After the banquet ended, not long after Seake finished tidying up his workshop that evening, Miss Hana entered, needing to prepare Lady YoLan's medicine.
Hana made no comment about his newly organized workspace; the first words she uttered upon stepping into the room were, "I know you're incompetent, so don't get in my way!"
Seake tactfully nodded and stepped aside. Hana approached the red brick wall, tapping it with her palm. Seake didn't understand what she was doing, so he watched more intently. Hana tapped again, this time with her fifth palm striking a different spot. She kicked the wall, wincing from the pain, then hopped in place before tapping again, the fifth palm hitting another spot.
The bricks slowly shifted, revealing a small space behind the wall. Hana retrieved a thick book from inside. It turned out to be the action to open a secret door.
Seake glanced at the book; its title, in ornate letters, read "The Secret Formulas of Grand Magi." The cover looked quite worn, resembling a century-old tome. But when Hana placed the book on the workbench and opened it, Seake recognized the layout immediately. It was the same as the magical pharmacology textbook "Comprehensive Guide to Household Potions" used by mage academies. Same content, different cover. Seake had a terrible thought: Hana deliberately hid this very basic book as if it were a super-secret formula, possibly to impress her boss by pretending to be skilled.
Seake didn't want to admit it, but the idea made sense, explaining why Hana, who mistrusted him, would perform the act of opening a secret door in front of him. After all, the secret door and its contents were nothing more than stage props.
Hana noticed Seake's gaze and said to him, "What's with that look! I can whip up this simple formula without even needing to consult a book!"
Such a simple formula, Seake had already memorized long ago, without needing to refer to a book.
Hana brought out a pile of tools and placed them on the workbench, covering the entire surface. Many of the items Seake couldn't even recognize. As Hana continued arranging, muttering about the lack of assistance from her usual apprentice, Seake, not holding out much hope, said, "He's dead."
"I know, he always plays dead to avoid work!" Hana didn't even turn her head, continuing to lay out a long row of saws of varying lengths on the table, as if without all these saws, she couldn't break a single twig.
The first step, the most basic and crucial in potion-making, was purifying water. Seake filled the (finally cleaned) large pot with water, while Hana began drawing glyphs around the perimeter.
The teacher who taught magical pharmacology at the academy was an extremely elderly gentleman, seemingly an important figure in the national magical pharmacology community.
Besides imparting technical skills, he often shared life lessons with his students. He once said that he abandoned teaching at the university to teach at the academy because university mages only wanted to take trendy courses, showing no interest in outdated magical pharmacology, with a terrible attitude towards learning. The average age of academy students was higher; they knew what they were doing, seizing every learning opportunity, so he preferred teaching at the academy.
He said that observing a mage brew potions revealed their entire capability. Potions required a mage's most crucial abilities: focus, observation, and precision.
Long ago, only a select few could wield magic through innate talent. The modern ability for people to use magic through study was due to previous researchers studying how those individuals cast spells and systematizing their findings. Magical pharmacology was the vanguard of that transitional period, the oldest discipline among all magical studies. Focus, observation, and precision were essential for conducting research.
Seake observed Hana's potion-making process carefully. She used the glyph for purifying water, which, while flashy, wasn't executed correctly. The shapes of the glyphs were crooked, with many incorrect symbols, and a considerable amount of powder was spilled in places it shouldn't have been. She hadn't memorized the glyph, nor did she check the images in the book after each section she wrote.
What surprised Seake considerably was that the glyph actually activated successfully. Water bubbled continuously, forming bubbles that shouldn't have existed, which frightened Seake immensely.
Then Hana began gathering materials. Thanks to Seake placing labels outward, she could immediately see where the needed materials were. She picked up a jar labeled "Tufted Bird Feather Tea," took out two crushed feathers, and threw them into the pot. In this recipe, these two materials could indeed be interchangeable, but the effect would be inferior.
She then picked up a jar of garlic bulbs. These two were entirely different. After opening it for two seconds, she seemed to remember that this jar was counterfeit, so she set it down, glared at Seake for a moment, then grabbed the Enthusiasm Fruit with substitution properties from below and threw a handful into the pot.
After picking up several more ingredients, Hana noticeably began to lose focus. This continuous observation of material state and meticulous cross-referencing with the recipe was too mentally taxing for her. She picked up a jar labeled "Sparse Moth Scale Powder" and poured it directly into the pot, filling the room with the scent of chocolate drinks.
