Chapter 187: Secrets of the Abyss

Sunlight slanted through the window, falling across the stack of documents in the center of the desk.

Richard put away the text on encryption and stretched, his shoulder blades rubbing a dull thud against the back of the chair.

At the very bottom of the pile lay a thin booklet with a simple title: {深渊之秘}.

Beside the signature, his aunt had added a line in small fountain-pen script: "Richard, read the attached note before you open this."

The note was folded separately and slipped between the cover and the title page.

Richard unfolded it.

"A warning first: your guide and I reviewed this booklet together. Mr. Hutton selected the excerpts, and I laid down the projections."

"Drink a glass of warm water before you open it, and withdraw any spell models you are currently maintaining."

"After viewing each segment, rest for a moment before turning to the next."

"Once you finish, do not read it a second time."

On the back of the title page was a ring drawn in silver thread.

The center of the ring was left blank, shaped to fit the palm of a hand.

Sweeping his Spirit Vision over it, he could perceive the dormant flow of aether along the ring.

Richard recognized this structure.

A projection spell model.

Occasionally, rare manuscripts used these models to create dual-layered texts that could be both read and viewed.

By feeding in a tiny trace of aether, a newcomer could experience a cinematic illusion within their mind.

Ordinary projection models could only sustain a few seconds of imagery. Imprinting an entire book's worth of visions required the handiwork of a Minor Adept in the Secret path.

Richard pinched the note between his fingers.

Two of his elders had vetted this entire booklet—images and text alike—before passing it on to him.

He folded the note and set it aside on the corner of the desk.

A muffled thud drifted up from downstairs—the oven door closing.

His mother called out, "Evelyn, don't get so close," followed immediately by his sister's aggrieved protest, "I just want to look!"

Richard walked to his door and turned the lock.

Returning to his desk, he took three deep breaths, drawing the expanded Micro-circulation state he had been maintaining back into the dead center of his chest.

The leaves of his Light Tree folded inward, and the ambient aether flow in the room receded back within the borders of his body.

He turned to the first page.

Pressing his right palm against the paper, he followed his aunt's instructions, coaxing out a wisp of aether and channeling it through his fingertips into the silver ring.

The silver thread awoke.

The light in the bedroom dimmed, and then dimmed again.

The sounds, temperature, and scents of the outside world were slowly muffled, enveloped in an incredibly fine veil.

The title of the first excerpt floated up from the booklet on the desk.

"The following three entries are dedicated to those who have heard the sound of water behind the door."

Richard set down his pen.

The bedroom before him was gently peeled away, revealing another scene beneath it.

A wheat field stretched out before him.

The wind pressed the wheat into rolling waves. In the distance stood a small, steepled church, two crows perched upon its bell tower.

A sweet scent lingered in the air.

...But it wasn't the fragrant sweetness of ripe wheat. It was the coppery, metallic sweetness that welled up in the back of the throat.

A childish, singsong voice rang out.

Richard couldn't pinpoint the source. It simply blanketed the air above the wheat field in an even layer.

"Once upon a time, there was a very good little boy in the village."

A child walked into the scene.

He was seven or eight years old, barefoot, with his trousers rolled up to his knees and a piece of foxtail grass clutched in his hand.

"He was better behaved than all the other children. The others learned how to whistle, how to climb trees, how to sneak frogs into the girls' baskets."

"He didn't learn any of that. He only learned one thing."

The child came to a halt in the wheat field, tossed away the foxtail grass, and closed his eyes.

"He learned how to breathe."

When the childish voice said the word "breathe," the rippling waves of the wheat field paused for a fraction of a second.

"The village elder taught him to count to four when inhaling, count to four when holding it, count to four when exhaling, and count to four when holding it again."

"This was called the good boy's breathing."

"The little boy learned it so fast. The elder rubbed his head and said he would grow up to be the most successful child in the village."

Richard recognized this technique: Fourfold Breathing, the entry-level method of the Golden Path.

"But the little boy wasn't satisfied."

The voice drew out the words softly and giggled.

"The little boy said the breathing the elder taught was too slow."

"Inhaling for four was too slow, holding for four was too slow."

"I want to learn a fast way, a way to breathe in all the good things in one single gulp."

In the illusion, the child opened his mouth.

He stopped counting to four. He opened his mouth incredibly wide, as if trying to inhale the entire wheat field, the church, and the two crows perched on the bell tower all at once.

As he inhaled, Richard watched the sweet scent in the air spiral into the boy's mouth in visible wisps.

The wheat flattened toward him. The crows plummeted from the bell tower, crashing into the field and never taking flight again.

"The little boy learned it!" The voice sounded delighted. "The boy learned how to breathe in all the good things in one single gulp, and he grew so fast."

This appeared to be the breathing method of the Path of Blood Ignition; Richard had read a little about it.

The boy grew taller.

Right before Richard's eyes, the child shot up from the size of a seven-year-old to the height of a grown adult.

