Chapter 97: Riddle, Gate, Judgment

In that moment, Richard finally understood the true meaning of the name "Sphinx."

In the mythology of the Black Soil River Basin, the Sphinx crouched at the boundary between two worlds.

It bore the body of a lion, the face of a human, and giant wings upon its back.

The gate it guarded connected two domains—the world of light and the world of shadow.

Naturally, the Ether sealed within the oil lamp carried the attributes of the Sphinx.

When this Ether flooded into the material world, it didn't ignite flame, generate heat, or produce sound.

It awakened shadows.

Richard leaned back against the cold iron frame of the telephone booth.

It was late at night and the streets were empty, but that didn't mean no one was watching from a window.

If some insomniac old woman happened to draw her curtains and saw the shadow of her flowerpot writhing against the glass... He didn't want anyone to know what was happening in this alley tonight.

The numbers on the Panel were still climbing.

0.78... 0.84... 0.89... The absorption continued, but it wasn't fast enough.

Richard crouched down and cupped both hands over the oil lamp.

With the increased contact area, the Panel's absorption efficiency jumped.

The numbers ticked up faster.

0.91... 0.95... 0.99...

Just as a prompt popped up on the Panel, a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision nearly stopped his heart.

He was crouching in front of the oil lamp, so his shadow should have been crouching too.

But now, his shadow was standing up.

He was crouching while his shadow stood—that alone was bizarre enough.

What made it even more unnerving was that the shadow didn't just twist or flow aimlessly after rising.

Its movements were incredibly deliberate.

The shadow raised its arms, crossed them in front of its head, and closed its hands around its own neck.

The very second Richard saw the motion, he knew exactly what it was trying to do.

The instant the shadow's hands clamped shut, real pressure seized his throat.

An invisible force crushed his windpipe, forcing his Adam's apple back.

He tried to swallow, but the movement of his throat was heavily obstructed.

The rhythm of his Fourfold Breathing shattered, and his air intake plummeted.

Richard didn't try to stand up or struggle.

The pressure around his neck was real, but it wasn't fatal.

It tightened just enough to make him uncomfortable while leaving him barely able to breathe, but the pressure didn't increase past that point.

This had to be the effect of the seal.

Although he had pried a crack into the seal on the Sphinx Oil Lamp, the overall structure remained intact.

More than ninety-five percent of the sealing inscriptions were still functioning normally.

The shadow could move, contort, and strike various poses.

But they couldn't peel themselves off the two-dimensional plane. They couldn't gain true mass.

His shadow likely desperately wanted to strangle him to death, but the seal denied it.

Thank God he hadn't just smashed the lamp to pieces...

As he struggled to maintain his breathing, a line of text that had never appeared before suddenly flashed across the Panel:

[Structured Ether Core detected... analyzing...]

Richard's fingers froze on the surface of the oil lamp.

The text on the Panel slowly updated:

[Core Nature: Seed]

[Seed Source: Sealed Artifact Residue]

[Trait Tags: Riddle, Gate, Judgment]

"Extract?"

[Yes] / [No]

Richard stared at the two options, his heartbeat hammering in his ears.

Starting from the pendant, to the Spirit Board, the Silver Coin, the copper coin, the incense burner, and the Gargoyle... the Ether absorption process for every supernatural item had been passive and automatic.

The Panel had never asked him if he wanted it.

When Ether flowed out, the Panel simply absorbed it.

Once absorbed, the numbers went up. His participation in the entire process had been strictly limited to physical contact.

Yet here was this prompt about an Ether core and a seed.

It meant that among the energy the Panel was absorbing, there was something structured—something that couldn't be simply converted into "points."

Trait tags: Riddle, Gate, Judgment. Each tag pointed directly to the Sphinx's role in mythology.

Riddle—the Sphinx posed riddles to every traveler, and those who answered wrong were killed.

Gate—the Sphinx crouched above the portal between two realms, serving as the gatekeeper.

Judgment—the Sphinx's riddle was itself a trial, deciding who was worthy to pass.

These three tags were bound to a single seed, floating out from a thousand-year-old bronze oil lamp.

With no time to overthink, Richard made his decision right on the brink of suffocation.

He chose [Yes].

The Panel's absorption mode shifted.

The previously steady flow of Ether was suddenly stirred by an invisible hand.

A portion of it was ripped away and funneled into a single point, where it began to spin, compress, and solidify.

Massive amounts of Ether were forcibly compressed into that microscopic point.

As the Panel vacuumed up the Ether, the ambient concentration of the energy plummeted off a cliff.

The bizarre shadow activity on the main street outside the alley began to weaken.

One by one, the shadows across the entire block returned to normal.

Starting from the furthest edges, the anomalies receded layer by layer, ebbing toward his position like a receding tide.

The pressure on his neck finally began to loosen.

He took two massive gasps of air, and his Fourfold Breathing stabilized.

The main street outside the alley returned to its normal nighttime appearance.

The shadows of shop signs lay dutifully where they belonged, and the shadows of the streetlamps turned back into neat, straight lines.

The mannequin shadows in the tailor shop window displayed only their torsos and heads, clean and armless.

Everything was back to normal.

Richard looked down at his own shadow.

