The Williams family had a landline, but it rarely rang.
His father’s factory would occasionally call to announce overtime.
An aunt would sometimes call to chat with his mother, but the rest were just sales calls and wrong numbers.
The phone suddenly rang. Evelyn peeked her head out of the kitchen.
"Richard, can you get that? My hands are covered in flour."
Richard closed the dictionary, placed it on the arm of the sofa, and walked over to the small table to pick up the receiver.
"Hello, this is the Williams residence."
"Richard?"
A vaguely familiar female voice came from the receiver.
Richard paused for a moment before he recognized who it was.
"Is that you, Auntie?"
"Yes." Isabella got straight to the point.
"Elder Hutton reported the matter of your signed Marvel. I’ve read his evaluation report."
Richard frowned.
The old gentleman hadn’t mentioned this before, but it made sense when he thought about it.
"Did he recommend the Sphinx Copper Lamp?"
"Yes."
"Tell me the specific details about the lamp."
Richard went over everything he could say once more.
He had to avoid the parts involving his panel and the "seed," but he could present the objective information about the Marvel itself in full.
"The lamp came from the unsolds list of an auction house’s clearance."
Richard said, "The auction house’s appraisal tag read, ’Age unknown, suspected to be an artifact from the Black Earth River Basin.’"
Isabella let out a soft "Mm."
"Elder Hutton mentioned that this lamp has a ’resonance’ with you?"
"Yes."
Richard didn’t deny it; this was a key point that couldn’t be avoided.
"How long have you been in contact with it?"
"About two months."
The line went quiet for a moment.
Richard could feel the person on the other end thinking.
"Two months of contact isn’t enough to explain that level of resonance."
Isabella’s conclusion was the exact same one Mr. Hutton had reached.
Richard’s heart beat a little faster.
Just as he was mentally preparing an excuse, Isabella’s voice came through the receiver again.
"But there’s no way to test for something like Ether compatibility, and causal links are even harder to trace."
"In any case, this is a good thing. Better than what I was imagining."
Richard didn’t respond immediately.
"What were you imagining before?"
"The usual situation is that Elder Hutton assigns you a standardized Marvel from the inventory."
Isabella’s speaking pace slowed slightly.
"Standardized Marvels are characterized by having clear functions and controllable risks, but their potential is limited."
"This lamp in your hands..." she continued to explain.
"If Elder Hutton’s assessment is accurate, its ceiling could be much higher."
"How much higher, exactly?"
"Estimating now wouldn’t mean much," Isabella said. "We won’t be able to tell until after the signing ceremony is complete."
"Signing is for life."
Her tone softened a little.
"If you settle once, you’ll be paying for that compromise with every step you take later on."
"It took me nearly a year to choose my own signed Marvel."
"A year?"
"A year and three months."
Isabella remembered it clearly.
"During that time, I visited dozens of auction houses and antique shops of all sizes. I handled almost every single ancient artifact that was publicly available."
"In the end, I settled on an early Alchemy Manuscript from the Alexandrian School."
Isabella sounded somewhat proud.
"My early academic achievements were based on researching this very Fragment, and I wrote quite a few papers on it."
"By the time I signed it, I had already read the parchment hundreds of times."
Richard understood.
Isabella was using her own experience to tell him that the compatibility between a signed Marvel and a Cultivator determined the stability of the signing’s brand, and also the stability of future Tier Transitions.
’Settling is just digging a hole for yourself.’
"I understand."
"Good."
Isabella shifted back into her professional demeanor.
"This winter, I might be on a business trip to the northern region."
"A business trip?"
"The Northern Industrial District has several zones with abnormally high Ether activity. The department sends people out for routine fieldwork every year."
"I’m going to apply to lead the team this year."
"Does that mean you’ll come to Brighton?" Richard asked, feigning casualness.
"...Yes, I’ll stop by on the way."
Isabella confirmed again.
"I need to see your lamp with my own eyes. When it comes to something like a signing, a report isn’t enough. I have to inspect it myself."
"Okay."
"The specific time isn’t set yet. The earliest would be mid-January, the latest early February."
Isabella’s tone suddenly shifted.
"Speaking of which, Elder Hutton happened to mention something else in his report."
Richard’s fingers tightened slightly around the receiver.
"What did he mention?"
"He said you have more than one potential Marvel in your possession."
There was no discernible emotion in Isabella’s voice.
"Those Marvels don’t have much residual Ether..." Richard replied carefully. "I’ve basically absorbed it all."
"Mm." Isabella didn’t press the issue.
"Many Newcomers have a misconception. They think that once a Marvel has almost no Ether left, the object itself is useless. Like a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste, they just toss it in a drawer to collect dust."
