Chapter 171: Silent Observation

Before dinner, Richard went upstairs and took a hot shower.

He turned the faucet, and hot water poured from the lead pipes. Steam crawled up the tiles, fogging the mirror white.

[Breathing: Healing] was most efficient when his pores were open.

The leaves of the tree of light unfurled in his chest. Every exhale pushed the lingering soreness from his muscles.

By the time he dried his hair with a towel, the dull ache beneath his temples had faded.

Dinner was stew with mashed potatoes, alongside the bread his mother had baked that morning.

Evelyn sat across from Richard the entire time, stealing glances at his face as she ate.

Their mother was also studying him, though far more discreetly, sweeping her gaze over him whenever she passed the salt shaker or butter dish.

Richard pretended not to notice, merely dipping his bread in the stew's gravy.

The lamb brisket in the homemade stew had the perfect ratio of fat to lean meat, and the carrots were stewed until tender.

"Eat slowly." His mother ladled another spoonful into his bowl. "You've been gone for ten days. You certainly couldn't have eaten well on the road."

"I ate well." Richard finished chewing a piece of potato. "The landlady at the Whitcom Inn made leg of lamb. A new recipe every day."

"Really?"

"Really. Roasted, stewed, braised, in soup—I tried it all."

Evelyn put down her fork. "Then why did you lose weight?"

"I ran around a lot."

"Ran around doing what?"

"Running errands for my seniors." That was a half-truth.

His sister let out an "oh" and picked up her fork to tackle the last piece of potato on her plate.

After the dinner table was cleared, his father brewed a pot of tea and took it to the study to inspect his newly acquired tin of tobacco.

His mother was in the kitchen washing dishes. Evelyn scrambled to help but was shooed out.

Richard went upstairs to his room.

Once inside his bedroom, he locked the door behind him.

His suitcase was already resting at the foot of the bed. He took out the items inside and lined them up one by one.

In the deepest layer was the Sphinx Lamp, wrapped in three layers of old flannel.

When he took it out, the body of the lamp was noticeably warmer than the day he first left home.

The middle layer held his pouch of Runestones, a Copper Dish, gray wax sticks, a long box of Silver Needles, and a small cloth bag containing his Maple Whistle.

The outermost layer held the spoils of his winter break internship: the Bronze Fragment and the Ritual Dagger.

After sitting down, he placed his hand over the dagger's silver hilt.

On the panel, the [Available Points] began to climb from 0.13.

It climbed much faster than it had with the copper coin from Flower Moon Street.

The Ritual Dagger had soaked in a medieval sealing field for nearly six hundred years, and it had a solid silver base. Once the seal was broken, the residual ether seeped out like water from an open floodgate.

Richard leaned back in his chair, his eyelids half-closed.

After about twenty minutes, his available points stopped at 0.89.

As usual, ninety-five percent of the ether in the dagger's main body was absorbed.

He moved the dagger aside to the left edge of the desk, swapping it for the Bronze Fragment.

The Bronze Fragment was cold to the touch. It had spent quite a long time inside the Whitcom Seal.

Once the seal was broken, its seepage rate was even fiercer than the dagger's.

[Available Points] continued to climb from 0.89.

1.4... 1.6... 1.68...

[Available Points]: 1.75.

Nearly two points.

He knew the advancement conditions for [Learning] Lv.3 by heart: Lv.2 progress at 100%, 1 available point, and personally deciphering a doubly overwritten encrypted text.

For the doubly overwritten condition, he could only wait and ask his aunt when she arrived. He hoped she wouldn't stand him up.

In addition, unlocking [Speculation] required 1 point.

If he had a surplus, expanding [Spiritual Capacity] from 10 to 20 would also cost 1 point.

When he used [Shadow Armor] to bail out the captain during the sealing ritual, the pure ether automatically separated by his Spiritual Capacity had been incredibly handy.

Moreover, the side effects were low and the recovery was fast; it had only taken two days to clear the buildup.

If he was ever truly pushed into a corner and forced to use Prometheus's Deep Ether Condensate...

The side effects of such a potent catalytic medium definitely couldn't be slept off in a couple of days.

Richard planned things out again:

Even if Clement and his aunt didn't bring in any new supernatural items in the short term, he already had enough points for his [Learning] advancement.

If those two channels could provide a few more pieces, he would unlock [Speculation] first, then expand [Spiritual Capacity] to twenty.

As for [eating] and [sleep], although he had met all their unlocking conditions...

Their Lv.2 progress bars were still far from 100%. He needed to accumulate his daily progress for a while longer.

[walking] and [Perception] were in the same situation. He had to grind them out slowly.

Speaking of which, he hadn't yet looked at the advancement conditions for the next tier of [Perception].

According to the convention of his previous skills, previewing didn't consume any points itself.

