I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The Ambrosian Library is located at the end of a narrow alley.

The storefront is small, and the granite lintel has been polished smooth by hundreds of years of handling.

Wooden crates were stacked in the courtyard, hemp ropes were piled under the pillars, and there was a smell of glue, camphor, and old leather.

A dozen or so young people were hunched over the table copying books, the rustling sound of their writing filling the air.

Some people would pull their right hand out and shake it a couple of times while copying, then continue copying.

"Professor Mortimer, Mr. Williams."

Luca squeezed out from between the tables, still holding a stack of papers in his arms.

"You've come in, the curator is inside."

The curator was a thin, old priest who stood in the center of the Fico Hall. He was only up to the top of the wooden box next to him, and his fingernails were covered in ink.

"Professor Mortimer." He bowed and led them to the innermost room for a routine tour, showing their collection to the guests who had come from afar.

Of course, only scholars receive this treatment.

In the innermost room, there was a wooden shelf with a huge book lying on it.

"This is the Atlantic Scrolls."

"More than three hundred years ago, a Spanish collector collected all the loose pages that Da Vinci had taken down and pasted them onto this large sheet of paper to make a book."

When the old priest mentioned this name, he couldn't help but straighten his back and puff out his chest.

The first thing Richard saw was words, densely packed and crawling from right to left, with all the strokes reversed.

"Mirror writing".

Mortimer explained, "He's left-handed; some say it's to prevent others from peeking."

The old professor shook his head.

"He writes more than ten pages every day. If someone has to do this to prevent thieves, that's a really tiring life."

Richard took out Venus's silver mirror, and the reflections were all reversed.

In the mirror, Richard could vaguely make out that it was the Tuscan (the region where Florence is located) dialect from four hundred years ago.

The spelling system was invented by the writers themselves; they could add vowels whenever they wanted.

He flipped through the list of "knowledge," but there was no matching table in the library.

So he gave up on the calligraphy and started looking at the paintings.

The page had a string of gears drawn on it, the second page had water, and the third page had a dissected diagram of a bird's wing.

The second item was a painting sketch, which covered the entire wall.

The painting depicts a group of people, some arguing, some writing, and some sitting on the steps with their heads propped up.

The two people in the center walk forward, one with his hand raised to the sky and the other with his palm pressed down.

The old priest was equally proud of the painting: "This is a large sketch of Raphael's 'The School of Athens,' and the painting on that wall in the Vatican was drawn from this piece of paper."

But a person was added to that painting later; you'll see when you see it.

Richard moved to the side: "Can I get a closer look?"

"Okay, but don't touch it."

He bent down and found a hole along the edge of the line.

There are tens of thousands of such holes on the entire sheet of paper.

"This is called applying powder," the old priest explained from the side.

"Put the paper on the wall, and then use a bag of charcoal powder to pat it along the holes. The powder leaks through the holes, leaving a string of dots on the wall. The artist then paints based on those dots."

The last item was a camphor wood box lined with velvet, inside which lay dozens of palm-sized pieces of paper.

"The original pages of the fifth-century illustrated Iliad are long gone; later people cut out the illustrations and pasted them onto other paper to keep them."

Richard looked down and found that the color was still there.

The red part is the robe, the blue part is the water, most of the gold leaf has fallen off, and what remains is dim under the lamp.

The people in the painting are all short, with big heads and arms longer than their feet.

There is a painting depicting two teams shouting at each other across a river, with the shouters' mouths open.

Richard stood in front of that box for a long time. The seal on it was very tight, with almost no ether leaking out, which also prevented anyone from maliciously damaging it.

But since almost none of them are exposed, it means there are still some, so why not pick them up?

Richard knew that although there were so many exhibits, he only had one chance to absorb points.

After the first time, the curator would never give him a second chance to get that close, so he chose the oldest one.

Richard stretched his hand forward, as if to examine the figures in the painting more closely.

Available points: 2.18...2.29...2.33

The absorption rate is getting slower and slower, but there is still some effect.

