Regression Ritual

"Is this the place?" Qiong's sweet voice echoed.

"That's right."

The chamber music hall was dimly lit. From outside came the occasional footsteps of students passing by after class.

Fan Ning walked onto the stage. The layout here was similar to Hall No. 1: around a hundred audience seats, a four-and-a-half-foot Boethius baby grand piano, and some music stands and chairs piled to one side of the stage.

Several gas lamps high up around the hall stayed lit, their faint glow filtering through colored glass. Aside from those, Fan Ning had no idea where the other lights' control panel was.

"Do you know where the cleaning supplies are stored?" Qiong asked.

"What do you need that for?" Fan Ning asked, puzzled.

Even so, he reached out. "It's usually in the backstage room at the end of that corridor. I'll take you to have a look."

A few minutes later, under Qiong's direction, Fan Ning carried a basin of water to the middle of the front row of seats. A rag was draped over his shoulder.

"Thanks for the effort." Qiong gestured for Fan Ning to hand her the rag.

She bent down, reached out, scooped up some water, and sprinkled it onto the floor at the front edge of the stage. The stage was more than half a meter higher than the floor below.

Then she stepped onto the stage, crouched down, and began carefully wiping it with the rag.

"Are you here to clean?"

"Although the concert hall is already very clean, we still need to clean it again before using it as an altar." Qiong, crouching on the stage, turned around and smiled at him.

"An altar? Do you really know any Mystic Rituals?" Fan Ning asked with interest.

"A Regression Revelation Ritual that isn't considered too difficult in mysticism. Do you want to learn? I'll demonstrate it for you." Qiong's laughter was gentle yet smug.

Is she a bronze or a king-tier? She won't get herself killed, will she...

If this had been before, his cautious nature might have urged him to stop her. But he was a Knower now. If there were any minor dangers or disturbances, he should be able to notice them and offer assistance.

"I'll help you wipe it." He offered the suggestion as a gentleman would, took back the rag, and crouched down.

"Lock the door first," Qiong said.

"What if someone wants to come in?"

"That's precisely why I'm afraid someone might come in and disrupt the ritual."

"All right. I'll lock it for now."

Afterward, Qiong began taking various items from her small shoulder bag.

She placed a somewhat larger multi-candle holder at the far end of her setup. "This represents the object of my prayer."

She placed a small, single-candle holder in front of herself. "This represents me."

"The object of your prayer? It isn't some strange Lord of Witnesses, is it?" Fan Ning was still somewhat worried.

He felt that his knowledge of mysticism was far too lacking. He didn't know whether he should simply let Qiong pray to something.

But she had grown this old without incident. She should be fine, right?

"What's the name of the deity you're praying to?" Fan Ning asked, adopting a curious tone.

"The divine name of this Lord of Witnesses is 'Winter Wind,'" Qiong said.

"You know the term 'Lord of Witnesses'?" Fan Ning asked in surprise.

"It's how some mystical texts refer to deities. Since they witness the completion of our rituals, I see you know it too?" Qiong struck a match, first lighting the four candles in the multi-candle holder opposite her, then lighting the single candle representing herself.

"I heard about it from Teacher Anton." Fan Ning watched Qiong's movements. "By the way, why does the candle holder representing the Lord of Witnesses have four candles, while yours only has one?"

"It isn't fixed. This time, I'm using four candles because in mystical numerology, four carries meanings such as 'planning, surveying, measuring, categorizing, and recording.' That corresponds to Winter Wind's dominion over memory and passing away."

"But the candle representing oneself is generally always just one. In mystical numerology, one means 'beginning and originality, singularity and isolation.' It represents the aspect of one's consciousness or will. A single candle symbolizes 'the true self,' or 'I am.'"

At least you're not a bronze. You're at least in the gold tier... Fan Ning was left speechless with astonishment.

"All right, I need to focus on setting up the Mystic Ritual. I might not have time to talk. Ask me anything you don't understand afterward. One good meal, and I'll teach you for half an hour." Qiong giggled.

Fan Ning stood slightly to the side, within Qiong's line of sight, and blinked slowly, trying to imprint the surrounding scene into his mind. He then imagined three beams of light without beginning or end converging at his chest and transforming into a pearl-colored spherical celestial body.

A flash of pale golden light passed through his eyes. Driven by the Candle's Inspiration, the sphere slowly expanded, forming an Inspiration "field" that enveloped the surrounding objects. His vision was immediately veiled by a layer of dark golden light, and different objects revealed various shadows of heterogeneous colors.

In this state, he began observing Qiong's actions.

She placed a dish of coarse salt, a bowl of clear water, a large and a small sheet of parchment, a quill, and a penny coin wrapped in some dark material on the altar.

She dipped the quill into ink and drew three generally smooth but irregular arcs with curled ends on the large parchment. These served as the witness sigil of Winter Wind, and she spread the parchment across the base of the altar. On the other, smaller sheet of parchment, she wrote her own name.

