I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 154 The One Who Stole the Young Man's Shadow

About twenty minutes after leaving the hostel, the mill came into view.

One-third of the building's exterior walls are covered with plants, and dead vines are still hanging on the walls, their leaves long since fallen off.

"The main entrance is not our work location today."

Mrs. McNeil explained as she walked around the main entrance.

"Today we'll go around to the southeast corner of the outer wall and start pasting."

"Why from the southeast corner?"

"Because the southeast corner is closest to the cellar entrance, the cellar side is where the visible and hidden parts are closest together."

Starting from the tightest point and working outwards is the most efficient way.

Richard silently memorized this principle, another piece of little-known knowledge he hadn't read in books.

There is a crack in the southeast corner of the outer wall, and at its widest point, a finger can be inserted.

Mrs. McNeil stood before the crack.

"This is a new crack." She reached out and touched the crack, her fingertips turning red from the cold. "It only cracked this autumn."

"How can you tell it's new?" Theodore leaned closer.

"There are no plants, moss, or spider webs in the cracks," Mrs. McNeill pointed out. "Old cracks would at least have spider webs."

"……Reasonable."

"Before applying the silver strip, a process called 'seam cleaning' is performed."

She took several things out of her handbag: a small wood plane, a cloth bag containing coarse salt, a small glass bottle containing rice wine, and a bunch of dried rosemary tied with a red string.

"The principle of cleaning seams is to remove all the 'things that shouldn't be there' from the seams first."

Mrs. McNeil explained as she worked.

"The carcasses of small animals, moss, plant roots, ash, and gravel."

These things do not contain ether themselves, but they will be sealed inside after the silver band is attached.

Once sealed inside, the silver belt's efficiency was completely wasted by this junk.

"Understood." Richard took the small wood plane.

"You give it a try."

He squatted down and used a small wood plane to scrape along the edge of the crack.

The blade of the wood plane slid into the gap, cutting out a few bits of dust, half a dried spider web, and the huddled corpse of a small beetle.

Every time something was cut out, Theodore would use a cloth brush to sweep the debris into a tin box.

"Keep the box," Mrs. McNeill said, supervising from the side. "Take the contents back to the village and burn them later."

"Why burn it?"

"Because they've already been in the cracks."

Mr. Hutton had mentioned a similar principle, and Richard added, "Things that have been touched by the edge of a seal cannot be carelessly thrown into the ground."

"Yes." Mrs. McNeil raised an eyebrow. "You've made great progress these past few days."

After pushing for a while, the planer blade suddenly got stuck on a certain layer.

Richard stopped and peered closer at the crack.

"Madam," he looked up, "it seems there's something underneath the crack."

Mrs. McNeill came over and knelt down.

She squinted, took a thin hook from her handbag, and reached into the crack to hook it.

The hook pulled out a small, hard black object.

"...Old sealing wax." Mrs. McNeill picked up the object and examined it between her fingers. "Made by the early church group."

"The early church?" Theodore leaned in from the side. "Did the church perform a sealing here before?"

Mrs. McNeil nodded.

"The seal at Whitcomb Mill, which we are standing on today, has at least three layers."

"Three floors?" Richard stopped what he was doing.

"The bottom floor is the oldest." Mrs. McNeil gestured with her hand:

"The border stone circle erected by the local Druids in the pre-Roman period, with the stone bearing the true name, pins 'the one who eats shadows' down here."

"The middle layer was made by the medieval church."

She examined the old wax again: "The exact age depends on the composition of the wax, but it can be roughly traced back to after the Norman period."

"The Church makes such a heretical seal?" Theodore was somewhat puzzled.

"Do it," Mrs. McNeil said sarcastically.

"The Druids of the former Rome were all killed by the Romans, and the seal was left unattended."

The substance had been buried underground for centuries, causing so much trouble that the local lord couldn't stand it anymore and sought help from the church.

"The church layered its own on top of the pagan seal, and did so quite crudely."

"How brutal?" Richard pressed.

"A new layer of wax was poured over the original seal, and the contents inside were read aloud again."

"What they were reciting was the new name the church had given to that 'shadow-eating woman,' called 'the underground female demon.'"

"...They changed the name already?" Theodore was speechless.

"The church at that time believed that pagan gods were all demons."

Mrs. McNeil continued to explain.

"Since they are all demons, there's no need to distinguish which one specifically."

"Treat them all as 'demons' and suppress them all with the same set of rituals of 'saints' protection'."

"That's why I say it's rough."

"Won't...there be any problems?"

"Of course there will be problems, and big problems."

Mrs. McNeill wrapped the old wax in oil paper.

"The sealing efficiency was cut in half from the very beginning because of the wrong name."

