I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

In his room, after finishing his daily practice of the Breathing Technique, Richard decided to try nurturing a Marvel.

He first glanced at his status panel: [Spiritual Appearance] 10/10

It had been at maximum capacity for several days.

Once the reservoir was full, it stopped; not a drop more could be taken in.

It was a shame that he couldn’t keep accumulating more after it was full.

His daily practice of the Breathing Technique could have been pouring a steady stream of pure Ether into it.

But once it reached the limit, the excess just spilled out uselessly.

The overflow dissipated into the air, mixing with the unrefined Ether outside, never to be recovered.

Richard made a mental note of this. Once he had enough Points, he would have to arrange for an expansion.

Expanding from 10 to 20 only cost 1 Point. It was a worthwhile investment.

’But I’m not in a hurry to think about that tonight.’

He nudged the Sphinx Lamp closer to the center of his desk, positioning it at a comfortable distance from his palm.

Mr. Hutton had said that nurturing a Marvel was like watering a plant: too much would drown it, and too little would cause it to wither.

Richard closed his eyes and calmed his breathing.

Upon reaching the breath-holding phase of the third cycle, Ether gathered in the Throne of the Sun as it should.

The amount was greater than usual. ’My condition must be good tonight,’ he thought.

The Ether pushed out from the Throne of the Sun, sliding along the pathway inside his right arm toward his palm.

Just as the surplus began to flow into the lamp, a small stream spontaneously gushed forth from the ten units of pure Ether in his reservoir.

One stream was the surplus from his practice, outputted by the Throne of the Sun; the other was the pure Ether that automatically surged from his Spiritual Appearance.

The two streams of Ether converged in his palm, and the blended Ether surged through his skin and into the lamp.

In the next moment, the Sphinx Lamp’s temperature shot up from lukewarm to scorching hot.

The skin of his palm was scalded to the point of numbness, and he almost yanked his hand away.

But the scorching heat climbed no further, stopping at a critical point between scalding and bearable.

Richard opened his eyes, his gaze falling upon the relief on the lamp’s body.

The Sphinx’s silhouette was clouded by a thin film of oxidation.

He had seen the relief carving—the human face on a beast’s body—countless times.

The half-closed eyes, the impassive jaw, the corners of the mouth neither upturned nor downturned.

But now, he noticed a difference.

The slits of those half-closed eyes seemed a fraction wider than before.

He held his breath and watched for a moment longer, but then it looked no different than before.

When Richard moved his right hand from the lamp, he could feel a pull between them.

[Spiritual Appearance] 9/10

The Ether in his reservoir had decreased by one unit.

Richard leaned back in his chair to think.

’Since the Sphinx Lamp can absorb Ether from me, it might consider the reserves in my [Spiritual Appearance] as part of its own supply.’

Mr. Hutton’s assessment at the time was that he and this Marvel had a "weak resonance."

’After tonight, the word "weak" might need to be reconsidered.’

If he always nurtured the lamp while his Spiritual Appearance was at full capacity, then additional pure Ether would be absorbed by the Sphinx Lamp during each session. One unit didn’t sound like much, but it would accumulate over time.

For now, he couldn’t tell what changes this pure Ether from his [Spiritual Appearance] would bring about in the lamp.

Mr. Hutton had once said, "Keep nurturing it, and eventually, it will give you a surprise."

’Perhaps the original small surprise might turn into a big one?’

From downstairs came the sound of his Mother’s coughing, followed by his father’s deep snores.

Ten chimes rang out from the direction of Greenwood’s clock tower.

He climbed into bed, and the sleep Skill slowly took effect amidst the warmth of the covers.

In the next room, his sister was still reciting her geography lessons. She had an exam tomorrow.

"...Manchester City is the largest city in the Northern Imperial Industrial District. Its main industries include cotton and wool textiles, and machinery manufacturing..."

The young girl’s voice grew fainter and fainter, eventually trailing off into a few indistinct murmurs.

.........

After school that day, Richard found himself at the library again.

The periodical rack in the Greenwood library was located against the eastern wall of the second floor.

Dozens of current and recent newspapers were held in wooden clamps, hung and categorized by origin: the Imperial Capital, local Brighton papers, others from the Northern Industrial District, and those sent back from the overseas colonies.

As Richard came up the stairs, his gaze habitually swept over the periodical rack.

The outermost clamp held a copy of today’s *Albion Evening Post*.

The front page was filled with a few inconsequential local news items. The third page had been folded open by a previous reader, revealing a small brief that wasn’t a headline:

*Captain of the Gloucester Dies Suddenly in Hotel, Police Suspect Cardiac Arrest*

Richard stopped in his tracks.

