I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The gas lamps in the eastern half of the entire camp were all lowered at the same time.

The sound of copper whistles, three short and one long, came from different directions of the camp, rising and falling in waves.

Richard looked down at his feet.

The chisel marks on the inscribed stone surfaces in the excavated pits were glowing.

Although the curtain did not turn over, the invisible water under the spiritual vision began to surge in all directions.

The first person to drown stood up from the mouth of the lantern.

Richard had read in the literature before that the Latin annotation used the word "mersus," meaning a person who sinks to the bottom of the water.

The illustrations in the textbook depicted them as blurry gray outlines, which looked like they were just scribbles done by an art student when handing in a assignment.

But a real drowning victim standing in front of you is unlike any illustration.

A translucent, grayish-white humanoid shape.

It's about the same height as a living person, and it has a head, arms, and legs.

It had deep marks on its neck from being strangled, a cut on its throat, and its entire body was soaking wet from head to toe.

The three gods each took their own: strangled, throat-slit, and drowned.

The only difference was their height and weight; some were as thin as bamboo poles, while others were less than four feet tall. I wonder which Gallic tribe used them as tribute.

The first thing each drowning victim did after emerging from the ground was to bend over and reach out their hands.

Those wet hands reached from the ground toward the tent flap, trying to pull people into the water.

The first scream rang out from tent area B.

Pratt drew a line in the air with his left hand, and spiderweb-like etheric threads swept across the three tents closest to him.

When the line touched the tent flap, it snapped the flap open, revealing the inside.

In the nearest tent, two refugees were lying on cots.

One had already rolled over and was struggling, while the other was not moving at all.

The person who wasn't moving had their mouth slightly open, and a semi-transparent hand had already reached up from under the cot and placed on their ankle.

"Evacuate!" Pratt reacted quickly.

"Get them out of the tents first! Everyone..."

His words were drowned out by a louder whistle from afar.

In the eastern half of the entire camp, the covers of six tent rows were simultaneously lifted.

Edmund rushed into the tent and started calling out to each person.

Although the young priest was a size bigger than last year, his legs and feet did not slow down as a result.

Most people were shaken awake and were pushed out of the tent with blank stares as he pushed them out.

When they were pushed out, some people weren't even wearing shoes. They were barefoot, shivering from the cold as they walked on the muddy ground at the end of November.

There were several that couldn't be woken up by shaking their shoulders, shouting loudly, or pinching their tiger's mouth... nothing worked.

They lay on their cots, their chests heaving with a rhythm that wasn't their own.

All of these were "caught".

The drowning victims' hands rested on their ankles, wrists, and shoulder blades, filling their respiratory systems with that wet, rhythmic flow.

From their spiritual vision, they could see that one of their feet was already in the water.

Maggie played a crucial role at this time.

When her green ring is placed over the drowning victim's hand, the victim's "hand" will loosen.

Maggie covered those who couldn't be woken up one by one, and then Edmund carried them out from inside.

Catherine stood at the entrance of the tent passage to sort the goods.

She could tell at a glance which people coming out of the tent had been "captured" and which were just too scared to move.

There was a subtle asymmetry about the person who was caught.

"Her!" Catherine shouted at Maggie, pointing at a middle-aged woman being helped out by Edmund.

In this urgent situation, she no longer cared about adhering to her rule of keeping quiet.

Maggie turned the green ring in that direction, and the invisible hand on the woman's body loosened.

"It's alright, you can walk by yourself!"

Catherine then pointed to a tall, thin man behind her.

The tall, thin man stood blankly outside the tent flap, his bare feet in the mud, his arms wrapped around himself and trembling.

Edmund gave him a push on the back as he passed by.

"Head towards the warehouse! Don't stop!"

The tall, thin man finally took a step.

Richard did something else while evacuating.

He squatted down beside the pit exposed on the inscribed stone, aiming the opening spell at the exit of the chisel-marked passages in the ground.

The tidal breathing began to operate, and ether surged out from the Sun Constellation, pressing down along the conduction pathway.

The high-density ether created a tiny high-pressure zone at the channel exit, filling the channel opening.

When the new drowning victims surged upwards from below, they collided with this high pressure and were the first to be pushed back.

The second one was pushed back halfway, and after struggling for a few seconds, it was also pushed down.

Effective, but extremely energy-intensive.

For every passage Richard blocked, a little ether fell down.

There are two or three passageways at the bottom of one pit, and four pits have been dug in the B row tent area.

He blocked the three nearest exits, and couldn't reach the fourth.

For the fifth exit, he must rely on the [spiritual form] to maintain his composure under pressure.

Lingrong fell from 20, and after about three minutes of blockage, the underground pressure pushed open the ether he had poured in.

The passageway reopened, and another drowning victim stood up from inside.

Richard gritted his teeth and poured in another layer of ether.

He was essentially pressing down on the drain with his fingers, but water would still seep out through his fingers.

But he controlled the B section, and the number of newly emerging drowning victims was significantly less than in other areas.

When his [Spiritual Appearance] dropped to 8, he activated the [Out-of-Body] connection channel.

The shadow intercepted a wisp of environmental ether on the shallows behind the curtain and transported it back through the channel.

The quantity is small and the passage is too narrow, but something is better than nothing.

Lingrong went from 8 to 9, then dropped to 7, and then went back to 8.

In this asymmetrical tug-of-war, his entire job was to prevent that number from dropping to zero.

