I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The convoy rounded a rock face that sloping to the left, and the acetylene lamps came to a stop.

The yellow light fell on the cave wall, illuminating silver lines.

The silver line circled the rock face for a full loop, shaping the passageway ahead into a doorway.

"We're here." Hathaway walked past the crowd to the silver line.

"The people from 1763 were really skilled."

"It's been bound for 150 years, and only the cannon fire at Ximen caused it to crack in three places."

Richard stood behind Gerald, using his spiritual vision to see the circle of silver lines.

There was an extremely thin layer of ether hanging inside the line, and you could hear the sounds of those trapped behind them crashing together.

One man was shouting to change course, while another voice was reciting the Lord's Prayer, stopping at "Your Kingdom shall come," and then starting over.

There were people swearing. Richard himself couldn't understand them, but judging from Hathaway's furrowed brow, he guessed they were swearing very foully.

"Will these sounds hurt people?" Phillips leaned closer and asked.

"No." Hathaway replied without looking up.

"After 150 years, they can't bite you, they just make noise."

It was really noisy; the flame of the acetylene lamp flickered in the sound waves.

Hathaway took out a leather pouch from her waist and poured a small pinch of silver powder into her palm.

She dipped her fingertips in silver powder and drew another arc outside the old silver line.

After drawing a line, the shouts inside quieted down a bit, just like turning down the volume on a remote control.

She drew seven lines in a row, encompassing the old silver line along with the overflowing sound behind it.

The sound was still ringing, but there was a wall between them.

Hathaway dusted the silver powder off her hands and stood up.

"The owner of these voices has already been prayed for to rest in peace; the voices are just stuck in the silver thread and haven't completely disappeared."

Corbyn held the acetylene lamp forward.

"Once the first layer is cleared, move on to the next one. Everyone stays close together, because the next layer is different."

Phillips tilted his head at Richard: "It gets colder as we go down. Aren't you cold?"

"cold."

"I'm cold too," Phillips said, shivering.

"My dad told me to leave the teapot at home, but now that I think about it, I should have fought tooth and nail to bring it with me."

"In this godforsaken place, a mouthful of hot water could save a life."

Old Phillips' voice drifted back from the front, drowning out the noise in the cave.

"If you say another word, you won't be getting any drinks at home either."

Phillips immediately fell silent.

The line continued downhill for a while longer.

The second seal appears in a recessed area of ​​the rock wall; this one is no longer a silver line.

Richard scanned the rock face and saw needles embedded in seven points on the rock wall.

Around each needle, the ether was twisted into a knot.

Hathaway reached out and very gently picked up something from the side of the first needle with the tip of tweezers.

There was hair inside the stitches.

A very thin strand was picked out from the tip of the tweezers.

The hair was tangled with the stitching thread, so much so that it was hard to tell which strand was thread and which was hair.

"The church, in the name of Saint Hilda, stitched a stitch into each of the creature's seven mouths."

Corbina had checked the files beforehand.

"St. Hilda was a 7th-century abbess who founded Whitby Abbey."

Hathaway brought the strand of hair close to the light.

"This couldn't possibly be Saint Hilda's own."

She picked up the thread from the second needle, and there was another strand of hair, slightly darker in color.

"The monastery was rebuilt after the Norman conquest."

Hathaway looked at each hair one by one.

"When the Benedictine nuns passed on their presidency, they would cut off a lock of their hair and tie it to the thread left by the previous presidency."

"They thought it was a sacred ritual, and that by wrapping their hair around the 'sacred belt' left by Saint Hilda, they could bask in the saint's light."

She put the tweezers down.

"In fact, they are risking their lives to reinforce this crack."

Richard's spiritual vision probed along that strand of hair.

The hair holds a woman's thoughts as she cut her hair: to remain chaste for the Lord and to protect the world from impurities.

Thoughts became entangled in the thread, and the thread tightened into the mouth of the sealed object.

"I have to thank them first before I take it apart," Hathaway said.

She plucked a little silver powder from her sachet and sprinkled it very lightly on the seven strands of hair.

"Girls, you've waited long enough."

She spoke with a local accent, the soft, gentle voice typical of the Esker River region: "It's time to rest."

