After returning from school on Monday, Richard continued to go through the remaining encrypted documents.
By the time he reached the final document, he could separate the layered strokes with his gaze alone, something that previously required him to use Spiritual Vision just to hold them steady enough to tell them apart.
The third set was the real exercise for testing his progress.
On the cover of the third set, his aunt had written an even shorter note: "No answers provided."
Richard pulled out the third set and started with the document on top.
The bottom layer, the plaintext, was a report analyzing the reasons for a failed Sealing attempt.
The surface layer, the overlay, appeared to be a draft of the same report.
The two shared the same paper and the same ink.
Richard spread it flat on his desk and used his Spiritual Vision to hold the entire page steady.
He no longer searched for which words were being repeatedly avoided. Instead, he treated the entire page as a net, looking to see which threads were out of place in the most critical locations.
About twenty minutes later, he put down his pen.
The real report hidden beneath the overwrite was an early proposal for the Whitcomb Seal.
Parts of that proposal had been expunged from official records because they had offended the Church.
The one in his hands now was a private copy, hidden by a certain Scholar within their lecture preparation notes using Double Overwrite.
[Scholarship] Lv. 2 Progress: 100%.
The progress bar on the panel moved no further.
Richard closed his notebook and opened the panel.
[Available Points]: 2.0.
He touched his fingertip to the [Scholarship] column.
One Point was consumed, and on the panel, [Scholarship] Lv. 2 became Lv. 3.
Richard’s gaze fell on the stack of rubbing copies of his aunt’s dissertation, which was pressed under some books in a corner of his desk.
He casually recalled page seventeen of the dissertation.
The line of small text in the footnote on page seventeen surfaced in his mind.
"...This part concerns the dissemination path of the later variants of the Alexandrian School on the Western Continent.
See Raphael Mendes, ’Later Alexandrian School,’ published in Classical Studies Review, issue thirty-four, 1882, pp. 127-129."
He remembered that footnote.
He even remembered the even smaller line of text below that footnote, which the graduate student in charge of printing had accidentally shifted by half a letter’s width.
He then recalled the third edition of Introduction to Curtain Dynamics, which he had flipped through last fall at the Imperial University Library.
Page two hundred and sixteen, third paragraph.
"...The correction coefficient for the Curtain’s annual decay rate, starting from the year 1820, was adjusted from the initial model’s 0.003% per year to the current 0.0037% per year. See Appendix A for the specific basis of this correction."
Richard’s fingers paused on the edge of the desk.
He remembered this paragraph.
He even remembered the line graph below this paragraph.
The y-axis was the decay rate, the x-axis was the year, and the line at the 1820 mark had been printed slightly thicker.
He had only skimmed through a few pages of this book at the Imperial University Library.
At the time, he had scanned it page by page, spending less than ten seconds on each one.
But now, every single page was in his mind, precise down to the words, punctuation, and printing flaws.
Richard’s gaze fell upon the panel.
[Scholarship · Extensive Learning]: All texts that pass before the eyes leave their mark upon the brain.
In the past, reading for him was like spreading a few stacks of books across a limited workbench in his mind.
Every time he opened another book, the first stack he’d laid out had to be put away to make room.
When he returned to that stack a few months later, all that remained would be a vague outline and a few of the most important sentences.
But now, things were different. The workbench was gone.
All the pages he had ever laid eyes on now stood upright in his mind.
If he wanted a certain page, he could simply walk up to it and take it.
Richard let out a soft breath.
He didn’t need to think twice to understand what this bonus meant for someone pursuing the path of a Scholar.
A Scholar’s greatest bottleneck, aside from the speed of their thoughts, was whether their mind could hold enough raw material.
From this moment on, he no longer had the problem of running out of space.
He still had 1 Point left on the panel.
Richard moved his gaze back to the [Wisdom] column.
The third item under [Wisdom], [Rationality], was not yet lit.
He touched his fingertip to the [Rationality] column.
A notification popped up on the panel.
"Consume 1 Point to unlock [Rationality]."
Richard confirmed, and 1 Point was consumed.
[Rationality] Lv. 1 unlocked.
He sat there for a while but didn’t feel any obvious change.
Richard furrowed his brow.
He took out the rubbing copies of his aunt’s doctoral dissertation from his drawer.
’The Influence of Later Variants of the Alexandrian School on Sealing Art in the Western Continent’.
He had given it a rough read-through over the past few days.
