svetikya Chapter 221 Thoughts in the Garden
Chapter 221 Thoughts in the Garden
Chapter 221 Thoughts in the Garden
Saturday's sun generously bathed the Hawthorne's backyard, dispelling the morning mist. The air was filled with the fragrance of damp earth, the fresh scent of sun-warmed grass, and the faint salty smell of the sea breeze from afar.
Today, since everyone was tending the garden together, Emily wasn't using the magical gardening tools Karen had given her last year. Instead, wearing a wide-brimmed gardening hat and cotton gloves, she was bending over, carefully clearing fallen leaves and weeds from the edges of the flowerbeds with a small rake. David, meanwhile, was pushing the newly "recovered" green lawnmower, creating a steady hum and the fresh scent of grass on the lawn. Lily, wearing a small, crooked straw hat and carrying a small red plastic watering can, was like a busy little bee, running between her parents and the flowerbeds, trying to water every plant she could reach. Her little leather shoes made soft, pattering sounds as they stepped on the soft soil.
Karen was in charge of trimming the hedges. He held a long-handled pair of pruning shears in his hand, the cool metal handle gleaming slightly in the sunlight. He carefully trimmed away the sprawling branches that stretched out in neat arcs, listening to the crisp "click" of the blades snapping shut. The scent of the earth, the slightly astringent fragrance of the grass being cut, and the tangible feel of his palm against the wooden handle all gave him a sense of grounded tranquility.
His gaze involuntarily drifted to a corner of the garden. There, a rose bloomed with extraordinary beauty. Its petals, in the sunlight, seemed to drip blood. Even amidst the full bloom of spring, it was the absolute focal point. This was the magical rose he had discovered before, now growing even better than the last time he had seen it.
Karen put down the pruning shears, walked to the rose bush, and knelt down. He didn't immediately activate his True Sight, but first observed it carefully with ordinary vision. The stem was thick, a deep green almost black, covered with a layer of fine, almost invisible thorns. The leaves were glossy and thick, with clearly defined veins. The flowers were large, with deep golden stamens at the center of layers of petals. Everything looked vibrant, yet it also exuded an unnatural, overly intense presence.
"Look at its roots," Karen murmured to herself.
His gaze pierced through the surface soil, "looking" at the roots of the rose.
The thick taproot, like a dark green conduit deeply embedded in an energy network, greedily draws in the brownish-yellow specks of light representing nutrients and water from the soil. But that's not all. What surprised Karen most was the magical microcirculation in the soil surrounding the root system!
In the vision of the Eye of Truth, the originally slow-moving magical flow in the soil was drawn and converged by a strange force as it approached the roots of the rose! Like countless tiny, luminous streams, they actively and continuously flowed towards the dark green roots and were absorbed by them. The absorbed magic did not stagnate but circulated within the root system and was transported upwards along the stem.
What's even more remarkable is that this absorption isn't a one-way plunder. After the roots absorb and transform the soil's magic, they separate out extremely fine, almost imperceptible pale golden light spots, like the gentlest breath, slowly releasing them back into the surrounding soil. These pale golden light spots contain a subtle "life-catalyzing" property. They blend into the soil's magical network, and wherever they pass, the brownish-red veins of light seem to become more active and "healthier," even the white glow emitted by the tiny roots of other plants in the soil near the roots seems to brighten slightly.
This rose is like a tiny, spontaneous magic converter! It absorbs the gentle natural magic of the earth, transforming it into nutrients for its own growth, while simultaneously feeding back some refined, gentler, and more beneficial energy to the soil, forming a miniature, benign magical ecological cycle! This is a level that ordinary plants cannot achieve; it inherently possesses a subtle magical activity!
"Karen! What are you daydreaming about? Come help Mommy pile the pruned branches in that corner!" Emily's voice came from the flowerbed next door, accompanied by the rustling sound of her tossing a bunch of weeds into a wicker basket.
"Oh, here it comes!" he replied, suppressing his surprise, and walked over to pick up a pile of pruned branches and leaves from the ground. The unusual magical activity of that rose, like an unsolved mystery, was imprinted in his mind.
As Karen carried the branch toward the composting area in the corner of the garden, his thoughts drifted back to the Occlumency technique. Several days of failures made him realize he needed to change his strategy. Perhaps practicing and maintaining a state of focus in a slightly disturbed environment was more practical than forcibly constructing false memories in absolute silence? He decided to try the selective blocking mentioned in his notes.
He put down the branch, not deliberately seeking a quiet corner, but standing beside the composting area, his back to his parents and Lily working. He closed his eyes, adjusted his breathing, and once again immersed himself in the lingering sensation of microscopic still energy brought about by the eye of reality, quickly capturing a state of "stillness of mind." Consciousness was like a calm lake.
Now, let the sounds, lights, and information from the outside world flow in, but don't let them stir up ripples in your thoughts.
He first "listened," no longer deliberately blocking it out as before. The constant hum of David's lawnmower in the surrounding environment was like a stable background noise. He "allowed" the sound to enter his perception, but immediately "marked" it as meaningless background noise, imagining the sound waves touching the surface of the lake of his consciousness, causing only extremely slight, momentarily calm ripples that could not sink. Noise was just noise; it didn't mean "Father is working," and it didn't evoke any associations.
