She and Alger turned simultaneously toward Temperance, seated in the seventh chair on the left. Klein also watched discreetly, though his position at the head of the long table allowed him to take everything in without turning.
Lin Chuan began reflecting on why he had simply taken the nearest seat, so far from the other three.
Especially with Klein, Audrey, and Alger seated so close together, he had to tap the table every time he wanted to say something to get their attention.
So Klein learned his habit of tapping the table from me? Who's the Cause of All Fruits here, huh? Where's the Primordial Celestial Worthy? A little help, please.
After grumbling inwardly for a moment, he noticed everyone waiting for him to speak. He stopped tapping and added in an even tone:
"I noticed that you don't know much about certain basic Beyonder matters, and that you have quite a few misconceptions."
"To spare you from wasting time and energy going down the wrong path, I'll explain on Mr. Fool's behalf."
Klein had no idea what "common knowledge" he was supposed to explain, but he knew he ought to play along. He chuckled and said casually:
"Then you can explain it."
Lin Chuan silently gave Klein a thumbs-up. His response had sounded so natural, as though he really did have some common knowledge to explain and supplement. That was Klein for you.
Audrey's eyes lit up, and she looked at Mr. Temperance expectantly. In her mind, this knowledgeable gentleman with such profound insights would surely offer some extraordinary "common knowledge."
Mr. Temperance really is a good person, she thought sincerely.
Alger unconsciously straightened his back, equally eager to hear what Temperance would add.
Earlier, the man had casually shared knowledge about the King of Dragons from the Second Epoch. Even what he called basic common knowledge was immensely valuable.
Besides, Temperance had said there were "quite a few misconceptions." This concerned the method of exploring potions that Alger had always believed correct, so he could hardly ignore it.
Lin Chuan looked at Alger and continued:
"Earlier, you said, 'Practice every day to truly master the potion's power, explore its symbolic meaning and mysteries, and avoid the danger of losing control. The key to a potion's symbolic meaning lies in its name.'"
"I don't know where you heard that, but if you want to progress further and faster along the Beyonder path, while avoiding the risk of losing control as much as possible, remember these words."
He paused. Seeing everyone holding their breath and listening intently, he solemnly reminded them:
"It's not mastery, but digestion."
"It's not exploration, but acting."
"A potion's name isn't merely symbolic. It's also an image, and more importantly, the 'key' to digestion."
"This is called the acting method. Although the 'exploration' you mentioned earlier has a somewhat similar meaning, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it actually heads in the opposite direction from the acting method."
Audrey listened in bewilderment, not quite understanding what Mr. Temperance meant. After all, she hadn't even understood Alger's earlier explanation about "exploring a potion's power," or she wouldn't have wanted to ask about it.
She instinctively glanced across the table at Alger's reaction, only to discover, to her surprise, that his body had shuddered and gone rigid, like an ordinary person hearing a sudden, deafening clap of thunder.
"Digestion, acting... digestion, acting... digestion, acting, key..." Alger murmured again and again, as though he had grasped something crucial or fallen under a strange spell.
Still not quite clear? Lin Chuan thought. He noticed that Alger seemed to have understood the meaning of the acting method from those words, but Audrey still looked lost. As for Klein... he was putting the acting method into practice with his own performance.
Lin Chuan looked around and considered how much time remained, then decided not to explain the acting method in detail just yet.
For one thing, he had already stated its essentials. Once they actually drank their potions, they would explore and understand it themselves. There was no need for him to waste more breath.
For another, although he liked the Tarot Club members, he didn't want to play nanny and raise a bunch of useless people. His goal was simply a favorable ending. Everything else depended on his mood.
Besides, he had to leave Mr. Fool some room to perform. If necessary, he could always discuss it privately with Klein later.
Of course, the most important issue was still time. If this dragged on any longer...
The future "Lord of the Mysteries, King of Space-Time, Beacon of Destiny, Avatar of Sefirah Castle, Dominator of the Spirit World" would be caught performing a ritual to an evil god and arrested by the Nighthawks squad belonging to the church of the likewise future "Eternal Darkness, Singularity of All, Space-Time-in-One."
While Lin Chuan imagined two Great Old Dominators fighting their way to the edge of the universe, Alger had already raised his head and said hoarsely:
"Thank you, Mr. Temperance. Your guidance is as precious as my life. It has helped me understand many things. Of course, I believe I still haven't fully grasped or understood it."
"It's nothing," Lin Chuan said, returning to his senses. "As I said, this is merely common knowledge. Even now, general education in certain places still teaches the acting method. It isn't difficult to understand. I'm sure you'll grasp it completely very soon."