"But that generation of church members didn't care about what would happen in the future; all they cared about was suppressing it now, so they could get by."

"As for whether the suppression is stable or not, that's a matter for future generations."

"..." Theodore swallowed hard, suddenly realizing that there was a reason for Henry VIII's dissolution.

"Is there a third level?" Richard asked again.

Mrs. McNeil stood up.

"We won't see the third floor until we're halfway through our work; that floor is from decades ago."

She patted Richard on the shoulder: "Finish this one first."

"Yes."

Richard squatted down again and inserted the small wood plane into the crack.

The seam cleaning process lasted about forty minutes.

Even with gloves on, his hands were still frozen stiff.

After cleaning the crack, Mrs. McNeil took a small handful of salt from the bag of coarse salt and sprinkled it along the crack.

"The role of salt is to 'reset'."

"The local coarse salt is enough to neutralize the ether residue on the surface of the cracks."

"Why not use sea salt?" Theodore thought for a moment and asked, "Isn't sea salt purer?"

"Pure isn't what we need at this stage," Mrs. McNeil said.

"The sea salt has the 'taste' of seawater. This place is high ground, hundreds of miles from the sea, and the seal is resistant to seawater."

The local coarse salt is mined from salt mines; the land seal uses land-based salt.

"There's such a detail," Theodore said, seemingly enlightened.

"Don't you have such customs in your mine?" Mrs. McNeil asked casually.

"In the mine, there's a rule that 'well water cannot be brought to the wellhead.'"

What's the rule that well water can't be drawn from the wellhead?

"Water drawn from the bottom of a well should not be poured directly into your mouth from the bucket at the wellhead."

Theodore explained, "It needs to be served in an earthenware bowl first."

Why?

"...I don't know either, that's how my dad taught me."

After sprinkling the salt, Mrs. McNeil opened the small bottle of rice wine and sprinkled a few drops into the crack.

"Rice wine is the 'starting point' for the next step."

"The salt is reduced to zero, the alcohol is activated, and only then can the silver strip and the crack fit together when the silver strip is applied in the next step."

Finally, there was the dried rosemary; she swept the bunch of rosemary over the crack three times.

"The aroma of rosemary is a 'marker'."

"After this section was completed, this section of the sealing field was marked as 'New Sealing'."

When other professionals come to inspect the work again, they'll recognize the scent and know that this section was newly done this year, avoiding the need for repeated work.

"So it was a mark left for his colleagues." Richard understood.

"The worst thing we can do in this line of work is to repeat the same work," Mrs. McNeil said, fastening the rosemary back into her bag.

"If you do a seal twice, the second seal will fight with the first one."

The result was that neither attempt worked, which is why this seal always needs to be repaired.

After four preparatory steps—cleaning the seams, sprinkling salt, adding wine, and sweeping with incense—it's time to work on the silver belt.

Mrs. McNeil took the silver ribbon out of the iron tube.

Upon unfolding it, Richard discovered inscriptions printed on the silver belt.

"This is... Gugel's 'Chain' inscription?" He leaned closer to examine it.

"Chain inscriptions," Mrs. McNeil confirmed. "They existed before the Roman era. Each section of the silver band was a link, and the links had to be interlocked to form a 'lock.'"

A very soft, short "click" sounded between the silver ribbon and the wall.

"It's done." Mrs. McNeil nodded.

"...I felt it." Richard breathed a sigh of relief.

"What do you feel?"

"When the silver ribbon closed with the wall, the other side of the wall also 'sighed'."

Mrs. McNeil stopped what she was doing.

"Can you feel the wall sighing?"

"...It's not very obvious." Richard quickly added, "It might just be my imagination."

"It's not an illusion." Mrs. McNeil shook her head: "Those who can sense the sighs from the walls have a significantly higher level of inspiration than the average newcomer."

She glanced at the boy from the horse farm.

"Did you feel this when you were applying it?"

"...No," Theodore answered honestly. "I feel like I'm just sticking a piece of paper on."

The silver stripe was applied to this side of the exterior wall, and it took the entire morning to apply it.

After the meal, Mrs. McNeil led them around to a small door in the north wall of the mill.

A small door leads to the mill cellar, the entrance of which is behind a sunken stone staircase.

Mr. Hutton, Edmund, and Maggie were at the entrance to the cellar.

The cellar entrance was very low; Richard had to duck to get in.

A stone coffin was placed in the center of the cellar.

There is a mural on the stone wall next to the coffin.

Most of the murals have faded, and only a few blurry human figures can be seen.

There was a curved line on the top of the humanoid's head, which Richard could tell was a bridge.

Mr. Hutton gently brushed away the loose dirt from the surface of the mural with a fine brush.

The lower half of the mural is now visible, and there is a set of Latin inscriptions on the image.