"In reality, Marvels with little remaining Ether have their own value."
Richard was intrigued. "Empty Marvels have value?"
"When using a Marvel as a vessel for a Seal, the worst thing is for the vessel itself to have ’a mind of its own.’"
Isabella gave the first example.
"If you use a Marvel still full of Ether to Seal something else, the old Ether inside will fight with what you’re trying to Seal."
"When Sealing Masters perform a Seal, they all look for an old object with very little Ether left to use as a base."
She chuckled, then added another point.
"The same logic applies when using a Marvel as a Casting Medium."
"If you want a Technique to follow your intent, you need an ’obedient’ medium. The milder its temperament, the better. The older its framework, the better."
As Richard listened, he slowly pieced the logic together in his mind.
A Marvel’s Ether reserves and its fundamental structure corresponded to two completely different markets.
"So..." Richard ventured, "If I have a few empty Marvels, Auntie, could you..."
Isabella was very forthright.
"I don’t handle deals like that myself, but the academic system has channels specifically for acquiring such things."
"If those few items you have don’t have much Ether left, rather than letting them gather dust in a drawer, you might as well let me take them off your hands on my way through."
"If you’re lucky, you could trade them for a new Marvel that still has Ether reserves."
"If you’re not, you can at least get some money back."
Richard held the receiver and let out a soft "mm-hm."
"I’ll have to take stock of them."
"Up to you. I’m just offering to take a look since I’ll be in the area," Isabella said noncommittally.
"By the way, is your mom there?"
Richard glanced toward the kitchen.
His mother was still inside. The faucet was running, accompanied by the clinking of dishes.
"She’s in the kitchen."
"Let me talk to her."
"One moment."
Richard placed the receiver on the small table and walked to the kitchen doorway.
"Mom, Auntie wants to talk to you."
Margaret turned off the faucet, dried her hands on her apron, and picked up the receiver.
"Isabella."
An almost inaudible response came from the other end of the line.
Richard couldn’t make out the specifics, but the voice was completely different from the cool, detached one she had used with him.
Before, it was all business. Now, it was as soft as a marshmallow.
"Have you eaten yet?"
A muffled reply buzzed from the receiver.
His mother’s eyebrows shot up.
"It’s past five in the afternoon and you still haven’t had lunch? Do you think you’re still eighteen?"
More muffled sounds came from the phone.
"It’s your own fault if your stomach starts growling in the middle of a lecture."
The phone buzzed again.
"Cookies don’t count as a meal. Isn’t there a small cafeteria downstairs from your office?"
Richard stood by the sofa, pretending to flip through his dictionary while eavesdropping.
His mother gave a few more instructions: be careful on the way, don’t get so absorbed in a book on the train that you miss your stop, and call her in advance when arriving in Brighton.
With every piece of advice, the voice on the other end meekly accepted it.
Evelyn poked her head out of the kitchen, a "what’s happening?" expression written all over her face.
Richard put a finger to his lips in a gesture for Silence.
Evelyn tiptoed out and crept up behind the sofa.
"What’s Auntie saying?" she asked in a tiny whisper.
"I don’t know," Richard replied, keeping his voice down.
"Then what’s Mom listening to?"
"I don’t know."
"...How do you not know anything?"
"Auntie called for Mom. How would I know what they’re talking about?"
Evelyn puffed out her cheeks but didn’t leave.
She pricked up her ears, trying hard to catch the words coming from the receiver.
"...I know, I’ll be careful."
His mother responded once more before hanging the receiver back on its cradle.
The moment she turned around, she saw her two children sitting on the sofa, one on each side, staring at her.
"What are you two doing?" his mother asked.
"...Nothing," Evelyn said, shrinking back.
"Reading." Richard held up the dictionary as proof.
Margaret pointed to the chopped onions on her daughter’s hands.
"Evelyn, you haven’t finished chopping the onions."
"...Oh." Evelyn scurried back to the kitchen.
His mother came over and sat down across from Richard.
"Your aunt will be visiting in a while."
"Mm, she told me on the phone."
Margaret placed her hands on her knees.
"There’s no need to be nervous when you see her. The only sharp thing about her has always been her tongue."
"When she was little, she would weave daisy crowns in the garden and wear them on her head, declaring she was the Daisy Queen. A few of our cousins teased her, ’What kind of queen wears wildflowers?’ and she threw the crown on the ground on the spot."
"A little while later, she ran back out, picked up the crown, and put it back on. She told those cousins, ’Daisies *are* what queens wear. You just don’t get it.’"
A smile spread across his mother’s face as she recounted these embarrassing stories about her sister.

Comments

Loading...