I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"remind?"

"Yes, the people who came to remind me are... people my dad deals with in business."

Richard understood. Grey's mother had mentioned before that her family knew some people on the mystical side.

"We're going to move to our house outside the city this afternoon, stay there for a few days, and then come back."

"That's good." Richard breathed a sigh of relief.

"What about you?" Grey suddenly asked. "Aren't you leaving?"

Richard held the microphone but didn't answer.

He can't leave; he has to go into this vortex and do what he needs to do.

"I'm at school," was all he could say. "The school has made arrangements."

"...Hmm." Grey didn't ask any further questions.

"Then... be careful."

"The same to you."

Neither of them hung up the phone.

Only their soft breaths remained on the telephone line.

After a while, Grey remembered something else.

"Oh, right." Her voice suddenly became a little lighter.

"The frosty bean seed you gave me last time."

Richard raised an eyebrow. "That bean above the snow line?"

"Yes," Gray said. "I've always kept it in a flowerpot on the balcony."

"It still hasn't sprouted."

"Hmm." Richard didn't expect it to survive either.

"But..." Grey paused.

"But when I touched that bean recently, it didn't seem as cold as it used to be."

"It's not that cold anymore?"

"Hmm." Grey hesitated for a moment.

"I can't say for sure if it's just my imagination or if it's real."

"When I first got it, the bean was so cold it felt prickly to the touch, and I had to pull my finger back after a while."

"Now...it's still cold, but the chill seems to have subsided a bit; at least it's not freezing me anymore."

Grey spoke to him, and it seemed she was also speaking to herself.

"I was thinking, if these beans are kept growing like this... maybe one day they will actually sprout."

Richard leaned against the wooden wall of the phone booth, saying nothing.

………………

On this day of mourning, the outer street of Huayue Street was emptier than usual.

The swindlers' shops were lined up one after another, with signs still up, but no one came out to hawk their wares.

The notice of Mrs. Mary's closure was still pressed on the door of number seventeen, "In-house inventory, temporarily closed," which had become bloated from the smog of the past few days.

Richard pressed down where the handle should have been, and the coin softened into a handle.

Just like last time, the door opened and there was only a room full of mirrors.

But unlike last time, all of Lady Mary's secret agents who were available to come today have arrived.

Richard roughly counted about ten people, including men, women, and children.

The two people against the wall had a much stronger aura than the others; they were minor proficiency users.

Mrs. McNeill blended in unnoticed among her fellow apprentices. Today, she wasn't wearing her plain scarf, but instead had a tiny black jade brooch tucked behind her ear.

Mrs. Mary sat in a high-backed armchair at the far end of the Room of Mirrors, her face still impossible to discern.

"Richard, come to me."

Richard walked over.

No one spoke in the room; the dozen or so people all nodded slightly to him in acknowledgment.

Richard brought everything he needed last night.

The Sphinx lamp was kept warm against his body, the sacred bronze paperweight and bronze scales were in his bag, and the half set of runestones were each placed in oil paper.

He even brought Clara's little flag used to attract guests.

Mrs. Mary glanced at the small flag, offered no comment, and simply said:

"We won't need this tonight."

"The Strange Tales Collection has been published," Richard said in a low voice.

"I know, I've also got two copies here. The six rules on the paper are well written."

"Will it work...?"

"I only found out tonight."

The first bell of noon rang at that moment.

The factory horns, near and far, sounded simultaneously, their long blasts enveloping the entire capital.

The carriages on the street stopped, and the horses pulling them didn't even paw at the ground.

Through the mirrored room, Richard heard the sounds outside gradually fade away: the sound of wheels stopped, the hawkers' cries stopped, even the sparrows under the eaves stopped moving.

The entire city removed its hats and observed three minutes of silence.

Lady Mary raised her hand, and the entire capital city slowly appeared on the largest standing mirror in the room of mirrors.

"Look, we are observing a moment of silence."

In a city of a million people, even in the dead of night, there are always a few lights, a few coughs, and people who can't sleep standing at their windows—the usual noises of a living city.

All those noises were swept away at that moment.

On a certain street, the heartbeats of hundreds of people bowing their heads in silent mourning slowly converged, rising and falling in unison.

The pigeons in Trafalgar Square stopped flying and landed on the cobblestones, one after another, their heads facing the same direction.

And the curtain took a deep breath during those three minutes.

Three minutes passed, the long whistle of the steamer stopped, the horses on the street began to paw at the ground again, the wheels started rolling again, and the city came back to life, as if nothing had happened.

"This one puff during the day is inhalation."

Mrs. Mary restored the mirror's reflection to its full brilliance.

"It rings at eight o'clock in the evening, that's it."

"call?"

"You'll know when the whole city breathes a sigh of relief."

………………

It got dark earlier than usual.

Each household voluntarily turned down the gas lamps at their doorways, leaving only a sliver of light.

Of the dozen or so people Lady Mary had worked for, most of them were sent away, leaving only two or three behind.

Mrs. McNeil was among the last to leave. Before she went out, she nodded to Richard without saying anything more.

"They've gone to the outer perimeter," Lady Mary's voice came from deep within the Room of Mirrors. "You stay here."

"What am I responsible for?"

"You'll find out when the bell rings."

At 8:00 a.m. sharp, the first bell rang from the nearest St. Clement's Church.

Then came St. Martin, St. Bled, Westminster… one after another, the churches throughout the city rang their bells in mourning at the same time.

The tolling of the bells came in layers, pouring in from all directions, causing all the mirrors in the mirror room to vibrate and hum.

