Richard slowed his pace as he reached the latter half of the street’s middle section.
To his right was a small storefront with a faded cloth curtain. The sign read "Malcolm’s Astrology." The curtain was half-drawn, shrouding the interior in darkness.
The shop itself was unremarkable, but the concentration of Ether there was a notch higher than in the surrounding area.
It was faint, like an undercurrent at the bottom of a stream. Without careful Perception, it would be drowned out by the noise of the street.
Richard walked a few more steps. At the mouth of a narrow alley two shops down on his right, the Ether concentration rose another level.
Further ahead, near the corner at the end of the street, two pots of withered mint sat in front of a closed gray wooden door. The Ether concentration there was the highest on the entire street.
Three points, unevenly spaced along the latter half of Huayue Street.
They were like three separate springs on a riverbed, constantly seeping water upward.
Richard silently committed the three locations to memory. The dividing line between the real and the fake was drawn here.
Ninety percent of this street was an act, ten percent was the real deal. Both shared the same street, the same smokescreen, and the same oblivious customers.
He glanced at the building numbers on both sides.
The numbers started in the thirties near the entrance of the street and decreased the further in he went: twenty-eight, twenty-six, twenty-three... Even at the end of the street, he didn’t see any numbers below ten.
The numbers on Huayue Street started at eleven. The first ten numbers, including the number seven he was looking for, simply didn’t exist.
"There is no number seven on Huayue Street." Richard stopped walking.
Vincent, his hands stuffed in his coat pockets, smiled. "Isn’t there?"
"The numbers start at eleven."
"Yes, not on the surface."
His cousin pulled his hands from his pockets and jutted his chin toward the gray wooden door at the street corner.
"Follow me."
Next to the gray wooden door was an old brick wall.
The bricks were blackened from years of rain and soot, with a few clumps of dead moss in the cracks.
From the outside, it looked like an ordinary old wall, no different from the side of any other old building on Huayue Street.
But as Richard approached, the warmth within his Throne of the Sun trembled.
The Ether concentration in front of the wall spiked, jumping from an undercurrent to a rushing estuary torrent.
"This is it." Vincent pulled down his scarf, baring his neck.
"Everyone has their own way of passing through the wall." He rolled his shoulders a couple of times. "My method is rather simple and crude."
He took a deep breath, his respiration rate climbing from normal to the level of hyperventilation.
His face quickly turned ashen, and the veins on his temples bulged.
Richard recognized the same state change he’d seen during his morning training, the only difference being the absence of an ice bucket this time.
The next second, the young man lifted his foot and stepped forward.
His body collided with the brick wall, but the scene Richard expected—of bricks shattering or a person being sent flying—didn’t happen.
The moment Vincent’s shoulder touched the wall, it sank in, as if he were stepping into a waist-deep bog.
The brick surface rippled around his body, and he was quickly swallowed by the wall.
After he went in, the wall returned to its original state. The blackened parts were still black, and the mossy parts were still mossy.
Richard stood there for a few seconds.
He stretched out his right hand, palm forward, and slowly approached the brick surface.
When his fingertips were about three inches from the wall, he felt a resistance.
The air grew viscous, like plunging a hand into syrup that had cooled to a semi-solid state.
At the same time, a wave of chaotic perceptual interference washed over him.
His sense of direction was the first to be disrupted. He knew he was standing facing the wall, but the signal his brain received was, ’You’re spinning in circles.’
His sense of balance began to protest, and the breakfast in his stomach did a flip.
Static appeared at the edges of his vision—his brain generating gibberish as it tried to process the conflicting signals.
This was the Fog Wall Technique, but it was countless times stronger than the one he could cast with the piece of Ashen Grass in his possession.
Any ordinary person without an internal Ether cycle would feel dizzy and nauseous upon encountering this interference, instinctively recoiling.
Even if they forced themselves forward, with their sense of direction completely scrambled, they wouldn’t be able to tell which way was which and would end up walking in circles right back onto the street.
They would just think they’d suddenly fallen ill and needed to see a doctor.
Richard withdrew his hand and took half a step back.
Vincent had used a Burning Blood Burst to force his way through, crushing the interference field with an infusion of Ether.
To use an analogy, it was like charging through a hailstorm while wearing a thick down jacket.
The hail would still hurt, but the jacket was thick enough to push through.
’I don’t have a down jacket.’
His Ether Micro-Cycle had only just formed. Compared to a Quasi-Practitioner Level Hunter like Vincent, the total amount he had was several orders of magnitude smaller.
If he tried to brute-force it, he’d most likely be knocked unconscious by the interference field before he was halfway through.
’Then I’ll have to try another approach. Charging through a hailstorm in a down jacket is one Walking Technique; finding the gaps between the hailstones is another.’
Richard closed his eyes and began to perform the Quadruple Breathing.
Inhale for four beats, hold for four beats, exhale for four beats, hold for four beats.
The warmth in his Throne of the Sun stabilized from its chaotic state, coalescing into a point of light the size of a copper button.
He used the rhythm of his internal cycle to counter the chaos of the interference field.
The interference field’s essence was to feed gibberish into the target’s perceptual system, while the essence of Quadruple Breathing was to establish an extremely stable order within oneself.
’Order against chaos.’
’As long as the internal order is strong enough, the gibberish fed from the outside will be automatically filtered out.’
He extended his hand a second time. His fingertips touched the viscous layer of air, and the perceptual interference washed over him again.
His sense of direction began to skew, and static once again appeared at the edge of his vision... but this time, he wasn’t swept away by it.
The rhythm of his Quadruple Breathing turned steadily in his chest. The Throne of the Sun acted like an Anchor, nailing his consciousness in place.
The interference signals struck him, only to be deflected by the rhythm of his internal cycle.
It couldn’t deflect them completely—it blocked about seventy percent, and the remaining thirty percent still made him slightly dizzy.
But seventy percent was enough. Richard opened his eyes and took the first step.
The brick surface before his palm softened, and his fingers sank in.
The sensation was completely different from what he’d imagined while watching Vincent pass through. It felt like pushing his hand through an extremely thick cotton Curtain.
The cotton Curtain pressed in on him from both sides, carrying a damp chill as the sensation of Ether permeated him from the outside in.
Every inch of his skin’s surface was receiving information.
The path was only about two steps long, but it felt like an eternity to walk.
The Curtain’s resistance suddenly vanished in the last half-step. Richard’s right foot landed on solid stone pavers, and his left foot followed.
The air was cool and dry, and the buzzing in his ears stopped.
He opened his eyes. It was still Huayue Street.
The same street width, the same two-story old buildings, but everything was different.
The sky above was covered by a translucent dome. The number of shops on either side of the street had been reduced by more than half, and every remaining storefront was quiet.
There were far fewer pedestrians, walking in twos and threes along the stone-paved road.
They were dressed in various styles: some in robes, some in suits, some in cloaks with hoods.
But no one spoke loudly, and no one stopped to gawk.
Everyone who came here had a clear purpose.

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