Chapter 220: Coax, Trick, and Outlast

In the end, he couldn't escape oatmeal for dinner.

Evelyn stirred the pot, righteously declaring that her gingerbread rabbits had already eaten a chunk out of the household budget.

Brown sugar, cinnamon, good butter—none of them were cheap.

Their mother, Margaret, chimed in, saying, "Waste must be accounted for," though her tone carried a hint of indulgence.

Richard didn't mind. His appetite had grown so much over the past few months that even Father looked at him sideways; he could easily put away two large bowls of oatmeal with pickled radishes.

When the [Eating] trait kicked in to squeeze out every drop of nutrition, his body carefully broke down even the blandest food as if it were a treasure.

After finishing his porridge, he returned to his room and turned the gas wall lamp up to its brightest setting.

Richard opened the leather box and took out Divination and Spirit Vision: From Beginner to Master.

The binding at the spine had been resewn. The stitches were fine and even; whoever mended it had clever hands.

He turned to the first page.

The handwriting in the main text was neat to the point of being rigid, every stroke aligned as if written on an invisible grid.

This was a handwritten copy made personally by Madam Marie's teacher, starting from the definition of Inspiration and listing principles out one by one.

Richard read half a page and almost yawned.

He flipped further down.

Things started to change when he reached the third page.

The main text discussed the basic principles of the "fixed gaze."

It stated that the practitioner should "stably attach their Inspiration to the target, maintain constant contact, and prevent it from deviating."

A correct but entirely useless platitude.

But squeezed into the right margin beside this paragraph was another line of text.

Written in fountain pen, the ink was lighter than the main text, and the handwriting was much messier.

"Don't try to 'grab' it. It's like grabbing beans—the harder you squeeze, the farther they pop away.

You have to treat it like reaching into a bag of flour... keep your hand loose, and let it stick to you."

Richard stared at that line for a long time.

He had practiced his Spirit Vision's fixed gaze countless times—on the candle flame in the Copper Dish, the old wax in the wall crevices, the metallic stress inside a Silver Needle...

He had always felt he was staring, using his Inspiration to bite down hard on a target and refuse to let go.

Shuffling the cards for the seventh time, applying stress for the twelfth time—he had relied entirely on that unyielding bite.

But Madam Marie said to keep it loose.

He tried to follow her instructions, shifting his Inspiration from a "bite" to a "stick."

His Inspiration spread out, landing on the rim of the Copper Dish on the desk.

He no longer tried to pinch or press it. He just let his Inspiration rest there, allowing the Copper Dish's faint ether residue to slowly climb onto it.

The stability of his fixed gaze quietly nudged up a notch.

Richard sat up straight.

The main text was a rigid outline copied word for word by a Major Adept from their own teacher—a medium's legacy that had endured for centuries.

But the margins, the spaces between the lines, and every blank spot were densely packed with annotations Madam Marie had accumulated over decades of fieldwork.

The ink varied in shade. There was fountain pen and pencil, and in some places, he could tell she had gone back later to add notes in red ink.

Reading this book was like reading someone's entire life.

Richard flipped ahead a few pages.

In the section on "Stone Reading," the main text eloquently listed the standard interpretations for over twenty Runestones. Old Biggs had taught him those long ago.

But at the bottom of this page, Madam Marie had written a single line in pencil:

"Stones don't lie. The one lying is you, desperate to hear good news."

Richard remembered his first time divining whether his manuscript would be published.

Back then, he had read a "price," but he had done so reluctantly, wishing he could have poured just a little less water from the kettle.

He continued reading.

Madam Marie's metaphors were all grounded in plain, everyday things: kitchens, pharmacies, needles and thread, clotheslines.

On preparing for fieldwork, she wrote:

"Tie your shoelaces twice before you leave the house. The first time is for your feet; the second time is for your mind."

On Inspiration overload, she wrote:

"If you hang too many wet bedsheets on a clothesline, the rope won't snap right away.

When you see it sagging, it's time to take two sheets down. Don't wait for the snap."

On breaking in a new deck of cards, she wrote:

"New cards have the same temper as a new pot. The first few times you cook with it, everything tastes like iron.

Don't despise it. Cook with it a few more times, and the metallic taste will leave on its own.

If you treat it with disgust, it will give you that taste for the rest of its life."

Richard chuckled when he read that line.

As he read, he realized something.

Reading this book was actually raising his [Perception].

In the corner of the Panel, the progress bar for [Perception] Lv.2 was climbing faster than it did when he practiced the fixed gaze or performed divinations.

Throughout the entire book, Madam Marie's annotations were fundamentally teaching one thing.

How to "feel" a thing more finely, more slowly, and more loosely.

Reading her notes was like being trained by her hand-to-hand, sentence by sentence, across decades and hundreds of miles.

[Erudition] allowed him to "save" the entire book into his brain.

Every word of the main text, every correction, every red mark, and every crease stood out clearly in his mind, ready to be recalled at any moment.

This book was the work of someone who wasn't necessarily at the absolute pinnacle, but who was willing to put in the grueling effort. She had taken every mistake she could make and every loss she could suffer in her lifetime and recorded them all in tiny handwriting in the margins.

Richard turned to the very end of the book.

He tried to read a couple of pages. The density of the text abruptly spiked, layering jargon upon jargon.

While [Erudition] could memorize the words, [Speculation] couldn't quite gain traction.

He could understand every individual word, but couldn't piece together what the sentences actually meant.

What was even stranger was one particular chapter.

The title of that chapter had been blacked out with ink.

It was thoroughly crossed out. The black ink completely smothered the entire line, leaving not even the silhouette of a single letter visible.

