In his room, Mulan had his eyes closed, concentrating fully on a special experiment.
"Feel the breath of nature."
Mulan was exceptionally gifted to begin with, and with the Elf helping him, sensing nature was not particularly difficult.
Maintaining that state, Mulan kept himself in resonance-a strange resonance with nature-then gently opened the window.
Immediately, a stronger breath of nature flowed inside: the sea breeze, the damp moisture, and the distant storms.
Only after a long while did Mulan open his eyes.
That was about two hours.
With that thought, Mulan closed the window again, opened the notebook on his desk, and began writing briskly. A thick stack of books stood beside it, some open, some closed, and some bristling with bookmarks.
After finishing a passage, Mulan pulled over a book and began examining it carefully. It contained black-and-white photographs as well as color illustrations, with callouts and labels on the images and corresponding explanations in the text.
These were pictures of animals, mostly birds.
Suddenly, Mulan's ears twitched as he heard something. He looked up toward the window and, sure enough, saw the raven. But the raven had not come alone; it held a dead bird in its claws.
Mulan opened the window and took the dead bird directly from the raven's claws.
"Thank you. You don't need to come back for a while. Come again when Silias is nearly finished with the preparations."
"Caw!"
With that reply, the raven spread its wings and flew back into the sky.
Mulan immediately closed the window, opened his desk drawer, and took out a metal tray and a leather-wrapped tool kit.
Mulan removed his coat, unfastened his shirt cuffs, and rolled up his sleeves. Then he took a pair of thin gloves from the tool kit and put them on before