Available points: 2.35...2.37

He took another half step forward, his nose less than a palm's width away from the piece of parchment.

Available points: 2.39...2.43

Mr. Williams.

The curator's voice sounded behind him, and a hand gently patted his shoulder.

Richard, knowing when to stop, returned to his rightful place.

The old priest narrowed his eyes behind his pince-nez glasses, staring at the young man's hands.

"Your hands."

Richard withdrew his hand and brushed away the last bit of ether that had seeped out.

Available points: 2.46

Go to Must Search

"Excuse me, I got too close. I've never seen such a rare and genuine painting before, and I couldn't help myself..."

The curator nodded, not at all surprised; he had been through that age himself.

"It's alright, just this once."

"Father, I'd like to inquire about someone."

Mortimer leaned his cane against the pillar and clasped his hands together in front of him.

"Is there a librarian like this in the museum, around forty years old, of medium height, with a pencil tucked behind his ear?"

The old priest was somewhat embarrassed.

"We have several people here who match your description, but we don't know which one you are referring to."

"He led me down to the fourth level."

The old priest looked at him with some confusion.

"Professor, there is no fourth floor in this building."

Mortimer touched his thinning hair, unsure how to continue.

For the next half hour, Mortimer asked everything he could.

The duty roster has been found. There were a total of seven administrators on duty in the past few days, and all seven of them are moving boxes in the atrium today.

Mortimer went to check and found them sweating profusely, looking nothing like the mysterious figures they were supposed to be. Besides, none of their faces matched up.

The payroll was finally found, and the accountant, after checking it, shrugged and said:

"Sir, when it comes to paying salaries, we are not going to pay one extra person."

The library cards that were issued in the past few days have also been retrieved, and the old priest compared them one by one until all of them were checked.

"Professor, no one like the person you mentioned has ever been here."

Mortimer sighed softly, knowing it wouldn't be that easy.

"Thank you for your help."

"No trouble at all. If you think of anything else, just ask me anytime."

The old priest left, leaving only the two of them in the corridor.

"Professor, you originally wanted to introduce me to someone?" Richard asked.

Mortimer did not deny it.

"Yes, unfortunately we weren't very lucky; they didn't want to see us."

He pointed his cane toward the courtyard.

"Alright, that's enough. You still have copying assignments this afternoon."

At two o'clock in the afternoon, it was time for the scribes to rest.

About twenty young people dispersed from the long table and surged into the courtyard corridor.

Some people dipped their wrists into basins of cold water, while others squatted on the steps and gnawed on a piece of bread so hard it could be used to hammer nails.

Luca squeezed in, holding two small white porcelain cups.

Mr. Williams.

Call me Richard.

"Then please don't call me Mr. Valais, they all call me Luca."

He handed over one of the cups and added a formal remark.

"No sugar."

Three or four people in the corridor burst out laughing.

Richard, holding the bitter-tasting food, accepted it.

Someone coughed from the other side of the steps. It was a tall young man from Padua, wearing glasses that clearly didn't fit his face.

He speaks in Latin, and his words are barbed.

"Mr. Williams, I have a question for you."

"Speaking."

"When you go on a field mission in your country, what's the first thing you do upon arrival?"

"check in."

"Who should I report this to?"

"At the branch office, you submit the documents and get a number. If something goes wrong, someone will take care of it, and you can get reimbursed when you get back."

There was a brief silence in the corridor for two seconds, then the dozen or so people started making a noisy discussion.

"We need to go find a university," the two Padua said in unison.

"Our area is under the jurisdiction of the parish," said a young man with a southern accent.

"That's how it is in Naples. Go find the parish priest first."

"The Chamber of Commerce," a Genoese man next to Luca raised his hand. "We always consult the Chamber of Commerce first."

"The Quartermaster Department," the one from Turin said decisively.

"Where's Venice?" someone shouted.

"Venice depends on which island you're on."

"Bologna is a guild."

Which guild?

"...It depends on what you do for a living."

The Paduan pushed his glasses up.

"So on our side, you need to figure something out."

