I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The Inspector General stepped forward, and Ether automatically made way for him.

The space where he stood began to tremble.

After fully unleashing his power, this master hunter became a bell that lay dormant in the mortal world.

The bones of everyone present were trembling—teeth, shinbones, knuckles, skulls—all buzzing at a maddeningly slow frequency.

Montagu bent down and pressed his knees, while Phillips chewed the last two tea leaves in his mouth and swallowed them.

The Inspector General's gaze passed over Javier and was fixed on the Snake Mother's body; he was looking for a point of resonance.

Superior evil entities also have their own frequencies, or rather, any structure has them—bridges have them, towers have them, ships have them, people have them, and even spirits have them.

The vibration locked onto the snake mother, who was struggling to climb up when her body began to vibrate.

Richard saw the Snake Mother's body, now just a thin layer of skin, begin to tremble from within. Old Phillips found the inherent frequency of her body and made her resonate from the inside out.

The snake mother's head, which had been shattered by Havel, trembled and cracked its scales one by one.

It opened its mouth as if to roar, but the sound it made was caught, amplified, and reflected back into its own body by the frequency of the bell.

The louder it roared, the heavier the blow became to the bell that was ringing inside its body.

The more you resist, the faster you die; every struggle is like tolling the death knell.

The snake mother realized that speaking would lead to her death, so she shut all her mouths.

The seven heads simultaneously closed their snouts, holding their breath, and the resonance frequency dropped.

The chief inspector's face remained expressionless, and he silently lowered the frequency by an octave.

The mother snake may remain silent, but her bones will never stop spitting.

The bones will crack at that frequency, unrelated to breathing, and the cracks will continue to widen.

Phillips stood far away from his father, his hands in his coat pockets.

His face was expressionless, a stark contrast to his usual nonchalant and irritating demeanor.

For the first time, Richard saw in his eyes an extremely calm, calculating gaze.

The Inspector General's resonant frequency was pushed to its limit, and the Serpent Mother was so overwhelmed by the sound of the bell that she couldn't lift her head.

Not content with that, it decided to take advantage of its home ground.

The upside-down city responded to it.

The figures walking on the upside-down streets—eighteenth-century fishermen, nuns in black and white robes, Vikings wrapped in furs—all descended from the dome.

On the way down, the fisherman's oilcloth clothes tore open from the back, and scales emerged from inside;

The hem of the nun's robe transformed into a snake's tail, twisting in mid-air;

The Viking opened his mouth, and his teeth became sharp one by one.

Their faces still retained human features, but the lower parts had transformed into snakes.

The snake people fell in droves from the upside-down ceiling, landing between Old Phillips and the Snake Mother.

A hand rested on Richard's shoulder.

"It's my turn."

Gerrard released his grip and went inside.

Richard had always known that his maternal grandfather was a master, but he had never seen him use his skills.

But he also vaguely sensed that his grandfather's etheric field was slowly declining, getting lower year by year.

Gerald exerted his power, and the ethereal field around him transformed this space into a hunting ground.

Richard's footing became disoriented.

He clearly saw the Snake Mother just a few steps away, within arm's reach;

Looking at it again, I felt that the seven heads were far away, separated by hundreds of miles of wilderness.

Space was stretched and flattened by the etheric field of the lunar hunting tradition.

Richard had read the relevant records in Ashford's study.

This is a tactic used by highly skilled hunters to trap their prey within range, ensuring that no matter how the prey tries to escape, it cannot break free of the designated distance.

A layer of cold, moonlight-like radiance spread from Gerrard.

Sunlight is violent and dispersive; evil has nowhere to hide in it.

The moonlight is cold and penetrating; evil spirits can stand still, their every layer of disguise pierced through.

Wherever the cold moonlight shines, things there are marked.

The meaning of "marked" is: you are in my hunting ground, you are my prey, and you can't escape.

