I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"It's not dead." Mr. Hutton helped the student stand up with difficulty.

"It is waiting."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Let the one behind it take care of it."

Richard felt a chill on his neck.

That pupilless eye is about to awaken.

At the center of the ceremony, Mrs. McNeil propped herself up halfway.

Her left hand was pressed on the ground, while her right hand was still resting on the opening of the anchor net.

She looked up and glanced in Mr. Hutton's direction.

Hang in there.

The medium's lips didn't move; her voice was sent directly to Richard's ears.

The next moment, the bone bracelet on McNeil's wrist lit up on its own.

The extremely old white light around the bone bracelet was always cold.

At that moment, the light gained a touch of warmth, as if someone had breathed on it from afar.

The silver ring on Richard's chest also felt warm.

No. 17 Huayue Street, Beijing.

That room that was never locked, yet no one could enter without permission.

The hostess, who had been holding her tea without moving, put down her cup.

Richard looked around.

Behind the curtain, the mirror reflects all the puddles, glass, and wet walls—all at the same moment—the same indistinct figure.

She wore a gray dress, her long hair was pulled back, and her features were shrouded in a layer of old mist.

The entire northern district seemed to sink slightly in Richard's perception.

"Turn the mirror away from you."

A voice came from within my inspiration.

The mirrors, puddles, and glass throughout the entire building all turned around after that one sentence, no longer facing the tens of thousands of faces in the North District.

Even now, she still adheres to her rule: the price of the mystical side cannot be borne by the guests.

The first thing he did upon appearing was to move the guests away.

She turned around and looked at her apprentice.

"Your junior's registration book is very well written."

The medium's face twitched.

Mrs. Mary didn't say another word; she began calling out names to clean up the mess.

First paragraph.

"Sitting upright at midday where there is no shadow, one with the same origin as light."

As soon as those words were uttered, a crack appeared in the night sky that had been shrouded in soot from chimneys for decades.

There was a very faint gold line in the seam.

It firmly pressed down the layer of ether that belonged to darkness and replacement that night.

"Those who could once divide day and night in a single glance."

The gold thread has widened.

The water surface behind the entire curtain was divided into upper and lower sections.

What was once a pool of pitch-black ditch water, when turned over, is now a bottomless, submerged abyss.

Now, a layer of extremely fine and thin golden sand has appeared on the water's surface, separating the upper and lower parts.

The shadows in the water that had been caught by Mr. Rif's silver thread were pulled up again by this layer of golden sand.

They stand on the water, half of their shadows in the water and half on the water.

"His eyes burned out, his flesh and blood turned into torches, but his light will forever shine upon the world."

After the last sentence was recited... at that moment, all the clocks in the city simultaneously pointed to twelve o'clock.

Physically, it's the middle of the night.

Whether it's two o'clock or three o'clock, the clock should point to whichever direction it's supposed to.

But in that instant, all the clocks in Briston, big and small, went back to twelve.

The boundary between day and night has been redrawn.

"Standing eternally at the heart of the furnace, one with the fire."

There is also a second verse.

The voice was still that of Madame Mary, but the tone was different this time.

The previous part was pure, clean gold, devoid of warmth.

This section sank, carrying the lingering warmth of the smelting furnace that had been burning for hundreds of years.

"The tangible and the intangible were once separated by a single hammer blow."

As the hammer struck, specks of red seeped from beneath the flipped-over layer of golden sand.

That was the dark red light from deep within the furnace.

"The bones have become the anvil, the blood has become the casting, only the furnace fire remains to burn eternally in the world."

The moment the last sentence was uttered...

The furnace in the north area, the still-lit gas lamp, and the embers that hadn't been completely extinguished in the hearth all sprang up at the same time.

The flames all pointed in the same direction.

The direction it leaned towards was that shameful thing on the other side of the shore.

An expert in traditional stove-fire techniques.

This one, like the sun, is not in this city; they are both far away.

They simply followed Mrs. Mary's recitation and borrowed the "concerns" they had left in this area.

As the two honored names were recited, the bottom of the Black Ditch was revealed.