"What is it?"

"Find out whose turf you're on now."

He stood up from the steps and dusted off his pants.

"You Albionites, a single form can govern Edinburgh."

"Our watches can't leave the city."

On October 31, fog rolled in over Milan.

The fog was cleaner than in the capital, but it still obscured the entire end of the alley.

People carrying chrysanthemums have been walking around the streets since morning, and handfuls of white blossoms have been flowing from the alleyway toward the cemetery.

Richard spent the afternoon copying in his inn room, then laid the tip of the antler wrapped with the reins on his lap.

It has been shaking since yesterday morning, at a frequency similar to that of a pocket watch.

Considering the importance of the matter, he brought it up directly with Professor Mortimer.

After all, the two professors assisted with the entire process of the name-changing ceremony for my maternal grandfather.

There's no point in hiding it; he needs someone to watch over him when he manipulates shadows.

Mortimer sat in the chair by the window without interrupting from beginning to end.

"Old Mike advised you not to go back then. He felt that you wouldn't gain anything by going, but you would be risking your life."

"But he doesn't know the cards you're holding in your hand."

The old professor stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains open a crack.

You can't see anything outside because of the fog.

"If you're going to participate in the Wild Hunt tonight, I suggest you perform the ritual in Ambrosiania."

"...Why?"

"I met a very important person at that library last week."

Mortimer tapped his finger on the window frame.

"He is not here today, but some traces will remain."

"Even if we can't detect these traces, experts can tell at a glance."

Richard stood in the center of the room, slowly coming to his senses.

"You mean, we want to borrow that person's name?"

Mortimer lowered his hand.

"Yes, the Hunter will bring his team to pick you up tonight. When it looks up, the first thing it will see is what's inside this library."

"What do you think it would think if it saw this library?"

"It might not be sure," Richard thought of the Hunter's personality.

Not only is he a miser, but he is also very cautious in his actions. Last time, when he participated in the gas war chaos in Fran, he didn't act until the final decisive moment, and he immediately took his profits after the hunt.

The old professor nodded.

It never touches anything it's unsure about.

"Besides, I'm here too." He took the dusty old overcoat off the back of the chair.

"I'll sit next to you tonight."

"When it weighs you, it weighs me too."

At nine o'clock at night, only two lights remained in the museum.

The old priest opened the door to the Fico Hall for them, asked nothing, and only said one thing before leaving: "Don't knock over the box."

There were more than twenty wooden crates piled up in the hall. Richard sat down on the floor between two rows of crates.

Mortimer moved his chair three steps away, spread a newspaper on his lap, and looked like he was going to read all night.

"Let's begin."

Richard unbuttoned his coat and pressed the Sphinx lamp against his chest.

He first summoned the shadow from behind the curtain.

The dark mass rose up from the crack in the floor tiles and stood still under the light.

It ate quite a lot this year, and formed a piece of ink that was fished out of the water.

"Put it on."

A bronze mask was placed over the faceless one, golden wings closed, and two golden snakes slid down the legs and coiled tightly around the ankles.

"The Silent Ones".

As the name was placed on the mask, the transparent layer that had been stretched out by the mask retracted.

Richard handed over the tip of the antler, and Shadow reached out and took it.

The moment it was caught, the air in the entire Fico Hall cooled down.

The reins on the corner loosened by themselves, and the smell of frozen earth, horse sweat, and grass trampled by tens of thousands of hooves rushed in, completely suppressing the smells of camphor, paste, and pine.

The sound of horns followed immediately.

The first sound came from the north, very far away, across the Alps.

The second sound came closer, pressing down on the belly of the cloud.

On the third note, the glass in the high windows on the ceiling of the hall began to resonate with a buzzing sound.

………………

There have always been people on the fourth floor of Ambrosiana, but outsiders can't find them without the administrator's permission.

The administrator hung the lantern back on the hook and sat down behind the counter.

There was a piece of paper spread out on the counter, but it was blank.

He was thinking about how to write a story.

He has been doing this for many years.

