I Loaded the Occult Panel

Richard woke in the pale light of dawn to a muffled thudding outside his window.

The sound was rhythmic, hitting every few seconds like someone taking a hammer to something soft and heavy.

He pulled on his coat, stepped to the window, and parted the curtains just enough to look.

The courtyard wall enclosed a clearing of packed sand, lined at the edge with several wooden stakes.

A few young men were running through their morning drills.

Richard recognized the one closest to the wall—his cousin, Vincent.

The young man stood there, the muscles in his arms stretching the fabric of his shirt.

He stood barefoot in the sand before a tin bucket filled with a slush of ice and water.

Autumn had already arrived in the Imperial Capital, leaving a layer of morning dew on the ground.

Vincent took a deep breath and plunged both hands into the icy bucket, submerging them to the elbows.He closed his eyes. His lips began to flutter as his breathing rate spiked to several times that of a normal person.

Hyperventilation. Richard had read about this training method in a book.

Apprentices on the Path of Blood Ignition had to use extreme temperature drops to force their bodies to press ether into their veins.

The ice water caused the blood vessels in the extremities to contract sharply, forcing blood back into the body’s core.

By hyperventilating during this process, ether would ride the surging blood flow back to the heart and pour deep into the veins.

Within a dozen seconds, Vincent’s complexion faded from normal to iron-gray. His lips turned purple, and veins bulged at his temples.

He pulled his hands from the ice water. The skin on his arms was flushed dark red, looking as if it had been scalded.

Then came the explosion.

He pivoted and threw a punch at the wooden stake. His fist smashed into the coarse burlap wrapped around it, making the entire post shudder in the sand.

This was where that muffled thudding had come from.

He threw four rapid punches. Every strike drove the stake half an inch back.

After the fifth strike, Vincent stumbled two steps back, resting his hands on his knees as he hacked out several violent coughs.

A trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with his sleeve, straightened up, and strode right back to the ice bucket.

The next round began immediately.

Several other young men were running through similar drills.

One was doing bare-chested squats in the corner of the wall with iron weights and sandbags strapped to his waist. He clamped down on a piece of leather cord to keep from biting his own tongue.

Another was even more extreme. He held a plank position in the sand while a companion relentlessly whipped his back with a wooden staff.

Every single blow landed with brutal force, splitting the flesh. Beads of blood trickled down both sides of his spine.

The young man enduring the beating gritted his teeth in utter silence, performing a set of explosive breathing with every strike.

Watching the staff split the skin wide open, Richard winced, feeling a flash of phantom pain.

The introductory training for the Path of Blood Ignition was vastly different in person than it was in print.

”Many apprentices do not survive the first winter.” The line in Appendix C had been written with a cold, restrained detachment.

But paired with the scene before him, every single word took on the warmth of real blood.

He looked down at his own hands. They were long, pale, and bony. These were the hands of someone who held a pen.

In a fight, he figured someone could knock him flat before he even had the chance to raise a fist.

...

By breakfast at seven o’clock, Vincent had changed into clean clothes and was sitting at the other end of the long table.

If not for the faint trace of blood he hadn’t fully wiped from the corner of his mouth, no one would have guessed he’d been torturing himself half to death beside an ice bucket just an hour ago.

”Morning,” Vincent said, raising his teacup.

”Morning.”

”Grandfather said you might want to go out for a stroll today.”

He tore a piece of toast in half and shoved the larger piece into his mouth.

”Flower Moon Street, right?”

”Yeah.”

”Good place,” Vincent mumbled around a mouthful of toast.

”But that street is complicated. It’s best to have someone guide you the first time.”

Evelyn came running down the hall. Her hair was only half-tied, the rest spilling loose over her shoulders.

She was clutching the box of Valentine Chocolate from last night. By the looks of it, she had just scarfed down two pieces for breakfast.

”Richard, are you going out today?”

”Yeah, going out to run some errands.”

”Can I come?”

”It wouldn’t be convenient.”

She wrinkled her nose in confusion but didn’t press the issue.

”Then Mom and I will go check out the department store.”

