I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 524 Chaos

Richard turned around and saw a man standing next to the registration table, still wearing the same old overcoat, with cobwebs he had brought from the library still hanging on his lapel.

Of course it's Mortimer. He refused to eat dinner yesterday, but for some reason he came out again and even got to the front of the registration table.

He greeted Richard in Albion:

"Come here for a second, and hold this register down for me. It's a bit windy."

Indeed, the wind at the mouth of the valley was particularly strong due to the funneling effect, blowing into the courtyard in gusts and lifting all the corners of the paper on the table.

Richard sighed softly, picked up his plate, and walked over, using one hand to help the professor press down all the corners of the paper.

He looked over with some curiosity and froze on the spot.

That page was already full, and only the bottom three lines remained on the second page, all of which were written by Professor Mortimer himself.

The one holding the pen was still that young monk.

When he held the pen, his hand gestures were distorted, his fingertips were covered in ink, and there was some on his nose as well, probably from wiping away sweat.

The ink bottle was almost empty; he tried to scrape the ink with the nib, but it only made a scraping sound. Mortimer wasn't finished yet: "Next, Llewellyn Ap Gruffidt."

"Sir, please speak more slowly."

"Llewellyn, two l's."

The monk wrote it down, then looked up, his face filled with despair.

"Sir, this name has too many consonants, more than we mountain folk talk for a whole year."

Mortimer explained matter-of-factly:

"That old fellow was a Welshman. Welshmen never use vowels until they die; they use all the vowels they save to trade for sheep."

Richard, standing beside him, pressed down on the pages, sucking in his cheeks to suppress a laugh.

"He died in 1871, so let's continue with that," Mortimer then announced.

"Sir, we only need to write names."

The old professor, however, refused to budge an inch.

"Write it down for me: there were two Llewellyns in that year's department. If you don't write the year, they'll start arguing about these beans down there." The young monk looked at him, then looked towards the large cauldron.

The old monk in charge remained the same, nodding helplessly in this direction.

The young monk had no choice but to lower his head again and add the year.

Behind Mortimer, the line stretched all the way to the well.

At the very front of the line was an old woman with a cane. Her shawl was faded from washing, her chin was jutting out, and she kept tapping her cane on the stone slab, looking anxious as she waited.

Behind her stood a man driving a mule, arms crossed, a blade of grass dangling from his mouth.

There was a little boy standing next to the man, with an empty plate on his head as a hat, which his mother ripped off.

All the people were staring at Mortimer's back, but no one made a sound.

The old monk by the pot would glance over every now and then.

The little boy tugged at his mother's skirt and asked in a low voice:

"Mom, does that grandpa know everyone in the world?"

His mother slapped him on the back of the head. The young monk had already changed to a new bottle of ink.

He raised his head and asked cautiously, "Sir, generally speaking, we can only accept gifts for one or two people at most."

Mortimer simply said, "I've lived longer than most people, turn the page."

The monk turned the second page and came to a new blank page to begin writing.

The man driving the mule bit off all the grass stems.

Richard pressed down on the corner, his gaze climbing up the names.

The list of names he had given out that afternoon, which was no more than half a page long, now looked rather shabby among the first few pages.

Professor Mortimer's two-page report listed the year after each name.

Richard scanned the area back and forth, and when he reached the bottom, the smile on his face froze.

Those were two names that shared the professor's last name; one ended in 1856, and the other in 1861.

Richard's hand remained pressed against the page.

Mortimer, his eyes still fixed on the monk's pen, suddenly spoke: "How long have you had this dish of beans?" "A while ago."

"Your beans aren't steaming anymore."

Richard glanced down and saw that the soup had solidified into a layer of oil at the bottom of the plate, with a few blackened leaves floating on the side, probably sage.

"Professor, you should know what lies beneath this land..."

Mortimer nodded. "Yes, it's a cemetery. I know more about it than you do."

He then gave the next name, and while the monk was writing, he continued chatting with Richard.

"The Irishman who came over the mountain, the first page of his name he wrote is still here, and his handwriting is even worse than yours."