"A mineral mixture of sapphire, green glass meteorite, and coarse salt."

Qiong took blue-and-green crystal granules from a small bottle and piled them at three points. Finally, she sprinkled coarse salt around them, forming a closed triangle.

"Hm?"

The instant the curves merged, Fan Ning's psychic perception indeed detected extremely faint heterogeneous colors within the altar. The dish of coarse salt bore the pale-purple Phase of the Key, the bowl of clear water bore the dark-silver Phase of the Wasteland, while the coin wrapped in dark material displayed a special gray-and-white striped shadow. He wasn't sure what Phase it was.

Qiong placed the basin of water outside the altar, then took out a mirror and submerged it at the bottom of the water.

"A mixture of dried alder, bay leaves, and deer-tongue grass powder."

Qiong took out a burning spoon made by riveting together a copper scoop, iron wire, and fire-resistant handle. She moved the incense powder above the candle flame and burned it to ash.

The air filled with the fragrance of plants and a scent resembling the mixture of traditional medicines from Fan Ning's previous life.

"This is frankincense essential oil." Qiong flicked the liquid from the dropper into the first candle of the far-end holder.

"Hiss—"

Mist rose as the strange resinous fragrance drifted out, leaving the mind peaceful and languid.

"We pray to Winter Wind, the god of midnight's loss, the god of tragic and beautiful decay."

Qiong's sweet voice produced several groups of unusual syllables. The rhythm emphasized the latter parts, alternating between murmuring and decisiveness, with many affricates and liquids.

"What language is this?" Fan Ning couldn't understand it at all, but he was deeply surprised. "This isn't Old Hoffmann, nor does it sound like the Lange language from the Lydian Kingdom or the Janus language of the Holy Kingdom of Janus."

He also thought of the languages of the Nileru people and Tungus people that he had once heard, from certain borderlands and remote mountain regions. None of them sounded like this.

Is this Tulungalia language from the Third Epoch?... Teacher Anton was obsessed with researching ancient music and had studied many ancient languages. Fan Ning had occasionally heard a rough description of this language's audible characteristics.

According to the academic definition of a "dead language," the last human whose native language was Tulungalia had died more than three hundred years into the New Calendar. In other words, the language had been dead for six hundred years.

Although historians and linguists had achieved fairly rich results in researching the meanings of its written characters, a great deal of its pronunciation had been lost, except among a very small number of scholars who studied ancient texts.

This little girl isn't simple...

"Lord of frost, Lord of cautious thought, Lord of mist. You never speak throughout eternity. Everything from the past that humanity remembers shall fade to pure white and become dull and tasteless. Only the revelation of silence shall remain suspended in the heart."

"Hiss—" The second drop of essential oil evaporated.

"Those who gaze upon you shall founder into the sea like sunken ships. Those who remember you shall bury the oracle until the arrival of the bitter winter. Those who pray to you today shall not serve tomorrow. Those who worship tomorrow shall never worship you again."

Qiong rapidly recited the prayer written in Tulungalia, dripping frankincense essential oil into all four candles.

Mist billowed from the altar.

She then picked up a silver key, rubbed it several times against the plant ash in the burning spoon, and took it out.

She held the key to the lock, extended it outward, and walked in a medium-sized circle around the front half of the piano on the stage and the front rows of the audience seats.

Fan Ning's Inspiration vaguely sensed that the area traced by the key in Qiong's hand seemed to have attracted the attention of some existence.

"Secret History is intricate and unknown. I only pray to glimpse the place indicated—the flickering past of Nora Carr—with bondage and concealment as its foundation. Even the exhaustion of Inspiration shall not weigh upon me."

Returning to the altar, she finished the final sentence of the Tulungalia prayer. Then she set the parchment bearing her name alight in the candle representing herself and threw it into the dish of coarse salt.

Just as the paper was about to burn away completely, she extended a fair finger and wiped a gap into the closed triangle of coarse salt, pointing it toward the basin of water.

Qiong closed her eyes and murmured softly, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Witnesses."

Her voice was so gentle that it seemed to be soothing someone beside her into sleep.

A strangely cool wind swept through the concert hall.

Under Fan Ning's Observation, the three originally faint and static Phase shadows within the altar suddenly rose. Dominated by the dark-silver Phase of the Wasteland, the purple Phase of the Key was cut into stripes by another Phase, serving as embellishment. They intertwined as they flowed toward the basin of water.

This girl really has something... Fan Ning was genuinely amazed this time.

Judging from what he "saw," the Phase controlled by this Lord of Witnesses, whose divine name was Winter Wind, should be the Wasteland—the same as Raven, the true deity of the Order of Secluded Spirits.

He looked at Qiong. Aside from her eyes seeming somewhat tired, there was nothing else unusual about her. He felt considerably relieved.

The ground seemed to tremble as if something were shaking, and the surface of the water in the basin began to ripple!

Qiong walked up to the basin and looked at the mirror lying at the bottom, shaken by the trembling water.