Silver powder fell on the hair, darkening the gray, dark gray, and almost black strands layer by layer.

"Then things get tough."

Corbyn stood up, his knees cracking twice.

"Once the stitches were removed, all seven mouths of the Snake Mother loosened, and once the inscriptions were removed, the seven sound channels were simultaneously connected."

He scanned everyone present.

"The voices of 1,200 years will surge forth simultaneously."

The chief inspector glanced at Gerrard, who nodded slightly.

"All hunters, step forward," the Inspector General ordered.

Javier stepped out from the middle of the group.

He took off his overcoat, revealing a close-fitting wool sweater underneath, with the cuffs tightly tied.

Gerald also took off his hat and stuffed it into his pocket, and the two hunters stood on either side of Corbyn behind him.

"Scholars and observers, step back thirty paces."

Richard, Montague, and Phillips retreated to the bend in the road thirty paces away.

The corner position is just right to block most of the direct etheric shock, while still allowing you to peek out with half your head out.

Corbyn placed his hands on the first of the seven inscriptions.

The Latin letters, driven into the nails, began to heat up in his palm.

"defigatur..." (to pull out a nail)

He read out the first syllable of the inscription.

This is a reverse reading, where each word that the church engraved in the original text is deciphered one by one in the reverse order of its engraving.

Once it's carved in, it's like a nail; once it's removed, you have to pull them out one by one.

"oblinatur... (scratching seal)"

The second syllable.

The scale-like patterns on the cave wall trembled violently.

"...recondatur in imis (something hidden deep within)"

The moment the third syllable landed, all seven inscriptions shattered simultaneously.

Rust flakes broke off from the rock surface and fell down in a flurry.

The snake mother opened all seven mouths at the same time, filling the cave with sound.

It was on a completely different scale from those sounds that seeped out one by one; the sounds of twelve hundred years ago were simultaneously unleashed.

The cries of generations of fishermen, the shouts in stormy nights, the roars of anchor-pulling.

Someone was reciting something on the mast towards the giant waves when he was swept into the water by a wave halfway through his recitation. The last half of the recitation turned into bubbles underwater.

The prayers of dozens of generations of nuns, their daily prayers, evening prayers, and midnight prayers, were recited with fervor in some and hastily in others, and in a few places, one could hear that the person reciting the prayers was dozing off.

"oeinná yer alla!" (Odin will possess your souls!)

The war cries of the Vikings mingled with the creaking of the ship's keel as it rolled over the shallows.

"Herjaför, gef mér sigr!" (Father of the armies, grant me victory!)

The wailing of the ancient Anglo-Saxons lingered between the Viking war cries, occasionally escaping through the cracks only to be swept back into the water.

"En avant! En avant!"

(Forward! Forward!)

The clanging of Norman knights' armor and the thud of their hooves transformed into a deep, muffled drumbeat.

The sound of nails being hammered into coffins during the plague era, one after another.

The intervals between the knocks grew shorter and shorter; the people nailing the coffin became increasingly anxious and numb.

And one winter, a child played near the entrance of a cave, and his laughter echoed for hundreds of years.

All the sounds overlapped, so densely packed that the boundaries of each sound were squeezed out.

They became a wall made of sound, constantly advancing forward.

Havel stood at the very front, with a golden light barrier erected in front of him by Ether.

The light curtain of the sun's traditional hunters can dispel the dark realm behind the veil; in the material world, it is a pure ethereal barrier.

When the sound wall collided with the light curtain, the light curtain dented backward.

Gerald stood to the side and slightly behind Javier, casually pulling out a short dagger with silver runes engraved on its blade, a tradition of the Moonhunters.

He held the dagger horizontally in front of his chest, and with a flash of light, the screen cleaved the sound wall in two, striking the cave wall behind it.

The moment all seven mouths opened, the curtain fell.

The ground beneath Richard's feet became the top of his head.

The cave's dome became beneath our feet.

The stalactites that originally hung on the cave ceiling have been transformed into inverted houses.

Fishermen's stone huts, monastery spires, dockside warehouses, church bell towers...

The entire Whitby is hanging upside down overhead.

No, it wasn't just Whitby; an 18th-century fishing village nestled beneath a 7th-century monastery, and Viking wooden fortresses were embedded in medieval stone streets.