On the surface, this is an empire giving an explanation to its hundreds of thousands of dead.

Mrs. Mary relit the large standing mirror, and Richard saw the net that covered the entire city.

Every ringing bell is a lit node on the internet.

In every window, the light left on for the son, husband, or brother who will never return is like a bead.

The things on a person's body: the black jade mourning brooch pinned to their chest, the memorial box with a strand of the deceased's hair woven into it hanging around their neck—all are knots.

The sound of bells and hymns, and the tune of Tipperelli that I've been humming for half a year on every street corner.

Richard then realized that the song no longer needed a phonograph.

It got into a person's throat.

The mother on night watch hummed it as she sewed, while the drunkards in the tavern slapped the table and sang it.

At that moment, hundreds of thousands of mouths hummed the song simultaneously, and a glowing net covered the entire capital city.

Then, the spirit world corridor began to make fire along the net.

Richard saw the breath in the still water of the Mirror of Stillness.

Mrs. Mary said.

"As soon as the bells rang, the whole city was filled with grief, and the fire started on its own."

"Can't we stop them?" Richard was still somewhat unwilling to give up.

"They can't stop them, or rather, those in high positions who could stop them don't want to."

Mrs. Mary's words carried a hint of helplessness.

At 9:17 PM, a piercing screech ripped through the night sky.

Searchlight poles were erected one after another from the dock, sweeping their stark white light across the night sky, turning the low-hanging clouds a ghastly white.

The air raid sirens sounded like tsunami bombs, each blast trailing off in a long, drawn-out tone.

Richard listened to the long note through the mirrored room and suddenly realized something was wrong.

Beneath the sustained note lies something else.

Three long and one short bark—that's a dog's bark.

"It's an air raid; the Zeppelins are heading straight for the dock area."

The muffled thud of the bombs falling echoed across most of the city.

In the direction of the dock, the firelight illuminated a small patch of red under the clouds.

Panic was forcibly torn out of the grief at that moment.

"This is the solvent it needs," Mrs. Mary said.

In the corner of the mirrored room, an old-fashioned telephone connected to the side of the curtain suddenly rang.

One of Mrs. Mary's students quickly answered the call, her face changing.

"There's a cable misconnection at the switchboard room." He covered the microphone.

"They said the route connects to the other side of the coast, and someone on the phone... asked for the address."

"How's the barometer?" Mrs. Mary asked.

The practitioner glanced at the row of instruments hanging on the wall:

"A frontal line was formed from northwest to southeast."

The Wild Hunt has arrived, riding the Stormfront.

Tens of thousands of horses galloped eight thousand feet in the air, with no road beneath their hooves and wilderness all around.

The bugle sounded before the thousands of troops, drowning out the long tones of all the alarms below.

The seemingly endless column of people was passing overhead.

In the mirror, a Zeppelin airship is locked onto by a searchlight beam.

The boat struggled to veer into the clouds amidst the beam of light, just as the storm front swept over its head...

The beam of light from the searchlight strangely bent.

Something waded through the light, causing it to stray.

When the beam of light returned, there was nothing left where the airship had been.

Afterwards, the airship's own navigation log contained only half a sentence:

"At an altitude of 8,000 feet, a flock of geese collided with the aircraft, which was flying against the wind..."

The Wild Hunt followed the direction of the war, passing through the heart of the capital.

Where it passed, the fear was amplified.

The guest started knocking on the door, three times.

"it's me."

The sound came through the door, soft and tired, with its tail slightly upturned.

"Let me in."

The six rules that Richard wrote down these days are now being tested one by one behind hundreds of thousands of doors in the city.

Some people behind the doors did as instructed, but some doors opened.

The image on the mirror fell onto an apartment building not far from Huayue Street.

A woman in her fifties, with her hair pulled back and her apron still on.

She was holding someone with her arms outstretched, tears of joy streaming down her face.

The man stood inside the door, soaking wet, his mother's apron drenched in water.

Two sets of cutlery were laid out on the table, one on the mother's side and the other opposite her.

The chair opposite had been empty for half a year, and tonight someone finally came to sit in it.

The door was bolted from the inside.

Richard abruptly turned to Mrs. Mary.

"She bolted the door."

"I saw it," Mrs. Mary said calmly.

"When she opened the door, she said one thing: 'My son is back.'"

Richard froze.

"From the moment she uttered those words..." Mrs. Mary said, emphasizing each word.

"To her, the one standing inside the door is her son; that's how she defines him."

Mrs. Mary sighed softly.

"Guests who have been invited in cannot be driven away by outsiders."

Richard stood in front of the mirror, watching the mother in the mirror repeatedly stroking her "son's" wet hair, muttering something to herself.

Perhaps it was asking him if he was hungry, or perhaps it was saying that the soup was still hot.

Mrs. Mary took a piece of chalk from her sleeve and flicked her wrist slightly through the standing mirror.

In the mirror, a chalk mark silently appeared on the door frame of that house.

Salt was suddenly sprinkled onto the steps.

Mrs. Mary withdrew her hand.

"Once it's inside, there's no stopping it, but I can stop it from taking people with it."

Richard did not speak again.

In the mirror, the sound of knocking echoed throughout the entire street.

Three taps, three taps, one door after another.

Behind one half of the door came screams, and behind the other half came laughter.

The mother's smile, the wife's smile, the sisters' smiles...

The laughter of reunion, and the laughter of long-awaited reunion.

Dishes were laid out on the table, the lights were on, and the family sat around them, chatting and laughing.

Richard felt a chill run down his spine as he listened to the laughter coming from the mirror.