I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The dormitory room is a small cubicle.

A cot, a small table, and a gas wall lamp.

Richard placed his shoulder bag on the bedside table and took off his coat, hanging it on the back of the chair.

He came to the bedside, intending to lie down and rest for a while.

As soon as I lay down, I felt much more energetic.

I close my eyes, and my mind is filled with fragments of the day.

The grain of salt crushed under the tongue, the serene smile on the respondent's face, and the pool of blood left by Mrs. McNeill.

He lay in bed for a while, sighed, and put his coat back on.

Sometimes, the more physically exhausted a person is, the harder it is for them to fall asleep.

Richard pushed open the dormitory door and walked down the stairs.

When he reached the lobby on the first floor, he saw Old Big walking from the other end of the lobby toward the underground passage.

"Old Bigger."

Old Big heard someone call his name from behind and visibly hunched his shoulders.

He only relaxed when he turned around and saw it was Richard.

"You brat, aren't you asleep yet?"

"I can't sleep."

"Why can't you sleep? You were so exhausted today..."

"I want to sleep too," Richard said with a wry smile, "but my mind just won't stop."

Old Big looked him up and down and clicked his tongue.

"I've been in that state before; the longer I stayed up, the more energetic I became."

"Normally, I could chat with you, old man, but I have other things to do today."

He gestured towards the underpass.

"My senior sister and I were preparing to deal with the body of the respondent."

"If you're not going to sleep, why don't you go back to your dorm and lie down to read a book? Dealing with corpses is... well, that's not really your job..."

"I want to go and see."

Old Big's lips twitched, but he swallowed back the rest of his sentence, "Not so good."

"...Aren't you afraid?"

"I've seen so many during the day," Richard said innocently. "There's not much difference at night either."

Old Big chuckled twice and patted him on the back.

"Alright, I need a companion too. You can come down with me, but there's one condition..."

He held up one finger to Richard.

"Do whatever your senior sister says."

She says not to look, so you close your eyes; she says not to ask, so you keep your mouth shut; it's the rule of the trade, and it's also a way to save your life.

"it is good."

The two walked down the underground passage to the lowest level.

When they reached the thick wooden door of the autopsy room, old Big stopped and knocked three times.

"Senior sister, I brought Richard with me."

Mrs. McNeil's voice came from inside.

"...Did he come of his own accord?"

"Yeah, he can't sleep."

There was silence inside the door for a few seconds.

"Then come in, it'll be good to broaden your horizons."

When Richard pushed open the door, Old Big went to change into his autopsy smock.

"Richard, you should change it too," Mrs. McNeil's voice drifted over. "Just hang it on the hook behind the door."

Richard did as instructed, glancing around the room as he changed.

The body of the responder was placed on top and covered from head to toe with a layer of gray cloth sprinkled with salt.

Mrs. McNeil was in another corner of the room, with all her tools spread out.

On the left is a shallow copper dish containing a finger's depth of "developing solution" with extremely fine silver powder suspended in it.

"Come over when you're done changing." She didn't even look up.

"Stand to Bigelow's right rear, half a step away from the platform."

Richard walked over.

Old Big put on his gloves and removed the gray cloth.

There wasn't any disgusting stench of corpses, after all, the human part of the responder had been almost completely hollowed out.

But upon closer inspection, Richard paused for a moment.

Wentworth's knife pierced through his back and down to his chest, completely splitting open his sternum.

Once it was opened up, nothing inside was correct.

"First step," Mrs. McNeil instructed, "take all his personal belongings."

Old Big used a long pair of tweezers to take the items out one by one from the body's pockets, belt, and inner pockets.

Finally, three items were placed on the worktable.

The black medium consisted of two small steel pipes and a piece of paper folded to the size of a palm.

The most eye-catching thing is the two steel pipes, both ends of which have been processed.

One end is a screw cap, and the other end is narrowed into an extremely fine opening, as if something is about to be "spit out" from that opening.

Beside the steel pipe was a piece of black medium, woven from an unknown material, held in the right hand of the responder.

That black medium was neither cloth, nor hair, nor any animal fur.

It lay quietly in the enamel dish, and when the light shone on it from the wall lamp, there was no reflection on its surface.

After Richard glanced at the object, he instinctively didn't want to look at it a second time.

Mrs. McNeil unscrewed the steel pipe.

The inside of the steel pipe was stuffed with a compacted, dark gray straw, the texture of which was similar to dried moss.

The medium used tweezers to pick out a small amount and put it into the developing solution in the copper dish.

A very thin layer of mist slowly rose to the surface of the water.

"Multi-eyed black moss, a product of the nearshore transition zone."

She picked out another small pinch, which was dark green in color.

"I recognize this one," Richard said, speaking up. "I've taken a demerit from 'Products Behind the Curtain,' the Silent Fern."