With a thought from Richard, a new line of text floated at the edge of the panel.

"This item is active. Further advancement requires:

Lv.2 progress at 100%;

Available points: 1;

Actively observe a hostile target of a higher Rank from behind the veil for fifteen minutes, remaining completely undetected throughout."

"Unlockable effect preview — Perception: Calm Observation:

While remaining stationary, the diffusion range and precision of spiritual perception will increase synchronously, and it will be less susceptible to reverse detection."

This unlocking condition was starting to get a little difficult.

Compared to the four [Body] items, whose unlocking conditions were practically freebies, the two currently displayed on the [Mind] side were somewhat challenging.

For [Perception], the main restriction was that it had to take place behind the veil.

The target also had to be hostile. Otherwise, he could have just stared at Mr. Hutton for fifteen minutes during class to finish it...

And actively observing a hostile target of a higher Rank in the Shallows for fifteen minutes seemed like courting death no matter how he looked at it.

But then again, this unlocking condition didn't require him to complete it alone.

If he could eventually find a Hunter and a Secret practitioner to team up with for field missions, he should have a chance to pull it off.

After sorting out his thoughts, Richard moved his notebook and the stack of rubbings to the center of the desk.

The stack of twelve rubbings from the Boundary Stones had been tied neatly with string by Maggie.

In addition to the rubbings, he had copied out a clean version himself.

The traced charcoal characters were easy to smudge, so the clean version was written with a fountain pen on stiff paper. Beneath each symbol, he had left three blank lines to add annotations.

The copy of the Bronze Fragment was made later.

He had been idle during those few hours on the train anyway, so using a sharpened pencil stub, he had traced every symbol on both the front and back of the Bronze Fragment.

Richard spread both copies out on the desk and compared them.

At first glance, the strokes from the Boundary Stones were predominantly curved, showing the obvious characteristics of ancient Celtic script.

However, scattered among them were a few sharp, square turns—traces left behind from the Romanization period.

The Romans didn't care much for curves. Their inscription masters had a habit of straightening out anything bent.

The Bronze Fragment was even more of a mix.

The front had a Celtic foundation, but someone had carved another style of symbols over it in an overlaid layer.

The back gave him even more of a headache; he completely failed to recognize that string of symbols.

It wasn't a Celtic base, nor a Romanized transition, and it had nothing to do with medieval ritual Latin.

Richard tried to hold a fixed gaze with his Spirit Vision.

But the moment he activated his Spirit Vision, several stroke transitions trembled slightly, as if something had swum past.

He immediately withdrew his Spirit Vision and stopped staring.

Old Biggs's "window theory" still rang in his ears.

The first rule of survival for the lower Ranks was to keep a low profile and look less at things they shouldn't look at.

He covered the back of the Bronze Fragment, deciding not to touch it for now. He would take it to ask his aunt and Mr. Hutton when he had the chance.

The next morning, as soon as Richard woke up, he continued annotating the parts of the Boundary Stone pillars he could understand.

That was the section with the strongest Celtic roots.

The first two lines of the first group: "With blood and salt, this stone is raised together," "Those who stand here may speak their names."

The first two lines of the second group: "Those who offer songs to the night," "Those who greet the light in silence."

The first two lines of the fifth group: "The water beneath the stone has not slept," "The names upon the stone are briefly silenced."

He couldn't match the rest. The two documents Mr. Hutton had left him didn't contain such references.

Maggie was a child born and raised in the Gaelic Highlands; she had barely managed to read out those few lines from the Celtic foundation.

But Richard could barely even recognize the basic Gaelic alphabet.

He needed basic reference materials on Gaelic, and not just Gaelic either.

The Boundary Stone Array was stacked in layers. Over the Celtic foundation lay traces of Romanization, and above that were ritual Latin annotations left by medieval monks.

For the ritual Latin, he had built a foundation using Mr. Holland's "From Sanctuary to Pulpit".

But the specialized ritual terminology of the Medieval Church was not the same thing as Cicero's speeches or Tacitus's "Annals".

The Church had its own distinct vocabulary.

Edmund had once said in Whitcom:

"You say 'seal,' we say 'saint's warding.' You say 'Spell Formula,' we say 'sacrament.'"

He didn't have a single word of reference material on hand for that entire vocabulary extended from translated liturgical rites.

Richard leaned back in his chair. He couldn't go to the school library right now.

During the winter break, Greenwood's gates were tightly locked.

Then he would go take a look at the Briston Municipal Library.

It was just north along Central Avenue, right next to City Hall.

He had no idea whether he would find materials on Gaelic and Church ritual terminology there.

Briston was a city with little history. Coal, iron, textiles—what held this city up were factory chimneys.

Still, it was better than nothing.

Furthermore... Richard's finger stopped tapping the edge of the desk.