Hana only realized after pouring it that this jar was also counterfeit. She widened her eyes in panic for three seconds, then quickly regained her composure, pretending that what she had just poured was indeed Sparse Moth Scale Powder, and continued adding other ingredients.
Watching the pot gradually emit a strange blue-purple fluorescent light, occasionally sparking, Seake felt quite uneasy. Would this workshop be blown up in a moment?
Seake came up with a solution and said to Hana, "Miss Hana, let me handle this simple task. This way, I'll also have the opportunity to practice, but I'm not as skilled as you, so it will take a bit more time. You can wait in the lounge, and when I'm done, you can come back to inspect it. How does that sound?"
Hana glared at Seake with a relieved expression, "Don't mess it up, or it will embarrass me!"
Seake had initially intended to give a very perfunctory response, but he restrained himself, nodding and saying, "I'll do my best."
Then Hana hurriedly escaped from the workshop, returning to the world of romance novels in the spiral tower.
Seake poured out the contents of the pot and started over.
He carefully examined Hana's tool pile and discovered that there were no basic tools; they were all fancy and useless items. He had to take out a measuring tape from his own herbal bag, fix one end, and tie chalk to the other, making circular marks on the table surface. Some studios with heavy workload for glyphs would use acrylic boards to carve out the glyphs and sprinkle powder to form the characters directly on them. Hana didn't have such convenient tools. Seake rummaged through the toolbox and finally found an unopened pack of powder-bearing paper on the bottom shelf. He folded the paper, placed the powder inside, and slowly poured out the pattern.
Then he poured the herbs onto the paper, carefully inspecting them, selecting the usable parts, and modifying the recipe based on the genuine ingredients available in the workshop.
After a long time of busy work, when he completed the spell, with the large pot boiling and placed in the brick-insulated cabinet, it was time for him to leave work. So he returned all the tools that Hana had taken out (none of which were used) to their original positions and left the workshop. Miss Hana wasn't in the lounge, so he couldn't find her and left work on his own.
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Seake returned to his room to fetch fresh clothes and headed towards the bathroom. As he passed through the hallway, he noticed a missing flame among the two rows of candles. One candle had gone out. He paused, contemplating whether he should help the homeowner relight the candle.
He sensed that something had changed in the air, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was. The silver locket around his neck trembled slightly, reminding him that something was amiss.
Taking a deep breath, Seake closed his eyes, focusing on the darkness before him. Then, slowly, with his eyes still closed, he opened them.
The world he saw was vastly different from what he had seen before closing his eyes. He saw many silvery waves of light moving through the darkness. He was now seeing the world with his third eye, a sight granted by spiritual vision, revealing another aspect of the world.
Normally, these energy waves should be roughly evenly distributed, but now Seake saw many particularly bright and thick streams of light emanating from above people's heads, just a little higher, and descending towards the ground. Seake compared and noticed that these streams of light were emanating from the position of the candles. Seake tried to look underground but could only see a chaotic mist, unable to discern what lay beneath.
At that moment, the silver locket shook vigorously, striking Seake's skin below his collarbone. Seake quickly opened his eyes—someone was approaching.
Seake stepped back and grabbed his clothes, pretending to walk nonchalantly towards a corner not far ahead. But before he reached the corner, the person appeared.
Seake first saw the floor and walls illuminated by the firelight, then Lady YoLan, holding a torch, dragging her feet as she walked over. She was wearing a thin-strapped silk nightgown, with nothing underneath, showcasing her voluptuous figure. But Seake couldn't feel any sense of allure because half of her face was a shocking shade of purple, swollen, with one eye red, and her lips swollen. There were deep brown scabs at the corners of her eyes. Looking at her exposed arms, they were also abnormally swollen, with a large bruise.
As she looked at Seake, her gaze didn't seem to focus on him but rather on a spot behind him. Her eyelids drooped weakly, her facial muscles seemed to be in a state of wanting to lift but lacking the strength, and her expression was ambiguous. Seake felt like she was trying to put on a social smile but resisting it, unwilling to do so.
"These candles must not go out," she said weakly, using the torch in her hand to relight the extinguished candle. "You mustn't touch them," she added, gazing at the stabilized flames and remarking, "Candlelight is so good, fragile, burning itself to illuminate people, and always shedding tears."
Seake nodded vigorously. After she dragged her feet and passed by Seake, he hugged his clothes tightly and hurried to the bathroom. He desperately needed hot water to wash away the chill that had settled over him.