squeezed out.

A monogram was engraved on top of the box.

Richard recognized it immediately. It was the exact same mark as the one on the incense packaging Clara had given him last time.

"Senior Clara's distant uncle's handiwork?"

Isabella set her teacup down.

"His schedule is packed tight. Simple orders like this are handed off to the apprentices in his workshop."

"An apprentice made something this good?"

"His workshop is extremely strict about who they hire. The apprentices are no fools."

As she spoke, Isabella pulled a folded receipt from her drawer and slid it across the desk.

"Labor was one pound and four shillings. They didn't charge for materials.

"He noted that since you provided the Frost Branch yourself, they only charged for the refined salt and a little silver powder used for the adhesive."

Richard tucked both the receipt and the box into his canvas bag.

"Thank Senior Clara for me, and pass my thanks to her uncle's apprentice as well."

"Thank her yourself. Next time Clara sends a letter, just slip your own reply inside."

With that done, Isabella shifted back to business.

"Are you done testing the breathing methods?"

"I am."

Richard flipped his notebook open to the pages detailing his data.

Isabella scrutinized the three pages, reading through them twice.

"The Solar Tradition rejected you. How bad was it?"

"When I pushed the ether to the junctions of my ribs, it rebounded hard. It took me two days to fully soothe the area."

Isabella nodded.

"And the Classical Records Tradition?"

"The compatibility is good, but it lacks initiative."

"Initiative?"

Isabella frowned.

She had annotated that specific outline countless times, yet her nephew had dismissed it with a simple 'lacks initiative.'

"Mirror." She pulled the final outline in front of her, glancing just once at the words 'perfect fit.'

"Have you decided?"

"Pretty much."

"Pretty much?" Isabella raised an eyebrow.

"It either is or it isn't! I've told you before, ambiguity is the greatest taboo in academics..."

Richard smiled. "Right. I'm just waiting for your nod of approval."

Isabella choked back the rest of her lecture and leaned back in her chair.

After a moment, she finally spoke in a languid drawl. "You know which path I wanted you to choose."

"I know."

Isabella continued her attempt at persuasion.

"The Solar Tradition has hundreds of years of history behind it. From the initiation stage all the way to Major Adept, every single pitfall has been thoroughly documented by our predecessors.

"The Classical Records Tradition I practice isn't quite as comprehensive as the Solar path, but at least Sophia and Clara are ahead of you.

"And I am ahead of them. We know exactly which stones on this path are loose."

Her gaze finally drifted back to her nephew's face.

"Meanwhile, there are barely a dozen people practicing the Mirror Tradition in the entire Empire. They're scattered to the four winds. Where are you going to find any peers?"

Richard sat quietly in his chair, his hands resting on his knees.

He knew his aunt was worrying about him, and her concerns were entirely practical.

"Aunt Isabella, I traveled all the way from Briston to the Imperial Capital. Along the way, I had Mr. Hutton, I had you, I had grandfather, and I had Madam Marie.

"But I took those first few steps entirely on my own."

He spoke slowly.

"Deciphering those first few books was agonizing. I was fumbling blindly along the walls of a dark room, and I was stuck in there for a long time."

Isabella's fingers paused on the red cap of her pen.

"Senior Hutton was right there beside you the whole time."

"He was there, but he couldn't decipher the texts for me." Richard met her gaze.

"There were twenty-six books on that third-floor bookshelf, and I chewed through them one by one.

"He gave me the cipher, but I had to cut my own teeth on the words."

Isabella stared at him for several seconds before letting out a soft sigh.

Reaching into the bottom drawer, she pulled out a stack of parchment she had prepared in advance.

"From initiation up to Minor Adept. The complete progression sequence."

Isabella pushed the booklet to the center of the desk.

"This is as far as my connections go.

"Once you actually reach Minor Adept, your own network and contacts... should be enough for you to track down the rest."

She screwed the red cap back onto her pen, her movements deliberate and slow.

"Of course you had to choose a path I can't pave for you."

Richard reached out and took the booklet.