Then he grew taller still. Bones crackled beneath his skin as his arms, fingers, and neck stretched unnaturally long.

"The villagers all said, 'My, whose child is growing so well? So tall and strong, he'll surely be a great success someday.'"

The boy's face still belonged to a seven-year-old.

His face hadn't aged at all, yet the body beneath it had sprouted as high as a roof beam, forcing him to hunch over just to stand in the wheat field.

"But the little boy was hungry."

The childish voice dragged out the word "hungry" for a long time.

"Inhaling once wasn't enough anymore."

"The boy wanted to inhale twice, three times. He wanted to inhale all the sweetness in the village."

"The sweetness of the wheat, the sweetness of the well water, the sweetness of freshly baked bread—he wanted it all!"

Within the illusion, the steepled church began to lose its color.

First, the stained glass windows faded to gray, followed by the walls, and finally the bell tower.

It was as if something was being siphoned out of the entire village. Its colors washed out inch by inch until nothing remained but a pallid, lifeless gray.

The boy kept growing.

His face was still that of a seven-year-old.

But on that young face, his eyes began to bulge.

They bulged and then split open, spawning new, smaller eyes from the fissures. Those new eyes then split again, birthing even smaller ones.

His mouth tore open past his ears. Inside, there were no teeth—only concentric rings of dark, throat-colored flesh spiraling inward.

The childish voice continued its cheerful nursery-rhyme cadence.

"The little boy grew so very, very tall."

"The villagers couldn't even see his face anymore, because his head reached all the way up into the clouds."

"But the boy was still hungry."

"The boy said, 'Mommy, I'm so hungry.'"

"The boy said, 'Mommy, there's no more sweetness in the village. I breathed it all up.'"

Down in the center of the gray village, a tiny human figure tilted her head up. It was the boy's mother.

"Mommy said, 'Be a good boy. Mommy will bake you some bread.'"

"The boy said, 'Mommy, the bread isn't sweet anymore.'"

"The boy said, 'Mommy... but you have sweetness in you.'"

The voice stopped.

The projection plunged into silence.

The wheat field lay perfectly still. The gray village lay perfectly still. And the impossibly long thing, whose face scraped the clouds, bent down.

The childish voice spoke again.

This time, it was faint and gentle, like a lullaby's final whisper.

"After that, there was no one left in the village."

"There was no more wheat, and no more sweetness."

"There was only a very, very tall good boy who had learned a new way to breathe."

"He just stood there. And he was still hungry."

"He would stay hungry forever, because he had breathed in everything there was to breathe."

"But he couldn't stop. The new way of breathing never taught anyone how to stop."

"And that's the end of the story... So, little friend, wouldn't you say he was the most successful boy in the village?"

The projection faded.

Richard realized his pen had slipped from his hand onto the desk, its ink bleeding a small black stain into the corner of his manuscript.

His room was quiet. The list of thirty-six books remained pinned to the wall, and somewhere downstairs, Evelyn was humming an off-key tune.

He sat in silence for a moment before picking up his pen.

The nursery rhyme, combined with the illusion, had vividly demonstrated the general effects of the introductory breathing method for the Path of the Abyss.

Gulping down aether in massive quantities, growing fast, gaining strength fast—but never being able to stop. Ultimately draining everything in the surroundings dry, before draining oneself.

Following the nursery rhyme was a detailed breakdown of its underlying mystic principles.

He dutifully transcribed it all onto his own paper, saving it to digest slowly later.

As he copied, the lingering echo of that childish voice—dragging out the word "hungry"—kept looping in his mind.

Richard rubbed his temples, took a brief rest, and moved on to the second segment.

The guiding runes at the start of the second segment were shaped slightly differently.

The partially drawn ring was fuller this time, its gap much narrower.

He coaxed out another wisp of aether and pushed it in.

Once again, his bedroom peeled away.

This time, it was a battlefield.

Trenches of upturned black soil scarred the landscape, half-burying splintered wagon shafts, scorched banners, and mangled corpses that might have been human or something else entirely.

The sky was an iron gray. A city burned in the distance, the firelight licking the bellies of the clouds a dull, bloody red.

A voice rang out.

This time, it belonged to an elderly man. His voice was thick with grit, and he softly cleared his throat at the end of every sentence.

"I'm going to tell you about a man," the old man's voice carried across the battlefield. "A man who never lost."

Through the illusion, a shadow walked across the black soil.

Richard couldn't make out his face.

Everything else in the projection was razor-sharp, but this man looked as though someone had dragged a thumb across wet paint, smearing his features together.

He wore the cropped leathers of a Hunter, an abnormally long-handled axe slung across his back.

At this point, Richard understood: this entry detailed the merging of the Abyss Tradition and the Hunter path.

"He was a Hunter," the old man rasped.

"He plunged into ice water at thirteen, triggered his first aether eruption at fifteen, and became a Practitioner at twenty."

"Up to that point, he was no different from any other skilled Hunter."