The situation in the B row tent area was brought under control, but other areas of the camp were not so lucky.

The four members of the patrol team in the adjacent C-row tent area are all hunters.

What is the hunter's first reaction? — To draw his sword and slash.

It was truly satisfying to chop so hard.

With a single, decisive blow, the drowning man's gray-white figure was cleaved in two from shoulder to hip, the two halves flying two feet to the left and right respectively.

But three seconds later, the two halves that had flown out stopped in mid-air.

They started to move towards the center, and the left and right halves found themselves and pieced themselves back together.

After being pulled back, the drowning victim was no different from before he was slashed.

He bent over, reached out, and continued to reach into the tent.

The hunter slashed again.

This time he struck the neck, and the drowning victim's head flew off.

Its head rolled twice on the ground, then flew back and landed on its neck with a "thud".

Even the deep mark left by the strangulation was in the exact same spot.

The hunters hacked for twenty minutes, the drowning victim being chopped apart and then reformed, only to be chopped apart again, going back and forth countless times.

The group's ether reserves were mostly depleted, but not a single drowning victim was missing.

An even more fatal thing happened during the cutting process.

When the hunter cleaves the drowning victim in two, etheric fragments fly out with the blade.

The fragments landed on nearby refugees who hadn't had time to evacuate, and those who were hit by multiple fragments immediately experienced changes in their breathing rhythm.

The transition from spontaneous breathing to synchronized breathing took less than two seconds.

It's like cutting off one drowning person to create several people who are "pulled back".

By the time the hunter leader of platoon C realized what was happening and ordered a halt, there were already more than a dozen refugees infected by the ether fragments.

The group leader in row D is more experienced.

He made his judgment the moment the drowning victims surged out: he couldn't win.

He ordered everyone to retreat to the warehouse area and abandon the tents.

The people were evacuated with minimal casualties, but the entire D-platoon tent area was handed over to them.

The drowning victims stood in rows inside the empty tent.

They were bent over, their hands outstretched; the tent was empty.

What are they just standing there in line waiting for?

Montagu's group was guarding platoon F.

He set up his family's traditional techniques in the open passageway.

A golden curtain of light hung from the left to the right of the passage, cutting the tent row in half lengthwise.

When a drowning victim touches the light curtain, it will be burned away. When the grayish-white figure touches the light surface, it hisses and smokes, and its surface is scorched with black marks.

They retreated.

Montagu maintained the light barrier alone, standing alone in the middle of the passage.

The blond youth's forehead was covered in sweat, and his shirt was soaked from the collar all the way down his back.

The light curtain consumes a great deal of energy.

A practitioner's ether reserves cannot sustain such a large-scale purification ritual for very long on their own.

Montagu ran out of ether after holding on for nearly ten minutes.

Montagu took two steps back, stumbled, and almost fell onto the muddy ground.

The other two people in the group grabbed him from the left and right and dragged him toward the warehouse.

The second half of row f was also lost.

Edith's group was on the outermost edge of the east side.

The density of drowning victims in the outer area was lower than in the central area, with only three or four people emerging in total.

Edith's inspiration wasn't strong enough.

A drowning victim crawled through a gap less than half a foot wide between the canvas at the bottom of the tent and the ground.

It lay prone on the muddy ground, squeezing like a snake into the narrowest gap between the canvas and the ground.

By the time Edith found them, the two children inside the tent were no longer breathing on their own.

The two children lay on their cots, their chests rising and falling in perfect unison.

The drowning victim was lying face down under the cot, with his hands resting on the ankles of the two children.

The team leader rushed into the tent and, using his ether reserves, tore the hands off the child's ankles.

The two children were carried out.

Edith squatted down next to the team leader, her hands trembling.

"Carter," the team leader called out to her, panting heavily.

Are you alright?

Edith's hands had stopped trembling.

When she stood up, her knee hit the muddy ground, and a large patch of wet dirt stuck to her trouser leg.

"fine."

Fisher was pushed down by a panicked refugee while assisting with the evacuation in platoon C.

The refugee was a burly middle-aged man who was on the verge of a mental breakdown when he was pushed out of the tent.

He saw Fisher blocking the passage and, without saying a word, bumped into him with his shoulder.

Fisher hit the back of his head on a bolt of a cast iron pipe connector.

The injury wasn't fatal; the bolt had torn his scalp and caused a lot of bleeding, which looked scary, but his bones were fine.

He was helped by volunteers to a makeshift aid station behind the warehouse.

He sat on the bench, clutching the back of his head, his expression more one of helplessness than pain.

The most chilling thing in the entire battle was what happened to the refugees who had been completely "held back" by the drowning victims.

Their lips turned purple, and their complexion gradually changed from normal to bluish-gray.

Their chests were heaving violently, the heaving shallower and faster.

Then, the first person started vomiting, and a large amount of murky, salty water gushed from his mouth.

He lay on his side on the muddy ground, water flowing from the corners of his mouth and nostrils, his body convulsing uncontrollably.

Although the mud underfoot was damp, it was far from being enough to drown a person.

Water kept gushing out of his body, and he was drowning out of thin air.

Others soon followed suit and developed the symptoms.

There wasn't a single extra drop of water around them, yet murky, salty water was gushing from everyone's mouths.

Some people don't even have the strength to vomit in the end.

With its mouth open, water slowly overflowed from inside, spilling over the corners of its mouth and flowing down its cheeks into the mud.