Lily's giggles rang out nearby, filled with pure joy. The sound was sharper than a lawnmower's. Karen tried to envelop it, imagining herself encasing it in a transparent, smooth, silent bubble. The laughter remained within the bubble, but its emotional impact was stripped away—it was merely a sonic symbol of the fact that "Lily is laughing," no longer automatically triggering subsequent thoughts like, "What is Lily playing that's making her so happy?" or "Is she messing with my old toys again?" The laughter, stripped of its emotional core, was trapped in the soundproof pod.
Emily was humming a tuneless little tune, intermittently. Karen categorized it as background noise, like the lawnmower, and allowed it to merely glide across the surface of her consciousness.
Next comes "seeing," but not actually seeing; rather, with eyes closed, perceiving changes in light and shadow. The eyelids feel the warmth and faint reddish glow of the sunlight. This is marked as ambient light information, without going into deeper associations with weather or time.
Occasionally, a fleeting shadow might pass by, perhaps Lily running by or a bird flying by. This is marked as meaningless dynamic light and shadow and will not be used for image recognition or association.
The hardest part was "thinking." When Lily's laughter rang out again, Karen's mental inertia almost slipped back into the thought, "Is she playing in the water and getting her shoes wet again?" The thought had barely surfaced when he immediately became alert, but instead of suppressing it, he quickly "captured" it, imagining it as a pebble just thrown into the water. Then, with a "hand of thought," he scooped it up and decisively tossed it into a pre-designed isolation chamber, far from the surface of his consciousness. The chamber door closed, and the thought was imprisoned. The lake returned to calm.
At first, this process of "marking," "encapsulating," "capturing," and "isolating" was extremely mentally taxing, like trying to scoop specific leaves from a rushing stream with a fine net—a chaotic and frantic process. Sometimes the sound of a lawnmower would be forgotten and mistaken for the roar of shipyard machinery; Lily's laughter would occasionally burst, instantly infecting him with its joy; the shadow of a bird would make him subconsciously guess what kind of bird it was. But Karen didn't give up. With the special affinity his Eye of Truth brought for states of "stillness" and "pure observation," he tried and corrected time and again. Gradually, the process became smoother. Most external information was successfully "passivated," and those intruding thoughts were more quickly identified and confined to the isolation chamber. The core area of consciousness, that "empty" state, while no longer as profound as absolute silence, still maintained relative stability and tranquility. This was a preliminary sense of control in maintaining core stillness amidst dynamic interference!
"Lily! Don't water the rose too much! It doesn't like being waterlogged!" Emily's voice came with a hint of helpless laughter.
Karen instinctively opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the sound. She saw Lily standing in front of the unusually bright red rose bush, standing on tiptoe, struggling to hold up her little red watering can, the spout crookedly aimed at the base of the rose, water dripping down.
The sunlight shone on her earnest little face, and there was a little mud on the tip of her nose.
Almost simultaneously, Karen activated his Eye of Truth again. He was curious whether there was any connection between the only two magical beings in the house besides himself.
The grey-blue world descended once more. In the pure energy field, an extremely faint, hazy, and pure aura naturally emanated from Lily's small body—it was her unconsciously dissipating, primal magical field brimming with life. This aura fluctuated slightly with her movements and emotions.
When Lily approached the red rose, especially when she was focused on watering it, something strange happened!
The micro-circulation of light around the rose's roots, which had been slowly flowing, absorbing, and replenishing the soil's magic, suddenly brightened the moment Lily's pure magical aura approached! The light, which had been like a stream, suddenly increased in brightness and its flow speed noticeably accelerated, as if it had been injected with vitality! Even more noticeably, the number of pale golden "life catalysis" light spots released from the roots back into the soil seemed to have increased slightly. They happily merged into the soil network, and a few tiny light spots, as if attracted, floated and drifted into the faint light of the white roots of a few small grasses in the soil at Lily's feet.
The rose itself, especially its stamen, already possessed a deep red light that represented its vigorous vitality. As Lily approached, it seemed to respond by flashing a few times with extremely subtle, rhythmic acceleration! Like a tiny heart, its beating frequency subtly increased as the pure magical aura drew near!
This scene lasted only a few seconds. Lily finished watering, satisfied, put down the watering can, and ran away, the aura around her fading away with her. The brightness of the magical microcirculation around the rose's roots slowly returned to its previous rhythm, and the shimmering of the flower's stamens subsided.
Karen closed his Eye of Truth, his heart trembling. His sister Lily's pure, unconscious magical field resonated so clearly with this rose, which already contained a faint magical activity! Her approach was like a refreshing breeze, briefly activating the rose's internal magical cycle. This was no coincidence. Lily's magical talent was far more natural, more approachable, and even capable of subtle interactions with magical plants than he had previously observed with the floating teddy bear! Perhaps this unusual red rose was attracted and nourished by the magical field unconsciously emanating from Lily, thus displaying such dazzling vitality?
He watched his little sister run towards their mother in the sunlight, and then looked at the scarlet rose swaying gently in the breeze. A seed quietly sprouted and was deeply planted in his heart.