I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 467 The Hermit's Stone Bowl

I was eating breakfast when someone outside started cursing again.

The old man slammed the bucket down on the ground.

"The sheep lay outside all night, and the grass was covered with dew."

If you get a rotten hoof this year because of this, I'd like to see where you're going to find a veterinarian.

His wife responded from inside the house, saying that they could just take a look when the people from town came to get vaccinated next month.

Richard overheard this while drinking his soup; he knew that the sheep were probably not really lying down, but kneeling.

McFee finished his soup next to him and wiped his mouth with his hand.

The professor didn't say a word this morning; he just ate.

Catherine sat between the two, her right hand wrapped in cloth, her left hand awkwardly holding a spoon.

After breakfast, the pastor somehow came looking for us.

He was clearly knowledgeable, and he took the initiative to ask Professor McFee:

"The names I read aloud last night, I want to write those names into a book."

"What specific booklet is it?"

"Book of Burials"

McFee twitched his white eyebrows.

The local pastor offered his own suggestion:

"Write it on the last page, stating that he was buried at sea and that he is remembered in this church."

"Will the parish authorities accept this wording in their pamphlets?"

The pastor laughed and said, "If the higher-ups don't recognize it, then the village does."

McFaye chuckled and said, "Then, Reverend, please write it down."

"What about the dates? They died in different years, the earliest being in 1847."

"Let's write about yesterday. They all slept peacefully in the village yesterday."

The pastor thought for a moment, nodded, and turned to leave.

Richard knew what they were thinking. Since the name was recorded in the parish's burial book, the parish would read it aloud from the book every All Souls' Day.

The living may think they are just doing a charitable act, but they are actually helping to maintain the stability of the 12 stone pillars on the slope.

The bicycle followed.

An old man with white armbands on his arms parked his car against the wall.

"I reported to the district yesterday that there's a village to the north where the windows are covered up even more tightly than those of hotels in Beijing."

He spoke with great pride:

"If anyone comes to the village to take photos in the future, remember to sweep the yard."

Richard and Catherine spent the entire morning scanning the ring of beehive-shaped stone houses on the island, one by one.

More than a dozen round houses were half collapsed, and there wasn't much left to take from them, since the hermits were proud of not having much to offer.

Next came the task of counting the spoils. There were only a few items laid out on the table:

A deer antler chisel, its iron tip rusted down to only half its original size;

The small cross formed by the three nails must have been made by the same two hands;

There were also two whalebone combs, with most of the teeth broken off;

A glass bead, deep blue with a hint of white, its design suggests it may be from the Viking era; I wonder how it ended up in the hands of this hermit.

There were also seven copper nails and wax pieces peeled off the seal, as well as a whole roll of rubbings taken from a printing press.

The final highlight was a hermit's stone bowl, its inner walls worn smooth enough to reflect a person's image.

There is an engraving on the rim of the bowl, with only three characters from bottom to top.

This stone bowl is the only one among the relics that can be considered a genuine marvel.

Richard spoke first: "Professor, you can choose first."

McFaye sat there with his arms crossed over his chest, not moving an inch.

"Kid, my room is already full of stuff."

The wall in the study collapsed last year; it was caused by my own belongings.

Catherine held up the notebook: "Aren't you going to take a look?"

McFee's chin slightly.

"I watched you make rubbings inside the stone house, and then I looked at them all from outside."

He shrugged: "These were left behind by the people who guarded this island for 1000 years. They're perfect for you two who are just starting out. This old man doesn't need them."

"Since the professor has said so, let's split it between the two of us."

Catherine wrote much faster than before.

"You take the lion's share. Last night I was carving my stone on the slope. If I can't finish, I can continue until dawn."

"If you hadn't stopped that horde of the dead on the island, this seal probably wouldn't have been so obedient."

Richard thought for a moment: "You still have that last lash of the whip."

The red-haired girl pursed her lips and rewrote: "That's only because you've already cleaned up the place before it will try to steal it."

The two people politely deferred to each other across the long table.

McFaye coughed impatiently, "If you two keep giving in, I'm taking all of these."

In the end, Richard made the first move.

He first pushed the chisel with the antler handle in front of Catherine: "Here, take this."

Catherine frowned.

Richard pointed to her bandaged hand: "You knelt all night last night, carving the seal until your hand bled. This is what you deserve."