She set the box of chocolate on the table and went to pour herself some tea.

...

The Ashford family’s luxury four-wheeled carriage was easily countless times more comfortable than hailing a hansom cab off the street.

The suspension springs swallowed most of the bumps from the cobblestone roads, and the interior was lined with cashmere seat cushions.

Vincent leaned back in the opposite seat and crossed his legs.

Dressed in his everyday clothes, he looked just like any other wealthy young man you could spot on the streets of the Imperial Capital.

He wore a dark blue overcoat and light gray checkered trousers, with a thin scarf wrapped around his neck and leather shoes polished to a mirror shine.

During training, his muscles had bulged as if ready to burst through his clothes, yet in everyday attire, he looked surprisingly lean. It was almost magical.

”Vincent.”

”Hmm?”

”Do you train like that every morning?”

Vincent rubbed the back of his head, immediately realizing that Richard had watched the morning drills.

”Every day,” he said, tugging his scarf up a little higher.

”The ice water and the wooden stakes are foundational courses. Cold, heat, rain, or snow, I don’t miss a day.”

”Since when?”

”Since I was thirteen.”

Richard was quietly astounded.

Submerging in ice water, hyperventilating, striking the wooden post, getting beaten until the skin split open... He had been repeating all of this every single morning for six years.

”You get used to it,” Vincent said, seeing right through his thoughts.

”The first year is the hardest. Every morning you wake up and don’t want to get out of bed. There isn’t a single inch of your body that doesn’t ache.”

”Eventually, the pain dulls into numbness. After that, the numbness turns into heat, and the heat turns into strength.”

He raised his right hand and clenched his fist.

Thick calluses coated the surface of his fist, and the skin around his knuckles was several shades darker than the rest of his hand.

”If it were me, I probably wouldn’t survive the first month,” Richard said frankly.

”You were never meant to train like this,” Vincent said, as if it were only natural.

”Grandfather told me yesterday. You’re probably going to take the Scholar path.”

He relaxed his fist and flicked a speck of dust off his knee.

”Honestly, I envy you guys who get to be Scholars. You just sit in a study and flip through books to advance. Must be nice.”

”I read occasionally when I’m tired from training.” The young man chuckled. ”But I always end up falling asleep.”

The carriage turned a corner, and the scenery outside the window began to shift.

Rows of stone storefronts gave way to old wooden buildings. The street narrowed, and the pedestrian traffic swelled.

Even the smells in the air were different.

Before, it had been the scent of sycamore trees and carriage lacquer. Now, it was roasted chestnuts, cheap perfume, old books, and a sour stench wafting from some unknown gutter.

”We’re here.”

Vincent lifted the window curtain for a peek outside, then rapped twice on the carriage wall to signal the driver to stop.

The two of them stepped down from the carriage as Flower Moon Street unfurled before them.

The street was much longer than Richard had imagined.

The storefronts on either side were packed tightly together, each one using every trick in the book to drum up business.

The shop closest to the intersection had a string of wind chimes hanging outside, the brass tubes clinking endlessly in the breeze.

A row of crystal balls of varying sizes sat on display in the front window.

The cheaper, fist-sized ones were propped up on wooden stands, while the expensive ones—as large as watermelons—were nestled on black velvet.

Further down the street, the shops grew increasingly eclectic.

There were those selling evil-warding amulets, protective incense sachets, Tarot Cards...

Incense and candles burned in front of every door. Smoke spilled out through the cracks in the doors and windows, mingling with the haze and shrouding the entire street in a grayish-blue pall.

As he walked, Richard split his attention to focus on his Perception.

The warmth from the Seat of the Sun in his chest acted as a probe.

For most of the shops, the ether concentration was exactly the same as the street outside—roughly zero.

The crystal balls in that front window were as clean as the radishes in a vegetable market.

As for the turban-clad old woman sitting in the Spirit Vision parlor, there wasn’t a single trace of ether flowing anywhere in her body.

Fakes. Fakes. All fakes.

Over ninety percent of the storefronts on Flower Moon Street were selling nothing but atmosphere and tall tales.

But there were exceptions.