Chapter 367: The Extinct Tradition

The final option was the Mirror Tradition. Its corresponding advanced breathing method was Speculatio.

"The cultivation method for Speculatio is completely different from all the previous breathing methods."

Isabella touched the potted mint on her desk.

"Inhaling and exhaling are merely preparatory movements to smooth out the ether within your Micro-circulation. The real work happens entirely while you hold your breath."

"While holding their breath, the practitioner suppresses their own ether fluctuations until they are completely still, much like a mirror of water."

"When it reaches absolute stillness, any external ether fluctuation cast upon it will form a clear reflection."

Richard's breathing involuntarily slowed.

"Whether it is a Spell Formula cast by an opponent or traces of ether drifting in the environment—anything that touches your Still Water will form a real-time mirror image within your perception."

"In the later stages, it goes beyond mere observation."

Isabella traced a line on the desk with her finger. "You can retain the reflection."

"For how long?"

"That depends on how still and deep your water is. Once retained, you can analyze, dismantle, or even replicate the reflection."

"The simplest application is replicating your own Spell Formula for an equivalent enhancement, or you can replicate an opponent's Spell Formula during combat to counterattack."

"Whatever Spell Formula they throw at you, you reflect it, retain its structure within your mirror, and then fire it right back with the exact same structure."

"The replicated version will generally be noticeably weaker than the original. After all, you only captured its reflection; you didn't learn it from scratch."

"But the replication speed is much faster. You don't need to completely master it the way I have to when analyzing a Spell Formula."

Richard's mind raced.

His [Perception: Calm Observation] did something very similar.

Calm Observation was a passive diffusion at the level of Inspiration. Speculatio pushed this state of stillness to the ether level, turning the entire person into a mirror.

If his shadow could function as a mirror... it would become the perfect surface to replicate and reflect an opponent's Spell Formula. He could even reflect himself, allowing his shadow to split.

Isabella went over all the materials.

"My recommendations mainly point in two directions."

She pulled out the documents for the Solar Tradition and the Classical Records Tradition, placing them at the front.

"The Solar Tradition." She tapped the left side first.

"It's the most well-rounded, and you already have the foundation of the Golden Path. The Solar Corona Method will essentially broaden that path. Scholars of the Solar Tradition have the highest acceptance within the Empire's system. They enjoy the most resources and the widest networks. If you report to any Branch Office and they hear you are walking the Solar Tradition, their first reaction will be to treat you as one of their own."

"The drawbacks are also obvious," she added.

"Being too well-rounded means you lack any standout traits. There are far too many practitioners from the Solar Tradition; you won't easily be remembered in a crowd."

Her finger moved to the right.

"Personally, I highly recommend the deep reading path of the Classical Records Tradition."

"There are a large number of scholars in the Classical Records Tradition, but my main reason is simply that I can teach you."

"That is the advantage of having a forerunner. If you choose another tradition, I can only hand you the materials and leave you to figure it out yourself."

Richard leaned back in his chair, rubbing the corner of the "deep reading" syllabus between his thumb and index finger.

The Solar Tradition was indeed safe, well-rounded, and rich in resources. The Classical Records Tradition offered a well-trodden path already paved by his aunt.

But his eyes kept drifting toward the syllabus for Speculatio.

"You're thinking about the Mirror Tradition."

Isabella's voice pulled him back to reality.

His aunt's expression couldn't be called surprised, but it carried a hint of curiosity.

"You've flipped through the Speculatio syllabus several times, but you haven't even opened the deep reading one since I handed it to you."

"Do you have a reason?"

Richard quickly filtered through several layers of reasons in his mind.

"When I appraise a supernatural item, Spirit Vision shows me the exterior, and divination points me in the right direction. But to see what the item truly looks like on the inside, I need a mirror that can reflect its depths."

"The reflection of Speculatio is, in a way, a form of appraisal. By shining it over the target, its structure surfaces within the mirror."

"I feel like I really need a skill like that."

Isabella didn't state her stance right away.

"Counting Minor Adepts and above within the colonies, the Mirror Tradition practitioners I know of—even including the semi-retired ones—number no more than twenty."

"Active ones are even rarer."

"Materials are scarce, and communication among them is practically zero... because practitioners of the Mirror Tradition naturally repel one another."

"Repel?"

"You've seen two mirrors facing each other, right? They reflect infinitely, growing deeper and deeper."

Isabella held up both hands in a mirroring gesture.

"If two people from the Mirror Tradition reflect each other in the same room, their ether will eventually tangle and knot together. A mild case means a headache for a few days; a severe case means resting your circuits for half a month."

"That is why practitioners of the Mirror Tradition generally go their own way, occasionally exchanging letters at most."

"If you choose the Mirror Tradition," she said, looking into her nephew's eyes, "I can't teach you anything beyond the syllabus. You'll have to figure the rest out yourself."

Richard flipped the syllabus to the second page.

The entry requirements were listed there: the practitioner must possess a "weak perception" of the ether field.

That meant being able to naturally receive surrounding ether information without actively deploying Spirit Vision.

[Perception: Calm Observation].

The description of that trait from his panel automatically popped into his mind.

When stationary, the diffusion range and precision of Inspiration increase synchronously, making it difficult to be counter-detected.

He had completely met the threshold for this advanced breathing method; one could even say he had surpassed it with room to spare.

His own Calm Observation could hardly be called a mere "weak perception."

"I'll think about it for a few days." Richard tucked all three syllabuses into his bag.

Isabella nodded.

"Tide-Shifting Breathing is a universal type. If you want to switch to another advanced breathing method, you can do it anytime."