"That's right." The medium nodded. "The Silent Fern is deeper, almost at the edge of the Deep."

She put the tweezers down.

"Our previous speculation has been confirmed; a stable deep-world data collection channel will be available."

She put down the tweezers, her brow furrowing even more deeply than before.

"...It's much more complicated than we initially estimated."

"How so?" Old Big leaned closer.

"The name 'Echo Society'..." Mrs. McNeil was saying to Richard, "The Northern Bureau's files on it are just a thin sheet."

"Fran, Germania, Sami, the Ross Empire... these major countries on the western continent have all had their cases in recent years, and the intelligence was shared from there."

The case file contained fragments of doctrine and post-attack debriefings of a few attacks, but that was all.

"Live specimens—we haven't obtained many across the entire Western Continent over the years."

"The higher-ups' previous assessment of the Empire was that they at most had a few insignificant contact points in coastal ports on the western continent near the Empire's main island, which didn't even qualify as branches."

She pointed to the two kinds of fodder.

"The fact that they can reliably harvest Silent Fern from the edge of the Deep indicates that they have established a complete harvesting line within the Empire."

This scale cannot be maintained by a few port liaison points.

"Our previous judgments were all wrong."

"They've been lying low within the empire for who knows how many years, and only tonight have they managed to make such a big fuss."

"Bring that piece of paper over here," Mrs. McNeill gestured to old Biggs.

The piece of paper, folded to the size of a palm, was taken from the innermost compartment, its surface mostly soaked with blood.

"A considerable amount of blood." Old Big leaned closer and sniffed. "It's not just his own blood."

"They've colluded with others before." The medium confirmed, "The files from the Western Continent mention that the Ying Sheng Society uses the blood of their own people as ink."

Previously, I'd only ever seen it mentioned in reports; tonight is the first time I've actually seen the real thing in person.

She gently unfolded the blood-soaked paper.

Richard recognized it immediately; it was a map of the Briston City Canal System.

The original map lines on the paper were almost completely obscured by blood. Only in a few places on the edge where the blood had not seeped through could a few abbreviations written in the miners' dialect be vaguely discerned.

Of those abbreviations, Richard recognized two of them almost without having to think.

"Seventh Lane", "Dumb Well".

The medium carefully examined the blood-soaked image.

"The blood has covered the main body, I have to use my psychic powers to redraw the original image."

She took a small brass box from the suitcase, opened the lid, and inside were several finely sharpened charcoal pencils.

The medium took out a syringe and dipped it into the developing solution in the copper dish.

She slowly began to write on another clean sheet of white paper.

Richard watched her put pen to paper.

Without hesitation, she meticulously "called back" the original map, inch by inch, from behind the curtain, the map hidden beneath the blood-stained surface.

He could hear the medium's very soft murmurs, muffled by his throat.

Old Big made a gesture to him, meaning "Don't look, don't listen, don't remember."

Richard looked away and turned to look at the body.

The only sound in the entire autopsy room was the "rustling" of the medium's pen moving across the paper.

Soon, a complete picture appeared on the white paper.

At each location, the medium wrote down the corresponding code in extremely small characters.

Seventh Lane, Dumb Wellhead, Black Stone Mine Pit.

The three small blood spots that appeared in "The Taboo Song of the Well" are all on it.

Richard counted them down: thirteen points scattered along the Briston City Canal System, forming a network that, while not densely packed, covered a very wide area.

"They've already set up checkpoints all over the city."

"Hmm." Mrs. McNeil put down her pen.

"The western suburbs are just a window; what they're really doing is shown in this map."

"Of the information shared in the files, half of it doesn't match up after reviewing it tonight."

Old Big came over.

He glanced at the thirteen locations, and his expression slowly darkened.

"Senior sister, there are two points here... in my jurisdiction."

Which two?

"At the other end of the Second Parish in the North District," he pointed, "and the northern section of the North District Canal."

"The number of bodies registered at these two locations from last year to this year is significantly higher than in previous years."

He took off his hat and rubbed the back of his neck with the back of his hand.

"The death register I signed this winter is thicker than any winter I can remember."

"The number of corpses in the North District has been climbing every year. At first, I thought it was due to coal smoke, the cold winter, and the poor not being able to cope..."

Old Big waved his hand, dismissing the thought from his brow.

"I'll go through all the registration books from these past years and sort them out."

Richard hesitated for a moment, then tentatively asked.

"So... won't it be okay for you to handle all this by yourself?"

Old Big laughed heartily.

He took out the copper penny he usually used for magic tricks from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers.

"What could possibly happen to a coroner like me?"

"I'm the safest person in Briston; dead people don't bite."

The coin was flipped over between his fingers.

"I've been in this line of work for so many years, and I've done at least eight or ten thousand disembowelments for clients. They all lie down obediently when they come to me."

