I loaded the Mysticism panel.

There were few people on the stone-paved road along the canal.

Occasionally, one or two barges would slowly pass by, with the boatmen, wrapped in thick cotton-padded coats, squatting at the stern.

Richard followed the route marked in the fishing guide.

After walking for about half an hour, we passed two sluice gates and several numbered wooden stakes along the way.

The "seventh pile downstream of gate number three" is located on a very secluded section of the riverbank.

The river narrows here, and the water turns bluish.

There was a large rock on the shore, next to which stood a crooked wooden stake with a fishing line tied to it.

A person was sitting on the rock.

There was a cup next to the man, and the cup had a chipped rim.

Richard couldn't see the face clearly, but he recognized the cup from afar.

"professor!"

He stopped five steps away.

The man flicked his finger on the fishing line.

"How did you find me?"

Half of his wrinkled face was visible under the brim of his hat, the wrinkles twisted together, making it impossible to tell whether he was smiling or sleepy.

"A divination," Richard said honestly. "A divination of myself."

Mortimer burst out laughing.

"Clever kid, so you chose 'go to the canal'?"

"It's not that accurate."

Richard squatted down on the grass next to the stone.

"The divination result was 'Follow your curiosity,' and then I found a fishing guide at a used bookstore with your annotations on it."

"Fishing guide..." The old professor tapped his temple, trying hard to recall.

"I think I bought it when I was young. It was cleared out when I moved offices, and I never expected it to end up at a used bookstore."

He shifted his sitting position, and his lower back cracked.

"Please sit down."

Richard moved from the grass to the edge of the stone.

"Professor, what brings you to the canal to fish?"

"Fishing is just a pastime," the old professor said, adjusting the fishing line again. "The real reason is to avoid people."

"Are many people looking for you?"

"The editing team just finished their work, and now the front lines are urging us for the next batch of sealing patterns."

The old professor picked up the chipped cup and took a sip.

"And then there are those people from the seminary; they've been arguing with the department for two months now."

Both sides came to me for mediation, as if some old geezer like me could influence the entire department.

He pressed his felt hat down further.

"I'm in the office, and that door gets knocked on dozens of times a day. When I come back from the restroom, I always find two notes slipped under the door."

"So I came out."

He gestured towards the crooked wooden stake.

"I discovered this fishing spot ten years ago."

This section of the canal is lined with abandoned buildings; nobody ever comes here, and there aren't many fish either.

He took another sip of tea.

"But I don't need those few fish, I just want to find a quiet place to sit down."

"Professor." Richard didn't beat around the bush; he started taking things out of his canvas bag.

"I've come to see you with important business."

"Hmph." Mortimer glanced at him.

"Don't you always come with important business?"

Last time your aunt dragged you along, your hands were always full.

"Last time it was your aunt who pestered you." Richard placed the three items one by one on the grassy bank of the river.

"This time I'll grind it myself."

"Alright, alright," the old professor waved his hand.

"Anyway, I don't have anything else to do, and the fish aren't biting."

There were three things on the grass.

Rubbings of fragments from the Cretan labyrinth, a statue of a Carolingian saint, and a ceramic bowl by Demeter.

Mortimer pushed his felt hat back, his gaze sharpening.

"Wow, you've saved up quite a bit."

He reached for the rubbing.

"Who's first?"

"Fragments of the maze."

Mortimer unfolded the rubbing and laid it on his lap.

Have you tried it yourself?

"I've tried it." Richard took his notebook out of his bag.

"I can't recognize any of the strokes, and they don't match any of the reference charts I have."

Mortimer nodded.

"The labyrinth tradition is unique to the Minoan civilization."

"The most distinctive feature of the inscriptions in the Cretan labyrinth is that the strokes themselves are a labyrinth."

Richard frowned.

"What do you mean?"

Mortimer bent down and drew a very simple spiral on the mud.

"The labyrinth tradition, every stroke of it is a path."

His fingers slowly traced the spiral lines inwards.

"You follow it, and as you walk, it forks."

One fork in the road, while the other turned back and circled around to the vicinity of the starting point.

You think you've gone a long way, but when you look back, you realize you're still going in circles.

Richard stared at the spiral on the muddy ground.

"Then the reason I can't read it is..."

"You went in." Mortimer erased the spiral as well.

"The more you try to understand it, the more it leads you astray."

"What is the solution?"

"I won't read it."

"...Not going to read it?"

Mortimer pulled his hands off the muddy ground and wiped them on his trousers.

"By listening."

"Turn off your clairvoyance and use your intuition to 'listen' to it."

Richard was eager to try:

"Professor, may I try it now?"

"You try it, I'll watch." Mortimer picked up his teacup.

Richard placed the rubbing on his lap, facing him.

He first turned off his spiritual vision, leaving only lines on the paper.

Inspiration, like a layer of moisture, adhered to the surface of the rubbing paper.

At first, I couldn't hear anything; all I could hear was the sound of the canal flowing.

The motor of the barge was still churning in the distance.

He filtered out these sounds layer by layer, until the world was so quiet that only the sound of his own breathing remained.

I don't know how much time has passed.

Richard read it aloud as his knees began to go numb.

"For those navigating the maze, remember that the entrance is behind you."

"Every step takes you away from the entrance, but every step also leads to the exit."

"The maze doesn't trap anyone; what traps you is the moment you stop walking."

Richard opened his notebook and copied down the deciphered passage word by word.

It speaks of the nature of the maze and the admonition to "never stop," yet it has no operable spell effects.

It's just three... well, correct but meaningless sentences.

Richard was a little confused.

"Professor, is that all?"

"That's all." Mortimer didn't even lift his eyelids.

"You think the most valuable thing in the labyrinth tradition is the technique for 'finding the exit'?"

