I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Richard pushed open the door and entered the room, leaving February locked outside the glass.

This is an abandoned plant greenhouse. The dampness clings to him first, driving away the chill from his collar.

Mortimer sat at a long worktable at the end of the brick path.

"Close the door, don't let the heat escape."

Richard closed the door.

"Sit down." Mortimer gestured with his chin toward the overturned empty wooden barrel beside him.

"Let's do a problem."

"What question?"

"A reasoning question. First, assume you are not Richard Williams."

"Then who am I?"

"That one across the sea."

Richard sat down on the wooden barrel.

"You stay in your lair, sleep, and recover from your injuries."

"Suddenly someone tore three syllables off you and gave them to another person."

"You're awake."

What do you most want to know right now?

The greenhouse was so quiet that only the humming of the heating pipes against the wall could be heard.

"Who gave it to you?" Richard asked.

"Yes." The old professor nodded. "Next, how are you going to investigate?"

Richard put himself in that position.

"Let's see who can touch my name first. There's only one place they can touch—that piece of fragment that was swallowed up."

"The fragments were collected in the Imperial Capital Museum."

He raised his head.

"That expert knows everyone who was there that night."

"explain."

"The curator, Weatherby, is not far from being a master of the small, and has two experts in charge."

There was also Pritchard, Hammond, a stealthy hunter, and about twenty trainees.

"If you were it, how would you arrange them?"

"With the curator present and two experts in charge, the fragments dissolved right under their noses."

"Every link in this chain fits together perfectly; the motive is there, and the timing is right."

"And what about yourself?" Mortimer asked.

Richard shook his head.

"I won't include myself in that list."

Why?

"Because I don't have that ability."

"The son of an engineer from out of town was still memorizing the Latin declension table in Briston at this time last year, and he's been doing this for less than a year."

"It can't even list things out properly; if it did, it would doubt its own brain."

The old professor nodded.

"Naturally, its first target will be the authorities."

"This is a good thing; it can buy you some time."

He took a sip of tea: "Don't be so happy yet."

"The second clue is that Whitby had a black dog sitting at the cave entrance that morning."

"How many people are there?"

Richard counted in his mind.

Corbyn, Hathaway, Colonel Javier, Montagu, Phillips, himself, his maternal grandfather, the Inspector General, and the accompanying staff of the various sub-offices.

"About ten."

"With a dozen or so mouths, there's bound to be someone who can't keep a secret," Mortimer said.

"The black dog watched over two people; one left within a month, and the other was sitting at his own dining table drinking tea just yesterday."

The old man twirled the cup halfway around in his palm.

"This kind of thing is the best topic of conversation in the hunter community."

Within two months, the news had spread from the capital to every branch office in the north: the Black Dog had its sights set on Gerald Ashford, and Gerald was still alive.

Richard's back tensed up.

"The third clue is the Echo Meeting."

Mortimer continued speaking.

"That line was buried within the empire for decades."

"That night at Black Gulch, you only destroyed one site in Briston; nobody knows how many others were elsewhere."

The old man looked at him.

"Even a bookworm like me who avoids people all day knows about the Ashford family's old story of a reverse hunting."

"You're telling me, how could it not find it?"

The humidity and heat in the greenhouse suddenly made people feel uncomfortable.

Richard sat on the barrel and laid out the three clues together.

A real name that was given away, a master who survived being targeted by a black dog, and an old case of a reverse hunting incident from decades ago.

"It will suspect the Ashford family."

"It will have doubts," Mortimer said, finishing his last sip of tea. "And it doesn't need any evidence to make a presumption."

"Those people pushed out of that pit in the western suburbs were all emptied out and filled in by it."

"For someone like that, it's much easier to kill the innocent than to find out the truth."

Richard remained silent.

Mortimer stood up from the barrel, reached for a while on the nearest orange tree, and finally picked an orange.

The skin was very thick; it took him a long time to scratch it open with his fingernails.

After peeling it, he broke off a piece and put it in his mouth, eating without changing his expression.

Richard was cut into several pieces, and without any hesitation, he threw them directly into his mouth.

