I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Richard followed Maggie's gaze and saw Catherine.

The two red-haired girls locked eyes.

Maggie still had half a piece of Basque cake in her mouth, her cheeks puffed out on one side, and she had stopped chewing.

The atmosphere changed abruptly.

Catherine didn't touch it, nor did Maggie; they even forgot to chew the half-cake.

The Blackwood and McPhee families, two Highland hunter families, have fought for generations over the deer hunting grounds on the north shore of Lake Arryn.

He had killed people, burned down their sheepfolds, and erected a stone tablet on the hillside to curse their families.

Theodore was standing two steps behind Maggie, completely bewildered.

He frowned, looking left and right, and opened his mouth twice but didn't dare to make a sound.

Edmund had no idea what had happened.

"Uh..." The chubby young man raised the tin box in his hand.

"Would you like some cake? It's made by the nuns of our order, Basque cake, it's delicious."

Catherine didn't even glance at the box; her gaze remained fixed on Maggie.

A seagull cried out overhead, its voice sharp and shrill.

Richard stood between the two, unsure which way to look.

A tall, thin young man from the Manchester guild walked by, clutching a crumpled registration form in his hand.

He was looking down at the squad list on the form when he looked up halfway up and glanced at the group of people in front of him.

His gaze lingered on Catherine and Maggie for a moment.

"Hey..." He patted his companion's shoulder and gestured with his chin.

"Look over there, those two red-haired girls."

The voice wasn't deliberately lowered, and the harbor wind was blowing this way, so every word was delivered to where it was supposed to be.

"They must be sisters, right? Their hair and eyes are exactly the same."

Upon hearing this, Catherine and Maggie both turned their heads in that direction.

The fire emanating from those two eyes almost burned a hole through the tall, thin young man's chest.

The tall, thin young man had half a sentence left unsaid, but when he met those two eyes, he swallowed the rest of his words.

His companion had already instinctively moved to the side.

"Wrong way, wrong way... I'm going that way..."

The tall, thin young man stuffed the registration form into his pocket, slipped away, turned a corner, and disappeared back into the crowd.

Edmund held up the tin box, his mouth agape.

Theodore didn't even dare to look at it anymore, turning his whole face towards the port to admire the industrial beauty of the crane.

Richard stood there, looking at the scene and couldn't help but laugh. At first glance, the two of them did indeed look like sisters.

When the two highland girls turned their heads back, their eyes met again.

Maggie swallowed the half of the cake she had been holding in her mouth.

"He said I look like you?" There was no anger in her voice.

Catherine's lips twitched.

The object of their anger is no longer each other.

Richard seized the opportunity to interject.

"She is Maggie McPhee, of the Highlands Guild, Scholar Direction."

He tilted his head towards Maggie, then turned to the other side.

"Catherine Blackwood, a preparatory student at Imperial University, and also an academic."

He deliberately emphasized the term "scholarly direction".

Both men are scholars; it's inappropriate to project the feud between hunters onto scholars.

Maggie relaxed before Catherine.

She shifted her gaze from Catherine's face to Richard.

"Your classmate in Beijing?"

"Um."

Catherine extended her right hand.

If members of two feuding families meet at a neutral venue, the one who extends their hand first will declare, "Today doesn't count."

If we meet at the hunting grounds tomorrow, that's a matter for tomorrow.

Maggie glanced down at the hand Catherine was extending.

Then she extended her hand and shook hands with the other person.

Grip it fast, release it fast too.

"The assembly is complete." Catherine put her hands back in her coat pockets and wrote something serious in her notebook for Richard to see.

"Get to the main entrance of the building within ten minutes."

She turned and left, a corner of her scarf billowing behind her in the wind.

Maggie stood still.

"Your classmate."

She turned her gaze away from Catherine's departing figure and looked at Richard's face.

"She has quite a temper."

"You two are equally bad."

Maggie didn't deny it; in fact, the corners of her mouth curved upwards.

"If you were to say that to her..."

"I won't say," Richard said, knowing when to back down.

"Let's go." She brushed the cake crumbs off her coat. "It's time to gather."

Edmund stood by the side the whole time, and his arm ached from holding the tin box for at least two minutes.

As he put the box back into his arms, he finally couldn't help but whisper a question to Richard.

