Yan reviewed the Soul-Lantern Division method in the guest room after dinner. He sat by the open window, following the sequence with one finger on the table: central thread, first branch, second, third, then recall. He did not try to split his awareness. Reading the words did not start the art.
The ordinary cost described by the manuscript was severe. A practitioner’s soul could fragment, the pieces become unstable, or the thread fail to draw them back. Yan understood why most people would stop at the first warning. The promised benefit was also clear: each lantern could hold an awareness point at a different distance. The method did not promise that a projection could act like a body. It could look, listen, and carry small objects along the thread, but its reach depended on prepared lamps. The most dangerous instruction was the recall: each branch had to be drawn home before the central anchor faded. Yan understood the risk in the words. He felt no dread from reading them, only a keen wish to see how the method worked for him.
He traced the branches once on a scrap of paper, checked them against the manuscript, then tore the copy into small pieces and dropped them into the stove. The hall’s formula remained in its book. He needed the sequence in his memory, not on loose paper.
