I loaded the Mysticism panel.

There are no more trains further north.

Gasoline had to be purchased with a receipt. Local cars were already parked in the carport covered with cloth. A mail wagon pulled by two horses came to pick them up.

The person driving the carriage was a young woman in her early twenties, wearing her father's old coat.

She flicked the reins:

"My brother passed away last autumn, and I'm all alone now."

McFee spoke a Gaelic phrase.

The girl turned around and glanced at him, her eyes brightening, and her attitude became noticeably more enthusiastic.

The car traveled for a day, with peatlands on both sides of the road.

"We've arrived." The girl reined in her horse.

The village has a dozen or so low-ceilinged houses with sod covering the roofs.

An old woman was standing at the entrance of the village.

She was dressed in black, with a dark square scarf on her head, and her hands tucked under her apron.

"Hector McFeely".

"I remember that after your father passed away, your mother went back to live in our village."

"The last time you came was to attend your mother's funeral."

Nineteen years ago.

"Seventeen years ago, your mother passed away the second week after Easter. That year, half the lambs died."

McFaye lowered her head, her head, which was almost touching the door frame, drooping down in front of her.

"Seventeen years." He himself couldn't quite remember.

The village was still lit up at seven o'clock in the evening.

Richard sat for a while in front of the old woman's house, watching her close and secure the wooden planks of the west window, and then prop it up with a crossbeam.

Richard stood up: "Madam, it's not dark yet."

It doesn't matter if it's dark or not.

"Then why shut it down?"

The old woman thought for a long time, so long that Richard thought she wasn't going to answer.

"My grandmother taught me this, but she couldn't explain it. She just said that something would come from the western sea."

"What's coming?"

"have no idea."

She wiped her hands on her apron.

"You should only shut it down if you don't know."

That evening, the whole village gathered for a meal.

Half a basket of potatoes, a small jar of pickled herring, two eggs, a piece of butter wrapped in a cloth, and a dried haddock.

There was also an old woman who twisted the neck of a live chicken herself, without letting anyone see her doing so.

The meal was laid out on the long table and looked quite full.

McFee sat to his left.

The white-haired giant picked up his knife and fork, habitually cut off a large piece of chicken and put it in his mouth, then stopped using the knife and fork.

Richard also put down his knife and fork.

The two exchanged a glance across the table, everything understood without a word.

Richard deliberately ate slowly at his next meal.

He finished eating a piece of potato, looked up at other people's bowls, and then cut off another piece.

The old woman next to him thought he wasn't used to the food, so she kept adding food to his plate.

"Young sir, people in the south don't eat very much."

"...That's quite a lot. I'm usually like this."

McFaye picked up the soup bowl next to him, drank a little bit, and then solemnly put it down.

Catherine sat between the two men and only wrote a line halfway through the meal.

"You two are putting on quite a show."

Someone suggested making another pot of broth for the guests, but McFaye refused outright.

"No need, no need... We've eaten plenty on the road these past two days."

The old woman clearly recognized McFaye and even asked him with concern if he had any health problems.

The professor simply said that the person was too old to eat anymore.

Richard thought to himself that this was probably the biggest lie he had ever heard from this professor since he met him.

After the meal, eight women carried in a roll of woolen fabric that had just come off the machine and spread it out on a long plank.

The cloth was wet, and a musty, stagnant smell immediately filled the room. Richard resisted the urge to touch his nose.

"Hot water won't produce this effect; you'll need something else."

"...I can smell it."

"Bear with it, there are much worse smells in our line of work."

McFaye said behind him:

"The newly woven woolen fabric needs to be soaked thoroughly and then pounded. We'll need it for tomorrow's ceremony, so keep a close eye on it."

Richard was standing to the side.

Everything this village does tonight has been passed down orally for countless generations.

Before they even started pounding the cloth, someone started a tune. It was the girl who had driven the horse-drawn carriage and brought them there.

She placed the child in the basket next to her, sat on the outermost side, and after she finished singing that line, the other seven people took over.

Under his spiritual vision, Richard saw that layer of rhythm.

The ether in this room was originally scattered, but with the arrival of eight hands, the ether in the entire room was pushed layer by layer in the same direction.

Richard thought about how he used the Condensing Mirror Technique. From the moment he started pressing down on that line, it would take three to four complete cycles. If he lost focus while doing so, his concentration would be scattered.

The eight men chatted and laughed as they pounded the cloth. Halfway through, one of the women turned around and cursed her own dog.