The sewage ditch at the bottom of the water, which had been there for decades, revealed every skeleton in the silt clearly under that layer of light.

The child's tiny frame;

The worker's large bones had scars at the joints.

The old man's pelvis was as thin as a tile.

One body after another, they stretched down the black ditch from the sluice gate to the unseen end.

Light is judgment, and seeing is weighing.

Each skeleton was illuminated by that layer of light, revealing its features perfectly.

That golden thread didn't linger for anyone for even half a second.

It swept along the black ditch.

The deceased who responded were called back one by one by that gaze.

Mr. Reeve's clothes collapsed in the golden light.

There was no one below, only a pool of black water that had evaporated completely.

That pupilless eye opened briefly from a great distance.

The still water beneath Richard's feet suddenly sank.

The eye swept across his still water a few times before slowly withdrawing.

The sun's golden rays had finished their work, while the dark red glow of the hearth fire fell upon the street.

The neighborhood that was ravaged by the aftershocks of the masters' battle, and the parts that were pulled into the curtain and distorted, are now being smoothed out.

The half of the room that had collapsed into the gap in the curtain was pressed back into the material world;

The beams, burned to charcoal yet strangely not falling apart, have their grain growing back together.

The fire will restore what should be erected and smooth out what should never be left in front of others.

It hasn't changed this, and there's no need to change it.

………………

Before everything settled down, Mrs. Weil from Slag Lane didn't sleep well tonight.

The old lady is over sixty years old and has a bad back.

She didn't stockpile much coal that year, and by the end of March, there wasn't much left in the coal shed.

She heard the long, drawn-out whistle of a ship tonight and knew something terrible had happened in the city.

The old lady sat on the edge of the bed, wearing an old cotton-padded coat.

"Meow..."

The cat in the yard was missing overnight.

"Meow..."

She called out a few times, but the cat didn't respond.

There was a creaking sound from the coal shed.

Mrs. Wells looked up.

The wooden door of the coal shed was half open.

It was very dark inside.

"Meow?"

She lit the small gas lamp and brought it to the doorway.

"Old woman."

A voice came from inside the coal shed.

Mrs. Weil's hand trembled.

That was her man's voice.

The old man has been gone for over twenty years.

"Old woman, will we have enough coal for next year?"

He continued talking to himself, "Go get another truckload on credit in two months, and don't let them cheat you out of what you've already bought on credit."

Mrs. Weil stood in the doorway, holding a small gas lamp.

When she was young, she ate with a man in the mines, and he later died of cholera, which swept through Bristol.

She raised her son alone, but he passed away, leaving her all alone at the end of this alley.

She has seen everything.

The old woman took two steps into the coal shed carrying the lamp, then stopped.

She suddenly thought of something.

She never went into the coal shed when her husband was alive.

That guy thought the coal shed was dirty.

No matter how cold the winter was, he would have his wife go to the coal shed to load coal while he sat inside smoking.

"Old woman."

The voice from inside the coal shed called again: "Is there enough coal?"

Mrs. Weil blew out the light.

She locked the wooden door of the coal shed with her other hand.

I locked it, moved a small stool over, and sat on the threshold of the coal shed.

She started cursing at the locked wooden door.

"If you really are him."

The old woman scolded without losing her breath: "You should know that I hate people calling my soul in the middle of the night more than anything else in my life."

"If you really are him."

"You should have known he never went into the coal shed."

"If you really are him."

"You should know that the key to my coal shed was hanging on his picture frame during the day."

"Why didn't you go and touch it? Why did you come to the coal shed to call me?"

She sat on the bench all night, cursing all night long.

The voice from the coal shed didn't call her again in the latter half of the night.

In the latter half of the night, all the factories in the city sounded their long whistles.

It lasted all night.

One whistle followed another, silencing all the faint, fragmented "soul-calling" sounds throughout the city.

The whistle was given by old Crowley.

In the first half of the night, he rallied all the major factory owners in the North District, West Suburbs, and docks who knew a little about the mystical side, and turned the factory whistles of the entire city into an iron barrel.