Catherine nodded upon hearing this, looked at the chisel, and reached out to grasp it.

Richard then made the arrangements.

"After the rubbings are made, we'll each get a copy. You can also take the copper nails and wax; you'll need them to study the seal's structure."

Catherine wrote in her notebook: "Then what do you want?"

Richard placed his hand on the hermit's stone bowl, and then took the glass bead as well.

Catherine wrote several lines heavily with her left hand.

"Then we'll keep the same as before, sharing whatever research results we find."

Richard nodded.

"I took the most expensive one, so the rest are yours."

"I don't want that much."

"I'll remember that." Richard said helplessly, knowing it was because of the Nemesis mask.

"From now on, just tell me what you need."

Catherine took out a notebook, tore off a page, and solemnly wrote a few lines with her left hand before pushing it over.

Richard looked down and saw it was an IOU.

The date, reason for the debt, debtor, and even a space for signature at the end were all written in a more formal style than those used in law firms.

"...Are you sure you don't need to go that far?"

Catherine shoved the pen into his hand.

At that moment, McFee took the hermit's stone bowl from the side.

"This stone bowl is at least a thousand years old, perhaps even older than the village itself."

He weighed it in his hand for a moment.

"Unfortunately, there is no structure or technique inside, and no one has sealed anything inside."

It was taken out and brought back night after night for 1000 years.

As Richard was putting his two spoils back in, he also took out the pendant he had found inside the water horse's belly.

"Professor, could you take a look at this for me?"

McFaye took it, flipped it over between his fingers, and then returned it.

"This thing is clean, not contaminated, and no one has buried any traps on it."

"What about the Ethereum reserves?"

The white-haired giant shook his head.

"It's very thin, meaning it's only been soaking in seawater for a few decades, not even that many years."

The remaining ether is probably not even worth as much as that bead in your hand.

"I see."

Richard wasn't surprised; it was purely an unexpected bonus.

Even a mosquito's leg is still meat; maybe the 0.1 or 0.2 points absorbed can add up to a crucial 1 point.

We had some dry food for lunch on the island.

The wind died down in the afternoon, and Richard laid the rubbings out on his lap.

Catherine was asleep on the grass nearby. She had been carving all night, kneeling from dusk till dawn, and was exhausted.

Plus, I just finished lunch, and my blood sugar spiked... Oh, maybe that's not a common saying now, but anyway, I was so sleepy after eating that I couldn't keep my eyes open.

While his student was asleep, McFee quietly pulled Richard aside and said he would give him some extra help.

"Give me your hand."

Richard reached out his hand, and the other person grabbed his wrist, pressing his fingertips against the stone ridge of the door frame: "Close your eyes."

Richard closed his eyes, and the large hand led him to touch the door frame.

The ridges are marked with lines that run from under the fingertips, many of them cutting diagonally across the edges.

"Count all the ridges of these engravings."

「1、2、2、5、1。」

McFee loosened his grip: "Yes, this is Oganven."

"It's not carved on the surface, it's carved on the edges."

"The edge is the boundary, and the boundary is where it belongs."

Richard opened his eyes: "What caused this?"

"Because it's designed for hands to read."

Richard's fingers were still pressed against the stone edge.

McFee continued to explain: "It gets dark early for eight months of the year here in the Highlands. If you're traveling at night and you come to a boundary stone, you can't see anything."

But if you reach out and touch it, you'll know whose land you're standing on, and who's buried beneath your feet.

He pulled the scroll of rubbings over and pointed them out to Richard one by one:

"There are 20 letters in total, each named after a tree: birch, rowan, alder, willow, ash."

He pointed to each one one by one: "So when they write a name, it represents a small grove of trees."

Richard looked down and counted the engravings. His "Erudition" was rapidly collecting 20 characters, five sets of cutting methods, directions, and strokes, one by one, into the ever-expanding library.

McFaye taught very quickly; after Richard finished touching the door frame, he had him open his eyes and look at the rubbing.

After touching it, they changed the order to let him read a passage himself, and then let Richard carve it on another stone. If he made a mistake, the whole passage had to be erased and started over.

When Catherine finally woke up from a nap, Richard, with his eyes closed, reached over and was able to count the 20 digits in one breath without stopping.

McFee said, "You have to read with your eyes and read with your hands."

How do you tell the year from a hand?