Whitby from all ages was swallowed by this thing, half-digested, and then spat out intact.

A figure walks on the upside-down street.

Some were dressed in fishermen's oilcloth clothes, some were draped in nuns' black and white robes, and some were wrapped in Viking furs, with rusty axes hanging from their waists.

They walked around the upside-down city, pushing open one upside-down door after another and entering one upside-down house after another.

They didn't know they were dead.

Richard looked up at the upside-down town, or perhaps he was looking down at it?

The still water of the condensing mirror technique spread across his body, and he could clearly see those figures doing what they were supposed to do in their previous lives.

A boy was running down an upside-down street, past one upside-down house after another, pushing open every door and rushing into every empty room, shouting.

"mom!"

His voice echoed through the upside-down city, crashing against the inverted walls and bouncing back.

"Mom, where are you?"

He pushed open the next door, but the room was empty. He then ran to the next building.

Hathaway explained from the side.

"That child has only been here for twelve days."

"Last month, an apprentice went missing in town. His family reported him missing, saying he had fallen into the sea."

"He didn't know he was already inside her, and neither did the people inside."

The snake mother's largest head opened its eyes.

Its eyes were a cloudy yellow, and its pupils were split vertically into a knife-like slit. Six heads of different sizes were left, all surrounding it.

The Serpent Mother took a breath, and the entire upside-down city began to shake violently because of that breath.

The largest head raised itself, but didn't look at the living people immediately.

In its eyes, Richard and his companions, along with the stalactites filling the cave, were just a backdrop, much like the ash beneath the world.

It was only staring at one place—the crack above its head (or below its feet?).

A sliver of life from the living world was seeping through the crack, and it was trying to climb upwards.

"Corbin, the three of us will buy you time."

Colonel Javier tossed his coat to his feet: "You just handle the ceremony."

As the colonel exerted his strength, the blood vessels under his skin shone with a golden light, one after another, climbing from his neck to the back of his hand.

The light suddenly exploded.

There was no natural light in the cave, but at this moment, the area where Havel stood was as bright as day.

Golden light spilled onto the upside-down street and onto the snake mother's seven heads.

The snake mother's seven heads shrank simultaneously. Having lived for 1,200 years in the depths of a lightless cave, they were instinctively afraid when illuminated by this light.

Javier charged forward, stepping on the light he had earned with his own life.

He held an enchanted battle axe in his hand, and the ether flowed along the axe blade.

When it chopped down, the sunlight was compressed into a blade-like white light, cutting out along the trajectory of the axe.

It struck the side of the snake mother's largest head.

With a snap, the scream of a fisherman, which she had swallowed and hadn't fully digested, drifted into the light through the wound and melted away.

The mother snake was in pain, and all seven of her heads bit down at Havel at once.

The largest one was moving slower because of a neck injury.

The other six intact ones converged on him from six directions.

Aether created a violent torrent during the Serpent Mother's actions, locking onto the target and giving it no chance to dodge.

Just as Havel was about to be bitten, a sun appeared out of thin air on the cave wall behind him.

Richard's spiritual vision sharpened, but he didn't look directly at her.

That was clearly not Havel's own power; it came up through the channel of the Montagu family's inherited technique.

Havel was propelled to a height he could never reach in his lifetime by the power of his own ancestral master.

The light from that little sun poured down, burning away the darkness in the entire space.

The seven snake heads that were biting at Havel saw themselves clearly in the light.

Beneath the seven heads was a body reduced to a single layer of skin, beneath which lay emptiness.

For 1,200 years, she swallowed so many voices and deaths, and she also swallowed herself.

Bathed in light, the snake mother saw for the first time how weak she was.

That moment of hesitation was enough.

Havel swung his axe down again, and as the blade passed, the snake's head scales were crushed into fragments of sunlight, flying up piece by piece before turning to ash in mid-air.

The upside-down city swayed with the blow of the axe.

Several upside-down houses detached from the dome and fell, dispersing into mist in mid-air.

The little sun went out, and the expert withdrew his power.

Havel stumbled and fell to the ground, and a crack appeared in the etheric cycle.

The man knelt on the ground, panting but laughing.

"Gerald, old Phillips, it's your turn."