"For more than 1000 years to come, it will be recorded every year."

How many people are buried in the ground? How many times have beans been cooked in the pot? How many people have come to claim them?

Mortimer said the page with the most names in the register was from 1630:

"In 1630, half the population of Milan died. Later, Manzoni wrote about the great plague of 1630, and when the ladies of the entire Apennine Peninsula read it, they all wiped away tears with their handkerchiefs."

People were dying in the valley just like in 1630, and the pots for boiling beans in the monastery never stopped burning for a single day. The following spring, the people in the valley went to the fields to sow seeds as usual. The old professor glanced at Richard halfway through his sentence, probably realizing that Richard was worried that eating beans grown in the ground where dead people had been buried would make him sick: "For many years, the people in the valley have lived well, and I have never heard of anyone getting a strange disease and dying after eating beans."

Richard stared at the plate without saying anything more. Mortimer didn't wait for Richard to speak either, and continued:

"You've eaten quite a lot of bread in Beijing, have you ever wondered whose head the wheat used to make that bread grows on?"

"In the entire Old World, can you find a place where no one has been buried underground? The people here just did one more thing: they recorded the names of the dead."

After the old professor finished speaking, he gave the last name to the young monk. The young monk finished writing the last stroke and was still waiting with his pen in hand.

Mortimer waved his hand: "That's all, young man, no need to write anymore."

The young monk leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.

Mortimer walked to the pot, and the old dean, who was dividing the beans, also had a smile on his face. He scooped a full spoonful for the old professor.

The earthy smell of beans, mixed with the fragrance of sage, once again wafted into Richard's nose.

Mortimer turned around, holding the plate, and glanced around.

According to the rules, everyone who receives beans must give some to another person to eat.

Richard had already traded the beans in his dish with a local mother, so the old professor couldn't give Richard any more. After thinking for a moment, he simply shoved the dish into the hands of the young monk in charge of registration. The young monk jumped to his feet in surprise.

"Sir, I'm just someone helping with copying!"

Mortimer forcefully guided the young monk's hand to the edge of the plate: "You copied three whole pages for me, and you're paying me with a plate of beans? Why are you being so polite?"

The young monk, holding the plate, turned and glanced at his master by the pot.

The old cultivator nodded again, and the young cultivator sat back down and picked up his spoon to eat.

The line moved forward a little more, and an old woman wrapped in a black shawl walked up to the table, gave her name, and the monk wrote it down in three strokes.

The old lady took the plate, and leaning on her cane, walked steadily to Mortimer and placed the plate on the old professor's chest.

Mortimer didn't mince words, scooped up a spoonful of beans and put them in his mouth. After chewing a couple of times, his old face wrinkled up:

"They're overcooked; the beans have turned to mush."

The old professor kept complaining, but his spoon never stopped. He licked the last drop of soup from the bottom of the plate, then turned to look at the untouched beans in Richard's hand.

"See? I ate every last grain."

"If I go crazy or fall ill tonight, you can call Pendleton first thing tomorrow morning and say I got lost in the mountains." Richard looked down at the beans in his hand, remembering the face of the local mother who had handed him the beans.

He picked up the plate and took the first bite. The taste was indeed just as the professor had said—not very good. The beans were overcooked, there wasn't enough salt, and the earthy taste couldn't be masked at all.

The moment the beans went down, the [filter] activated.

[Filtering] enables the body to acquire strong resistance to toxins, putrefactive substances, and parasites.

Before long, the filtering effect gradually subsided, indicating that it determined that the bean was not a foreign object.

The panel lit up:

[Achieved: Actively ingested a product from behind the curtain and metabolized it completely.]

[Eating level 4, progress 52% → 83%.]

Richard's long-standing predicament was resolved by a dish of unexpected farm-fresh beans.

After eating the beans, the people in the courtyard gradually dispersed.

The two Serbian refugees squatted together, and one of them transferred the few remaining beans from his plate to the other's plate.

The old monk and his apprentice were cleaning up the pots and pans. Richard walked over and asked in his broken Apennine:

"Over the years, has anyone gotten food poisoning from this?"