"...What exactly happened just now? Why were they looking at each other like they were about to pull out knives?"

"feud."

"What kind of blood feud?"

"The way the Highlanders hold grudges is quite different from your religious order."

"Our order teaches forgiveness." Edmund put the tin box back in his pocket, his smile fading.

"Go and talk to those two."

Richard carried his canvas bag and walked towards the building.

Edmund swallowed the verse of forgiveness.

He glanced at Catherine's retreating figure in the distance, then turned to look at the back of Maggie's head as she walked on the other side.

Two red heads stood out starkly against the gray winter sky.

"Do you think they look alike?" Edmund asked Theodore in a low voice.

Theodore looked to his left, then to his right.

"...Don't ask me questions that could kill you."

Upon arriving at the open space in front of the main entrance of the port authority building, everyone obediently squatted inside.

The sea breeze blows in gusts from the Strait of Dover.

Richard stood inside the white-gray line, while Edmund, not far away, held a cross and his lips moved very slightly.

They might be reciting some kind of prayer, or maybe they're just craving cake.

Catherine and Maggie stood on either side, with Richard between them, tacitly regarding him as a somewhat unreliable barrier.

When the person in charge of this field operation came down, everyone fell silent.

He was a man in his early forties, wearing an old trench coat whose original color was no longer discernible.

He introduced himself as Harding, a senior inspector at the junior proficiency level.

This person has a long face, high cheekbones, and a scar on their chin that runs from the corner of their mouth to below their ear.

The scar means that when the left side of my face smiles, the right side remains completely still.

He walked to the white line and stopped, his gaze sweeping from the far left of the line.

The first person he swept up was Montagu.

Sweep upwards to the waist; the inner bulge is shaped like a peculiar object.

Further up, Montagu's shoulders were very level, and his chin was slightly tucked in.

"Clean," Harding said, then looked away.

Montagu frowned, unsure whether it was a compliment or an insult.

Harding slowed down when he saw Richard.

The canvas bag was slung over his right shoulder; its outline suggested that it contained a lot of things, but they were packed tightly inside.

There are calluses on the web of my right hand, which are from years of holding a pen.

Looking further up at his face, Harding lingered on it for a while longer.

"It works."

He left after saying that, which Richard felt sounded like he was evaluating livestock.

Harding only paused for a second when he saw Catherine.

"hard."

I scanned Maggie's image and paused for two seconds.

"wild."

When I scanned Edmund, this time it stopped the longest.

Harding stared intently at the other man's protruding belly and chuckled softly.

"...It's time to lose weight."

Edmon's face turned bright red.

Most people offered their conclusions, and Harding retreated to the steps.

"The teams are divided into groups of four to five people, with a senior professional serving as the group leader."

"You just guard your own section; once you're outside your patrol area... that's no longer your concern."

"Don't try to be a hero when faced with danger beyond your rank."

He took out a brass whistle and a red signal flare from his trench coat pocket, holding them in his hand without rushing to fire them.

"Listen carefully, I'll only say it once."

"Your primary job here is routine patrol."

"Each group is responsible for a section of the tent area, working in shifts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the day, in 12-hour shifts."

Your job is to walk row by row and look at each peak one by one.

"The layer of moisture on the report, the concentration of refugees exceeding the level three mark, will be marked in red on the register, and your group leader will be notified."

The team leader assesses the situation and reports it to me, then I decide whether or not to isolate the individual.

He replaced that hand with two fingers.

"There is also registration and interviews."

Everyone in each tent was recorded, including who lived there, what day they arrived, where they came from, and how thick the layer of substance on their bodies was.

"This is an interview, not an interrogation. Please speak politely and don't frighten them."

"These refugees have just escaped from the water, and some of them can barely remember their own surnames."

Just write down what you can ask, and don't force yourself to answer what you can't.

"Your team leaders are all seasoned professionals, mostly in covert operations."

They would perform divination and trace reading during breaks in their patrols.

The scholars will assist by recording the divination results, verifying symbols, and translating inscriptions—these are your specialties.

"The hunters are responsible for vigilance and keeping watch around the area while the team leader is doing divination."

Harding raised the brass whistle and the signal flare.