Thank God. It was finally willing to crouch down again.

[Available Points: 1.62]

It hadn't been a waste of all his time and effort.

The reserves inside the oil lamp had basically bottomed out. Per his usual habit, he left the tiny bit of residue unextracted.

A new line of text appeared on the Panel, its font size slightly smaller than the skill tags.

[Seed Extracted]

"Planting Condition: [Spirit] Attribute Unlocked"

Richard stood up and brushed the dirt from his pants.

Now that he thought about it, he had already laid hands on quite a few supernatural items.

But this lamp had demanded the most effort.

He had spent weeks studying its sealing structure, and after buying it, he had cracked the seal entirely on his own.

From purchase to unsealing, he knew every single scratch and every patch of verdigris on this lamp better than the lines on his own palms.

The Eye of the Sphinx had been watching him all along.

The seal was a chain, but it was also a shield.

It shackled the power within the oil lamp, but it had simultaneously stifled the destructiveness of that power down to a manageable level.

If the seal hadn't still been functioning, what had happened over those last few minutes likely wouldn't have ended nearly so cleanly.

His gaze dropped back to the new prompt at the bottom of the Panel.

A seed had to be planted to sprout. Sprouting required conditions, and that condition was unlocking the [Spirit] attribute.

He had no idea what the seed would grow into once it sprouted.

A seed meant growth, change, and utterly unpredictable results.

Richard temporarily set the thought aside.

The unlock condition for the [Spirit] attribute was "All four [Body] attributes activated."

Breathing, sleep, and eating had already been lit up. He was only missing walking.

Before heading home, he sank his consciousness back into the Panel.

[Available Points: 1.62]

He locked his consciousness onto [Walking].

The gray color faded away just as crisply as it had when he unlocked the other skills.

A line of text floated up: "Confirm?"

He pressed it.

[Walking Lv.1] Progress: 0%

[Available Points: 0.62]

The change arrived silently.

There was no rush of heat, no tremors. Even the rhythm of his breathing didn't fluctuate.

But the moment he stood up and took his first step, he felt it.

The ball of his foot met the ground first, absorbing the bulk of the impact, before his center of gravity rolled naturally along his arch to his heel.

The motion naturally and evenly dispersed the shockwave of his movement.

But he had no time to closely examine the changes to his walking.

At the exact moment [Walking] lit up, another line of text popped up on the Panel.

It was a single line: [All Four Body Attributes Activated—Spirit Gate Opened]

The lock symbol over the [Spirit] attribute disappeared.

He prodded it with his consciousness. It didn't demand any points.

The text simply lit up on its own.

A number appeared behind a dash, starting from zero. The font was tiny, tucked away in the bottom corner.

[Spiritual Capacity 0/10]

0/10. The zero on the left was his current value; the ten on the right was his maximum capacity limit.

Richard locked his consciousness onto that line of text, and a brief explanation floated up:

"Spiritual Capacity: Ether reserve gauge.

Allows the gradual accumulation of Ether during daily cultivation. Once full, it can be released in segments or all at once.

Release effects depend on the total stored volume and the method of release."

"Accumulation rate is linked to the cultivation efficiency of the breathing method. When a breathing method is active, excess Ether automatically flows into Spiritual Capacity. No manual extraction is required."

"Current Maximum Capacity: 10 units. Requires approximately 10 days of continuous cultivation to reach capacity."

The explanation didn't end there.

He shifted his gaze downward as another prompt surfaced from the bottom:

"Maximum capacity can be upgraded by expending points.

10 → 20: Cost 1 point

20 → 50: Cost 2 points

50 → 100: Cost 3 points

100 → ?: Requires additional conditions to be met (Locked)"

Richard stroked his chin. The cost of upgrading the capacity cap rose in a staggered curve.

Once it surpassed 100, the interface didn't even give a price, throwing up a "requires additional conditions to be met" instead.

That meant the reservoir's volume wasn't infinitely expandable.

The higher it went, the more expensive it got, until eventually it hit a threshold that points alone couldn't bypass.

It was the same logic as needing to "learn a supernatural breathing method" to advance his Breathing skill. The Panel wouldn't allow him to mindlessly upgrade by just hoarding and dumping points.

He collapsed the [Spiritual Capacity] explanation and organized the information in his mind.

The design of the [Spirit] attribute was far more generous than [Body] or [Mind].

It handed out a free function the moment the gate opened—though he had already paid the price of admission by unlocking the four [Body] attributes.

Only expanding the capacity cost extra; the initial volume was given for free.

He glanced back down at the unlock conditions at the very bottom of the Panel:

"Next [Spirit] Attribute Unlock Condition: All four [Body] attributes and all three [Mind] attributes must reach Lv.3."

That requirement was more than just a single tier higher than merely unlocking the four [Body] attributes.

Pushing all of his skills up to Lv.3 across the board... he figured that wouldn't happen until he officially became a Practitioner.

But his Spiritual Capacity reservoir was already open.

From now on, practicing his breathing method wouldn't just maintain the daily operation of his Ether Micro-circulation—it would also deposit energy straight into his Spiritual Capacity.

And he wouldn't have to do anything deliberate to save it up. The deposit was entirely automatic.