Chapter 366: Changing Breathing Methods

By the time he left the classroom, the corridor was almost empty.

Richard's usual spot was the desk by the window in the study room. When he pushed open the door, Catherine was already waiting.

The red-haired girl sat opposite his chair, spinning a pencil between her fingers.

Several sheets of paper were already spread out on the table.

"You're early." Richard took his seat.

Catherine scribbled a line in her notebook.

"Large volume of commissions this time. Working together is faster."

Richard sorted the rubbings into four piles based on their sources.

Heracles's seven battlefield church rubbings went on the left;

the Ancient Gaulish Inscriptions went in the middle;

Dionysus's phonograph wax cylinder casing rubbing was set aside on its own;

and Prometheus's alchemy manuscript, packed with a terrifyingly high density of inscriptions, was left for last.

"We'll tackle the first two piles together," Richard said, pointing to the left and the middle.

Catherine nodded and wrote: "What about the remaining two?"

"I need to look up some reference material for the phonograph and the alchemy manuscript first."

"Alright."

They both lowered their heads, and the study room fell quiet.

The old plane tree outside the window was stripped to bare branches. Winter sunlight filtered through them, casting a mosaic of fragmented shadows across the desk.

Their main focus was the Ancient Gaulish section, which required their joint efforts to decipher.

Richard sifted through the [Erudition] database in his mind, locating a footnote in Professor MacFie's Structure and Evolution of Ancient Gaelic Scripts.

The divergence between Highland Gaelic and Continental Gaulish occurred in the late Iron Age. Their shared ancestral language contained a batch of bidirectional roots.

Writing the root forwards meant one thing; writing it backwards meant another.

"Look at this," he said, pushing the paper toward Catherine and pointing out his annotation.

Catherine quickly scribbled in her notebook.

"Bidirectional roots? I saw something similar in the Highland ancient battlefield rubbing Professor MacFie gave me."

Richard placed the two rubbings side by side on the desk.

One was the Gaulish triple-reception sacrificial inscription, and the other was the Highland Gaelic ancient battlefield inscription Catherine had received from Professor MacFie.

The two texts were separated by two thousand years and a thousand miles.

Yet that root was the exact same word in both inscriptions.

From the continent to the archipelago, from Gaulish priests to Highland warriors, this single root had survived for two millennia.

"Then we can cross-verify this section," Catherine jotted down.

They worked for nearly two hours after that.

The light slowly crept from one end of the desk to the other, and the fragmented shadows of the plane tree climbed the wall.

Halfway through, Fischer passed by the study room and poked his head in.

Seeing them hard at work, he tactfully found a seat further away instead of joining them as usual.

By a little past four in the afternoon, the first two piles of rubbings were largely finished.

Catherine had powered through five of Heracles's seven battlefield church rubbings.

The remaining two involved pre-Frankish history, possibly dating back to the Roman Gaul province era. She marked them "to be investigated" and set them aside.

The structure of the Ancient Gaulish triple sacrifice was completely deciphered, including the restoration of several dialectal variants.

The two of them cross-checked their results.

Catherine wrote in her notebook: "Shared results."

"Yeah." Richard copied the final drafts, leaving one copy for each of them.

"We can do this regularly. You have your channels, and I have my resources. Combining them is faster than working alone," Catherine wrote.

"Sure," Richard agreed without hesitation, silently checking his panel's progress.

[Speculation] Lv.3 had already reached 60%. This skill, which had only just reached Lv.3 in October, was progressing exceptionally fast under the recent months of high-intensity inscription assignments.

[Learning] had also reached 12% toward Lv.4; its improvement speed wasn't slow either.

Currently, the closest to Lv.4 was [Perception], which had already passed 90%. It was expected to hit Lv.4 during his next automatic scribe session.

Catherine closed her notebook and tucked her pencil behind her ear.

"You brought me business this time. I owe you again."

She slung her bag over her shoulder and left.

Fischer followed suit, giving Richard a thumbs-up on his way out.

Richard tidied the desk, filed the rubbings and final drafts separately, and got up to head to Room 314.

Isabella was alone in the office, drafts of the final exam questions spread out across her desk.

His aunt finished marking the end of a paragraph and returned her red pen to its tray.

"Speak. What do you need?"

"I wanted to ask about advanced breathing methods."

Isabella looked up.

"How far along are you with Tide-Shifting Breathing?"

"I'd say I've mastered it," Richard said, leaning back in his chair with a creak.

"The basic frequency variation has become completely automated."

Isabella raised an eyebrow.

"Every advanced breathing method stems from a tradition. Whichever one you choose will permanently lock in your path from Practitioner to Minor Adept."

She walked over to the bookshelf by the window, bent down to rummage around, and pulled out an envelope.

She then pulled a flat wooden box from the second-to-bottom shelf. The lid was carved with Ashford House's oak and rampant lion crest.

"Some of this is my own material, and the family sent a few copies over as well."

"First is the Solar Tradition," she said, tapping the cover of the leftmost document.

