Chapter 49: The True Meditation

The Curly Baboon Research Society? If not for his sister’s poor mood, Lu Mi would have burst out laughing.

Even though he held back his laughter, he couldn’t help saying:

“Those who know understand you’re studying curly baboons; those who don’t think a bunch of curly baboons are doing the research.”

Of course, he was just joking, because the word “research” was in the passive voice.

Aurora rolled her eyes at him:

“We joke about ourselves too, saying we’re a group of curly baboons being studied.”

Seeing his sister’s mood had improved, Lu Mi asked:

“Are all members of your society Non-Humans?”

“Not all,” Aurora replied briefly. “But some gatherings are off-limits to ordinary people.”

She didn’t explain why they couldn’t attend.

“Who’s the president? How many vice presidents?” Lu Mi pressed.

“Are you checking a household register?” Aurora snapped back.

“Huh?” Lu Mi was utterly confused.

Actually, he could guess what his sister meant by “a small notebook recording family members”—she was referring to the Curly Baboon Research Society’s internal details, and she disliked him probing too deeply.

Aurora puffed out her cheeks and exhaled:

“The president’s codename is ‘Gandalf.’ There are five vice presidents.”

“Alright, I’m summoning Hela’s messenger.”

Lu Mi nodded, then frowned with doubt:

“Aurora, uh, sister, didn’t you say you only knew the codename ‘Hela’ and didn’t know her real name? How are you going to summon her messenger then?”

He remembered her earlier explanation: changing the final line of the summoning incantation to “messenger exclusively belonging to [someone]” would precisely target the creature—but now they didn’t know who “[someone]” was.

“Good,” Aurora praised. “Noticing problems is a sign of good learning. Here’s the thing: when you sign a contract with a spirit-world creature, it doesn’t matter what name you use—the contract automatically extracts a sliver of your true essence to establish a bond. But remember, any future summoning must use the name written during the contract. Changing it to your true name won’t work.”

Lu Mi pondered carefully:

“I get it. The key is essence and connection—the name used during the contract is just the incantation for future summonings; you can write anything.”

“Exactly,” Aurora nodded slightly.

Lu Mi suddenly chuckled:

“Could there be a scenario—hypothetically, I’m just saying—where you, sister, obtained the correct incantation, summoned a messenger, and signed a contract using the name ‘Aurora Li,’ then, out of affection for your little brother—that’s me—you taught me the incantation, and I successfully summoned another messenger, but, just for fun, I signed the contract using ‘Aurora Li’ too?”

“Then the question is: if someone uses the phrase ‘messenger exclusively belonging to Aurora Li,’ which one will be summoned?”

Aurora’s face turned pale with irritation:

“I don’t have a messenger! How would I know?”

She took a breath, steadied herself, then thought aloud:

“This is essentially a naming conflict causing misdirection. Compared to ordinary contracted creatures only you can summon, messengers that others can summon are more prone to this issue. But since I don’t have a messenger, I’m not sure if there’s a special mechanism to avoid such errors—I can only analyze based on my knowledge:

“One: those who possess messengers are extremely rare; the chance of duplicate names is negligible.

“Two: if there is a duplicate, you can place an object imbued with the messenger’s owner’s essence into the summoning ritual to precisely lock onto the target.

“Three—if you’re truly worried about name conflicts, make the name longer when signing the contract. For example: Lu Mi Torres Ale Lanlos Arthur Gellman Sparrow Li. That should eliminate duplicates.”

“But I’d probably forget that name right after signing—it’s too hard to remember,” Lu Mi muttered. “And why add the names of a pirate hunter and a great adventurer?”

"Because I like them. Miss Forsyth's adventurer novels are classics," Aurora replied without hesitation.

She turned her body, tidied the altar, and prepared to perform the summoning ritual properly.

At that moment, Lu Mi suddenly remembered something and called out:

“Wait!”

“What?” Aurora turned back, bewildered.

Lu Mi asked seriously:

“Are messengers considered outsiders?”

“...” Aurora first looked puzzled, not grasping his meaning—but quickly understood the issue.

She hesitated before replying:

“You mean, if a messenger, as an outsider, arrives in Kordu, it’ll get trapped in the loop and never leave?”

Before Lu Mi could answer, Aurora made a new deduction:

“No, it’s worse. It’s a contracted creature—it receives the message and immediately goes to Hela, effectively leaving Kordu, which restarts the cycle.

“Then, driven by instinct, it keeps leaving, and we keep restarting—there’s never enough time to investigate the loop’s core.”

Lu Mi couldn’t help imagining the scene his sister described:

He opens his eyes, sees his familiar bedroom, opens them again, sees the same bedroom, opens them again, sees the same bedroom… repeating this countless times, all because some messenger is desperate to “go home.”