If this job were really that dangerous, my teacher wouldn't have sent me to be a coroner back then.

He put the coins away and changed the subject.

"Besides, if I end up lying on this platform myself someday, I won't have to worry too much."

"Don't worry?"

"Shouldn't my senior sister at least collect my corpse?"

Old Biggs glanced toward Mrs. McNeil.

"She's a psychic, so she'll definitely be able to find out who killed me."

"Biggle," Mrs. McNeil said from the other end.

"If you say another word, I'll put you on the stage right now."

Old Big immediately shut up.

Mrs. McNeil looked up at Richard.

"According to the rules, none of these items can be taken out."

Richard nodded obediently; he hadn't expected to take anything with him anyway.

Old Big started moving, pushing the enamel plate aside.

"We'll talk about the items on the body later; let's examine the body first."

"Look here." Old Big used the back of his scalpel to poke at the lump inside the deceased's chest cavity.

That should be the location of the heart.

But inside there was only a suspicious, dark red lump of meat, its surface covered with tiny holes.

"What about the lungs?" Richard suppressed his discomfort and continued to observe.

Old Big moved the tip of his knife upwards.

"The lungs were gone, replaced with this."

Where the lungs should be, there were two extremely thin membranes attached to the inner walls of the ribs.

The membrane is translucent, and when light shines on it, you can see countless black threads inside.

The silk threads were still pulsating, contracting and relaxing, even though the man had been dead for several hours.

"They're still moving." Richard heard his voice was a little dry.

"Hmm," Mrs. McNeil said from the side, "the things coming in from the other side of the curtain haven't been completely cut off yet."

Old Big used a thinner pair of pliers with silver wire wrapped around the tip to clamp the joint between the two membranes and gently pull them outwards.

A sticky tearing sound came from where the membrane separated from the inner wall of the ribs.

The red liquid dripped down the pliers, spreading into a very faint mist.

"External interface," Mrs. McNeil began. "I had my doubts before, but today I've finally seen the real thing."

Old Big frowned.

"What is an external interface?"

"It's mentioned in the literature, and this is the first time I've seen it with my own eyes."

The medium explained: "A practitioner's microcirculation is originally a closed system. From the moment they sign their name, the entire loop belongs to them."

"The meaning of 'external interface' is that someone connected a wire from the other side of the curtain to this person's path."

"Why bring them in?"

"Enter a command, or... enter power."

Mrs. McNeil was clearly not very familiar with it either:

"The first responder can unleash a spell at a minor proficiency level in the mine, but his actual rank is mostly that of a practitioner."

All legitimate minor mastery breakthroughs are officially registered, but this person's name is not on that register today.

"He's been borrowed."

Old Big asked, "What do you mean?"

"Just the literal meaning," the medium continued.

"The wisp of spirit on the object he signed may not have been entirely his own from the very first day he signed it."

Ying Sheng could control what he did, said, and didn't say in the mine.

Even how he died was probably preordained.

"What about the names on the list?" old Big asked. "Can't we just check them one by one?"

"The roster records rank, not faction." Mrs. McNeil shook her head.

"There are at least a hundred people with expertise in various fields registered within the Empire alone. You can't tell who the Echoing Society has planted just by looking at the list."

Moreover, their external interface itself bypasses the official ceremony... The one who could lend such strength to the respondent is most likely not even on any of our lists.

The entire autopsy room fell silent for a few seconds.

Richard suddenly remembered the "harmony singer" who was captured yesterday, the one who could only respond and never speak first.

That guy wasn't hollowed out; he was never filled in the first place.

"Did he know he had been altered like this while he was alive?" Richard asked.

"It's hard to say," the medium shook his head.

"Maybe you didn't know at first, and by the time you did, it was too late to go back."

Perhaps from beginning to end, he willingly allowed others to alter the changes, piece by piece.

"That's what the Echo Society is best at. Making you think that handing yourself over is what you want."

Old Big put the outer connector into the refining furnace by the wall and closed the furnace lid.

"These must be burned."

"It's a label written on the other side of the curtain; it's kept as a locating beacon, and wherever it's placed, it's restless."

The furnace started up, emitting a low hum.

The pulsation of those two collection membranes finally stopped completely.

Mrs. McNeil walked to the other end of the body and took out several items from the suitcase and laid them out.

"Alright, that's all the people we can interrogate from the body. We're all dead now. I'll squeeze some stuff out of the corpse."

Richard was puzzled: "He's dead, how can you possibly get anything out of him?"

"When a person dies, the flesh rots, but some things are etched into the etheric layer and cannot be destroyed."

The medium spoke as he prepared to perform divination.

"Especially those who have been 'written' with instructions."

The instructions he carried out would leave "tracks" in the circuit; even if he's gone, the tracks remain.

"What I need to do is run through the ruts again."