I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 173 Shouldn't Be a Pit

After lunch, Richard went upstairs to his room.

He first arranged the three books he had borrowed from the library on the edge of the table.

He took out the stack of copied manuscripts separately and spread them out in the center of the table.

There are a total of seventeen "Taboo Songs for Underground Wells".

Unlike classical poetry, folk songs rely on the rhythm passed down orally.

The nuances of each sentence, its emphasis and cadence, are the result of generations of miners' repeated refinement.

The rhyming parts are often the thinnest and can't hide anything;

The important part is the passage that doesn't rhyme but still flows smoothly.

The third song, "When the Miner's Lamp Goes Out," tells you that when your miner's lamp goes out, don't run around. Just squat down, pull your hat brim down, and wait for the torch team to come looking for you.

In the second line of each paragraph, there is a noticeably extra syllable.

The compiler wrote in a footnote that this extra dragging sound was a common practice among miners.

Perhaps to match the rhythm of the echoes from the well, the singing was deliberately prolonged.

Richard copied out the words corresponding to those "redundant syllables" separately and arranged them in order in a row:

"Seventh Lane—something is listening behind the wall."

Richard's pen stopped on the manuscript.

Seventh Lane—this is clearly a place name.

He then turned to the seventh poem, "Don't Respond".

This is a nursery rhyme for children, about what to do when you hear a strange voice while underground.

If you hear one sound, don't respond; if you hear two sounds, don't respond; if you hear three sounds, turn around and walk away; if you hear four sounds, squat down where you are.

The compiler made no comment, only adding a sentence at the end:

According to local veteran miners, you should not respond to any sounds that come from places where no one is around.

If you string together the last word of the first line of each paragraph, it forms a Latin phrase:

"Os mutum, ne respondeas. (Keep your mouth shut, do not respond.)"

The surface of the folk songs is the local dialect and superstition spoken by the miners.

But once you strip away those superfluous syllables, unrhymed filler words, and awkwardly pronounced sentences and piece them back together, you discover something entirely different underneath.

Several place names were deciphered in the text. Richard thought for a moment and pulled out a map of the area around Briston from the bottom shelf of the bookshelf.

The map is the version printed by the city hall last year, and the western suburbs are drawn in the most detail.

After all, that area was the lifeblood of Briston, with dozens of mines and riverside textile mills crammed together.

He used a pencil to mark the two deciphered place names on the edge of the map.

Seventh Lane, the entrance to the Silent Well.

Keep eating.

The ninth poem, "The Old Well Never Returns," the eleventh poem, "No Shadow at the Bottom of the Well," the fourteenth poem, "The Black Stone Cannot Be Asked," and so on, were dismantled one by one.

By 3 p.m., the number of place names that had been deciphered had increased to three.

Lane 7 – a branch lane of the Third Mine in the western suburbs.

The main alley was closed in 1872 due to a landslide, and the local government subsequently ordered it to be blocked.

Dumb shaft – the earliest ventilation shaft in the No. 2 mine.

It was abandoned after less than 20 years of use due to too many cracks in the well wall, and the well cover has been pressing on the well opening for 60 years.

Blackstone Mine – the site of an earlier open-pit mine.

The Gregorian calendar was abandoned in the 1820s, and the ground is now covered with weeds.

He found the corresponding locations of the three place names on the map and circled them with a red pencil.

One red circle is located in the northwest corner, one in the due west-southwest corner, and one in the southwest corner.

The three loops hooked together form a somewhat irregular triangle.

Richard pressed the tip of his pencil against the geometric center of the triangle and paused for a moment.

That area on the map is not marked at all.

There were no mines, no roads, no houses, and even the contour lines were drawn very sparsely, as if the cartographer started to slack off when he arrived there.

He used his spiritual vision to look at the map.

The paper itself doesn't react; paper is paper, and ink is ink.

But the longer one's gaze lingers on that blank space, the more the leaf-like leaves in one's chest tremble.

This is inspiration giving a warning.

Although not as direct as when he went to Hecate for divination, it was clearly telling him that there was something wrong with that area.

Richard looked away, took two deep breaths, and calmed the leaf down.

He didn't look at the blank space again, and continued to decipher the fifteenth poem, "The Pit of No Answer".

This is the shortest in the whole set, with only four lines.