The essence of the Moon Hunting tradition is marking and purification. First, the prey is marked into a "damned shape," and then it is purified piece by piece.

Richard clearly saw that this was a damage assessment at the field level.

Anyone who fails to pass this test will be stabbed by Gerrard every second.

In an instant, most of the densely packed snake-men who had fallen were cleared away.

Everything in the cave was pinned to the ground by the moonlight, unable to move, including the snake mother.

The snake mother realized that the snake swarm tactic was no longer working, so she simply began to devour the snake people she had transformed into.

With each one it swallowed, its wounds visibly healed.

Richard watched as the main head, split open by Havel and cracked by old Phillips, grew its scales back, one by one.

Gerald drew his hunting knife, an old crescent-shaped silver blade with a gleaming leather strap wrapped around the handle.

Richard recognized it as hanging on the back wall of the main seat in the study, and he would glance at it every time he went to the study.

The crescent-shaped silver blade flashed and struck the snake mother's largest head.

All the sounds and pollution accumulated in that head receded like a tide under this slash, scattering into the moonlight.

Seven heads, now one is missing.

The snake mother let out a few barely audible cries, and her remaining six heads lunged at Gerald at once.

Gerald stood in the center of his hunting ground, letting the six heads plunge into the deepest part of the cold light.

All six heads were marked in that instant.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

My grandfather swung his knife so fast that it was invisible; with a turn of his body, he unleashed six cold beams of light.

Richard didn't see how the knife moved; he only saw the six heads that lunged at him split open simultaneously after he turned around.

Old Phillips seized the opportunity, and the chimes sank even deeper into the inherent frequency of those six heads.

The colonel propped himself up on the ground and unleashed a beam of light that burned through the jaw of one of the heads.

The three traditions came together at this moment.

The sun reveals its true nature, the evening bell resonates from within, and the moon hunt strips away its markings.

No matter how much the snake mother struggled, she was being burned, shaken, and skinned at the same time.

It retreats into the shadows and is then illuminated by the sun;

Trying to escape the distance, they were pulled back to where they started by the hunting ground;

Each roar adds another blow to Mu Zhong.

Richard had always felt that the Hunter was the "useless" of the three paths.

Unlike the Hidden Ones who have more methods and can't make decisive decisions like the Scholars, they mostly end up as meat shields on the field.

Perhaps he's a god-tier hero in civil wars specializing in human combat?

The battlefield he saw today made him change his mind.

Just as he was thinking this, Gerald stumbled as he chopped off the second head.

Richard's heart was in his throat.

Fortunately, the snake mother only had four heads left, and her body was riddled with holes from the resonance.

Knowing it couldn't hold on any longer, Whitby, hanging upside down, began to roll out of its body.

Before it dies, it will pour out all the voices that have been inside it for twelve hundred years into the material world.

The houses hanging upside down on the dome fell off one after another, plummeting towards the crack that let in the breath of life.

The eleven-year-old boy was still running upside down in the street.

The street beneath his feet was collapsing.

"Mom?" He pushed open another door, and the wall behind it collapsed. "Mom, shall we go home?"

"That's about it, Corbyn," old Phillips commanded in a deep voice.

"This thing has been weakened to the point that the sleep ritual can still take effect."

Hathaway had already drawn seven arcs around the stone seat, each corresponding to one of the snake mother's mouths and also to a door.

"It's our turn to work."

Corbyn distributed a rubbing of the manuscript to Richard, Montagu, and Phillips, saying, "Each of you knows your own way."

Corbyn read the church's Latin texts himself.

"Sanctimoniales, capilli vestri redditi sunt vobis."

(Nuns, your hair is back to you.)

He returned the seven strands of hair that Hathaway had taken off, one by one.

Grayish-white, dark gray, almost black.

With each wisp of light, a figure in a black and white robe in the upside-down city would stop and turn around.

"You've held out long enough," Corbyn said in his plain Albion language.

"Return to your own temple."