Aurora pressed her hand to her forehead:

“I can’t even imagine what changes would happen then...”

After sighing, she spoke seriously:

“From what we’ve seen, any living thing leaving Kordu and its surrounding areas triggers a cycle restart, while inanimate objects don’t activate the restriction—the telegram sent and the letter mailed are proof.

“If that’s true, spirits won’t work either. It seems we can’t summon a messenger.”

Hearing this, Lu Mi suddenly understood why the little blue book remained in its cut-word state.

The cut-out strip had left Kordu Village, escaped the loop, and was no longer affected—it wouldn’t return, so the little blue book couldn’t restore itself!

He told his sister this theory, then added:

“The little blue book’s mystery is solved, but how was that letter mailed?

“It couldn’t have been sent during the cycle—anyone leaving Kordu triggers a restart. And if it was sent before the cycle, I have no memory of it. Do you?”

“Neither do I,” Aurora thought for a few seconds, then scolded playfully, “You idiot, you almost threw me off track. Sending the letter during the cycle is simple!”

“Huh?” Lu Mi stared at his clever sister.

Aurora smiled:

“You don’t need a postman or hired courier to send the letter.

“When we detect the anomaly and don’t want to alert anyone who might be involved, the best option is to put the rescue letter inside a wooden box, seal it tightly, then toss the box into the river outside the village and let it drift downstream until someone in another village—or even in Dali—finds it and delivers it to the authorities.

“You said we confirmed in the last cycle that the river extends far enough to reach other places.”

“Of course!” Lu Mi clapped his hands together sharply.

He thought of another question:

“Could fish in the river trigger a restart?”

“Probably not,” Aurora mused. “Creatures with little intelligence are extremely sensitive to invisible restrictions—or rather, more easily influenced by them. They’d likely instinctively avoid areas that might cause a restart.”

“Then what about your ‘White Paper’? After twelve hours, it must leave the real world,” Lu Mi worried this would restart the cycle.

Aurora looked around, then thoughtfully said:

“I suspect the cycle doesn’t just include Kordu Village and the surrounding mountains—it also encompasses the corresponding spirit-world region of this place and everyone here.

“You probably don’t know that the spirit world and reality interact quite frequently. If we didn’t include the corresponding spirit region, the cycle would restart every few moments—but clearly, that’s not what’s happening.

“Your ‘White Paper,’ as my contracted creature, is directly linked to Kordu Village. The spirit region it roams is almost certainly included.”

I still don’t understand the occult well enough… Lu Mi stopped asking.

Aurora demonstrated the ritual magic process again and dissolved the spiritual barrier.

Amid a sudden gust of invisible wind, she told Lu Mi:

“It’s fully dark now. I’ll teach you the true meditation and how to open the spirit sight.”

“Mm-hmm,” Lu Mi signaled he was listening intently.

Aurora explained:

“You’ve already mastered the first half of meditation. We’ll start from the second half.

“When you visualize the sun, focus your mind, and enter a calm state, let your mind go slightly blank and imagine a thing that doesn’t exist in reality to replace the sun—keep sketching it, keep repeating, until your body and mind achieve stillness and your thoughts begin to feel weightless.”

“A thing that doesn’t exist in reality?” Lu Mi didn’t understand.

Aurora pulled out paper and pencil and sketched a few lines:

“Look—is there anything in reality like this?”

On the paper was a highly abstract shape: a circle with eyes and an X drawn over its face.

“You drew it—you made it real,” Lu Mi said, feeling her explanation was wrong.

“Drawings and imagined things don’t count as reality,” Aurora rolled her eyes.

Teaching her brother meant enduring this kind of nonsense constantly.

Lu Mi said “Oh”:

“Then I’ll try using your drawing.”

He pulled over a chair, sat down, leaned back, and focused his mind.

The crimson sun quickly formed in his mind, gradually calming him.

Since they were in reality, he didn’t hear the terrifying, mysterious voice—he could calmly replace the sun in meditation with the sketch his sister had drawn.

The circle with eyes and an X rapidly emerged in Lu Mi’s mind.

As he repeatedly sketched it, his body and mind grew quieter, his thoughts becoming increasingly weightless.

He “saw” faint gray mist around him, strange, unreal entities, and blended, vivid color patches, while high above—or perhaps deep within—shone clear beams of light.

“Don’t rush. The chance of a ‘Hunter’ succeeding in their first meditation is very low,” Aurora comforted her brother.

Lu Mi was about to tell his sister he had successfully entered meditation when he suddenly felt something watching him from deep within the faint gray mist and from infinitely high above!

This seemed like an illusion, yet it made him break out in cold sweat, filled with inexplicable fear, and he instantly broke out of his meditative state.

(End of Chapter)