"For the same character, the pre-Roman layer is cut deeper, and the cut is round;

The batch that was replenished 1000 years later was cut shallowly, with the cuts slightly turned outwards.

He grabbed Richard's hand and pressed it on each of the two marks.

"Did you figure it out?"

"The second one is definitely more difficult."

"Yes, that prickly layer was added by an amateur."

Richard memorized it in his mind.

At this point, [博闻] pulled out the rubbings of the 12 boundary stones of Whitcomb and compared them with the current one in sets.

When he reached the seventh stone, he looked up and said, "Professor, my empirical text from last year, which described Whitcomb's twelve stones, is somewhat similar to this one."

McFaye nodded.

"Yes, I've seen it. The approach from the curtain's decay to the trigger of its return is novel, but the arguments jump around too quickly."

Richard was taken aback by the familiar remark and obediently responded.

"But at the time I was reading the inscriptions on the surface, I never thought about touching the ridge with my own hands."

McFaye chuckled, his tone laced with sarcasm.

"The books on Oganin in the Imperial University Library are basically all rubbings of photographs taken from the surface."

So they've been talking about this for 40 years, and it's all about what they see with their own eyes.

The layer on the edge has to be felt by hand, and the person feeling it has to be on the ground. Nowadays, fewer and fewer people are willing to actually go to the site to investigate.

He turned the page of the rubbing.

"Let's look at this part again."

That's what Richard copied down from the wall yesterday: "One meal a day, before you eat, leave one outside the door, for the Lord was once a guest on the road."

"The section above is Latin, and the section on the door frame is Oghan," McFaye said. "When you read them aloud, do you feel there's no difference between them?"

"There's no difference; they're both saying to keep a copy."

The white-haired giant raised his chin and glanced at the circle of rocks on the slope:

"The lowest level of this town is the pre-Roman Celtic foundation, and that level governs the boundaries, that is, the inside and outside, and who can and cannot pass through."

When the hermits arrived, they did not dismantle it. Instead, they carved an Ogan inscription on the door frame, saying that if you stay, you are a guest; if you don't, you are something else.

Then they wrote in Latin, saying, "For the Lord was also a traveler on the road."

The white-haired giant spread his palms out: "The same sentence has only been translated twice; the underlying meaning retains the original, which is why this land accepts it."

Richard sat on the threshold, remaining silent.

Both critical thinking and knowledge are operating silently, gradually accumulating experience.

He lowered his head and put the rubbing into his bag.

McFee suddenly said something.

"Go back and write down this whole set of reading methods, including the character placement, the depth of the strokes, and the two rubbings on this scroll. I'll come and correct them for you when I have time."

Richard's eyes lit up; he knew what that meant.

"So you're going to teach me...?"

The other person put their hands into their pockets.

"Don't get too excited, I'm stricter than that old Mortimer."

In the evening, the two men collected the last rubbing on the hillside.

The sun had set into the sea, and the line on the horizon was a dirty red.

McFee took the flat flask from his pocket and took a sip.

Richard sat down next to him, thought for a moment, and then spoke the words he had been holding back for days.

"Professor McFee, I spoke with Professor Mortimer last month."

"What are you going to talk about?"

"Let's talk about industry."

McFee turned his head.

"I asked him then, what would it have taken to have tens of thousands of people doing the same thing at the same time in the past?"

He said it required a war or a plague.

"And now?"

"A newspaper."

The leisurely air on the white-haired giant's face vanished.

"Railways, telegraphs, phonographs, photography, newspapers, assembly lines—these are creating unprecedented communication."

After a moment of silence on the slope, McFaye rested his hands on his knees.

"You're calculating the inscription on the stele," he said.

"monument?"

"Each of the five traditions has a forest of steles, and each stele represents something that no one has ever done before."

"I counted the lunar hunting tradition when I was young, and there are currently nineteen great achievements in total."

"After all these years, there are still only nineteen items."

Richard sat up straight.

"The first great achievement was being the first to offer prey to the moon."

"The fifth point is that one person has kept a nation living in fear for a long time."

McFee slowly recalled: "The thirteenth task was to wipe out an entire army that shouldn't have existed in one night."

"By the latest one, I found that all the easy things had already been done."

The white-haired giant lowered his hand.

"The tradition of hunting the moon is one of the five major traditions, and it occupies a more prominent position than the tradition in classical texts."