I loaded the Mysticism panel.

In the last week of April, Croft took out a telegram and slammed it on the podium during class.

He pushed his glasses up.

"Today I won't talk about any ancient evil artifacts; let's talk about something more recent."

He first wrote a line on the blackboard: First Namer.

The chalk underlined the word with an emphasis mark.

"Last night, the radio station across the street broadcast the same message in four languages."

"The Albion Empire's army on the front lines used suffocating gas, which violates all civilized norms."

The Germanic government hereby lodges this protest with the conscience of the world and reserves all necessary means.

After reading the telegram, he put it down, and the classroom was quiet.

Croft continued.

"All the newspapers reprinted it today, but the comments were all the same: another despicable lie."

Fisher stood up and said, "It was a lie all along. We never did that!"

Kroft nodded: "We don't have any, so what?"

Fisher opened his mouth.

Croft said, "The whole empire laughed it off and turned to the next page to watch the horse races."

He took the chalk from the podium and added a few more sentences below the line of Latin.

"Now please treat this as a folklore question, and everyone should use their brains."

"Two families in a village became enemies."

Household A ran to the church entrance first and, in front of the whole village, shouted that Household B's old woman was a witch.

The next day, Household B ran out again, shouting: "No, it's the old woman from Household A who's the witch!"

"So, who do you all think the village will trust more? Williams, you tell us."

Richard stood up and answered without hesitation, "Of course, it's Household A."

Why?

"Because by the time household B speaks, the place in the hearts of the whole village has already been occupied by household A."

What B is saying sounds like they're just talking back.

"Yes." Croft tossed the chalk aside.

"This is the oldest, dirtiest, but also the most effective method in folk customs."

"The first person to speak nails their name down, and the person who speaks later can only try to pry the nails that have already been nailed down. The harder they try to pry, the more guilty they look."

Montagu asked, "Associate Professor, what does this have to do with what you're about to discuss?"

Croft said.

"That's the question I'll ask you: why would someone rush to accuse someone else when no one else is accusing them?"

Edith sat in the row closest to the window, holding the plant guide.

She raised her hand: "Because he wanted to do that himself."

Croft glanced at him: "Very well, continue."

Edith continued speaking.

"He first assigned the stigma to others, and when it came time for him to do it himself, no one was willing to look up."

When get out of class ended, Croft folded up the telegram and put it in his inner pocket, then left with his hat in his hand.

Richard packed his things faster than anyone else; he had something important to do tonight.

As soon as I stepped into the corridor, I heard that tune.

Surprisingly, it wasn't Fisher singing; the sound drifted up from the bottom of the stairs.

The two young women walked along humming, and when they got to the line about leaving the light on by the window, one of them even clapped her hand to keep time.

Fisher caught up from behind, laughing so hard his shoulders shrugged.

"Did you hear me?"

"I heard you, I'm not deaf."

Fisher patted him on the shoulder.

"Would you believe me if I said I never taught them a single sound?"

The baritone from the choir learned it first, while his wife worked in the laundry room.

The ladies in the laundry room sang as they laundred, and within three days the news reached the student dormitories.

When Richard came downstairs, Fisher was still following him.

"I even gave it a name."

Fisher unfolded the score and held the title page towards him.

A line was written on it in thick ink: Williams Code.

Richard stopped abruptly, his eyes widening, a strong sense of shame rising within him.

"Why use my surname in a name? Cross it out!"

"It can't be crossed out anymore."

Fisher stared at him, his face full of mockery.

"Didn't Old Ke just finish speaking? I was the first to speak, so I took the spot."

If you go and say now that you didn't write it, what will people think?

Richard opened his mouth, unsure of what to say.

Two knocks came from the wall in the corridor.

The red-haired girl stood at the corner, one hand on the door frame and the other holding a wooden box.

She took the notebook out of her pocket, wrote a few words, and held it up.

"Give up, Richard, he's already won."

Fisher laughed heartily, seemingly pleased to have won against Richard.

As he ran, he said he was going to find a baritone in the choir to revise the score.

Richard sighed and didn't chase after them; he wasn't really that petty.

Seeing Catherine's box, he went over and helped her lift it up.