He took down the wooden clamp and spread the third page out completely.

Directly below the brief was another, even smaller article.

The Navy Department had postponed the recruitment deadline for the third relief mission by two weeks, citing "a lower-than-expected number of volunteers."

He flipped through the rest of the paper.

In a corner of the sixth page, a syndicated brief from the *Business Gazette - Colonial Edition* mentioned that several border towns on the New Continent had experienced "population decline unrelated to war or plague" this quarter.

Richard returned the paper to its clamp and pulled out several other papers from the past month.

He flipped through them in chronological order.

Expeditionary force missing. Relief mission lost. Parliament passes secret funding. Colonial resource imports showing abnormal increases.

Each brief was unremarkable on its own, but when strung together, they told a different story.

He was beginning to see the Imperial government’s pattern of response regarding the New Continent.

Downplay the issue publicly, allocate massive funding internally, and suppress any unusual discourse in the media.

Richard leaned against the wooden frame of the rack. His gaze drifted from the newspapers to a map of the Imperial overseas colonies hanging above them.

The map was decades old, its colors faded.

The New Continent was depicted as a vast, irregular landmass. Along the East Coast, a dozen or so colonial names were crammed together in dense annotations.

West of the Central Mountain Range, however, was a large expanse of pale gray, with no named settlements whatsoever.

Richard stared at the gray expanse for a long moment.

The Empire had been colonizing the New Continent for at least three hundred years.

In the last century, the Albion Imperial had put steam engines from its factories into its ocean-faring merchant vessels, laid telegraph lines to every city of moderate size or larger, and installed internal combustion engines into the army’s newest armored vehicles.

Logically, three hundred years of colonization should have been enough time for the settlements on the New Continent to grow into autonomous cities, and eventually into new nations.

A continent on the other side of the ocean was a natural breeding ground for independent powers; the Sovereign State’s control couldn’t possibly extend that far.

And yet, Richard had never heard a single rumor of an autonomous power emerging on the New Continent.

Not only were there no autonomous powers, but there were no newspaper reports on the state of the nations there at all.

The colonial updates that occasionally appeared in the papers always repeated the same few phrases: "border settlements," "stable supply," "seasonal fluctuations."

For over three hundred years, the New Continent had remained in this state, neither growing nor expanding.

The towns on the East Coast were crammed along the shoreline, growing sparser further inland, until west of the Central Mountain Range there was nothing but a blank void.

Richard’s gaze returned to the briefs in the newspaper:

"The night there is blacker than anywhere else."

The words from Captain Harding’s public statement seemed to seep out from between the lines.

Richard put the newspaper back in its place.

He walked toward a seat in the eastern corner of the second floor.

He sat down and took out the Ancient Greek Language vocabulary list he was meant to study, but he didn’t open it right away.

’I’m not going to dig any deeper into this news about the New Continent for now. I shouldn’t be letting my attention wander so far afield.’

But his mind wouldn’t stop churning just because he told it to.

Advancing along the Scholar path of cultivation required sufficiently concentrated Ether, sufficiently ancient Marvels, and sufficiently deep sources of information.

’Where do Marvels come from?’

’Ancient artifacts are mostly found in the cradles of known civilizations.’

’The Black Earth River Basin, the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley, the Ancient Greek Sea Coast, the Spice Islands, and the ancient Monasteries and ruins within the Imperial borders.’

’Richard could likely access artifacts from these places through the academic system and auction houses.’

’But what about after he reaches a certain Tier?’

He remembered Old Big’s words clearly.

Grand Mastery was the ceiling on the Old Continent. The Experts, Masters, and Hidden Seats mentioned in the texts were never seen in the flesh here.

The description in Appendix C had a similar tone. The deeper one went behind the Curtain, the more the rules deviated from common sense. High Tier Cultivators "no longer need to be known by us."

’Those higher Tiers couldn’t have just vanished into thin air.’

’They were either hidden in some corner of the Old Continent that I can’t yet reach, or they’re somewhere outside of it.’

’And outside the Old Continent, the only known place is the New Continent.’

For hundreds of years, the New Continent hasn’t formed an autonomous government or given rise to an independent nation. The entire colonial process has been stalled in a narrow coastal strip.

The simplest explanation Richard could come up with was that something in the interior was preventing humanity from gaining a foothold.

Preventing them to an extent that could make countless expeditionary forces go missing, cause border town populations to steadily decline, and make a returning captain drop dead in his hotel room.

Richard closed the book in his hands.

’If I ever want to advance beyond Grand Mastery, the New Continent will eventually stand in my way.’