He chewed a few times, his eyebrows furrowed so deeply they could trap a fly.

"It's too sour, no wonder no one picks it."

Professor Mortimer smiled and broke off another piece, stuffing it into his mouth.

"I haven't finished the questions yet."

"The previous answer was about the other side of the sea; now let's switch to the other side."

He gestured towards the outside of the glass, towards the center of the capital.

"The Ministry of the Interior is not blind."

"Gerald Ashford's name has been crossed off the booklet, and I'm sure someone on the official side is asking why."

"What was your answer?"

"This is what Old Mike and I say about the above statement." The old professor pushed the orange peel aside.

"Mortimer is getting old and suddenly wants to find a successor, and he has his eye on a prep student."

For this student, he and McFee each went to great lengths to enlist the help of an expert they knew, and managed to get the student's maternal grandfather removed from the list.

He shrugged.

"I didn't lie a single word, I just omitted some details in the middle."

"How long can it last?" Richard asked.

"Until someone seriously investigates."

Mortimer's face darkened.

"And that night on Huayue Street, the pack of dogs turned around and left in front of the boundary stone. More than a dozen people in the industry witnessed it."

"On the bright side, it was Marie Viktoria who held her own."

"To put it bluntly, the Wild Hunt knows the people on that street."

"Plus, with her Slavic surname, she already had to go through more screening than others."

"She protected the entire Flower Moon Street that night," Richard said.

"She did protect him," Mortimer chuckled.

"Merits are recorded in the roster, doubts are recorded in the file, each recorded separately."

The heating pipe in the greenhouse made a gurgling sound.

"There's another one, even more troublesome than the one over the sea."

Richard raised his head.

"Hunter Master".

"It was really happy when it finished those three syllables, you saw it too."

"What will it think after it's done being happy? Can you guess?"

Mortimer looked at him.

Richard answered himself: "Why would a practitioner have this in their possession? Do they have any left over?"

He suddenly felt that the tip of the antler wrapped with the reins in his arms was a little uncomfortable.

The old professor pointed to the place on his body where the antlers were attached.

"It said it would wait, and it would watch over you when you arrived."

"You're not going..."

The old man spread his hands.

"It's definitely more interested in figuring out why you're afraid to go."

The coal ash on the glass roof filtered the sunlight, making it increasingly faint, and the shadows of the orange trees overlapped one another.

"Right now, that guy over there has lost his name and is going crazy with hatred, while the hunter is gloating."

"How long will they fight?" This was Richard's biggest concern.

"It won't last long. A fight that ends in mutual destruction will only benefit a third party. Anyone with a normal IQ can figure that out."

"They will definitely go to a truce after entering a period of stalemate, and both sides will take stock after the truce stops."

"By the end, both sides wanted to invite the person who delivered the goods to have tea with them."

Richard was holding his knees, his face looking rather pale.

"You and Professor McFee..."

"Don't count too much on us old folks."

Mortimer looked at him with a scrutinizing expression.

"We're both experts, but what does that matter in front of a true master?"

He held up the empty cup.

"Let's count two people who can still read."

"I won't even mention the nonsense about making you a minor proficient in one year, a major proficient in three years, or an expert in five years."

"But you must at least have the means to prevent them from controlling you before they are ready to attack you."

Richard looked down at his hands.

He started by touching every piece of junk at the Bristol flea market, hoping to find something of value.

At that time, he only had one thing on his mind: what exactly is hidden in this world?

Throughout his journey, the desire to explore accompanied him, so much so that he went deeper and deeper without even realizing it.

just now……

Mortimer pulled his coat off the orange tree branch and shook off two leaves.

"Starting next month, come to my office whenever you have time, at least once a week."

"What are you doing?"

"Copy the book." The old professor walked slowly toward the door.

"I have things in my room that haven't been filed in decades, and they're piled up on the windowsill."

"Is there any pay?"

"There is tea."

The door closed behind him, and a small sliver of February shone through the crack, only to be quickly swallowed up by the heating.

Richard stood amidst the orange trees filling the room, inhaling the sour smell for a long time.