Hervin Lambis picked up the bone china teacup beside him and took a sip, looked at Audrey who sat upright without a single flaw in her posture, and smiled kindly:
"There's no need to be so formal. It's not the first time you've met me. I still remember two years ago, you even discussed Bohman's moral philosophy and Contiço's pragmatism with me."
Audrey maintained a faint smile and said:
"I just find it hard to connect you with a council member of the Psychology Alchemy Society."
Hervin Lambis hadn't made such an introduction yet, but this was a reasonable inference Audrey could draw based on her knowledge of the Psychology Alchemy Society and the situation at hand.
Hervin crossed his right leg and smiled slightly:
"There's no need to dwell on this. Never forget that our Psychology Alchemy Society was established for the purpose of researching knowledge of the mental domain. We lean more toward academia than administration. Well, since it's academia, you can simply think of the so-called council members as university professors."
If Audrey hadn't already learned from "The World" that Hervin Lambis had been manipulating Calonne's suicide behind the scenes, no matter how she observed him now, she would have only reached the conclusion that he was a knowledgeable, kind, humorous, and not-at-all arrogant scholar. But now that she was on her guard, Audrey no longer trusted the surface he presented.
She kept her eyes on him as she organized her words, while making sure her attention didn't fixate on any single point, maintaining an active and diffuse flow of thought so as not to be hypnotized without realizing it.
At that moment, her mind suddenly grew hazy, and she seemed to see seven rays of pure light containing infinite knowledge, dense figures whose forms were impossible to describe, and them spreading across the heights, covering everything.
This was the sky of spirituality—the reflection of the Spirit World upon the mental plane!
Below the sky of spirituality lay a deep, dark ocean, where every drop of water was like a shaft of light and shadow, as if each represented a point of consciousness, a brand.
In the near waters of this ocean existed several islands, one of which belonged to Audrey herself.
She was clearly aware that this was a symbolic representation of her own consciousness. What protruded above the waterline was the portion she could perceive, while what was submerged beneath the "seawater" represented the deep-level consciousness she could not ordinarily grasp or detect.
Floating above her island and gazing downward, the first thing Audrey noticed was a vast expanse of solitary, silent grayish fog. It obscured her vision, allowing her to see only the enormous, dark outline of the unconscious and the illusory, undulating ocean of the collective unconscious, making it difficult to gather much information.
Just as Audrey was wondering how she had entered this strange state, she suddenly saw that beneath the island, in the deeper reaches of the unconscious ocean, the great mass of grayish fog parted like a tide to both sides, revealing a stone staircase that had appeared at some unknown time.
Atop the staircase, a figure was surging upward with a flashing, instantaneous speed. In virtually no time at all, he had entered Audrey's field of vision.
His hair was thick but had gone entirely white. He wore a standard three-piece suit with blue-gray pinstriped trousers and a dark red bowtie. The wrinkles on his forehead were pronounced. It was none other than Hervin Lambis!
This Lambis bore a sinister, gloomy temperament, without a trace of a smile. His head was slightly bowed, as though he were scrutinizing the deeper layers of Audrey's consciousness behind the staircase.
In just a few steps, he moved from the ocean of the collective unconscious onto Audrey's island of consciousness, transitioning from the unconscious realm to the portion exposed above the waterline—like an uninvited, silent visitor who hadn't knocked.
Having set foot on the island, Hervin Lambis raised his head. Part of his skin was now covered in ashen-white scales, and his eyes had turned golden and slit-shaped, devoid of any emotion whatsoever.
This—Audrey, floating in midair, watched this scene unfold, and the nature of the current situation became clear to her:
This was the world of the mind—a world of the mind composed of the sky of spirituality, the ocean of the collective unconscious, and the island of individual consciousness!
Because of the blessing given by "The Fool," that Angel, Hervin Lambis's covert intrusion into her mental body and mental domain through the ocean of the collective unconscious had triggered the "warning"... That power then separated her most essential self-consciousness, allowing her to manipulate everything occurring upon the "island" beneath the sky of spirituality, thereby resisting a true form of mind-reading... This is truly incredible—no, Hervin Lambis is truly despicable! Not polite in the slightest, barging into someone's "home" without permission or notice! Audrey muttered a few sentences from her position in midair.
Now that she understood her situation, Audrey simultaneously influenced the changes on the "island" while responding to Hervin Lambis, who was sitting leisurely on the sofa in the real world:
"I'm quite nervous even when facing university professors."
As she spoke, Audrey made the inner island "grumble":
This isn't a good comparison at all—as a member of the Psychology Alchemists' council at his age, he's at least Sequence 4, a being that's half-god and half-human, naturally awe-inspiring and intimidating!
Hervin Lambis on the sofa chuckled immediately:
"Then I won't push you. I heard from Hilbert about your situation—he said you went from 'Psychiatrist' to 'Hypnotist' in just a few months. I'm curious, how did you manage that? Hmm, I also heard the answer you gave Easrant—something about bold application. I want to hear more detail."
At this moment, Hervin Lambis on Audrey's "psychic island" was expressionlessly surveying his surroundings, listening to the sounds echoing there.
Audrey had long been prepared for this. She deliberately put on an appearance of gathering her thoughts, waiting several seconds before speaking: