I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

Old Big clearly didn’t want to dwell on this topic for too long.

He lifted the pewter cup from his leg and burped.

The burp abruptly lifted the heavy atmosphere in the room.

”Alright, alright, we’ve gotten sidetracked.” He slapped his thigh and stood up.

”For a Newcomer like you to be worrying about things beyond Grand Mastery is like a toddler in diapers worrying about who the next prime minister will be. It’s a complete waste of energy.”

A muscle in Richard’s cheek twitched. He was at a loss for words.

”Just focus on what’s right in front of you.

You’ve passed the inspiration test, which means you have the aptitude to learn Spiritual Vision. Now, it’s time for your first official lesson.”

Old Big stood up from his chair, brushed the wrinkles from his pants, and walked around to the back of the desk.

He squatted down and rummaged through the canvas tool bag, pulling out a few things.

The first was a palm-sized Copper Disc. A few concentric circles were carved onto its surface, and a small, cloudy crystal shard was embedded in the center.

The second was a thumb-thick Wax Stick, grayish in color.

The third was a cloth pouch, with something clinking and clanking inside.

Old Big lined the three items up on the desk.

”Now I’m going to teach you two basic lessons: the official introduction to Spiritual Vision and basic Divination.”

He first picked up the Copper Disc.

”You’re already doing Spiritual Vision. The Perception test just now was a rudimentary form of it.

You push out your Ether, and after it touches something, you sense its feedback.”

”But that’s just the crudest stage, like reaching out to feel for furniture in a dark room with your eyes closed.

You can feel where the table is and where the chair is, but you can’t tell what kind of wood the table is made of, or if someone is sitting in the chair.”

He handed over the Copper Disc.

”The formal introduction to Spiritual Vision requires you to learn one thing: ’Fixed Gaze’.

The Ether you push out doesn’t just touch something and pull back. You have to make it stop on the target’s surface, maintain stable contact, and continuously receive feedback signals.”

”What’s the difference between touching and fixing?” Richard asked.

”Touching is like a spring. It shoots out, hits something, and bounces back. The information you get is instantaneous and rough, only enough to judge ’presence or absence’.”

”Fixing is like a palm. Once you press it against something, you don’t let go.

You can slowly feel out the texture, temperature, material, shape... The amount of information is on a completely different level.”

Old Big placed the Copper Disc in the center of the desk. The crystal shard on its surface glinted with a hazy gray light under the lamp.

”This disc is a training tool for Spiritual Vision. The concentric circles on its surface are a ruler to help you calibrate the distance and direction you push your Ether.

The crystal shard is the bullseye. When you practice, you center your Fixed Gaze on the crystal shard. Maintain contact for as long as you can—the longer, the better.”

”At first, you might only be able to hold it for three to five seconds before the Ether slips off the target’s surface. If it slips, just start over. Don’t rush.”

”Once you can stably hold it for more than twenty seconds, you’ll be considered to have mastered the basics.

After you’ve mastered the basics, the way you see things will be completely different from ordinary people.”

He tapped the edge of the Copper Disc.

”When an ordinary person looks at a Marvel, they see its shape, material, weight, and age.

When you use Spiritual Vision to apply a Fixed Gaze to a Marvel, you can see the deep structure of its Inscription, the flow and density distribution of its Ether, and the integrity of its Seal.”

”These are things the naked eye can’t see and instruments can’t measure. Only Spiritual Vision can perceive them.”

Richard picked up the Copper Disc and turned it over to carefully examine the back.

The back was smooth, with no Inscription, only a line of extremely small letters carved on the edge: M.V.B.

The maker’s initials.

M.V.B. He racked his brain but couldn’t come up with a matching name.

”My teacher made that,” Old Big said casually.

”She made a training disc for each of her students. One for each person, and she didn’t take them back. I don’t need it anymore, so you can have it.”

Old Big then picked up the Gray Wax Stick.

”Next is basic Divination.”

He scratched a line on the surface of the Wax Stick with his fingernail.

”There are many paths to Divination. The one passed down in our lineage is the most basic, ’Wax Reading.’ It doesn’t even have a formal name. My teacher called it ’Wax Words’.”

He broke the Wax Stick in two and stood one half upright on the crystal shard in the center of the Copper Disc.

”Simply put, you light the Wax Stick, let the wax drip naturally onto the Copper Disc, and read the information from the shape it makes after it solidifies.”

”What kind of information?”

”Depends on the question you ask.”

Old Big took out some matches, struck one, and lit the Wax Stick.

The flame of the Gray Wax Stick wasn’t the orange-yellow of a normal Candle; it was a cool, cyan-tinted white.