"...Isn't that right?"

"Anyone who claims 'I know the way out' is trying to deceive you."

The old professor put the fishing line back into the water.

"The only thing that works is for you to keep going and find your own way through your own actions."

"You've gone the wrong way, turn back and try again."

Richard closed the notebook.

If this passage isn't worth encrypting like this, then what was the person who wrote it thinking?

These three sentences might become more useful than any technique when you are truly lost.

"Bring this one too," Mortimer gestured toward the statue of a saint on the grass.

Richard handed over the statue of Saint Carolingian.

Mortimer flipped the statue over to its base and scanned the inscription.

"This is the final part of a record of a canonization ceremony."

The old professor bent down and wrote a few letters on the muddy ground.

The shapes of those letters are quite different from those of the modern Latin alphabet.

There are more arcs, shorter vertical lines, and a row of dwarfs with hunched backs standing in a line.

"The canonization rites of the Carolingian era are different from those of the Church today."

"The canonization process in the church now involves a group of cardinals meeting and voting."

After the vote, an imperial edict was issued, and churches nationwide simply hung images of the new saints on their walls, and that was considered the end of the sealing process.

"That wasn't the case back then."

"Back then, the canonization process truly involved engraving the 'names' of deceased saints into objects, making those objects their representatives in the material world."

"The final step of the ceremony."

His fingertips stopped at a certain point in the middle of the book.

"It's about 'locking up' the name of the saints."

"Locked?"

"Look here."

Richard leaned closer and pushed his vision to its limit.

There is a tiny knot in the stroke of that stroke.

"This knot." Mortimer's finger hovered above it.

"It's a lock."

"After the ceremony, the saint's name was locked inside an object."

He turned the bronze statue around.

"Whoever has the ability to untie this knot..."

"The name will then emerge."

"Yes." Mortimer nodded.

"How you want to use it once it's available is up to you."

Richard brought the bronze statue back.

"But then again..."

The old professor added another sentence.

"The 'names' locked in the canonization ceremonies of the Carolingian era were mostly those of minor local saints:"

A monk in a certain parish who heals people, a nun in a certain village who drives away the plague...

"Their names, when taken out, have the effect of a prayer."

Richard recalled Pollock's lecture.

"The church has been using the ritual term 'tooth extraction' for hundreds of years."

"But what if there were canonization prayers that had been preserved intact, locked inside a Carolingian statue and never touched by anyone..."

Mortimer looked at him.

"Are you thinking that the church might have missed one or two teeth while extracting teeth over the past few hundred years?"

"Yes."

"Of course it's possible." The old professor picked up his cup.

"But you have to untie the knot first to find out if the tooth inside is still there."

"And even if he were," he said, taking a sip, "how sharp could the teeth of the Little Saint Carolingian be?"

"Sharper than a tooth that has been pulled."

"That's true." Mortimer put down his cup.

"It's up to you, I won't interfere."

Richard put the bronze statue away and said no more.

What if?

This "what if" scenario is worth the time he spends to untangle the knot.

The last item is a ceramic bowl by Demeter.

Mortimer became interested as soon as the bowls were laid out.

"This is the oldest one. The layer of old ether inside the bowl is thoroughly preserved, and the ether in the engraved ring at the bottom of the bowl... well, two layers."

The bottom layer is as old as the bowl's surface, while a new layer has been added on top.

Mortimer bent down and turned the bowl upside down.

"Look here, the curved lines represent earth, and the straight lines represent the mouth."

An arc above a straight line indicates "a mouth beneath the earth."

Richard leaned closer.

"Look at this part again." Mortimer moved his finger to the right.

"These symbols together can be read as 'a tongue in the mouth'."

In the final paragraph, the old professor withdrew his fingers from the bottom of the bowl.

"Try it yourself later."

Richard posted his inspiration there.

He found the rhythm for the first half by following the steps the professor had pointed out.

"Tasting the grains... shows my respect..."

He pushed his inspiration even deeper.

"Then it will not devour my child."

When the last five symbols were settled, the frequency of the etheric vibration at the bottom of the bowl suddenly dropped.

Richard withdrew his inspiration.

He wrote down the complete short prayer in his notebook:

"Under the earth is a mouth, and in the mouth is a tongue."

"I put the grains in a bowl, and then I put the bowl on the ground."

"If my tongue tastes the grain, it will know my respect and will not devour my child."

This is a summons.

Three thousand years ago, farmers knelt on the ridges of fields where seeds had just been sown, put the first handful of grain into a bowl, and recited these words.

The meaning of the words is roughly: Please come up from underground and have a taste.

Demeter's field should be at its weak point.

The weak point was thinning, and the seeping ether was being absorbed into this three-thousand-year-old bowl.

The short prayer is awakened, attempting to fulfill its original function: to summon the things of the earth to come up and partake of the grain in the bowl.

But those who were sacrificed three thousand years ago were the simple "spirits of the land" who coexisted with human agriculture.

The ecology of the curtain three thousand years later is completely different from what it was back then.

Now that short prayer at the bottom of the bowl is calling again... no one can say for sure what will climb up.

Richard put the bowl back into the earthenware jar and sealed it with coarse salt.

He folded the appraisal report and resealed it, along with the earthenware bowl, into the earthenware jar.

Just send it to Demeter later using the spirit messenger.

The fishing line on the river surface returned to its motionless state.

Mortimer pulled his felt hat down again.

"Is there anything else?"

"That's all."

"Then let's go. Go back and study hard."

Richard slung his canvas bag over his shoulder and walked back the way he came.

He turned around once after walking a dozen steps.

Mortimer was still sitting on that rock.

The fishing line dangled motionless on the grayish-green water.