"Are you... not worried about him?" Richard finally asked.
Lady Mary held her teacup and looked at him.
Richard couldn’t read anything on that indistinct face.
"My students are scattered from the Imperial Capital northward, across more than half of the Empire.
I take in anyone who comes to me. I turn no one away."
Richard listened quietly.
"Over the years, the ones who got lost, who never came back, who lay down and never got up again... I’ve lost count."
"For the first few, I couldn’t sleep at night," she said.
"Later, I slowly learned to let go."
"If I were to wring my hands and fret over every single one of them,
this old bag of bones would have fallen apart years ago... I wouldn’t be able to sit here now, refilling your tea."
She took a sip of her tea.
"There’s only one thing I can teach them: how to live a few more years in this line of work."
"And that one thing, I’ve already taught.
The road ahead is one they must walk themselves, step by step.
I can neither see them off nor walk it for them."
Richard had nothing more to say.
He stood up and shouldered his bookbag.
"Thank you for your guidance today."
He gave a formal bow to the woman of indeterminate age behind the tea table.
"I will remember the Chapter that was crossed out."
"Mm," Lady Mary acknowledged.
"Go back and chew on it slowly. If you can’t swallow it in one bite, keep it in your mouth and chew on it a few more times."
"Once you’ve chewed it through, you’ll be able to open your mouth and speak when you truly run into something stronger than you."
"Yes."
Richard turned and walked toward the copper plate door.
When he reached the entrance, the doorway dissolved on its own, revealing the smog-tinged daylight of the outer Huayue Street.
Just before stepping out, he couldn’t resist turning back to look at the woman one last time.
She was still sitting behind the tea table, holding that bowl of warm tea.
Through the warm, yellow light filling the room, her face was still indistinct.
The portrait of the stunningly beautiful woman in the newspaper;
the woman before him now, whose features couldn’t even seem to hold together;
and the face that an ordinary customer would see from across the tea table...
’Which one is the real her?’
’Or are they all the same person, just wearing different masks in different people’s eyes?’
Richard didn’t dwell on it. He had to get back to Ashford Mansion.
He had tutoring with his aunt in the afternoon.
The advanced seminar was starting in just two days.
After Richard left, Lady Mary sat alone behind the tea table for a long time.
The room full of mirrors reflected each other, but not the person sitting in the center.
She raised her hand and manifested her Tarot Cards.
She wasn’t thinking about the young man named Richard, nor about the student who wanted to build a Divine Hall.
In her heart, she thought of another person, her most unremarkable disciple.
Her school had produced geniuses seen once in decades, but it had also produced people like him—diligent and hardworking, yet utterly mediocre in talent.
Lady Mary began to shuffle the cards.
She shuffled them in the same way she had taught Richard and every other student who walked through her door.
First, she formed the question in her mind, thinking it through completely.
Lady Mary stopped after the seventh shuffle.
She cut the deck and drew the first card from the middle.
After she turned it over, the card did not immediately settle.
Under Lady Mary’s gaze, the figure drawn on the card’s face began to move with extreme slowness.
It was as if layers of deep water were pressing down on it, filtered through countless hands and interpretations, so that only a faint outline could struggle to the surface.
[The Hermit·Upright].
An old man in a cloak stood alone in the gloom, holding a lantern.
Lady Mary read the lantern.
He had walked a lonely path his entire life.
Now, he was about to take out the lantern he had always carried to light his own way and place it elsewhere to shine.
The card didn’t say who or what it would shine upon.
The card only said that he was going to move that small point of light away from himself.
Lady Mary gently placed the first card on the tea table.
She drew the second card.
The second card was even more stagnant and difficult to discern than the first.
She focused her mind, waiting for the deep waters to clear a little before she could make out what was on the card’s face.
[The Hanged Man·Upright].
A person was hanging upside down from a tree, suspended by a rope.
One foot was bound, while the other rested casually against it.
Head down, the tips of his hair dangling.
Lady Mary read this card very slowly.
The Hanged Man card speaks of suspension, of sacrifice.
To turn oneself completely upside down, to see this right-side-up world from an angle no one would ever expect.
What’s important is the posture in which he hangs.
In this card, The Hanged Man put his own foot into the noose.
He actively chose to be hung upside down.
The rope was tightened by someone else’s hand.
But that moment of slipping his foot in—that was his own doing.
Lady Mary focused her gaze and looked for a long time.
Beneath the layers of deep water, no other outlines were willing to emerge.
She could not see.
She could only read that the man was going to hang himself upside down, but not when, how, or for whom.
A Detective can read that a person will go to their death, but not what time they left the house, which street they took, or by whose blade they will fall.
Lady Mary placed the second card next to the first.
She drew the third card, and her hand froze.
It was [Judgement·Upright].
An Angel leaned out from the clouds, blowing a long trumpet.
Beneath the trumpet’s call, the dead who had been lying flat in their coffins sat up, one by one.
The dead sat up. The dead began to speak.
Lady Mary read the trumpet, and she read the risen dead.
The Judgement card speaks of a summons, a reckoning, an echo that resounds only after death.
What needed to be heard was finally heard;
the accounts that needed to be settled were finally brought into the light.
The crucial trumpet call sounded from without;
but the ones who sat up and spoke were the dead themselves.
Lady Mary understood the meaning of this card.
’He has spent his whole life in the morgue, reading corpses for decades.’
’This time, he will let himself speak.’
On the dim face of the card, something appeared on the face of the dead man who had sat up and spoken.
Lady Mary saw it clearly. It was a smile.
She was all too familiar with that smile.
It was the smile of her disciples who spent their lives shrinking in corners, looked down upon by all.
The smile they wore when they finally did one thing right.
In that smile, there was not a trace of fear.
The trumpet’s call faded, and the gloom closed in once more.
All three cards were upright, yet they led to the finality of death.
Lady Mary sat still. She did not draw a fourth card.
The fourth card would be to ask about the things she could not see.
To draw it would be pointless.
That is the work of a Prophet.
She was not a Prophet.
She laid the three cards side by side on the tea table.
The Hermit took out his lantern.
The Hanged Man put his own foot in the noose.
Judgement, the dead man spoke for himself.
Lady Mary sat amidst the roomful of mirrors that would not reflect her and gathered the cards back, one by one.
Years ago, she had repeated the same words over and over to every student who entered her door.
One student had taken those words to heart, deep into his bones.
’All the corpses he’s examined in his life had nothing to do with him.’
’Now, the one he intends to examine is his own.’
’He is going to turn himself into a piece of evidence.’
"...What a foolish child."

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