It was very heavy, and a green customs slip was pressed down on the metal lid of the box.

"What's in here? Stones?"

The box was moved downstairs to the empty teaching and research room, and Catherine, who was next to her, picked up a utility knife and pried open the sheet metal.

The top layer is a ceramic jar, the mouth of which is sealed with wax, and a label on it reads "wildflower honey".

Below that was a large piece of smoked salmon wrapped in oil paper.

At the bottom lay two bottles of wine, with straw ropes wrapped around their necks.

Before he could react, Catherine shoved a bottle into his hand without saying a word.

Richard held the notebook, unsure whether to accept it or not, while Catherine had already written something down in her notebook.

"These are all local specialties sent from my hometown."

This expensive bottle of wine should definitely be given to the professor, but you can have the rest.

"Take it and have it with Phillips. Hasn't he been... a little down lately?"

Catherine initially wanted to use a more direct word, but after thinking about it, she decided to use the euphemistic description of being in a bad mood.

When Phillips was mentioned, Richard didn't refuse.

"The King has recently made a vow; isn't it inappropriate for us to secretly drink alcohol?"

Catherine smiled and wrote on the paper:

"What business is it of ours if the king doesn't drink?"

Richard returned to his dorm with the wine, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

He had something on his mind for two years, and recently, because of the gas warfare incident, he had some thoughts about reviewing it.

Richard's previous life had no curtains in his world.

It was a world that had been thoroughly stripped bare from head to toe; all that was unearthed from the temple were pottery shards and bones.

There are no magical objects; all those séances and séance discs are just tricks and useless pieces of wood.

People call this era "disenchantment."

This was written by a bearded German scholar who said that the modern man's situation is that the world has lost its mystery.

Everything can, in principle, be solved through calculation... in principle.

Richard repeated the sentence to himself.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ink spots on his notebook.

Over the past year, there was the fire at Hammers, the night of Mons' retreat, and the ceasefire involving hundreds of thousands of people on Christmas Eve.

This world has a mysterious side, and some of the things he remembers are no longer relevant here.

For example, Hammers was fighting two experts behind him, the Mons evacuation really had archers, and the longing for home on Christmas Eve really brought back the dead.

And the day of mourning... these things don't correspond at all to the history books I've read.

The colonies in the New World were completely blank.

He remembered that there should have been a big, noisy country on that land, a country that wanted to meddle in everything.

The situation was even worse in the eastern part of the continent; he remembered many things that rarely matched up in the newspapers.

Right now, he only has a map that he can match half of.

He stared at the ink spots on the paper for a long time.

An idea popped up from somewhere inconspicuous.

He thought, even if there are deviations, there must still be some aspects that can be adopted.

He tried to mentally recite the historical details he remembered:

There is a river, and hundreds of thousands of people will die along its banks, for almost half a year.

There was a fortress, and someone said something very famous in front of it;

A plague swept in from the west, and this plague killed more people than the entire war.

The Rus Empire will be completely destroyed one winter, and then the most dazzling rebirth in human history will begin...

But all of these parts are blurry, like looking through frosted glass, which is very strange.

Every coded message he deciphered and every book he read that year.

Once you've seen it, it will be imprinted in your mind, down to the wording, punctuation, and printing flaws.

[博闻] He lit up every bookshelf in that library, so he could easily reach out and take it down.

But I can't get back some of the things I read in my past life. Why can't I get them back?

Richard wanted to make more accurate predictions.

The moment this thought crossed my mind, the etheric field in the entire room froze.

The wind was still blowing outside the window, and the sycamore leaves were still rustling, but when those sounds reached his ears, there was one less layer in between.

What is it? Very slowly, she shifted her attention a fraction of an inch in this direction.

It didn't even wake up.

While I was asleep, someone said something that shouldn't have been said, and I turned over.

In that instant, Richard's full activation of [Internal Awakening] allowed him to sort out the current situation.

First of all, the one casting this gaze is neither the one on the other side of the sea, nor the hunter.

Those two have names, but this one has no name, or rather, his name cannot be spoken of, for to speak of it would bring about his own demise.

It has no interest in itself, only in people trying to find out what will happen next.