The rhythm wasn't off at all.

"What are they singing?" he asked in a low voice.

McFaye leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Sing a song about a woman waiting for a boat on the shore."

"Has the ship returned?"

"None of them came back."

"The next one is back, but the one who came back isn't her man."

"What about her?"

"She finished pounding the cloth."

One song finishes, then another begins.

When the girl changed, she took a sip of water, wiped her mouth, and started singing a tune.

"Hurry up, this one!" the women laughed.

After one of the lines was sung, the group of people all glanced at the unmarried girl in the corner, and the girl's face flushed red.

Richard understood that one glance.

What song is this one?

"Which singer is the most useless?"

"Don't men get angry?"

"The man is not here."

………………

The next day, before dawn, Richard woke up to find only Catherine in the room.

She had already wiped the instruments clean and was stuffing paper into her canvas bag. There was a bowl of cold porridge on the table.

After they finished eating, McFee led them up the mountain to see the Sealed Stone Array.

The path up the mountain was only a foot wide, worn out by sheep, and on both sides were knee-high heather.

When you get halfway up the slope, the wind blows so hard you have to walk sideways.

At the top, twelve stone pillars form a somewhat irregular circle.

Richard untied the canvas bag and took out the rubbing machine.

Catherine squatted down next to him and pressed the paper down for him.

The wind was so strong that the thin roll of paper would fly away if you let go of it.

Richard laid paper on the third stone carving, tightened it with two cloth strips, and then unscrewed the small bronze urn, which was about the size of a thumb, by half a turn.

As the crank was turned, the condensed liquid in the jar seeped down the silver threads onto the back of the paper.

By the third layer, words began to appear on the paper.

Richard peeled the paper off, turned it over, and held it up to the wind, revealing more content on the other side of the curtain.

"professor."

McFaye came over and took it, pulling out his reading glasses from his pocket.

The three of them sat down on the low grass in the center of the circle.

After the white-haired giant finished reading, he began to formally explain the process.

"The three of us have our own tasks tonight."

The white-haired giant extends one finger.

"Catherine's mission is to guard the mountain and replicate the seal. I've been teaching you this all along."

"Richard, you... have a higher level of inspiration, so your mission is to go to the island to extradite the judgment."

When asked about "higher inspiration," the professor glanced at him.

"The Hidden Division's anchor point is on that island."

McFee turned around and gestured with his chin toward the west.

The small island, about half a mile away, was now mostly exposed.

The tide is receding, and the ridges of the pebbles are emerging from the water, glistening with moisture.

"The tidal window and the ritual window should be unified."

He pulled out a tide chart copied by a local postal agent from his pocket; the handwriting was crooked and messy.

"The low point tonight will be around 11:40 pm, lasting about four hours."

"I sit at the center, reciting the core mantra to connect the dots, and I will watch over the two of you."

"This ceremony is what I mentioned before, combining two things that need to be done together."

"What the old formation lacks is its anchor. The original anchor was those two tribes, but now they are gone."

The newly deceased lack a final rest; the church's Latin pronouncements cannot hold back those in the steerage wing, much less infants.

"By incorporating the ritual of returning to sleep into the sealing structure, the returning to sleep of the dead becomes the new anchor of the array."

"We've already obtained the name we need in Queenstown."

"I'll hand over the rhythm to the eight men who were pounding the cloth last night."

"They've been pounding for their whole lives. That tune is originally one line leading and another responding, with a name embedded in each line."

"Only fire remains."

He glanced towards the village; smoke was still slowly rising from the rooftops.

"This circle of stones was originally the site of that fire; one died and another left."

Richard thought of the pillar of the fire god temple.

"Could you send one up? I've done this before."

McFaye shook his head:

"On the day the last person in that family was buried, the house was returned to the landlord, and the ashes from the stove were swept out and scattered on the ground, so the fire could no longer be distinguished."

"What should we do then?"

"Put out all the fires in the village, leaving no one behind."

"Once it's completely wiped out, take two pieces of wood and grind them to make a new one."

"This fire has no ancestors; from tonight onward, it is its own ancestor."

"In the local dialect, it's called tein-éigin (a fire started only in times of emergency)."

At 8 p.m., the village began to fight the fire.

Richard had never seen anything like this before in his life, and he probably never would again.

The old woman went from house to house, saying a word in Gaelic at each door she reached.