He was quite good when he was proficient in a little bit of it; that was when he was most creative.

I can write two or three short stories a year, and I can laugh when I read them over.

After reaching the highest level of mastery, the first story I wrote was about a knight slaying a dragon and rescuing a princess.

He stopped writing on the third line. There are 4,112 books in the library. The earliest one is in Mesopotamia.

Later, He tried something no one had ever written about: a fish that wanted to become a library.

The first two pages are good, the third page starts to categorize the fish in the sea, and the fourth page is the whole thing, which is the general order of fish in the North Sea.

It got even worse after becoming an expert.

He was writing about a young couple falling in love in the reading room when, halfway through, their names were automatically changed to "the author's name".

He didn't write the ending line; the paper itself grew out a sentence: This document is for museum viewing only.

After taking the chair of the master of classical traditions, He only tried it once.

He wrote, "Once upon a time..."

Before the ink was even dry, the letters behind it started to grow on their own.

The entries start from "Once upon a time there was a king" and continue until they disappear from sight, with each entry followed by the year and index number.

He put down his pen from then on. The tradition of classical texts had come to an end, and he could no longer write books. He could only put the books back in their proper place.

Every sentence written down simply combines existing stories without any innovation.

Speaking of which, there was a team parked on the roof tonight.

The Hunter is coming tonight to pick up one of His readers.

The administrator turned his attention to the Fico Hall.

The child sat between two rows of wooden crates, his eyes closed.

Next to the child, an old professor sat in a wicker chair.

There was a newspaper spread out in front of him; it must have been the same newspaper Mortimer had bought three days ago.

I bet this old guy finished reading it a long time ago; he's just looking for something to do with the newspaper.

The administrator knew what Mortimer was up to.

Bring the students into His house so that the Lord of the Hunt on the roof may look down and first consider whose house it is.

He was shrewd and calculating, but I wouldn't say I disliked him.

When one reaches His position, one must consider whether a person can benefit the tradition and whether He finds it meaningful.

Both the old and the young satisfy these two conditions.

As for the child himself... He flipped through the booklet on the counter.

The first book, "Strange Tales," is a penny book by Mr. L.

Those six rules were set to music. The ladies in the laundry room hummed them as they scrubbed, and three days later the music reached the student dormitories. After that, the girls at the girls' school sang them while jumping rope.

The second one is titled "Island Chronicles".

The third image, "The Prudent Gentlemen," depicts a man with a protruding belly, and a man standing half a step behind him with his hands tucked into his sleeves.

He had seen the satirical cartoons before; they appeared in every issue of the Empire's weekly magazine. They depicted all the famous and important figures, with noses drawn much larger than real people, so everyone could recognize them.

These two are different; they don't resemble either of them.

So each pair of hands turned the page and filled in the one they recognized.

Fill in one on the leather sofa in the club, one on the corridor of the Ministry of the Interior, and one at the base of the wall at the Bois de France station.

He hadn't laughed at a story in a long time.

He also used his "authority" to preview some of the less influential and unpublished works.

After reading it, he closed the booklet and thought, "Since Mortimer wants to borrow my roof, then so be it."

He hasn't finished reading the books here yet, and the authors of those stories can't just be let go so easily.

The administrator raised his hand and turned a page on the bookshelf in the Fei Ke Hall from a distance.

With this flip, the entire library appeared clearly stratified in the eyes of those in higher positions.

On the other side, Richard closed his eyes and sent his inspiration along the wisp of light embedded in the shadow.

The roof is gone, and all that's left is open field.

That seemingly endless line of people was coming from Galicia.

Through the shadow's eyes, Richard saw the last part of the procession stretch out into a very long line, seemingly endless.

The number of people this year has increased significantly.

The Carpathian accent, the Bohemian accent, and all the way south to Isonzo.

The massive evacuation in the east this year saw millions of people retreating throughout the summer.

In the fall, Serbia reopened its borders;

The river to the west has been dredged since June, and the stones on the riverbank are all white.

The land was fertile that year, and the people thrived.