Then he added meaningfully, "Besides, you needn't thank me. I merely went with the flow and offered a casual reminder."
Alger's heart tightened. What kind of place taught something as vital as the acting method in its general education? Was everyone there a Beyonder?
He also understood Temperance's implication. The man ordinarily paid no mind to common knowledge like the acting method. Only because his acquaintance, the Fool, happened to have made this attempt and found Alger and Audrey had Temperance casually offered a few words of supposedly common knowledge.
No... can I really call him "he"? Perhaps the reverential form reserved for gods and similar beings would be more appropriate...
Regardless, Alger knew that Mr. Fool's attempt had given them this rare opportunity... yes, he no longer regarded it as a crisis requiring vigilance.
Even setting aside what two nearly godlike beings could possibly want from a mere Sequence 8 Folk of Rage like him-although he would soon advance to Sequence 7, there was little substantive difference-or from the noble young lady opposite him, who wasn't even a Beyonder.
Knowledge of the acting method alone could spare him decades of detours and countless risks of losing control.
No wonder he had always heard, during his time in the church,
that certain "geniuses" could advance at unbelievable speeds, and that even the risk of losing control, which terrified everyone else, was nearly nonexistent for them.
Apparently, this was thanks to the acting method.
Alger understood. The orthodox churches couldn't possibly be unaware of what Mr. Temperance called "common knowledge." Then why had he never heard of the acting method before? Why didn't the church spread it?
If he continued dutifully accumulating merit within the church and seeking rewards, how long would it take him to learn this precious knowledge that could protect him from losing control? Was it perhaps entirely beyond his reach?
Besides, people were ultimately different. Given his status, Sequence 7 would probably be his limit. How could he dare hope for the Lord of Storms' favor...
At that thought, Alger knew what he had to do. He had to seize this unique opportunity, or he would regret it for the rest of his life.
He glanced at Audrey. Seeing that she was still memorizing the acting method, he realized he couldn't count on her to ask. Who knew when this attempt would end?
Alger took a deep breath and turned toward the Fool, seated at the head of the long table and wreathed in gray fog, then said solemnly:
"Mr. Fool, would you mind making more 'attempts' like this one? Although your power exceeds our imagination, there are always fields in this world that you don't know or aren't proficient in. The young lady opposite me clearly comes from a noble background, and I have my own experience, knowledge, channels, and resources. Perhaps she and I could help you someday with trivial matters that would be inconvenient for you to handle personally."
Well done! Lin Chuan inwardly praised Alger's courage. He truly hadn't expected Commissar Hanged Man to be the one who proposed holding Tarot Club meetings to Klein this time.
Apparently, the acting method he had revealed ahead of time really mattered to Alger. It mattered so much that he had skipped hesitation and observation entirely. He was only a step away from declaring, "Mr. Fool will set the world right! We must abandon darkness and embrace the light!"
A young lady from a noble background... are my behavior and accent that obvious?
Audrey froze briefly when she heard Alger's question. Once she recovered, she turned toward Klein and said hopefully:
"Mr. Fool, I think this is an excellent suggestion. If you could hold these 'attempts' regularly, you or your subordinates could pass along anything that would be inconvenient for you to handle openly. If something is within our capabilities, you wouldn't need to do it yourself."
After speaking, Audrey half-turned toward Mr. Temperance, who was watching everything with interest from the side.
Before she could speak, Lin Chuan understood and answered evenly:
"No need to look at me. I'm only here to visit an old friend. I don't mind anything else, as long as Mr. Fool agrees."
Klein had been weighing the pros and cons for a while. This "gathering" had already given him some Beyonder secrets and knowledge of mysticism, as well as a Spectator potion formula for free. Without it, he might not have truly encountered the Beyonder world until much later.
No... perhaps I had already encountered it. Klein pondered silently. Why had the original owner obtained a revolver? And why had he chosen suicide when he had such a promising future?
As long as he passed an interview at Tingen University or Backlund University, even a probationary lecturer could earn two gold pounds a week, rising to three pounds and ten soli after becoming permanent. His entire family would leap straight into comfortable circumstances! It was the difference between earning three or four thousand a month and fourteen or fifteen thousand.
Given Klein's bond with Benson and Melissa, he couldn't possibly have killed himself. There was probably some secret behind the original owner's suicide that he didn't yet understand, perhaps involving Beyonder factors. What would happen when they discovered that "Klein" was still alive?
