Eight years and 10,000 handwritten cards later he completed his
linguistic analysis of Aquinas’s “interiority”—his introspective faith—at
Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.
整体作状语,相当于 with eight years and 10,0000handwritten cards later, he... 这里的later,好理解,是个副词修饰前面的名词,例如 three years later. 这里的later,也可以修饰整个前面2个名词,就是后来经过八年努力,手写了10000张卡片,他终于……