The person who crossed it out was obviously Madam Marie herself.

He looked at the footer of that page.

"You will naturally understand this chapter when you truly need it."

...

Over the next few days, Richard settled into a steady reading rhythm.

He would read for half an hour after his morning jog and for two hours after dinner.

Madam Marie had one phrase that popped up repeatedly across different chapters.

"A diviner is a detective, not a prophet.

A prophet asks 'what will happen,' but a detective asks 'what has already happened.'

You can only ever read what has occurred and what is occurring.

Anyone who promises you 'the future' is either a fraud, or... something far more terrifying than a fraud."

Richard thought back to the anonymous round table at the Theogony Salon.

Hecate had promised exactly that—"the future."

He didn't dwell on it too much and began searching the book for the case studies he urgently needed right now.

In the middle section, there were two chapters placed side by side.

The first chapter: How to Use Divination to Interrogate a Sealed Artifact That Refuses to Speak.

The second chapter: Three Attitudes Toward Cursed Objects: Coax, Trick, and Outlast.

The main text categorized cursed objects and explained the basic outlines for these three methods of handling them.

In the margins of this chapter, Madam Marie's annotations were denser than anywhere else.

She had recorded a case from her youth.

That night, Evelyn lingered in his room, refusing to leave.

His sister's recipe for her batch of gingerbread rabbits was already on its fourth iteration.

But she still couldn't get the oven temperature right. Frustrated, she wanted someone to talk to.

"Richard, tell me a story." She sat on his bed, hugging her knees. "That worn-out book of yours has to have something worth telling, right?"

"It's not a worn-out book."

"Does it have any stories?"

Richard thought for a moment.

"It actually does."

"Then tell me!" Evelyn rolled over on the bed, waiting for him to begin.

"Alright..." It took Richard a moment to come up with an opening line.

"Once upon a time, there was a fishing town by the sea.

There was a bride in town whose boat capsized on her wedding day. She and her entire dowry sank to the bottom of the ocean.

Only one of her jewelry boxes was washed back ashore by the waves."

Evelyn watched him intently.

"...And then what?"

"And then the townsfolk started saying that whoever touched the box would be cursed with bad luck.

Any family that touched it would have their pots burn, their cows fall sick, and their hanging laundry blown into the mud by the wind.

So everyone chipped in and hired a famous old woman to 'clean' the box."

"Was the old woman powerful?"

"She was still young back then, and full of pride.

She thought to herself, What's so hard about this?

She set up a massive ritual formation, intending to purge all the 'bad luck' inside the box in one fell swoop."

"Did she clear it?"

"She caused a disaster." Richard lowered his voice.

"That night, the mooring ropes of the fishing boats docked in the harbor snapped one after another, and the boats drifted out to sea on their own.

Every household in town fell asleep and heard someone calling their names from the bottom of the sea.

Two men even got up in the middle of the night and walked toward the water. By the time someone stopped them, the ocean was already up to their knees."

Evelyn let out a yelp and buried her face in her knees, then immediately peeked back up.

"Why did that happen? Wasn't the box supposed to be 'cleaned'?"

Richard looked at his sister.

This was exactly the reaction he had wanted.

"Because... that box didn't want to leave.

It had lost its master at the bottom of the sea, and back on shore, it was despised by everyone. It had no one left.

When the old woman set up that massive formation, it was the same as telling it to its face, 'I'm going to kick you out.'

It had nowhere to go, so it thought... 'If I'm leaving, we're all leaving together. No one gets to stay.'"

The room fell quiet for a moment.

Evelyn didn't move for a long time.

"...So what did that old woman do after that?"

"She learned a lesson."

Richard continued to recount the lesson he had read in the book.

"When dealing with something that doesn't want to leave, the more you posture and try to chase it away, the more it will try to drag someone down with it. You can't force it out."

"Then what are you supposed to do?"

"You have to be more patient than it is. Don't chase it away. Keep it company. Take it slowly, and wait until it's willing to leave on its own."

Evelyn stayed quiet for a long while after hearing this.

Richard thought she had taken something profound away from it.

But then his sister looked up, her face completely serious.

"Richard, my oven is just like that."

Richard stared blankly. "...What?"

"My oven." Evelyn held up her recipe notebook and pointed to a crossed-out line.

"I'm always complaining that its temperature isn't accurate. I keep trying to 'cure' it, stuffing towels under it, opening the door to let the heat out, just torturing the poor thing.

And in the end, it just fights back. The more anxious I get, the more it burns things."

She put the notebook down, her tone dead certain.

"I should keep it company and figure out its temper. Let it get hot when it wants to get hot, and let it cool down when it needs to cool down.

If I don't fight it, it won't fight me."

Richard opened his mouth.

He had originally wanted to tell his sister a story about obsession and patience.

A lesson about an Ebony Box that even he was still slowly digesting.

Yet Evelyn had taken that lesson and seamlessly applied it to her oven.

"...Close enough," he finally said.

"That's definitely it!" Evelyn stood up.

"I'll try again tomorrow. I won't get mad at it. Richard, this book of yours is actually pretty useful."

Hugging her recipe notebook, she skipped downstairs, muttering to herself as she went—probably making peace with the oven in advance.

Richard sat at his desk, looking at the empty doorway, and chuckled.

He had been worried that his adaptation wasn't artful enough, or that his sister might read too much into it.

Now, he felt relieved.

He lowered his head and continued reading.

In another annotation, Madam Marie had written:

"Tell a case to a layman, and you'll find they always hear things in it that you never said.

Don't laugh at them. Sometimes, what they hear is more right than what you told them."