So Audrey and Alger weren't the only ones who needed this gray fog as a platform. Klein also needed information and assistance from these gatherings. In this unfamiliar world, the gray fog was the greatest "cheat" he currently possessed!
Still, the more gatherings he held, the easier it would be to expose his true circumstances. If the two people he had pulled up discovered that he wasn't some mysterious Mr. Fool but merely an ordinary person, never mind the consequences-even imagining the scene was embarrassing.
Klein lightly tapped the edge of the long table. Considering that he controlled both the summoning and dismissal of the gathering, any problems exposed would remain manageable. The benefits clearly outweighed the drawbacks, and he quickly made his decision.
Before that, he casually glanced at Lin Chuan and saw him discreetly give a thumbs-up.
We're good! But where exactly did this guy come from? I didn't pull him up here, and I don't know how to find him afterward... Klein still had a string of unanswered questions about Lin Chuan. Regardless, being able to meet him here was already fortunate enough.
So he merely nodded slightly and stopped tapping.
Facing two pairs of hopeful yet anxious eyes, and one pair filled with nostalgia and delight, Klein answered evenly:
"I'm someone who likes equivalent exchange."
"I won't ask you to help unconditionally."
"Every Monday at three in the afternoon, try to be alone. Once I've made a few more attempts and figured certain things out, perhaps you'll be able to request leave in advance and won't need to worry about being somewhere unsuitable."
That counted as accepting Alger and Audrey's proposal.
Audrey clenched her fists and shook them twice in front of her chest. Her eyes shone as she asked enthusiastically:
"Mr. Temperance, Mr. Fool, should we choose titles for ourselves too? After all, we can't communicate using our real names."
"Good idea," Klein replied briefly and lightly.
Lin Chuan nodded and volunteered, "You can decide little things like that yourselves. Hmm... as the first members of the Tarot Club, choose one of the twenty-two Major Arcana cards as your code name. Naturally, you can't pick one that's already taken."
Audrey immediately set her mind to work. After considering for a while, she said cheerfully:
"I've decided. My title will be Justice!"
"And you, sir?" Audrey asked, smiling at her "companion" across the table.
Alger was thinking as well. Since this would be his code name in a long-term gathering, he ought to choose carefully. He first considered the Pope, but felt it was too ostentatious. Finally, he settled on his code name:
"The Hanged Man."
"The Hanged Man..." Audrey repeated Alger's code name enthusiastically, then asked for his address once more. Alger was quite pleased with her seriousness,
so he repeated it.
Lin Chuan noticed the invisible connection between Klein, the crimson stars, and the grayish-white mist beginning to weaken. It wasn't obvious yet, but the signs were there.
Looks like the spirituality I supplied could only last this long. Strange. Was some lost during transmission? It shouldn't have been so short.
Come to think of it, how's my main body doing... At that thought, he found something odd. Although he could still sense the location of his own Sefirah outside the barrier, he couldn't establish proper contact. He could only attribute it to the combined isolation of the Oldest One's Barrier and Sefirah Castle.
Besides, earlier, to prevent that sinister, cunning Celestial Worthy from discovering that something impure had slipped into his resurrection arrangements in Sefirah Castle,
Lin Chuan had voluntarily severed all connections between his backup in Sefirah Castle and his main body in the Starry Sky as the Oldest One's awakening approached. As a result, his memories now stopped roughly half a year after his evacuation from Earth.
Afterward, as the Oldest One's awakening drew near, the powerful portents had prompted the Lin Chuan in Sefirah Castle to seal his consciousness and blend into the army of cured meat inside the light cocoons. He knew nothing about the subsequent ten thousand years in the Starry Sky.
Otherwise, he would have emerged from his light cocoon on his own during the Fifth Epoch, when the Celestial Worthy's consciousness gradually fell dormant.
Klein couldn't touch the Celestial Worthy's little quilt, but why couldn't Lin Chuan? He could simply take it and refine it in an instant, whether to use as a Sealed Artifact or have his avatar swallow it and become a God of Mysteries.
As for the possibility of the Celestial Worthy's consciousness reviving? Did that mean the Lord of the Mysteries wanted to revive within Lin Chuan, who was "Beyond the Oldest One"? Or within "the Nothingness of the Oldest One," a Great Old One state into which Lin Chuan himself only dared dip half a foot?
Lin Chuan welcomed that old schemer's consciousness to move in anytime. Of course, if the symbolism of "nothingness" struck it into profound annihilation, forcing its mental imprint to wait several million years before gathering enough will to revive, that would be another matter.
