I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 160 Judgment

"Field," Mrs. McNeil began from the center.

Richard could see with his spiritual vision that the seven silver lines in the center wrinkled slightly.

Being in the center, her attention was slightly diverted, and the entire formation immediately showed signs of fatigue.

"Hold on!" That was all she could say in response.

The wolf inside the silver ring is currently blocking another shadow, and cannot let go;

The kingfisher was still perched on the highest beam in the hall; with its eyes closed, the whole room went blind.

The woman in the ebony comb was weaving, her hands never stopping;

The negotiations with the robed spirit over the moonstone pendant were extremely mentally taxing; if they stopped halfway through, the children would immediately go mad.

The coral earrings were singing a song of self-deception, making the shadows think that the outer hunters were the most worthwhile targets to hunt, otherwise the two hunters could not have blocked more than twenty shadows.

The silver chain pocket watch, too, had already had all the glimmer of light that could be given to the captain transferred over;

The old woman inside the bone bracelet is the anchor of the whole thing; if she moves, everyone will fall.

The captain is all alone now. Can he hold on?

Richard knew that the captain probably wouldn't die, but his leg would most likely be ruined.

If a low-ranking hunter loses a leg, his only options are retirement or dying on the next field mission.

So, does this have anything to do with me?

The other voice in Richard's chest was calm.

He glanced at the captain.

The man was desperately striking the other shadows with the back of his axe with his left hand, while his right hand braced himself on the ground, his face flushed red.

He didn't look at anyone, didn't expect anything from anyone, and didn't even look down at his leg that was being slowly eaten away.

He simply stuck to his post.

Richard let out a soft breath.

The words his mother had spoken that night rose in his chest.

"If your sister falls down one day, your first reaction is not to help her up, but to assess whether her injury is worth stopping for."

From that moment on, you paid a price you were unaware of.

When she said that, she responded with a "yes".

Although the captain didn't value his family to the same extent he did, the current situation perfectly confirmed what his mother had said back then.

He shouldn't consider gains and losses too much. He has the ability to save people, so he should follow his heart!

"gentlemen."

"What's wrong?" Mr. Hutton responded quickly from the other side.

"My next judgment will be delivered a beat later."

Why?

"I want to help the captain."

Mr. Hutton's red pencil lingered on the rubbing for a moment.

He didn't look up, but in that less than half a second, he thought of something.

In this situation, the only thing Richard could do to help the captain was something he hadn't been taught and that couldn't be learned from the usual bookshelves.

He only asked one question: "Have you thought this through?"

"I've thought it through."

Mr. Hutton nodded.

"Then don't hesitate, just go for it!"

Richard no longer hesitated. During the third cycle of exhalation, the etheric flow was reversed, flowing from the inside out.

In the material world, [Shadow Armor] is "applying an additional load to the target's body by using the target's shadow as a medium".

Beneath the veil, the etheric concentration is several times that of the material world, amplifying the spell's output.

The hand that seeped into the captain's left thigh was itself a shadow.

The child, along with that hand, was still half buried in the seam in the ground, with only the upper body and the hand showing.

Richard added the "weight" to the half below the floor seam.

The entire nineteenth child, from the waist down, was pulled downwards by a sudden, sinking sensation...

The hand that had seeped into the captain's leg was pulled away by his own lower body in that instant.

With a "pop," the hand was pulled out from the captain's left thigh.

The captain seized the opportunity and swung the axe behind his back with his left hand.

The axe struck the child's exposed neck squarely, and the child's entire upper body was forced back into place.

Richard stood in his place, his face paler than usual.

[Spiritual Appearance] dropped from 10 to 3, then to 1...

He was wondering whether to use the deep etheric liquid in his pocket when the captain used this precious breathing time to launch a second burst.

His entire body burst forth with deep red flames.

The muscles on his arms bulged, and the veins beneath the skin were dark red and burning hot.

The two enchanted axes were combined to form a single heavy axe.

The captain swung the sword down suddenly.

"Get out of my way!"

As the axe fell, the three derivatives that had been flattened on the ground by the Shadow Armor, along with the two others that were already wrapped around the captain's waist and left shoulder, were all chopped apart by the axe.

This blow shattered the children's overall "formation," leaving the remaining children disorganized.

They pounced like a flock of birds scattered by a kick.

boom!boom!boom!boom!