Flipping to the first page, he saw that the handwriting was neither his aunt's elegant script, nor the chaotic chicken scratch of Professor Mortimer.

Every letter was pressed flat, with unusually long horizontal strokes. It looked as if someone had hunched over a desk to meticulously copy it out by hand.

"I requisitioned that handwritten copy from the department archives," Isabella explained.

"The original text is stored in the restricted stacks on the third floor of the Imperial Capital University Library. The transcriber didn't leave a name, but it dates back about a century."

She retrieved a small paper packet from the drawer. Opening it, she revealed a piece of toffee.

"Take it." She pushed the packet toward Richard.

"I only have two left, so you get one."

Richard accepted the toffee.

Isabella's gaze drifted toward the wilting pot of mint on the windowsill.

"I won't be able to help you on your chosen path. But for the things I can help with, come find me anytime. I'll be right here in this office."

"Thank you, Aunt Isabella."

"Get out of here."

Back in his dorm room, Richard didn't rush to read through the complete breathing method right away.

Instead, he opened the newly crafted Frost Branch box.

It was the size of his palm, its walls carved incredibly thin. The interior possessed a natural field of stillness so potent that it didn't even require a salt seal.

Richard carefully placed his most sensitive materials inside—the rubbing of the Silence variant and the breathing method—along with the newly arrived unidentified items.

He closed the lid. Probing the box with his Inspiration, he couldn't detect a single trace of what lay inside.

He then took out the Name-Recording Tassel that Demeter had entrusted him to appraise.

He placed the Sacred Ibis Bronze Paperweight and the Bronze Scales side by side on his desk.

First, he had the Sacred Ibis 'look' at the Name-Recording Tassel. The long beak pointed toward the ear of wheat, and under his Spirit Vision, the miniature faces carved into the grains lit up one by one.

Then, the Bronze Scales began to weigh the item, immediately yielding a surface-level conclusion.

The ear of wheat was registering the dead within a certain radius. It was not a cursed object.

The faces were all etheric imprints left by the recently deceased, automatically drawn in and absorbed by the tassel.

The registration process itself was entirely passive. The tassel wasn't actively 'demanding' anything; it was merely keeping a record.

Richard jotted down this preliminary report in his notebook.

But why register them at all?

He mentally sifted through everything he knew about the agricultural pantheon.

The Goddess of the Harvest governed planting, reaping, and nurturing. Yet, her most ancient domain had never been about granting bountiful crops.

In the granaries of the Black Soil River Basin, the lowest layer of grain was always mixed with a handful of ashes from the recently deceased.

Within the context of the mystical side, this was a standard agricultural ritual.

The Greek version of the myth was even more blunt: for the six months Persephone spent in the Underworld, no crops would grow.

The goddess's daughter became the bride of the Underworld's ruler for half the year, exchanging her very presence for the following year's harvest.

Those six months were winter on the surface, but underground, they were an accounting period.

The dead returned to the earth, the earth grew the grain, and the grain fed the living.

The Underworld was tallying exactly how many people had 'returned' to the earth this year.

Once tallied, the total would be multiplied by a certain coefficient to determine the harvest output for the following year.

The more dead there were, the greater the harvest would be.

As the veil thinned, the innate instincts of Demeter's field awakened.

The field was taking stock of this year's 'sacrifice of the returned.' It needed to register the sacrifice before it could digest it.

The war had been raging for four months, and the death toll across the entire Old Continent was setting horrific new records every single day.

These imprints of death spread from the frontlines all the way to the rearguard, seeping into every inch of soil through the infiltration channels left behind by the thinning veil.

Richard finalized his report and sent it out via a Spirit Realm Messenger.

Demeter's reply arrived a day later.

The letter was brief, containing just a single sentence.

"If the fields across the entire continent are acting like this, then next year's harvest will be terrifyingly abundant."

At the bottom, she had tacked on a half-sentence:

"The Requiem Poppy in my fields produced far more seeds this year than ever before.

"When the wind blows to the southeast, the seeds have been rolling in that direction on their own."