He could recount the dissertation’s general outline, but he couldn’t quite grasp the specific details of the arguments within each section.
Now, he read it again.
"...It is precisely due to the coupling effect of the two aforementioned characteristics that the later variants were able to spread rapidly within the Sealing Art of the Western Continent."
He had read this sentence twice before and hadn’t noticed any problems with it.
Now, as he read the phrase "the coupling effect of the two aforementioned characteristics," the entire block of text seemed to shift gently before his eyes.
[Erudite] came into play at this moment; he could instantly recall all seven key paragraphs from earlier in the text that were referenced here.
He compared them one by one.
Two main lines of argument, laid out independently in different parts of the dissertation, converged in the paragraph before him.
The point where these two lines merged was the load-bearing beam.
If the merging point was invalid, half of the Chapter’s entire argument would collapse.
Richard set his fountain pen aside.
"When you read a dissertation, you look for the beams that support it."
"If the beams stand, the whole dissertation stands."
"If the beams don’t stand, then no matter how beautifully written it is, the dissertation is just lumber laid out on a plot of land."
He raised a hand and pressed his temples.
After pressing them a few times, he gradually realized what the bonus from [Rationality] actually was.
This bonus wasn’t like acquiring the [Erudite] trait, which had fired on all cylinders instantly.
The sensation was more passive.
When [Perception] unlocked, his entire being had become "clearer."
When [Rationality] unlocked, it was like switching from flat, even lighting to side lighting.
Flat lighting illuminates everything but reveals no depth.
Side lighting casts shadows, revealing every contour and indentation.
All those dissertations, those textbooks, those philosophical essays he had read in the past...
Before, with [Scholarship] Lv. 2, he could remember them, recount them, and find the corresponding passages within them.
Now, he could start picking them apart.
Richard couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from turning up.
He immediately turned his attention to [Stone Armor].
Previously, he had just followed the steps recorded on the Inscription, executing them methodically.
Now, he recalled the Inscription from the Gargoyle.
[Erudite] made every page, every diagram, and every small note from the creator appear with perfect clarity.
[Rationality] then began to activate.
The entire load-bearing structure of the [Stone Armor] Technique slowly materialized before his eyes.
The "Touching and Leading" tier was the foundation;
The "Inference" tier was the load-bearing walls;
And the "Maintenance" tier was the roof.
When he had practiced [Stone Armor] in the past, he had subconsciously treated all three tiers as equally important steps.
He had allocated his daily practice time equally among them.
[Rationality] told him he was wrong.
"Touching and Leading" and "Maintenance" were both fixed structures.
Practicing fixed structures had diminishing marginal returns; beyond a certain point, more practice yielded nothing new.
"Inference" was a variable structure.
And hidden within that variable structure were two weak points he had previously overlooked.
Richard grabbed a piece of scratch paper and redrew the operational flowchart for [Stone Armor].
After finishing, he added two small auxiliary lines within the "Inference" section, which had originally been the weakest part.
Richard set the paper aside and took out the rubbing copies of the twelve sets of Boundary Stone Inscriptions from his drawer.
In the past, he had gotten stuck after deciphering about a third of these twelve rubbing copies.
Later, with the addition of his Duality research on the Sheepskin Scroll and the Bronze Plate, he had managed a few more steps forward.
Now, he laid out his reconstructed drafts and the original rubbing copies side by side.
[Erudite] brought every symbol, every mark of wear, and every subtle deviation left by the carver’s trembling hand on these twelve rubbing copies into sharp focus in his mind.
[Rationality] slowly began to work.
The load-bearing structure of the Boundary Stone Array took shape before his eyes, inch by inch.
The first through sixth sets served the function of "sealing the thing inside so it cannot get out."
The seventh through twelfth sets served the function of "preventing anyone from the outside from casually entering."
This much was already known; Richard had read about it before.
What [Rationality] was telling him now was a detail he had been completely unaware of before.
The second load-bearing Inscription and the fifth load-bearing Inscription were structural mirror images of each other.
This kind of mirror correspondence has a name in Celtic rituals—"Lips."
The Lips are the true mouthpiece of the ritual.
Richard put down the pen in his hand and leaned back in his chair.
In the past, when he’d tried to write an empirical paper on the twelve sets of Inscriptions, he always wanted to produce something new, but whatever new ideas he came up with always felt insignificant.
Now, he knew what he had to write.
Richard reached out and pulled the inkwell a little closer.
’Now, only the beauty of truth remains.’

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