The hunter reined in his horse and stood on the belly of the cloud, looking down.

The tip of the antlers, wrapped with the reins, jingled below, drawing the hunter's gaze toward the library.

Looking across the street, it saw a butcher shop sign with the day's beef prices written in three languages.

The hunter turned his gaze back and looked at it again.

This time, it counted all the tiles on the roof of that building.

When it counted to more than 4,300 pieces, it realized that it had been counting for a while.

"..."

The hunter then realized it had been tricked, and the one who had tormented it had left it helpless.

It has been blocked by people countless times in its life.

The sun tradition is to smear light in your face, the hearth tradition is to weld the door shut, and the net tradition is to make you go in circles on the path you've already walked.

The person blocking it always tells it: I'm blocking you.

The library, however, politely told the hunter, "Go ahead and look around. If you can see anything, I'll admit defeat."

The antlers suddenly rose up, and the entire group collided.

Tens of thousands of horses reined in at the same time; those in front stopped, but those behind did not.

The young man wielding the axe flew two body lengths off the saddle and landed on the barefoot horse.

The barefoot man pushed him down, and he rolled to the feet of the man in the red coat.

"What's wrong?"

"Shut up."

The hunter did not turn back.

It had heard countless pages turning, and the old scholar's ledger on his lap was flipped through every day; its ears were calloused from hearing it so often.

That night, it saw another page turn: a scale stretched across its head, its beams so long that neither end could be seen, bending the sky behind the entire curtain by a line; that was the one sitting atop the myriad books.

It can weigh that scale, but it can't weigh this page.

How much does a single sheet of paper weigh? It doesn't know.

There are no classical texts among the five traditions.

But the first boundary marker on each of the five traditions was carved by someone.

The master engraver was sitting there, and everyone walking by followed him.

The Norse god-king, in order to decipher a few lines of text, hung himself from a tree for nine nights, even losing an eye in the process. He had heard this story since he was a child.

The most learned scholars, those who reach the very top, are never easy to mess with.

The hunter was filled with doubt and uncertainty. After a brief moment of thought, he took the horn off the saddle.

It weighed itself in the palm of my hand and then began to play a welcoming tune.

Of the tens of thousands of riders, more than half had never heard that tune before, and those who had immediately straightened up.

As soon as the bugle sounded, the entire seemingly endless column simultaneously turned their weapons around.

The axe blade faces inward, the spearhead points downward, the bowstring is loosened, and the back of the knife faces outward.

This is the oldest custom, indicating that the person coming down from below tonight is an absolutely distinguished guest.

The procession split in the middle, making way for a path that led from the roof of the library all the way to the hunter's saddle.

One by one, the fires on both sides of the road were lit.

"Does the guiding fire cost money?" the hunter suddenly asked.

"I won't spend it." The old scholar said expressionlessly, having long been used to it.

"The fire was taken from the spirits of the dead who came along the way."

"Then let's order a few more."

"...Two thousand have already been ordered."

"Keep clicking, keep clicking until you can't put any more in!"

Richard, standing between the two realms, separated by a wisp of spirit embedded in the shadow, saw the fiery path burn all the way to his feet.

"Yo..."

A loud voice boomed from the middle of the line.

"That guy with the cane is coming again!"

The young man wielding the axe straightened up from his saddle, raised the axe above his head, and shook it twice.

"Old scholar! Make a note of this! The one with the cane is coming!"

"I saw it!"

The old scholar had a book lying open on his lap, with his pen tucked behind his ear.

He's a bit older than in April... Richard thought about it and realized the idea was untenable; this guy had been old since he joined the team.

The one in the red coat squeezed in from the side, stopped five or six steps away, and bowed to the shadow.

With palms facing outwards, elbows almost touching ears.

The shadow replied.

The man in the red jacket nodded in satisfaction and turned around to shout something to the group.

"See that? They learn from you so quickly!"

Someone in the group snorted in dissatisfaction.

The lame puppy emerged from under the line.

It ran erratically, knocking over the saddlebags of two people along the way.