The faceless man strode into the center of the battlefield.

A dark tide surged toward him. Richard recognized them: aberrations deeply corrupted by aether. They swarmed without formation, relying purely on overwhelming numbers.

"But he wasn't satisfied," the old man cleared his throat.

"He thought Hunters were too slow. Hacking away swing by swing, firing off Enchanted Bullets one by one—it was too slow for him."

"He wanted a method where he could just lift a hand and wipe out everything in front of him."

"So he walked deeper."

Within the illusion, the man never drew his axe.

Instead, he made a subtle motion, as if pulling something outward from his own chest.

The black soil around him deepened.

It turned so utterly dark that Richard felt if he stepped onto it, he would sink endlessly into a bottomless void.

The leading edge of the surging aberrations hit that black soil and froze. Then, they simply slumped over, dead.

It was as if whatever allowed them to stand had been siphoned out from within.

Wave after wave, radiating outward from him, every moving thing on the battlefield crumpled to the earth.

"You see..." The old man's voice carried no joy, nor any other emotion. It was just a flat statement.

"He won. He lifted his hand, and he won."

"From then on, he won every battle the exact same way."

"The packs of Bonehounds up north—he'd clear a whole valley of them in half a day."

"The filth in the southern swamps—he'd stand on the shoreline, and the far bank would just go dead silent."

"The higher-ups gave him commendations, until eventually they ran out of ways to reward him. No other Hunter could match what he was doing."

The projection sped up. One battle blurred into the next.

In every single skirmish, the faceless man stood at the center, making that same subtle, pulling motion at his chest. And the enemies around him would collapse and fall silent in expanding ripples.

"Among those of his rank, no one could touch him."

"Even among Minor Adepts, very few were willing to cross him."

"Someone ran the numbers—he alone was worth a full squadron of Practitioners."

The old man's throat cleared out above the silent battlefield.

"Now, watch closely after he wins a fight."

The illusion slowed down.

The faceless man stood in the center of a freshly silenced battlefield.

He lowered his head and stared at his hands.

"With every victory, he changed a fraction more."

"After one battle, his nails blackened to the color of the rot-soaked earth."

"After the next, raised ridges webbed across the back of his hands—something writhing beneath his skin, crawling along his veins."

"After another, when he raised his hand, the stretch of forearm peeking from his sleeve barely resembled a human arm anymore."

"Every time he pulled from within, he offered another piece of himself up to the depths."

"Power from behind the veil isn't free. It lends it to you, and you use it to win."

"But for every win, it takes a piece back. And it decides what it takes."

In the illusion, the faceless man stood amid another conquered battlefield, but he no longer checked his hands.

This time, he tilted his head up to the sky.

Richard finally caught a glimpse of his face.

There was nothing on that face. Only hunger.

The exact same, bottomless hunger as the boy from the first story who had learned to breathe.

"And then..." The old man's voice slowed.

"He didn't even need to march into battle anymore. Wherever he walked, silence followed."

"If he passed a village, the livestock would stop making sounds. The well water would turn putrid."

"The locals started sharing the same nightmare—dreaming that they were plummeting into a bottomless abyss."

"He didn't lift a finger. He didn't do anything at all. He was merely walking past."

In the illusion, the man trudged down a dirt road in the countryside.

With every step he took, the grass flanking the path withered and flattened. Once it fell, it never rose again.

He left a trailing wake of dead, silent earth in his path.

"He became a walking anomaly. A piece of filth."

The old man cleared his throat. It took a long time.

"Do you understand? He still remembered his name. He remembered he was a Hunter. He remembered that he'd won every single fight."

"But wherever he stood, the land began to rot. He himself was the corruption."

"When the brass decided to seal him... they sent out a Virtuoso."

The vantage point pulled back.

A vast stretch of land rolled out before Richard's eyes. The walking pollution source stood at its center, completely ringed by an indistinct, impossibly tall shadow.

The shadow raised a hand. Nine nested rings of stone erupted from the earth, closing in around the man layer by layer.

As the innermost ring slammed shut, the faceless man tilted his head up toward the Virtuoso.

The old man repeated his final words.

"'I won every fight.'"

The stone rings sealed shut. That patch of land remains quarantined to this day.

"Every spring and autumn, they send someone out to reinforce the seal. The people who do that job... they never like to talk much when they get back."

The projection faded away.

Richard's palms were slick with sweat.

He wiped them on his trousers and picked up his pen once more.

Outside, the crunch of tires rolling over icy pavement signaled his father's return.

He heard the front door open, followed by the thud of Evelyn's footsteps charging down the stairs, and then the customary interrogation:

"Dad, are you hungry?"

"Nope."

"Really?"

"...A little bit."

"Stay away from the top shelf of the cupboard!"

Sitting upstairs and listening to the familiar bickering, the tightness in Richard's chest finally eased.

He lowered his head and transcribed the mystic explanation corresponding to the second projection, copying it word for word onto his paper.