"Coronalis, the Solar Corona Method. It uses the heartbeat rhythm as a foundation and overlays a layer of photothermal visualization onto the framework of Fourfold Breathing."

Richard flipped through the outline.

"Once a practitioner of the Solar Tradition reaches Minor Adept, the Seat of the Sun itself becomes a constant-temperature light source that continuously radiates outward.

So when a Major Adept of the Solar Tradition walks behind the veil, they naturally project a field that dispels the dark realm. Anything that dares to approach will be roasted by the light first."

Isabella took out another document.

"Next is Ignis Custodis of the Hearth Fire Tradition. Its core is a bellows rhythm.

With every exhalation, ether is pushed to a designated location under high pressure, and the body temperature rises accordingly."

"When Clara's uncle does metalwork, he often handles the furnace without heat-resistant gloves."

Ruthless iron hands indeed, Richard thought silently.

The third document bore the Ashford family crest.

"Was this sent from Grandfather?"

"Yes. Generations of Hunters in Ashford House have used the Moon-Hunting lineage."

Richard flipped open the cover. The advanced breathing method of the Moon Hunting Tradition was called the Hunting Guide Method. A Hunter could smell out their prey simply by breathing.

"The Hunting Guide Method places extreme demands on the body," Isabella explained.

"Each sniff consumes energy equivalent to a fifty-yard all-out sprint. At the Practitioner stage, you can sniff three to four times a minute."

"Once you reach Minor Adept, there is no upper limit. The Micro-circulation is transformed into an automatic sniffing mode, making the act of breathing itself a form of tracking."

Richard recalled the sight of Vincent training in the backyard early in the morning. The underlying logic of that regimen now made perfect sense.

"There is also a branch of the Moon Hunting Tradition called Lunae Umbrae. That's the path my father took."

"Practitioners synchronize their breathing with ambient sounds, allowing their ether signature to blend completely into the background noise."

"Did Cousin Vincent try it?"

"Father had him try it for a while. His bone density and neural reflex speed both met the mark, but his Inspiration precision wasn't high enough.

Lunae Umbrae requires the practitioner to distinguish at least forty different environmental sound sources. Vincent's upper limit is around twenty-five."

"So he ultimately went back to the orthodox Hunting Guide Method."

The fourth was the Web Weaving Tradition, with the breathing method Textoris.

"Its core is rhythm weaving—breaking breathing down into different beats that run simultaneously.

The main beat controls inhalation, the sub-beat controls exhalation, with one to three additional micro-beats controlling the flow of ether through the body's auxiliary pathways."

"It's like one person playing several different drums at the same time. Tide-Shifting Breathing is somewhat similar."

Isabella continued her explanation.

"Once a practitioner of the Web Weaving Tradition reaches Minor Adept, they can simultaneously maintain seven to nine independent ether pathways. One person can do the work of several."

Richard thought of Mrs. MacNeil during the ritual in Whitcom. She had simultaneously controlled seven spirits while retaining enough energy to maintain the sealing ritual.

The fifth was the Abyss Tradition.

Richard noted his aunt's expression and tactfully left it closed.

"I won't consider this one."

Isabella nodded in satisfaction.

"The Abyss Throat Method of the Abyss Tradition—you've already read about it in Secrets of the Abyss... It grows fast, strengthens fast, and cannot be stopped."

She pushed the Abyss document to the farthest corner of the desk.

With the five major traditions covered, there were still quite a few documents left on the desk.

"What about these?" Richard pointed.

Isabella walked back to the desk and sat down.

"The Gale Tradition. You saw it with your own eyes at the Unresponsive Pit."

This document had also been sent from Ashford House.

"Tempestatis, a breathing method developed from Highland Celtic rituals.

The core principle is storing ether deep in the lungs without releasing it, continuously pressurizing it to the limit before exhaling all at once to form a wind pressure strike."

"The price is the immense pressure placed on the lungs and trachea. People who walk the Gale Tradition have their throats almost entirely ruined; long-term compression deforms the vocal cords."

Richard thought back.

That night at the Unresponsive Pit, Lieutenant Colonel Ord hadn't spoken more than a few words from start to finish. Perhaps it wasn't just his natural personality.

Having gone through them, Isabella gathered everything related to the Hunter path back into the wooden box.

"You only need a brief understanding of the Hunter-path materials," she said, shutting the lid of the box.

Only the last two documents remained in the center of the desk, placed side by side with the Solar Corona Method they had looked at first.

"These two," Isabella said, tapping her finger on the documents, "are the ones I really want you to consider."

"Lectio Profunda, the advanced breathing method of the Classical Records Tradition. This is the exact path I took."

"I have practiced Lectio Profunda for over a decade. From the basics to every pitfall outside the syllabus, I've stepped in all of them. If you choose this path..."

Her gaze locked straight onto Richard.

"I can teach you hand-in-hand. Everyone, including Clara and Sophia—all the graduate students under me are walking this path."

Richard glanced at it briefly and then closed the thin folder.

"Let me take a look at the last one first."