The melody is also very simple, almost monotonously repetitive.

The lyrics, when translated, roughly mean:

"I called and called, but there was no answer."

I asked again and again, but there was no answer.

The well is deep, the deeper it is, the quieter it becomes;

The road home, the road home, but no one can return.

The compiler wrote a note below: "This piece was a drinking tune played at gatherings of miners in the western suburbs, and has no real meaning."

Richard twitched his lips after reading the sentence.

Is there such an ominous phrase hidden in the melody of the drinking song?

The compiler probably never intended to deceive anyone; this is truly a case of trying to cover something up.

He strung together the first word of each line and then strung together the last word of each line to get two short sentences.

Read the two sentences together:

"The well remains silent, the deep path offers no return."

The two words that followed were forcibly separated by a comma.

He restored the two words and wrote them in the center of the blank space on the map: The Unanswering Pit.

The moment this name appeared, inspiration started racing again.

The deciphering wasn't over yet; the ending of those seventeen songs contained something even more secret.

After nearly an hour of struggling, Richard finally deciphered the entire passage and copied it onto the back of the manuscript.

"The three locations noted above," the author writes at the beginning, "all belong to the category of small bloodstains in our classification."

"In the collapse of the seventh tunnel in 1872, thirty-one miners were buried in the tunnel, and none of their bodies were ever recovered."

In the last twenty years before the well was abandoned, more than a dozen people died at the bottom of it, some burned to death, some suffocated, and no one remembers the exact order.

The final collapse of the Blackstone mine before its abandonment swallowed an entire team of miners, not even counting the numerous minor accidents that had occurred beforehand.

"Three points, because the traces of repeated deaths have accumulated; "

Because the traces persisted for years, a passage gradually formed.

"Where does it lead? It leads to the center of the line connecting those three points."

"That piece of land was a naturally formed sinkhole in pre-Roman times."

At that time, the indigenous people in this area would erect stones around the pit every autumn equinox to perform a sacrificial ceremony.

This ritual continued uninterrupted for over five hundred years, until the Roman legions wiped the Druids out of the area.

"More importantly, the location of this pit corresponds exactly to a 'place where stars hang low'."

"Therefore, this place possesses three characteristics simultaneously."

It is the bloodstains accumulated from repeated deaths; it is the sacrificial scars that have lasted for hundreds of years; it is also the corresponding point on the star map.

"According to the classification of weaknesses, this is a medium-sized weakness with a three-fold complex."

Richard recalled "The Weak Points of the Curtain".

All the examples cited in the book are basically the weaknesses of single and dual categories.

The author describes the complex weaknesses of the empire's homeland with exceptional care.

All items that combine the three symbols are marked with a specific number, owner, and maintenance cycle.

The combination of three elements, while not as powerful as the highest level of four elements, is still considered a medium-sized weak point, and most practitioners dare not enter it rashly.

He never imagined that such a place was actually in the western suburban mining area that he could see from afar every day on his way to and from school.

Continue reading.

"When the three elements merge into one, it is equivalent to a natural passage leading to the second level of the deep realm at the curtain level."

"That's why the people of the past sealed this entrance with exceptional care after they discovered it."

The surface entrance has been repeatedly filled with soil and cement, reaching a depth of over thirty feet.

In addition, a nine-tiered stone ring with inscriptions was erected, which was routinely inspected and reinforced twice a year, in spring and autumn, by the Briston branch office.

"No unauthorized personnel, regardless of rank, are permitted to enter this area!"

"Any unauthorized entry, regardless of the purpose, will be considered 'reverse infiltration'!"

Richard put down his pen after reading this passage.

He was familiar with the term "reverse infiltration".

That was the most serious offense in the mystical realm.

The seal is two-way; it prevents things inside from coming out, and it also prevents people outside from getting in.

Unauthorized intrusion into the weak points inside the seal, regardless of the method used, is tantamount to opening another breach in the seal.

Regardless of the intruder's rank or purpose, they will be regarded by the defenders as an infiltrator from the opposite direction of the veil, essentially no different from evil beings.

There is only one way to handle it: remove it on the spot without asking any further questions.

Richard memorized this place, including the three small weak points around it, marking them all in red on the map.

Next, read the appendix.

The appendix is ​​much more interesting than the main text.