The inscription is badly worn, but the outlines of the letters are still visible.

"In nomine Sancti Cuthberti..."

"Saint Cuthbert?" Maggie tilted her head. "He shouldn't be a saint from this area."

"The Saints of Northumberland," Edmund explained. "A figure from the seventh century."

"Why is his name on this wall?"

Mr. Hutton then spoke up.

"The medieval church had a set of fixed practices for dealing with pagan seals."

"Find a saint from your own country and transfer his name and guardianship duties to the original seal."

"It's like letting the saints take over the work of sealing."

"Will the saints come?" Maggie asked incredulously.

“The saints certainly won’t come,” Edmund shook his head. “But the Church can make the name recognized on the etheric level through ritualistic transference.”

Mr. Hutton took a notebook out of his pocket and opened it.

"So our job is to figure out the proper name of what is sealed away, or at least to find a substitute name."

The notebook contained more than a dozen short phrases, each extracted from murals or inscriptions.

"The one who took people from under the bridge"

"Walking in the Shadows"

"Salt should not be near her."

Those who do not leave before dusk

"This line..." Mrs. McNeil used ether to peel off a piece of paint from a distance, revealing the phrase underneath.

Mr. Hutton leaned closer.

"...Old Gaelic, Sí a ghoideann scáth na n-óg."

"The one who stole the young man's shadow," Maggie translated.

"Preparations are complete, and the evacuation of villagers will begin tomorrow."

Mrs. McNeil began arranging the final tasks:

"Tomorrow we will go door to door and invite them to stay overnight in the village center."

"Will they listen?" Theodore asked.

"Yes, the people in this area have gotten used to our customs over generations."

The evacuation went very smoothly.

The first household was a shepherd living half a mile southeast of the mill, the same old shepherd Richard met on the hilltop the first morning.

The old man sat by his fireplace, and Mrs. McNeil spoke a few words to him in Gaelic.

The old man nodded after listening, took a wool bag from his house, put the pot, matches, and a few strips of dried meat inside, picked it up and left without asking a single question.

As he reached the door, the old man turned back and glanced at Richard one last time.

He touched his chest with his free right hand, then drew a diagonal line across Richard's chest.

Richard thought for a moment and then imitated it.

The old man smiled.

The second household, the third household... all were evacuated in less than half a day.

After the evacuation was completed, Mrs. McNeil returned to the hostel with the four new guests.

The fireplace in the hostel lobby was burning brightly, and she took a small cloth bag out of her leather case.

Inside the bag was a very old tarot deck.

"Tonight," Mrs. McNeill placed the cloth bag on the table, "I will give you a proper divination before the curtain."

"How is proper divination different from what we learned before?" Theodore asked.

"You previously learned to read stones or wax."

Mrs. McNeil pointed to the wax sticks and runestone pouches that were also in her toolkit:

"These are only suitable for asking small questions, such as 'Will it rain tomorrow?' or 'Should I buy this?' They can give you a sense of direction."

"What about the Tarot?"

"Tarot is suitable for asking about the outline of important matters."

She untied the rope of the cloth bag.

"Specifically, before the next major ceremony, the advantage of Tarot is that it can unfold all the 'nodes' that may occur during the ceremony."

"A complete process of crossing the curtain will go through several key nodes."

Every step can go wrong, and knowing a general outline beforehand is always better than being caught off guard.

The cloth bag was opened.

Seventy-eight cards were poured out of the bag and laid out on the table.

The cards are in a hand-painted print style, and the colors have faded considerably.

"This deck of cards was passed down from my teacher. She herself has advanced to a level of mastery, and she no longer needs to rely on external tools for divination."

Mrs. McNeil didn't even need to look at the cards; she could tell which card she had just by touching it.

"When she passed it on to me, she had already used it for twenty years, and I've been using it for another eighteen years now."

"...Thirty-eight years in total," Edmund said softly.

"In thirty-eight years, every card has been turned over thousands of times."

She stacked the cards.

"The longer a tarot tool is used, the more accurate it becomes."

Each time a card is flipped, the etheric trace is etched into the card itself; the deeper the etch, the more accurate the resonance between the card and me.

"Can't others use it?"

"No one else can find what I can find."

Mrs. McNeill revealed a profound expression: "This is the 'man and tool as one' in the Hidden Direction; the master craftsman's tools cannot be lent out."

The medium placed his left hand on top of the deck and began shuffling.

My hand was pressing down on the cards without moving, but the deck itself was automatically spreading out in four directions, and then returning to the deck one by one.

This is a "shuffling" at the etheric level.

Richard activated his spiritual vision and could see that each card was enveloped in a wisp of gray mist, which wove into a net on the table.