The noise of industry drowned out its reputation.

This city has no church bells to protect it, but it has steam whistles.

In a small cubicle in the shelter, Margaret sat leaning against the wall.

Evelyn's head rested on her mother's lap.

"Mom, the boiler room is so noisy."

She mumbled groggily, "Where did I put my bag of flour?"

"At your feet." Margaret stroked her daughter's hair.

"oh."

Evelyn closed her eyes again.

She was an ordinary person through and through, and she couldn't hear the faint, fragmented cries of souls calling out from beneath the city tonight.

But her mother could hear her.

Margaret leaned against the wall, her eyes half-closed.

"Margaret."

A voice was calling her.

She opened her eyes.

Inside the shelter's main hall, hundreds of people were crammed onto the floor, packed tightly together.

Coughing, children crying, the hum of the boiler room, and the sound of steam whistles outside.

Her husband was fast asleep, his hunting rifle beside him, standing guard at the door of the cubicle.

"Margaret."

But now another man's voice is calling her, a very young one.

He looked to be in his early twenties.

She was still at Ashford's house when she went out on field assignments with her colleagues.

At that time, there was a young man who was closest to her older brother.

At the age of twenty, he died on the northern highlands during a routine field mission.

She hadn't heard that voice for many years.

"Margaret, over here..."

"Our team is currently short one person."

"Come here..."

Margaret looked down at her daughter sleeping on her lap.

Evelyn's breathing was even.

She carefully moved her daughter's head onto a nearby duffel bag.

Then she straightened up and walked toward the locked little door.

She took two steps and then stopped.

She turned her head and glanced at her feet.

He bent down and took off the pair of wool boots he was wearing.

The shoes were placed upside down on the threshold of the hall.

The shoes are upside down; the soul cannot recognize the direction the door faces.

This is an old custom left over from the Celtic priests, even older than the empire itself.

She walked back to the spot where she and Evelyn had been sitting.

She took out all the spare shoes that her daughter and she had kept in their luggage, and put them upside down in the corner.

Then, from the very bottom of the duffel bag, he pulled out a small bottle.

The bottle contains coarse salt.

Margaret sprinkled coarse salt around the small patch of ground where Evelyn was lying, and then around her husband.

After she finished urinating, she sat down again and gently moved her daughter's head back onto her lap.

"Mom," Evelyn said, half asleep.

"Um?"

Where are your shoes?

"Mom's not cold," Margaret said. "You go to sleep."

"oh."

Evelyn is asleep again.

Margaret didn't sleep a wink all night.

That voice called her name countless times.

Then the voice said, "Margaret, what is your daughter's name?"

Margaret looked down at Evelyn.

She started talking to Evelyn.

When you were five years old, you opened your mother's jar of rock candy yourself.

He grabbed a handful and stuffed them into his mouth, and you silly child, you choked on those huge pieces of rock candy and they went down your trachea.

"Your dad was so scared when I called him home that he didn't even take off his hat. He carried you for three blocks to the clinic."

She told one story after another.

Evelyn's embarrassing childhood moments:

The flour sacks were scattered all over the floor;

My mother dropped her silver thimble down the drain;

She tore a page out of her brother's exercise book and used it to draw a rabbit.

The first time I tried baking cookies, they turned out completely black, and I was so angry that I cried in the kitchen.

Margaret recounted each story one by one until dawn.

The whistle never stopped.

Evelyn was occasionally woken up, but she would turn over and fall back asleep.

That voice called her all night long.

She didn't respond at all all night.

As dawn approached, the voice faded away.

The last question was asked very softly: "How are you doing?"

Margaret lowered her head and looked at her daughter in her arms.

She answered in her heart, "I'm doing very well."

The sound disappeared.

Margaret leaned down and pressed her face against her daughter's hair.

The sweet scent of butter still lingered in Evelyn's hair.

Outside the shelter, the morning light gradually spread across the city's rooftops.

The sound of coal cart wheels came from the distant street.

One sound after another.

It's dawn in Briston.