After finishing his description of the "shouldn't be pitted," the author shifts focus and begins to record a set of makeshift methods that the miners had figured out themselves.

It's clear that he relaxed considerably when he wrote this part, and his wording is as if he's having a casual chat with you.

"The main pit is sealed off, but business still has to go on," he began.

"The mines must be opened; without the mines, the city cannot stand."

"If you tell the whole of Briston that we're not going to mine coal anymore and are going to go home and grow potatoes, see if they'll hang you from a streetlamp first."

"After a long period of back and forth, the branch office and a few of us old hands from the community sat down and talked."

The agreed-upon solution was to seal off the main pit, while the surrounding adjacent mines would continue operating as usual.

The evil spirits will emerge sporadically, so we'll deal with them sporadically; no one can expect a permanent solution.

"Although the main pit has been sealed off, some intangible things still occasionally pop out of the nearby mines."

These things are basically remnants that leaked out from the bottom of the main pit. They have no physical form and rely on the supernatural to possess people, feeding on human fear.

"This is where the problem lies. There are dozens of mines of varying sizes around the main mine pit."

We can't just sit underground in the mine every day; otherwise, we wouldn't be able to do anything.

Therefore, those who actually deal with these things every day are the miners who have no idea what 'ether' is.

"But if you underestimate them, then you're out of your depth."

"After more than a hundred years of working in the mines, ordinary miners may not understand our terminology, but they have figured out a whole set of methods on their own."

One generation teaches the next; this is more practical than any set of rules written in our study.

Richard deciphered this point and began to study it carefully again.

First one.

"If you hear someone calling your name from the bottom of the well—don't turn around."

"Don't respond, don't answer, don't ask who it is."

Lower your headlamp to illuminate the small patch of ground at your feet, take two steps back following your footsteps, and then get back to work.

The editor added a note below:

"If a non-physical thing wants to 'remember' a miner, it will repeatedly call his name."

If it doesn't respond within three calls, it will move on to the next one. If it responds once, it will recognize you.

Richard connected this to what Old Big had taught him.

The "window theory" states that what you look out will be looked back at.

The miners reached the same conclusion in the simplest way.

The second one.

"When eating underground, don't rush to swallow the first bite."

He put it in his mouth, then spat it back into his palm, wiped it on the well wall, and only then did he begin to eat it properly.

"When the old foreman said this to me, I asked him why."

He glanced at me and said, "If you don't leave any for the things in the well, they'll demand some from you. Can you afford to give them any?"

"That may be a rough way of putting it, but the principle is the same."

Editor's Note:

"This trick works on filthy things like 'hunger,' but it's useless against filthy things like 'resentment' and 'anger.'"

The third one.

"Never borrow a light from down the well."

"If your own lamp goes out, go back to the mine entrance to get it. It's better to climb up in the dark than to take your partner's lamp from him."

"Don't lend your headlamp to anyone, even if they call your name just like someone you know."

Richard paid particular attention to this.

From a mystical perspective, borrowing a lamp is equivalent to transferring one person's "defense line" to another.

If the person you're borrowing the lamp from isn't a true ally, then you've handed your defenses over to them.

The miners, of course, didn't understand terms like ether, defense, or camouflage.

But they must know that someone lent the lamp to someone else and never returned home.

The latter half of the appendix is ​​a further explanation by the compiler, detailing the mystical principles behind these rules.

Richard read this passage and copied it down line by line, memorizing it.

As this knowledge was firmly imprinted into his mind, the progress bar for [Knowledge] Lv.2 climbed up from 82%.

The progress bar only slowed down when it reached nearly 84%, which was more than the progress he made in two weeks of self-studying the dictionary.

These are all things that can save your life during exploration within the veil, and they are more useful than any knowledge from books.

The compiler also left a summary at the end.

"When I was organizing this volume, I often felt my face getting hot."

"We are people who come from colleges, religious orders, and guilds."

He boasted of having read countless books, memorized numerous rules, and spoke in Latin and Ancient Greek at every turn.

But ultimately, those who truly spent decades navigating the edges of this world, flitting between the lines and these things, were the miners who had never received a proper education.

"They used their blood as ink and their lives as paper to write a book that we could never write while sitting at our desks."

"When future readers turn to this volume, please be sure to treat it with respect."

Each of these rules is underpinned by a name; they represent a viable path forged through countless trials and errors.