The nuns walked one by one toward the upside-down spire of the monastery.

The last figure to emerge was very thin and small.

Wildflowers were embroidered along the edge of her robe. She paused as she walked along the arc and looked down at her cuffs.

Then, they dispersed.

Montagu was in charge of the plague department.

"Ash."

The sun's traditional ether unfolds according to his judgment, perfectly matching his expertise.

During the plague in Whitby, the dead were thrown into lime pits without leaving a name.

Montague's light shone through that door, gradually drying and soothing the nameless, faceless cries of death.

"You were not remembered, but today someone will make a record for you."

Hathaway stayed by the side of the fishermen who had drowned.

She started a tune, an old fisherman's song from Whitby Wharf, one person began, and the whole boatload of people joined in.

Hathaway has been guarding this sea cliff for almost twenty years; she knows this tune well.

"The sea was given, and the sea was taken away."

She translated the fishermen's songs into spoken language, singing one line and then translating it.

"Tonight, we will send you back to shore."

The fishermen mending their nets on the upside-down dock all raised their heads.

The man who shouted to turn the rudder walked towards the shore, following the song.

Phillips guarded the Norman Knight's gate.

He caught the lingering echo of his father's bell, slowing down and deepening the clanging rhythm of the knight's armor.

"After fighting all his life, it's time for him to rest."

When it was Richard's turn, he laid out the Mirroring Technique.

The still water reflected through the door, and he heard the voices of Viking warriors, their battle cries, the sound of oars, and the muffled thud of waves crashing against the deck.

They died at the foot of a sea cliff a thousand miles from their home and haven't returned home for twelve hundred years.

Richard suddenly understood how to read the judgment.

He understood that night in Heigou: the power of a judgment never lies in how ancient the language is or how deeply it is encrypted, but only in whether the deceased recognizes it.

The Vikings recognized runes, Old Norse, and Valhalla.

That's not enough. What these soldiers who died at sea wanted was the same thing that the hundreds of thousands of survivors wanted on Christmas Eve—to go home.

Corbyn helped him gather up first.

"heyritér, daueiri djupinu."

(Listen, you dead in the River of Death.)

His Old Norse had a distinctly academic accent.

?——fehu, livestock and wealth.

?——raido, the journey and the return.

— hagalaz, hail and destruction.

Three runes rose up one after another, lining up in mid-air.

Richard brought up the runes in the "Knowledgeable" book and wrote them down in his mind, stroke by stroke.

?, othala, home.

"Heiman fortu." (You set off from home.)

The figures wrapped in fur in the upside-down wooden village stopped.

"heim skaltu fara." (You should go home.)

Richard then revealed a second rune.

?, laguz, water.

They came from the sea, and they must return by sea.

"hafit bartik hingat." (The sea brought you here.)

"hafit berrtik heim." (The sea will take you home.)

As the Viking warriors left, the rusty axes on their waists fell to the ground, scattering into rusty pieces.

They no longer needed axes; those returning home carried no weapons.

The most difficult to find are those who died from the 17th century to modern times: fishermen, dockworkers, black jade craftsmen, and boatmen.

These people died not long ago; some were less than a hundred years old, and some were only a generation apart.

The verdict had to be delivered in the Albion dialect, and Corbyn got stuck on this point.

His academic tone worked at first, but it's not working at this level.

"Let me do it," Hathaway said, standing up.

She walked to the front of the arc and spoke in Whitby's local accent.

"Aal reet, lads."

(Alright, guys.)

"time t#039 gan yam."

(Time to go home.)

The fishermen in their oilcloth clothes looked at each other.

One of them threw away the broken net pole that had never caught a fish before.

He walked to the front of the arc and nodded to Hathaway.

Then he turned around and yelled at his still hesitant companions behind him.

Richard only understood the first half of the dialect in that shout.

It roughly means "What are you dawdling for, let's go," followed by profanities that only local Whitby fishermen can understand.

They went in one by one.