Mystery: Emerging From Knowledge Moor

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Leyton and the butler finished their dinner, each preoccupied with their own thoughts. The atmosphere in the house was particularly silent today.

Wiping his mouth with a napkin, Leyton said, "I feel a bit dizzy from sleeping too long. I'll go to the study to read for a while. Uncle Sean, you can go and rest after you're done with your tasks. I'll handle things myself if anything comes up."

After saying this, Leyton got up and went to the study without waiting for the butler's reply.

"Very well, young master," the butler's response came from behind him.

In the study, Leyton took one book after another from the bookshelf, but he couldn't concentrate on reading. He decided to give up on reading altogether and went upstairs to the second floor.

He took the coat he had thrown on the cabinet in his room and the sealed artifact, the Great Magician's Top Hat.

Leyton took out the feather that the crow, an incarnation of an angel, had given him. After observing it for a while, he inserted it into the red ribbon on the top hat.

As the crimson feather was inserted into the tall top hat, the hat seemed to come to life, constantly twisting on the table, as if trying to shake off the feather.

But no matter how hard the hat tried to twist, it couldn't shake off the crimson feather. Eventually, it seemed to compromise and returned to stillness, even flattening the slightly curled front and back brims. It was as if the entire hat had given up.

After confirming that the Great Magician's Top Hat was completely sealed by the crow's crimson feather, Leyton took the hat in his hand and used divination to understand the effects of the hat after being sealed:

Wearing the hat would grant him super-strong body coordination and balance, precise body control, and make his lies more believable.

He could still use those few tricks, including Fog Creation, Flash, Burning, Freezing, and Wind Gust, but now each trick could only be used five times a day, and the intensity was low, making them useless in actual combat.

The hat's abilities as a magic tool and weapon were enhanced. In addition to the original ability to use the hat as a throwing knife to attack enemies, it also gained some Apprentice pathway abilities, allowing him to place the hat on a wall or table and reach through it to touch things on the other side.

The negative effects of the hat were also greatly reduced. The strong desire for performance inherent in the hat had less influence on the user. He only needed to wear the hat and perform magic tricks and illusions in front of people a few times a day.

The hat still retained some living characteristics, but it would no longer constantly bewitch the user. As long as he stuffed different books into the hat every so often, the hat's bewitching ability would be greatly reduced.

After understanding the effects of the hat after being sealed, Leyton could only say that it was indeed an angel of the White Tower pathway. It not only sealed most of the negative effects of the sealed artifact but also enhanced the positive effects.

What was even more terrifying was that a sealed artifact was now being forced to read books. He mourned for the poor hat in his heart and casually stuffed a book from the table into the hat.

Although he didn't need to use the hat now, helping the hat was a pleasant thing. Anyway, the Church of the God of Knowledge and Wisdom had no shortage of books. Even if he stuffed different books into the hat every day, he could probably stuff it for hundreds of years.

Leyton noticed a bright bronze ornament peeking out from under the books where he had taken the book. He put the hat that had been stuffed with a book aside and picked up the ornament, examining it for a moment.

"Oh, shoot! How could I have forgotten about it? I haven't returned it yet!" Leyton finally remembered what he had forgotten.

Seeing the ornament, Leyton was stunned for a moment before remembering that it was the relic of that Morse Ascetic member. The captain had asked him to bring it back to study it for any possible discoveries, but he had simply forgotten about it.

"But its existence should be to allow me to outline that pattern during meditation, right?" Leyton guessed, recalling his previous experiences during meditation.

"Forget it, I'll take it back to the captain tomorrow and just say I didn't find anything," Leyton thought, putting it into his coat pocket.

"Tap! Tap!!"

The sound of tapping came from the window of the room. Leyton looked over and saw that it was the crow, the incarnation of an angel.

Leyton quickly went over and opened the window, letting the crow in.

"Caw—" The crow chirped softly, then tilted its head back and spat out two jelly-like masses.

One mass was light green, expanding and contracting slowly, as if it were alive. The other mass was dark green, constantly deforming irregularly, as if trying to grow hands and feet.

"Beyonder characteristics?" This was the first thought that came to Leyton's mind.

"A Sequence 9 Planter characteristic and a Sequence 8 Doctor characteristic, both from the same pathway," the crow's voice sounded directly in Leyton's mind.

"Is this part of the characteristic that was extracted from that Sanguine, that is, from As, before?" Leyton asked curiously.

"Yes, this is part of the transaction between me and that Sanguine viscount who failed to switch pathways. I took his child away from there, and he gave me the extra characteristics from that Classical Alchemist characteristic," the crow replied.

"Wasn't he already corrupted at that time?" Leyton asked doubtfully.

A corrupted Sanguine viscount was able to make a deal with an angel at the last moment, asking the other party to save his child. Leyton found this a bit unbelievable.

"He had too many messy characteristics and corruption in his body, which allowed him to grasp a delicate balance, retaining part of his consciousness to make a deal with me," the crow's voice in Leyton's mind also carried some disbelief.

Leyton felt that if conditions had allowed, this angel might have wanted to study how this delicate balance was achieved.

"If he hadn't been corrupted himself, that viscount would have even poured his own Sanguine characteristics into his child's body," the angel's incarnation was quite talkative.

"Then why didn't he do that? Couldn't you have shattered the characteristics and then slowly reassembled them, thus clearing the corruption?" Leyton asked, puzzled.

"Indeed, that can be done, but do you think ordinary people know about this method of clearing residual corruption within characteristics?" the other party's voice retorted in Leyton's mind.

"Uh, I took it for granted," Leyton also felt that his question was a bit stupid.

This method of clearing residual corruption within characteristics was basically unknown except to angels or people with high enough status. Even Mr. Fool, who was hanging on the Sefirah Castle, spent a long time searching before learning this information from Little Sun.

"May I ask if you know of any ways to speed up the digestion of the Reader characteristic in my body?" Leyton hesitated for a moment before asking the question.

Leyton himself was also very helpless. It was clear that the Sequence 8 characteristic had been digested after reasoning out the cause behind this incident, but the Sequence 9 characteristic in his body showed no signs of digestion at all.

The crow, an incarnation of an angel, stared at Leyton for a long time before saying, "Read and master knowledge. Do you really need to ask me such a simple question?"

"I want to know if there's a faster way," Leyton said, feeling speechless.

"Use Beyonder abilities to speed up the process," the crow said before flying away from the table.

Leyton's mouth twitched slightly. He felt that he was being treated like an idiot by the crow, and the other party was so speechless that they directly complained about him.

"It seems that there really are no shortcuts to take. I can only read books honestly in the days to come," Leyton sighed, feeling slightly disappointed.

He rummaged through his father's room and found two iron cigarette cases, placed the two characteristics in them respectively, and then used a Wall of Spirituality to isolate them from the outside world.

Afterwards, he cleared out a cabinet in his room that he used to store collectibles and placed the sealed Great Magician's Top Hat and the two Beyonder characteristics inside respectively.

"In the future, I must collect a copy of the sealed artifacts and characteristics of all twenty-two pathways." Looking at the somewhat empty cabinet after cleaning it up, Leyton's collector's habit was aroused.

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