The puppy rushed straight to the shadow's feet, rested its chin on the cold foot, and lay down.

"..."

Through that wisp of spirit, Richard felt a very heavy object pressing on the top of his foot.

"Feed".

A soft, hoarse voice approached.

Richard turned his head.

It's that old guy who couldn't remember his own name for six hundred years.

He brought his face close, his eyes cloudy, as if he had finally caught someone.

"Sheepskin."

"...What?"

"Shoes." He held up one foot for the shadow to see, but there was nothing on it.

"I want the sheepskin one; I've been waiting for it for a long time."

The old scholar didn't even look up.

"I remember, he wants a shoe, a sheepskin one."

"You always say that."

"I wrote it down every time."

"Then why not?"

"Because you always forget what you want before dawn."

The young man wielding the axe laughed as he slid down from the saddle.

A bugle sounded, a short note, the tune of departure.

The procession has left; below lies the Alps.

The snow line peeks out from the gaps in the clouds and then recedes again, white and blue.

Further south lies the plain, the plain Mortimer laid out with sand on the train, with the Po River, that silver line, stretching across it from east to west.

Milan lies in the middle of a plain, where the hundreds of spires of the White Church pierce through the mist, their icons all facing different directions.

The village below was lit up.

Richard looked down through the shadows and saw offerings placed on the windowsills of every household.

Some had a bowl of water, some had a piece of bread, and some had two or three candies, the candy wrappers fluttering in the wind.

There was a pair of very small shoes placed in front of a house.

"They are offering sacrifices to the dead."

"For the child."

The old scholar had moved his mount next to him at some point.

"The custom here is that the dead return tonight and bring gifts to the living children."

If you leave your child's shoes by the door before bed, there will be something inside them the next morning.

"Aren't they afraid?"

"They're afraid, that's why they're setting it up."

Further north, past the mountains, comes a different landscape.

Dry hay was laid out outside the farmhouse.

One bundle stood upright by the doorway, while another family had two bundles on display.

Richard saw a woman looking out of the window of that house, and after a long time, she closed the window.

"The rules here are old," the old scholar said.

"Those who leave grass behind will have good luck next year."

"What about those that weren't kept?"

The old scholar took the pen down.

"Those who didn't keep any will find sweat on their saddles next spring."

The group headed southeast.

Richard helped Shadow settle into the saddle and began to take stock of the things that needed to be done that night.

During the mid-year battle, he dispersed 4,967 people on Genting Highlands using a card format printed by the quartermaster department.

He was thinking when he suddenly stopped.

There is one person in the middle left of the group.

The man rode on an extremely ordinary horse, his hood pulled up, and hadn't uttered a single word to anyone since the start of the journey.

Richard wouldn't have paid any attention to him otherwise.

There are many silent people in this group; among the group from six hundred years ago, there was one who could only hum.

What made him stop was his location.

There was about a body length of space on each side of that person.

Tens of thousands of riders were crammed together, their manes all tangled together, but there was two empty spaces in his place, as if reserved for someone.

"Sir, who is that person in the line?"

The old scholar stopped writing and closed the book on his lap.

"Which one?"

"The one slightly to the left of the middle section, the one with the hood pulled up."

The old scholar remained silent for a while.

"He's been here for a long time."

"how long?"

"soon."

Richard did not ask any further questions.

Just then, the man raised his hand.

He raised his hand quickly, to a height where his palm was down and his elbow was below his shoulder line.

Richard acknowledged the courtesy.

This is today's military salute. The patrol officers at the branch office give this salute, and the young people in khaki military uniforms on the train station platform also give this salute.

The man in the red jacket, standing at the other end of the line, called out "Hey!" from a distance.

"That same limp salute again!"

"Shut up."

"Palms down, look at him, who's looking at the calluses on his palms!"

"That's the current rule."

"Are the rules really this weak now?"

The person under the hood lowered their hand.

He ignored the red coat and kept looking in their direction.

The wind pressed in from the front of the procession, pulling the hoods back a crack.