"But once you switch from Tide-Shifting Breathing to a tradition's exclusive breathing method, trying to switch to a second one won't be as simple as changing your pants."

"The ether circulation paths of two different breathing methods are entirely distinct. Forcibly switching will cause a period of Micro-circulation disorder."

"And the more times you switch, the more severe the disorder becomes."

Richard made a mental note of this detail.

He could hesitate before choosing, but once the choice was made, there would be no turning back.

Just as he was about to wrap up the conversation, something else popped into his head.

The seed planted in him by the Sphinx Lamp—the trait [Shadow Inversion]—was labeled by his panel as "Tradition of Change (Fragment)."

From the very first day he received that seed, he had been wondering: what exactly was the Tradition of Change?

It wasn't among the five major traditions, nor was it among the minor traditions his aunt had listed.

Across all the literature he had scoured in the Imperial Capital University Library and the museum's rare book section, mentions of the Tradition of Change were few and far between, consisting entirely of fragmented phrases.

"Auntie."

"Hmm?"

"There's one more tradition I want to ask about."

"Which one?"

"The Tradition of Change."

Isabella pulled her hand back from the lid of the sugar jar.

She looked at Richard, staying silent for several seconds.

The only sound in the office was the gurgling of the heating pipes.

"Where did you hear that name?"

Richard already had an answer prepared.

"I stumbled across it in the museum's rare book section. An extremely old index summary mentioned it once, just a single sentence without any elaboration."

Isabella stared at him for about five seconds before finally seeming to accept his explanation.

After all, even Director Wetherby himself probably couldn't remember all the obscure materials stuffed into the corners of the dozens of shelves in the rare book section.

"The Tradition of Change was once considered the sixth major tradition, standing alongside the other five."

Richard immediately perked up.

"Its core principle is 'change'." Isabella pulled an old notebook from the shelf and flipped to a specific page.

"The Solar Tradition upholds order, the Hearth Fire Tradition performs forging, the Moon Hunting Tradition purifies, the Abyss descends, the Web weaves destiny—and the Tradition of Change governs 'morphological transformation'."

"Turning A into B, turning the inside out, and flipping the positive to the negative."

Her finger traced a line across the notebook page.

"Spell Formula inversion, attribute swapping, structural reconstruction... anything related to 'flipping the operational direction of a thing' falls under the jurisdiction of the Tradition of Change."

Richard thought of how his Stone Armor had become Shadow Armor, how Moon Nail had become Moon Nail: Reflection, and how Silence had become Unseal. Every single inversion had been exactly that—'flipping the operational direction'.

That was why its nature was labeled as "Tradition of Change (Fragment)."

"Why 'once'?" he asked.

Isabella closed the notebook.

"Because the Tradition of Change is extinct."

Richard's hand tightened around the strap of his canvas bag.

"Extinct..."

"The extinction of traditions has been systematically categorized in academia. It generally falls into two types."

Isabella pulled out an old set of lecture notes, flipped to a dog-eared page, and handed it to Richard.

Richard took it and quickly scanned the page.

Printed in a tiny font was a table titled: "List of Known Extinct Traditions (Revised Edition as of New Calendar Year 1897)."

Over a dozen names were listed, most of which he had never even heard of.

"The first path to extinction." Isabella's finger tapped on the long list of names in the upper half of the table.

"No one practices them anymore."

Richard's gaze followed her finger downward.

The remarks column next to those names in the table contained only a few sparse words.

Some were labeled "Pre-Rome," some "Iron Age," and some merely had the single word "Primitive."

"Cultivation behind the veil began in the early days of human civilization." Isabella's voice slowed down.

"Those earliest practices were completely different from what you read about in class. By today's standards... they were crude, brutal, and most of them carried fatal flaws."

Her finger moved to a name on the third row of the table.

Richard leaned in to take a look. "Bone-Devouring Tradition."

She pointed to another. "And this one, the Raw Devouring Tradition, a breathing method based entirely on consuming living entities."

"Although the Church defanged a lot of proper ritual terminology, wiping out these bloody traditions was undeniably a good deed."

"That is the first type of extinction." Isabella drew her hand back from the table.

"The tradition itself possesses a fatal flaw. Either the cultivation method is so cruel it crosses the bottom line, the damage to the body is irreversible, or the limitations are too great with no room for advancement. Over time, naturally, no one is willing to walk that path anymore, and when the last practitioner dies, the lineage breaks."

"Natural extinction?"

"Correct." Isabella drew a horizontal line on the desk with a red pen.

"Of the five major traditions you see today, the four aside from the Abyss all absorbed nutrients from these primitive traditions in their early days."

"The Golden Path of the Solar Tradition originated with practitioners tying themselves to pillars at noon to bake in the sun, relying on direct sunlight to force an ether awakening."

"The ancestors of the Hearth Fire Tradition shoved their hands into furnaces and were forbidden from screaming, waiting until both their skin and ether were rewritten in the flames."

"The foundation of the Moon Hunting Tradition is even clearer. It was gradually domesticated from the 'blood hunt rituals' of hunters in primitive societies. In the past, hunters drank the blood of their prey to gain power. Later, they didn't have to actually drink blood anymore, but the underlying principle never changed."

Richard scanned the table once more.

Looking through the dozen or so names of extinct traditions, over half of them had remarks reading, "Suspected to be the predecessor of [Blank] Tradition."

"What about the second type?" He closed the lecture notes and handed them back to his aunt.

Isabella's expression shifted.

"The second path to extinction."

"The tradition itself has no fatal flaws, and its practitioners have heirs, but the core of the tradition was never passed down."