The flame was small, burning steadily in the nearly windless room without flickering.

Wax began to slowly slide down the side of the Wax Stick. After flowing onto the surface of the Copper Disc, it solidified quickly, forming irregular white protrusions.

”Stare at the wax,” Old Big’s voice grew softer.

”At the same time, ask a simple question in your mind. Don’t ask anything too complicated, like ’How long will I live?’ or things like that.

The wax can’t answer that kind of question, and even if it did, you wouldn’t understand it.”

”What type of question should I ask?”

”Start with the simplest. Think of a question you already know the answer to, then see what shape the wax forms.

Use the known answer to calibrate your ability to interpret the wax shapes.”

Richard stared at the solidifying wax on the Copper Disc and silently asked a question in his mind.

After the wax solidified, it formed a crooked Y-shape.

”A Y-shape.” Old Big glanced at it.

”In the Wax Reading Technique, that usually represents a ’fork’ or a ’choice’. What did you ask?”

”I was wondering what I should do first tonight.”

”It seems you have two things to do tonight.” Old Big nodded.

”The wax read the ’fork in the road’ in your mind.”

He scraped the wax off the disc’s surface with his fingernail, leaving it clean again.

”The core of the Wax Reading Technique isn’t the shape of the wax itself.

The shape is just a vessel. What’s really at work is the brief resonance between your Ether and the trace amounts of Ether in the wax during those few seconds you’re watching it.”

He tapped the Gray Wax Stick.

”This kind of Wax Stick is made with a special formula mixed with Ashen Grass powder. It contains an extremely small amount of Ether.

When lit, the Ether in the wax is activated and resonates with the crystal shard on the disc as it drips.”

”Your Ether Perception also gets involved in that instant, and the question in your mind influences the way the wax solidifies.”

”So the Wax Reading Technique isn’t really reading the ’future’ at all, it’s reading ’oneself’?”

Old Big blinked.

”I asked my teacher the same question back in the day, and this is how she answered me:

’The introductory stage of all Divination is about reading yourself. Only after you understand yourself can you begin to read other things.’”

He handed the Wax Stick to Richard.

”Take the disc and the Wax Stick. Every day before bed, after you finish your Spiritual Vision training, light a small piece of the Wax Stick, let a few drops fall on the disc, and practice reading them yourself.”

”At first, the shapes will be chaotic, and you won’t see any pattern.

Don’t rush. After practicing a few dozen times, you’ll slowly start to notice that some shapes appear more frequently.”

”That’s your own ’Wax Language’ starting to form. Everyone’s Wax Language has subtle differences. There’s no standard answer, only a code that you alone can decipher.”

Richard wrapped the Wax Stick in oiled paper, put it in his bag, and set it beside the Copper Disc.

Old Big then opened the cloth pouch, and with a RATTLE, a pile of small stones poured out.

There were twenty-some stones, each polished into a flat, round shape, with different symbols painted on their surfaces in red lacquer.

”This is a complementary training tool. You’ll use it after you’ve mastered the basics of Spiritual Vision. For today, just take a look at it.”

He picked one out; it had an upward-pointing triangle painted on it.

”Each stone represents a meaning.

You carry them with you in the pouch, and when you need to, you grab a handful, toss them onto the disc, and perform a more complex reading based on where the stones land.”

”More advanced than the Wax Reading Technique?”

”Correct. The Wax Reading Technique is for beginners, the Stone Reading Technique is intermediate, and anything beyond that...” He smiled. ”Anything beyond that is not something I can teach you.”

As Richard took the cloth pouch, he noticed that some of the red lacquer on the stones’ surfaces had worn off.

This set of stones had been used many times.

”Did your teacher make these too?”

”No, I carved these myself.”

For once, Old Big seemed a bit embarrassed.

”The set my teacher made... I lost it back in the day. I dozed off on a train and forgot it under the seat when I got off.

By the time I remembered and went back to look, the train had already left.”

He rubbed his hands together. ”So later, I had to carve a new set from memory. My craftsmanship is nowhere near my teacher’s, but I’ve tried them myself, and they work.”

”None of this is valuable stuff. If you threw it in the trash, someone might just see it as junk.

Just take it all. After you’ve practiced Wax Reading this week, you can take a look at the stones.”

Richard tied the cloth pouch shut and stuffed it into the side pocket of his bag.

The Copper Disc, the Gray Wax Stick, and the Talisman Stones—the three training tools combined were not light.

His bag also contained textbooks and notebooks. With these added, it felt quite heavy on his back.