The old monk raised his head and stared at Richard for a moment with his cloudy eyes.

"have."

Richard's heart tightened.

But the other party had a second part to their statement:

"But those who got food poisoning were the ones who didn't follow the rules and went to snatch food from the pot themselves."

He hung the wooden spoon back up and slowly walked back into the building, supporting himself against the wall.

That night, Richard lay on the wooden bed in the guest room.

The window was very high and very small; from the bed, you could only see a small patch of sky, but there was no coal smoke in the mountains, and the stars were frighteningly dense.

The effect of [Wild Sleep] made him fall into a deep sleep within a few breaths after lying down.

But halfway through his sleep, he suddenly woke up with a start. A sensory line extended toward him, following the direction of his name.

Richard lay motionless in the darkness.

The sensory line first touched the register.

The young monk placed the pen on it and went back to sleep.

No one ever thought of putting it away, nor did anyone feel that it needed to be put away.

The sensory line followed the register and found the 237 names registered today.

After scanning it once, it flipped back to the previous page.

I flipped through pages from last year, the year before, ten years ago, and fifty years ago.

Some years are written very densely, while others are only a dozen or so lines long. Those were years of plague or famine, when few people came.

For over a thousand years, there have been hundreds of thousands of names.

At the etheric level, these names all follow the exact same format.

Richard lay in bed, feeling the sensory lines begin to malfunction. It had originally locked onto a name and followed that name into the courtyard.

Then it discovered that the name was written in the register, and there were 236 other names on the paper. Then it went deeper and deeper and found hundreds of thousands of names.

The weight of a thousand years stretches before it like an endless field, and the crops within it all grow in roughly the same shape.

It got lost in this field of crops.

Richard lay in the darkness, listening to the mountain wind whistling past the eaves.

I don't know how much effort I put in to prevent others from reading it.

But what saved him tonight was a plate of homemade beans and this register that anyone could turn the pages of, which had been written for over a thousand years.

There are so many names in it that any sensory line extending from it can only read "There are many people here".

It's a bit cold in the mountains.

………………

On the evening of November 16th, Richard and the professor returned to Genoa from the monastery in the mountains. The landlady had already lit the stove for them.

Mortimer sat in the dining room, finished his meal, drank a pot of Darjeeling he had brewed himself, said "This trip was worthwhile," and then went upstairs with his cane.

Richard returned to his room and closed the door.

The token given by the hunter was shaking again, and even more urgently than before.

He sat on the edge of the bed with the token in his hand and closed his eyes.

The shadow rose up from the cracks in the floor tiles, put on a mask, and ascended overhead.

The wind is light tonight on the cloud ridge.

The group was particularly disorganized; the riders didn't form any particular formation this time, but instead gathered in small groups and chatted idly.

There was a small group of people making a bet: who could tell the year they joined the Wild Hunt first.

On the other hand, there is a constant debate about whether there is a bottom at the very bottom of the abyss.

The hunter stood at the front, reining in his mount, with the old scholar following half a body length behind.

"They've arrived." "We've come to inform you that we'll be taking you down to the spirit world the night before Yul's arrival."

Richard tentatively asked, "...You said last time that there were other things to take care of."

The hunter answered quickly, clearly not wanting to be questioned further:

"I can handle my own affairs. You need a messenger, so I'll catch one for you while I'm at it."

It abruptly changed the subject, turning its mount to face them directly:

"However, when you go down to the spirit world, you need to prepare three things in advance: a lamp, a rope, and an anchor."

"The lamp is your own inspiration."

As you descend, only you can see yourself; you cannot borrow someone else's light, for even if you did, it wouldn't illuminate your path.

"We can provide the rope."

When the hunter got to this point, he became quite generous:

"Our Wild Hunt team is the rope; you're tied to this team, and even if you fall, we'll pull you back."

"What about the anchor?" "You'll have to figure that out yourself."

The old scholar coughed lightly beside him.

"What's wrong?"

"According to the rules, when our team descends into the Deep Realm, you must provide a rare artifact as an anchor to cover everyone's losses."

