Leaving Mr. Hutton's office, Richard walked down the corridor toward the school gates.
Evelyn waved at him from the line at the school bus stop, her braids tossing in the wind.
He called out to his sister, "I'll be back late today. Take the bus without me."
"To the library again?"
"Yeah."
"Are you planning to just move into the library?"
"Just about."
The girl shot him a glare before the crowd swept her onto the bus.
Right before the doors closed, she stuck her head out the window. "Be back before dark!"
Richard waved her off and turned toward the library.A scattering of students were still studying on the first and second floors. Behind the counter, the librarian was logging checkouts.
Up on the third floor, it was completely empty.
The fluorescent tubes buzzed just like before. The broken one flickered twice and went dark.
He walked over to the shelves between the geography and agriculture sections, crouched down, and began taking inventory.
Twenty-six books in total, varying in size and thickness.
Some were well-bound, while others had cracked spines or covers so worn the titles had vanished entirely.
Their publication years ranged from New Calendar 1790 to 1860, a span of nearly seventy years.
Richard did a quick preliminary pass.
He pulled out each book and flipped to the table of contents or the final pages, checking for appendices, non-textual content, or paragraphs with unusual textual density.
After eliminating the obvious standard academic texts—the ones with proper citation formats, clear footnotes, and no suspicious markings anywhere in the text—eleven books remained.
Of those eleven, three immediately felt off the moment he opened them.
In the first book, the footnote numbering skipped on a few pages. Missing numbers did not happen out of thin air; it was either a typesetting error or a deliberate omission.
In normal academic publications, it would be the former. On this particular row of shelves, he had to treat it as the latter.
The second book was even more obvious. The first letters of the paragraphs in one chapter spelled out a short phrase.
An acrostic—the oldest and simplest method of encryption.
The third book had two pages of handwritten notes tucked into the appendix. The handwriting was completely different from the printed text, and the ink color didn't match either.
Richard pulled these three books from the shelf, stacked them on the floor, and began examining them one by one.
Ever since decoding Mr. Hutton's On the Organizational Structure of Early Agricultural Communities in the Western Continent, he had developed a complete decryption workflow.
First, confirm the level of encryption. Then, strip it back layer by layer using a reference table and an etymology manual. Finally, cross-verify.
The first book took about forty minutes. He could tell it was broadly about the use of mineral mediums in rituals.
Useful, but not a priority. Once he understood what it was about, he stopped deciphering it.
Once he solved the acrostic in the second book, it pointed him to a specific paragraph on a certain page in the main text.
On the surface, the passage discussed hunting rituals in the northern forest regions. In reality, extracting every fifth word and stringing them together revealed a description of the Path of Blood Ignition.
It had reference value, but it wasn't suitable for him.
The Path of Blood Ignition was too radical. The introductory training methods described in the text involved extreme alternations of breath-holding in ice water and explosive breathing. His current physique couldn't handle it.
For the third book, he carefully turned to the two inserted pages and brought the desk lamp closer.
The handwriting was neat but exceedingly small, written with a dip pen. The ink had already faded to brown, suggesting it was at least several decades old.
The content spanned only two pages, but the information density was incredibly high.
The very first line read: "Aurea Via — Fundamenta Respirationis Primae."
"(Golden Path — Basics of the Introductory Breathing Method.)"
Richard's fingers trembled slightly.
He glanced out the window; the sky was completely dark.
The fluorescent tubes on the third floor were still humming, casting pale light that stretched his shadow long across the bookshelves.
He lowered his head and kept reading.
The text described the most fundamental introductory breathing method of the Golden Path. It had no specific name; the entire passage simply referred to it as the "introductory breathing method."
The steps contained no mystical descriptions, nor was there any nonsense about "clearing the energy meridians."
The entire passage read more like a medical manual:
Adjust breathing frequency, control the ratio of inhalation to exhalation, and maintain focus squarely on the center of the chest while keeping a specific rhythm.
The final paragraph was a warning:
"The introductory breathing method must not exceed three-quarters of an hour (approximately forty-five minutes) daily. Beginners are advised to keep it under a quarter of an hour for the first week.
"Excessive practice will lead to headaches, dizziness, and chest tightness. If tinnitus or light spots at the edges of your vision occur, cease immediately and lie flat to rest, otherwise it will result in mild shock."
Pragmatic, safe, and with clear boundaries. It truly lived up to being a cultivation method rooted in medicine.
Even if one pushed themselves too hard, the worst outcome was mild shock. It was nothing compared to the Path of Blood Ignition, which could genuinely suffocate or freeze someone to death. No wonder it was the top choice for beginners in most orthodox organizations.
Richard read the two handwritten pages from start to finish three times. After confirming he had memorized every single word, he closed the book and put it back in its place.
He didn't take the book with him. After all, he didn't need to record much content this time.
Taking one book could be passed off as borrowing, but taking several would draw attention.
Leaving these books on the shelves meant he could return to consult them repeatedly.
Richard stood up and stretched, his joints popping in a rapid series of cracks.
He checked his watch... Crap, it was already past seven.
The last school bus had left at half past six. He had completely missed the library's closing announcement, and no one had come up to the third floor to clear it out.
The night outside the window was thick, with only a few scattered streetlamps lit.
It was over three miles from the school to his house. Walking would take more than half an hour.
Taking a walk during the day could be considered exercise, but after dark, it was an entirely different matter.
Public order in Briston's Old Town was far from great at night, and there was no shortage of petty thieves and crooks.
In his previous life, he could walk the night streets casually; his motherland had good infrastructure and ubiquitous surveillance cameras. In this life, he didn't have that kind of confidence.
He grabbed his schoolbag and headed downstairs. The moment he pushed open the library's side door, a cold wind hit his face.
The campus was entirely empty now. Only the window of the guardhouse was still lit.
Richard hunched his shoulders against the chill and walked toward the school gates.
The old guard poked his head out the window, muttered something, and retreated back inside.
Stone griffins perched atop the gate pillars, the bird droppings on their wings gleaming white in the moonlight.
The moment he stepped through the gates, he spotted a car parked beneath a streetlamp.
Spoked wheels, whitewall tires, and gooseneck lamps mounted on both sides of the windshield—features found only on top-tier sedans.
The vehicle sat quietly under the lamp, completely out of place against the drab, dusty streetscape, like a pampered hound tied up at the entrance of a vegetable market.
The window quickly rolled down, revealing a somewhat familiar, pretty face.
It was Grey.
She hadn't braided her hair today; her chestnut locks fell loose over her shoulders, mostly tucked into the collar of her scarf.
The girl's blue eyes seemed even more translucent in the night than during the day, and her lips held a faint tinge of pink, as if she had applied lip balm.
"Williams," she greeted him.
"Grey?" Richard stopped under the streetlamp. "Why are you still at school?"
"I stayed late to catch up on some schoolwork today. When I came out, I saw the lights were still on up on the third floor of the library."
She closed the book in her lap, pushed open the car door, and stepped out.
"Not many students stay late at Greenwood. I figured it might be you."
Her words flowed naturally, as if they had merely bumped into each other by chance.
But Richard noticed the dew on the car's hood had already condensed into droplets. This car had been parked here for at least half an hour.