After saying that, the woman from that household went inside and took a rake to open the stove.

The third house on the east side is inhabited by an old woman, 91 years old, who has long been deaf.

The old woman went in and explained it three times, but the old woman still didn't understand.

When she finally realized that the fire needed to be extinguished, she braced herself on the edge of the stove with both hands and refused to move.

She cried silently, her shoulders shaking.

"What did she say?" Richard asked.

"She said she'd never let a fire in her house die in her entire life," McFaye said.

"The year she married into the family, her mother-in-law handed the torch to her; her mother-in-law took over from her mother-in-law."

"In between, there was cholera, there was cattle plague, and there was the burning of houses in 1814."

That year, her mother-in-law carried a piece of red-hot coal and walked nine miles through the snow.

The white-haired giant crouched down.

That head, which almost touched the roof beam, drooped in front of the old lady.

He spoke for a long time.

Halfway through her sentence, the old lady raised her hand and touched his hair.

Then she stepped aside and poured the water herself.

At nine o'clock, there was no fire anywhere in the entire village.

Then they began the most primitive method of hauling wood to start a fire.

The old rule required nine men, but the village couldn't find enough.

Finally, four women, three old men, a fourteen-year-old boy, and Richard stood up.

When the rope is pulled, the wood spins, and the sound it makes is dry and dull, like a millstone.

I searched for twenty minutes, but found nothing.

Thirty minutes passed, and still nothing.

The boy's palm was cut first, and blood smeared onto the straw rope.

He didn't say anything, changed his grip and continued pulling.

"Follow the rhythm of the pounding cloth," the old woman called from the side.

She started a tune herself, and the eight women responded with their own lines.

The nine people pulling the rope caught up.

Richard suppressed the gazing technique, only to see the rhythm pick up again.

After pushing it for what seemed like the umpteenth time, a wisp of smoke emerged from the crack in the wood.

The nine people maintained the same strength in their hands, and the rope continued to move back and forth as before.

The old woman squatted down, brought the dried moss she had prepared earlier to the wisp of smoke, covered it with her hand, and blew it out twice.

It's become popular.

That spark was smaller than any Richard had ever seen, so small that a mere gust of wind could carry it away.

The old woman picked it up with both hands and placed it into the pile of firewood that had been prepared earlier.

After the firewood pile was lit, the oxen were driven over through the smoke.

When the smoke cleared, everyone came to get fire.

At 10:30, smoke began to rise again from the rooftops of the seventeen households.

Each household was separated from one branch, all originating from that one place.

The long plank was placed on flat ground at the bottom of the slope, sheltered from the wind.

The women spread out the woolen cloth and flattened it.

The local pastor stood about ten paces from the longboard, with his hands behind his back, and did not sit down from beginning to end.

When he arrived in the afternoon, he said something like, "This is a heretical trick."

But after saying that, he didn't turn around and leave.

The pastor walked over, moved the stone aside, picked up the first page of the list, and muttered to himself as if in a self-hypnotic state.

"Say a name is not witchcraft."

"Reading names is something done for the dead."

He cleared his throat.

Patrick Dolan.

Eight women pounded down on it together.

They repeated it once, the three syllables rolling in their mouths.

Bridget Dolan.

There was another tap on the board.

"Tong, female, one year and two months old, Dolan."

As soon as he finished speaking, a woman on the other end of the longboard hesitated for a second.

The old woman started a tune, singing those three names into the melody of waiting for the boat.

The child in the basket at the feet of the mail truck girl woke up and started crying.

As she sang, she tapped the basket with her heel, the rhythm matching the rhythm of the mallet falling.

The child cried for a while, then stopped.

Richard stood on the hillside and couldn't help but glance at the basket.

"That child probably won't be able to sleep in a quiet place from now on."

The eight hands rose and fell in perfect unison, steadily and smoothly.

The name is from another place, but the tune is a local tune, yet together they serve as a sufficient introduction.

He activated his spiritual vision and saw what was behind the curtain.

The grass and heather are gone, the wind is still there, but the smell in the wind has changed.

The sweet smell of peat faded, replaced by the scent of seawater and wool from the hold that had been wet for three months.

The return journey to the west has already begun.

It rises from the sea, about a person's height above the water, and spreads flatly across this slope.

They lined up on the road, one after another, walking neither fast nor slow.

The person at the very front of the line turned their head to listen.

Richard paid no further attention. He and Catherine exchanged a glance before heading off to their respective destinations.