Sarah's shotgun shifted from piercing the heart to finishing off the enemy, firing four silver lead bullets through the gap the captain had created.

But Richard soon discovered that the children's disarray was only temporary.

New gray residue is seeping out from the joints in the ground.

The children who were knocked back by the axe had their shoulders and necks pieced back together, like scattered mercury slowly returning to its original state.

"They are not isolated individuals."

Mr. Hutton spoke in a low voice from the other side, without looking up, the red pencil still moving on the rubbing.

"They share the same roots as their mother."

"Breaking one apart actually brings them closer together."

"So you can't kill them all by force alone." Richard finally understood.

"Yes." Mr. Hutton finally looked up from the rubbing and glanced at Mrs. McNeil.

The figure in the center nodded slightly.

"Captain, Sarah," Mrs. McNeil said softly, "from now on, you two are not to finish off any more enemies."

"Maintain the encirclement; we need to move on to the next phase."

The fire in Captain Field's chest subsided slightly.

He didn't reply, but he sheathed the axe back in front of his chest.

Sarah reloaded her shotgun, but did not pull the trigger again.

The pace of the battlefield changed suddenly.

Richard saw it with his spiritual vision.

Beneath the previous clamor of swords and axes, there was actually a deeper undercurrent.

Mr. Hutton kept reading in the middle.

Each time a paragraph was read, a certain word that had been highlighted on the children's faces would dim;

Every time the darkness deepened, the mother would be lifted an inch up from the seam in the ground.

The moment she's exposed and has nowhere to hide, she'll come out on her own.

Edmund.

"exist."

"The seventh child in the southeast, the character for shoulder blade."

There was a very faint inscription on the child's shoulder blade, worn down repeatedly.

"'qui silentium tenet' (the one who keeps silent)." Edmund's Journal.

"What is the corresponding figure from the pre-Roman period?"

The freckled girl bit her lip:

"'an tí a choinníonn an ciúnas' (one who maintains silence)."

"Connection to the Alexandrian School?"

Richard's mind raced.

"'silentium sub umbra' (Silence under the shadow)."

"it is good."

Mr. Hutton posted this paragraph.

The words on the old foreman's shoulder blade dimmed with a "snap," disappearing back into the depths of his mother's memory.

"Do you understand?"

Richard had already realized: "We are calling out, one by one, the parts of our mother that she couldn't name before."

"After she cried it out, she couldn't hold on to it anymore."

"Hmm." The old scholar continued waving the red pen in his hand: "Her body is all the 'nameless' beings that she has received over the past few thousand years."

"The nameless constitute her flesh, but once it is read, that part of her flesh no longer belongs to her."

Richard frowned.

She collected every unnamed sorrow, every unanswered prayer, every unrecorded death.

She is a grave that is thousands of years old, and buried in it are people that no one remembers.

The children are her outstretched hands to embrace future generations, but this embrace is deadly to the living.

"The next few sections will be even more difficult," Mr. Hutton continued his work.

"When the church oppressed her, they covered up her well-known layers one by one with the name 'Demon of the Underground'."

"In this section, we need to first remove the lid that the church has put on."

"Are we breaking the seal of the Church?" Edmund asked, his voice strained as he stood in his place.

"Yes," Mr. Hutton said without trying to hide it.

"The church's seal from hundreds of years ago was brutal."

"What we need to do today is to dismantle this part, let her real name be heard again, and let her accept her final rest."

"..." Edmund's Adam's apple bobbed.

He glanced down at the silver cross on his chest.

"You're right, the church made mistakes hundreds of years ago, and we'll make up for them tonight."

The old scholar nodded slightly to him.

"Then let's continue."

The red pencil moves again on the rubbing.

Edmund.

"exist."

"Can you decipher the inscription covered in gold paint in the north?"

Edmund took a deep breath in his seat.

The gold paint peeled off inch by inch under the light:

"...'il cui nomen tacetur' (The Unspeakable Name)."

"Even the church doesn't dare to address her directly?" Theodore muttered under his breath.

"Hmm," Mr. Hutton replied.

"They covered the sentence with gold paint because saying it aloud would awaken her, but they couldn't bear to erase it completely."

"They know they've done something wrong," Edmund said, his voice lowering.

"They knew this 'mother' shouldn't have been called 'the devil,' so they left it at that."

The old scholar made a rubbing of this section and hung it at the end of the entire judgment.

The mother was raised an inch higher in the underground seam.