"Any abnormality discovered during patrols that is beyond your handling capabilities, regardless of its size, must be reported."

Don't try to do it yourself or show off, thinking that #039 is such a small matter and not worth bothering the team leader.

"Of the ten new recruits who die on field missions, eight die because they think they can do it."

He handed the bronze whistle and signal flare to the first group leader standing at the front.

"Three short and one long whistle signals for help, while firing a red signal flare signals retreat."

"Upon seeing the signal flare, everyone retreat towards the warehouse."

Harding read out the squadron list one by one.

Richard kept track of his group: himself, Catherine, Edmund, and Maggie, a group of four.

He hadn't heard of the team leader's name before; it seemed to be Pratt.

A man in his thirties emerged from the crowd, with a mole on the right side of his mouth.

A seasoned practitioner in the field of covert operations walks with almost no swaying of the body; it's as if the whole person slides over.

He spoke even less than Harding, glancing at the four of them as he walked up, lingering his gaze on Richard for a while longer.

That pause was extremely brief, but Richard detected a hint of recognition in his eyes.

He sensed the trace of power left by Lady Mary on the silver ring.

Pratt hung the brass whistle on his waist and tucked the red signal flare into the inside pocket of his trench coat.

There is only one rule in the group.

"The four of them must always stay within each other's sight and are not allowed to act alone under any circumstances."

He glanced at the deliberate distance between Catherine and Maggie.

"You two should settle your private matters outside the patrol area."

The two red-haired girls turned their faces away at the same time.

Theodore was assigned to the next group, while Montagu went to a patrol team in another direction.

Fisher and Edith each received their own share.

Fisher was in row C, while Edith was placed on the outermost side of the east side.

There were at least fifteen or sixteen small teams that could be seen, scattered throughout the old warehouse district that stretched for nearly half a mile on the east side of the port.

Each team is responsible for a section of the tent area.

Everyone is a worker bee in their own compartment of the hive, keeping their head down and doing their own thing, without interfering with how the neighbor is collecting honey.

Richard followed Pratt into the tent area.

It was so wet you could wring water out of it; the exposed skin looked like it had been licked by a cow.

He stopped at the entrance of the passage and spread out his hidden spiritual vision.

The tent fabric felt dry to the touch, while the mud on the ground was just normally damp.

In November, the southern ports of the island are muddy but not damp.

The layer of substance visible through spiritual vision has absolutely nothing to do with water vapor on the physical level.

It was stuck to the inside of the tent fabric, the iron pipes of the cots, the surface of the blankets wrapped around refugees, and even on the cheeks of sleeping people.

If it weren't for the high precision of [Quiet Observation], Richard wouldn't have been able to detect it at all.

Pratt was also watching, using his own methods.

Richard spoke first: "The humidity here varies."

Pratt turned his head to look at him.

Richard gestured with his chin toward the innermost row of tents.

"The third to fifth rows are the densest, while the first row has almost none."

Pratt nodded.

"You read very carefully, please continue."

Richard walked in about ten steps, with Catherine following behind on the right, Edmund on the left, and Maggie bringing up the rear.

The four people consciously formed a diamond shape, with their eyes overlapping each other—this is the basic formation for field operations.

Richard stopped when he reached the third row of tents.

The humidity here is noticeably higher than elsewhere.

"Rows three through five," Pratt explained behind him.

"It's where the last group of people to be evacuated lived."

Richard recalled the information in the report.

The refugees arrived at Folkestone Port in three batches.

The first and earliest group were those who ran to higher ground the day the dam was opened; they were the fastest and cleanest to evacuate.

The second batch, two days later, was taken down from the roof by the rescue team.

The third batch was the latest, arriving five days later than the first batch.

No one can say for sure what happened during those five days.

Richard led Catherine from the first tent in row B, lifting the curtains one by one and registering each household.

Edmund walked on the other side, stopping to offer words of comfort to any distraught refugees he encountered.

In this situation, the priesthood is more effective than any spell.

As soon as the cross is revealed, even people who don't speak the language will start to put their hands together in prayer.

Maggie stayed behind to keep watch, never lingering her gaze on the inside of the tent for long.

The first day of work was very boring.

Richard marked any problems he encountered during the patrol in red in the register and handed it to the team leader.