Too bad Evernight threw the little quilt into the Forsaken Land of the Gods. Forget it. Even if she hadn't, there'd be nothing I could do. Lin Chuan sighed and supplied Klein with another surge of spirituality. Alger and Audrey were discussing the Cards of Blasphemy. They could finish their conversation before ending the gathering.
"...another deck, a secret one, with cards symbolizing certain unknown powers. There were twenty-two in all. Only after completing it did he use it as the basis for inventing the twenty-two Major Arcana of the Tarot Cards as a game. Is that account accurate?"
"...Yes. It's said that Emperor Roselle saw the Blasphemy Slate, and that deck conceals the secrets of the twenty-two Paths of the Divine."
"The twenty-two Paths of the Divine..."
At that moment, Klein felt the invisible connection between himself, the crimson stars, and the grayish-white mist begin to waver. If he continued, he might not be able to sustain it.
He glanced at Audrey and Alger. Both seemed thoroughly engrossed in their conversation, especially Audrey, who showed no desire to stop.
"All right, let's end today's gathering here," Klein decided immediately, speaking in a deep voice.
"As you wish." Alger bowed his head.
"As you wish." Audrey imitated the Hanged Man, reluctance in her voice.
"I look forward to seeing you again." Lin Chuan first smiled and bid the two farewell, then looked at Klein:
"See you next Monday."
"Mm," Klein answered Lin Chuan. As he severed the connections, he smiled and said:
"Let's look forward to our next gathering."
The "stars" brightened again, and the crimson light receded like water. Audrey and Alger had only just heard Mr. Fool's words when their figures grew increasingly blurred and illusory.
In less than a second, the "projections" shattered, and the space above the gray fog returned to its usual silence... more or less.
*?*
Why am I still here?
Lin Chuan stood and looked around. The towering stone pillars surrounding him and the vast dome overhead were still there.
He left the Bronze Long Table surrounded by gray fog and inspected the backs of the high-backed chairs-ten on each side and one at each end. He discovered that the unoccupied chairs, along with those previously occupied by Audrey and Klein, bore only strange constellations that shone brilliantly with subdued crimson light and corresponded to nothing in reality.
The stars on the back of Alger's chair, however, outlined a symbol composed of shapes resembling an anchor, lightning, and waves, representing the Storm pathway.
What about his? Curious, Lin Chuan returned to the back of his own chair and found no symbol there, only strange crimson stars glittering in a disorderly arrangement.
"That makes sense..." He wasn't surprised. After all, if Sefirah Castle had detected the true identity of his main body, that sentient Sefirah, it would already have raised endless gray fog and kicked him out. It was hardly strange that Sefirah Castle currently regarded him as an ordinary person with no Sequence.
Unfortunately, he had wanted to see what symbols "Beyond the Oldest One" and "the Nothingness of the Oldest One" would have.
He walked around the long table, looking here and there, and even returned to the place he had descended from-the Light Gate-only to find that there wasn't a single step, leaving him no way to get up.
Only then did Lin Chuan stand beneath the dome and begin considering a serious question:
What exactly is my situation now?
How am I supposed to get down?
In theory, Sefirah Castle would actively release a spirit body from a light cocoon, find a creature that had just died or was barely alive, and stuff it inside, throwing in a bodily repair as well.
The Tarot Club members pulled up here didn't have to worry about this either. What appeared here were illusory projections, and they would return as soon as the connection was severed.
But Lin Chuan was neither inside a light cocoon, meaning Sefirah Castle couldn't send him down, nor someone Klein had pulled up, meaning he had nowhere to return to when the connection was severed.
He couldn't even contact his main body to provoke Sefirah Castle into spitting him out. Whether the combined suppression of the barrier and Sefirah Castle was too strong, or there was some other reason or an unforeseen accident, he temporarily couldn't transmit power inside.
Though even if he could, Lin Chuan wouldn't do that. He would end up fighting the Seven Gods and the True Creator inside the barrier while facing a siege from Outer Deities and Great Old Ones outside...
"Tsk."
"Am I really supposed to stay here for a week, doing nothing?"
Suddenly, Lin Chuan's eyes lit up, and his figure began turning illusory.
Meanwhile, Klein felt himself rapidly growing heavier. The drifting sensation around him vanished, and his vision first darkened, then filled with brilliant sunlight.
He was still inside his apartment room, still standing in its center.
"I have no idea what's going on with the gray fog or that guy Lin Chuan. A whole week's wait..."
Klein sighed quietly, full of confusion, and walked toward his desk with legs that felt filled with lead.
Then, in the full-length mirror beside his desk, he saw Lin Chuan's figure, right
behind him.
Before you continue