A thought suddenly popped into his head.

Could the Municipal Library also have concealed texts?

Mr. Hutton had said that the extant sealing inscriptions, tomb inscriptions, and ritual fragments within the Empire added up to several thousands, both large and small.

More than half of the papers published by academia were hidden in public journals that looked like physiology, geology, or anthropology.

If this set of rules applied across the whole country, then theoretically, the Municipal Library's shelves should also hold a few books that "looked sleep-inducing but actually contained something else."

Briston had little history, but "little history" did not mean "none at all."

People had lived on this land regardless. Before the factories were built, there had been fields here, and before the fields, there had been wilderness.

Even if he could only dig up one or two encrypted fragments with local characteristics, once deciphered, he could bring them out to share as intel at the next Theogony Salon.

The value might not be great, but exclusivity was a value in itself.

Having made up his mind, Richard went downstairs to eat breakfast.

After keeping busy for half the morning, both his brain and his stomach were exhausted.

Coming downstairs, he found that his mother and sister were both up.

Richard took the tea tin from the cupboard and started boiling water.

He measured three scoops of tea leaves into the teapot, and as he warmed the pot, he spoke with feigned casualness.

"Mom."

"What is it?"

"Auntie said she's coming to Briston soon. Did you ask her exactly which day she's arriving?"

"The exact day hasn't been set yet." His mother took the bread out of the baking pan.

"Her academic research has a set order. She has to do field surveys in a few northern towns first, and her final stop will be here with us."

"About how many days will she stay?"

"A day or two. Three at most."

Richard placed the lid on the teapot.

"If she changes her itinerary at the last minute..."

"She won't." His mother was very certain. "Isabella never breaks a promise once she's made it."

At the breakfast table, Richard laid out his plans for the day while spreading butter on his bread.

"I'm going to the library this morning."

"The Municipal Library?" His mother set the teapot down.

"Yeah, to look up some materials."

Evelyn, who had been looking down and studying her Yorkshire pastry booklet, slowly raised her head upon hearing that Richard was going out.

She didn't speak, her gaze landing squarely on his face.

Richard took a bite of his bread, pretending not to notice.

Evelyn continued to stare at him. "Brother, you played me yesterday."

"I apologized."

"An apology is an apology." Evelyn tilted her head. "Whether I forgive you is another matter entirely."

She unhurriedly speared a piece of potato.

"If you're heading out and it's on the way... hmph, you know what to do!"

Their mother covered her mouth and chuckled softly.

Richard finished his bread.

"Alright."

"Mhm." Evelyn nodded in satisfaction, burying her head back into her pastry booklet.

"You've got a good brain, Brother. You'll definitely know how to show your sincerity."

..................

Richard emerged from Slag Alley and walked north along Central Avenue.

In winter, the streets of Briston were gray.

Gray flagstone roads, gray brick walls, gray skies.

Factory chimneys spewed grayish-white smoke into the sky, and the smell of soot drifted close to the ground.

After walking for about twenty-five minutes, he arrived at the library.

Richard pushed the door open and entered.

It was a little warmer inside than outside, but only marginally so.

Bookshelves lined both sides of the hall, extending inward row after row.

Standing at the entrance, Richard did a rough sweep of the room and mentally compared it to Greenwood's campus library.

Even though Greenwood was only a secondary school, the school board was willing to spend money, and many of the teachers were top graduates hired from the Imperial Capital.

Since they worked here, they naturally brought cutting-edge materials over from the Imperial Capital.

Any random stack of academic journals in Mr. Hutton's private office would be considered rarities outside.

As for the Municipal Library... Briston was a city propped up by factories. The purse strings of this city were coal, iron, and textile looms.

The library was just a facade put up by City Hall. The collection was small, and the categories were rather incomplete.

The most common items on the shelves were "Steam Engine Maintenance Manuals", "Illustrated Textile Machinery", and "Fundamentals of Metallurgy", along with a large number of practical books on bookkeeping, gardening, and home medicine.

Richard wasn't discouraged.

It was a proper library, after all. No matter how shabby it was, it would inevitably have basic reference books.

In the language row, he looked for Gaelic first.

The collection was indeed small, but small didn't mean nonexistent.

A proper Municipal Library was bound to be equipped with basic reference books.

After wandering around for a while, he found a copy of "Elementary Gaelic Grammar" and a "Gaelic-Albion Bilingual Dictionary".

As for ancient Celtic script itself, there were naturally no specialized materials on it here.

However, the underlying grammar of the ancient script was cut from the same cloth as modern Gaelic.

With these two basic Gaelic books, he would at least be able to independently chew his way through most of the Boundary Stone's first layer of Celtic foundation.

While walking and searching aimlessly like this, he turned the corner of a bookshelf and nearly bumped into someone.