After the sun had risen into the sky, the warmth it cast was slow-coming, scarcely managing to completely dispel the chill of the night.
Sparrows, ants, hares, bats, field mice, and owls. As the sun yawned lazily, these tiny creatures scrambled up the mountain as if monstrous predators were snapping at their heels...
Sparrows, bats, and owls flapped their wings, scattering in all directions towards the mountain peaks and quickly forming a dense network in the sky. Separately, ants, hares, and field mice, in their own ways—burrowing, hopping, escaping—soon established extensive strongholds in various corners of the mountain.
"Shared Perspective!" Milo commanded.
At the foot of the mountain, six Alchemists stood in a circle, within which a Hexagram Symbol was slowly forming.
Each Alchemist stood at a point of the hexagram, representing good and evil, love and hate, and life and death.
Alchemy has always operated on the principle of equivalent exchange, a principle embodied to the fullest in the Hexagram Symbol of the Alchemy Workshop: good cannot exist without evil; love and hate are inherently the same; life and death are two sides of the same coin.
In the philosophy of Alchemists, the world is balanced. Exchanges that disrupt this balance merely extend the two opposing ends indefinitely. Alchemy might bring about qualitative changes, but these are merely superficial. Behind such transformations, the opposing internal aspect rushes furiously in the opposite direction. When you transmute an ordinary stone into gold, you see only its surface. This surface sparkles with ravishing brilliance, inspiring words of admiration. Yet, behind that facade, the gold’s essence, having been stripped away, is painfully fading away within its original space.
Good stands in opposition to evil. Hypocrisy will crumble before extreme wickedness, while unspeakable evil will become fragile before pure, simple, true goodness.
Love and hate, life and death, are all opposing sides of an equation.
Milo’s principal Exchange Beast is an ant. He stands at the ’death’ point on the hexagram. The Alchemy Equation traces its path along the lines of the Hexagram Symbol—this is the Shared Perspective Milo speaks of. This perspective is the Spirit Vision. Since the Exchange Beasts each Alchemist controls are different, the Spirit Power feedback they receive also differs. Therefore, to maintain control of the overall situation, Alchemists need to share the feedback from their principal Exchange Beast. This shared Spirit Power travels along the interconnected lines of the hexagram, conveying it to the Wizards at the other points of the hexagram, enabling them to successfully experience the Spirit Visions of their peers.
In this way, they can instantly understand whether the Exchange Beasts on the mountain are in danger or safe. Although this understanding does not involve using their eyes, this spiritual sensation is not substantially different from seeing with their own eyes. To some extent, Exchange Beasts are emitters of their controller’s Spirit Power. Should an Exchange Beast suffer a severe blow, its controller will also be injured.
Exchange Beasts are worlds apart from the Contract Beasts of Dark Alchemists. Exchange Beasts cannot be considered Living Entities because, from beginning to end, they are merely instruments used by Alchemists—tools created through Alchemy Equations. All the Spirit Power an Exchange Beast possesses comes from its controller. In other words, an Exchange Beast is essentially a surrogate manifestation of its controlling Alchemist.
(I was late in getting the book and didn’t have enough time to update. I’ll make up for it tomorrow!)