Richard was able to "see" her clearly at that moment.

She hasn't come out yet, but her shape is already almost complete.

Inside the entire underground sarcophagus, the female silhouette was slowly rising.

With each additional judgment, she accepted a little more of herself as she truly was.

She is finally going back to her original place.

"'qui in cordibus orphanorum manet' (that which dwells in the heart of an orphan)."

"'qui crimas matris bibit' (He who drinks his mother's tears)."

"'qui in silentio noctis dormit' (one who sleeps in the silence of the night)."

Segment by segment, the children's faces dimmed.

The two children who had recently gone missing also stopped; their eyes were empty.

The floor of the entire hall shook.

Richard sensed that the mother on the ground was looking up.

In the closest hall, the shadows of twenty-five workers in the main mill building from 1881 all lean downwards;

On the next floor, in the chapel from 1340, the cross in the bishop's hand is tilted to one side;

At the top level, in the pre-Roman hills, the singers who sang around the twelve newly erected stones stopped singing.

Mother is about to wake up.

Captain Field's outburst was nearing its end; the fire in his chest was almost extinguished.

"She's coming."

Edmund's silver cross throbbed against his chest, and he gripped it even tighter with his left hand.

Maggie’s oak cane stood at her feet, its head pointing downwards like ram’s horns.

Theodore bit his lower lip.

Richard took a deep breath in his seat.

A faceless female shadow emerged from the gray fog.

She rose from the coffin, just as depicted in the cellar murals.

Richard didn't look at it from the front, but the inspiration still stung a little.

[Perception] The enhanced inspiration spreads to its limit at this moment.

The "mother's" body is in this hall, but her waist is in the main mill building of 1881;

Her shoulder is in the chapel of 1340;

Her head is in the pre-Roman hills.

She extends from this hall all the way to the deepest part of the well; her body is the sum of these four layers of history.

Mr. Hutton smiled; the target had finally appeared.

Red pencils are no longer needed; the rubbings are already covered with their inscriptions.

The old man's right hand was suspended in the air, while his left hand rested on the rubbing.

He took a deep breath.

The reason I've been stuck at the threshold of becoming a practitioner is because the foundation of Ethereum is not pure.

But tonight is different; he doesn't need purity.

The scholar wields words as a sword, a sword wide enough to encompass three eras and dozens of generations, to sever every unnamed "nameless" part of this mother's body.

He began to read his own judgment:

"Stollithirenna (the one who stole the young man's shadow)."

This name is the key to the entire pronouncement of the night; it must be placed at the very beginning so that all the subsequent content can follow.

"You stand out from the shadow."

"Stol, Shadow."

"Your essence is the part that is not illuminated by light."

"We understand this one."

The top layer of the mother's body, the pre-Roman mountain section, began to dissolve.

The people who were singing around the twelve newly erected stones have now stopped singing and are standing still.

Once understood, the mother's "body" in the pre-Roman hillside collapsed inch by inch.

She no longer has the right to stand on that floor.

Mr. Hutton continued his work:

"You are not a passive shadow, but a shadow that actively infiltrates."

"It is a shadow that emerges from behind the light."

"It's a shadow that's crawling up from the child's feet."

"It's the shadow that came out from under my mother's eyelids."

"We understand this one as well."

A section of the mother's "body" on the floor of the chapel collapsed in 1340.

The seven monks surrounded the bishop, all looking up at him, and the cross in the bishop's hand shone brightly at that moment.

The monks' mouths were moving; they were reciting the passage of scripture they hadn't finished reading.

"-renna, flow".

"Also, mother."

"You are the moving shadow, the mother of shadows."

"It is the one standing in the center of the twelve standing stones."

"It was the one who received the stillborn baby."

"He is the one who embraces all the nameless within his own bosom."

"We only understood this one tonight."

A section of my mother's "body" on the floor of the main mill building collapsed in 1881.

The shadows of the twenty-three workers were originally facing the same direction, all in a state of surprise.

At this moment, one by one, the faces of these shadows returned to the expressions they should have had before their deaths.

Some people were laughing, some were panting, and some had crumbs of unfinished bread stuck to their lips.

Their last second before death was fully recovered.

Mr. Hutton read three paragraphs in a row.

Each segment dismantles the present existence from an era, and her body dissolves into three layers from top to bottom.

After the third paragraph was read, the old man's face almost lost all color.

The mother finally reacted.