The wind on the cloud ridge suddenly became exceptionally clear.

The hunter remained unmoved: "Then let's use the cheapest one."

"The cheapest stuff was already used up in Flanders last time."

"Then release the second one, which is worthless."

"The second least valuable item is a nail, taken from the keel of a shipwreck 300 years ago, rusted to the point that only half of it remains..."

"I want this one," the hunter interrupted him.

"Isn't using nails as anchors the most suitable option?"

In the crowd, those gambling and arguing stopped. The man carrying the charred log pushed his way out of the throng and suddenly shouted:

"Master Hunter, we are truly blessed to have a leader as shrewd and calculating as you!"

As soon as he said that, laughter echoed from the middle of the road to places that couldn't be seen.

Everyone started talking about what they needed to prepare. The young man who wanted to wield an axe wanted to bring one, but that was rejected because he couldn't cut through the deep realm.

The lobster soldiers demanded to wear full formal attire, saying that "they should go down with dignity."

The lame puppy insisted on following Richard;

The barefoot one asked again, as usual, "Sheepskin shoes."

The hunter raised his horn and blew it briefly: "Alright, call it a day."

The line slowly formed a formation as they prepared to leave.

Before leaving, the old scholar began to explain the details to Richard.

He started by asking, "Young man, what do you know about the spirit world?"

Richard thought for a moment and answered truthfully, "I once worked as an auto-scribe with a psychic."

"Where did you go deepest when you were creating the automatic bookmarking system?"

Richard dared not hide anything:

"The furthest I've gone is to the edge of the spirit world. My inspiration reaches out and scoops back a few scattered thoughts from the shallowest part of the well."

"I understand now." The old scholar nodded.

"This time, we're going down into the well."

"The scattered thoughts by the well will separate on their own, scattering into strands."

When you cling to a strand, you read a spiritual message; when you release it, it leaves on its own.

"But once you get to the bottom of the well, it's not that simple; everything down there is interconnected."

"If you want to speak in the material world, you must first have language."

You speak Gaelic, Greek, or Latin; people who don't understand the language won't know what you're saying.

Language is a wall that separates you from others, but it also protects you. "But in the very depths behind the veil of the spirit world, this wall melts away on its own."

The old scholar's face was obscured, but Richard felt that his expression was particularly serious at that moment.

There is no separate language there, only meaning.

What you want to express as soon as you open your mouth is automatically conveyed to others, and the same applies to others.

"So, I can understand everything that other people are trying to say over there?" Richard asked.

"Yes," the old scholar added, "but everything you say can also be understood by others."

Therefore, he couldn't hide anything over there, and Richard immediately understood what the other party meant.

The senior scholar began to explain the rules:

"When you get there, don't name anything, don't say your name, and don't answer any questions. Your answer there will be considered as agreement."

"Did you remember?"

"I've got it."

Richard, of course, remembered this; it was a matter of life and death. "Although we certainly won't go deep over there this time, there's something further down there I'll tell you."

The old scholar switched to a more casual tone:

"If you have the ability to descend to the deepest part of the Abyss, you will encounter some beings you shouldn't encounter."

"What does that mean?" Richard mentally took notes; these were things that wouldn't be recorded in books.

"You may or may not have read the term 'chaoticization' in a book."

The old scholar slowly recounted:

"You've probably met a few experts by now."

Richard nodded.

"To become an expert, you need to give up a part of yourself."

The old scholar continued:

"The part that was handed over is no longer on my body, nor in the material world; it has become a kind of conceptualization behind the veil."

On the cloud-ridged hill, the voices of the remaining tens of thousands of riders gradually faded into the distance. "The vast majority of those who surrendered will stay obediently behind the curtain."

"But what if the portion that's handed over spoils..."

The shadow's grip on the double-serpent staff tightened unconsciously.

What does "spoiled" mean?

The old scholar used a very vague description, after all, he himself had never seen it:

"You can think of it this way: it's like a master giving up their very breath, or their own flesh and bones, and after hundreds or thousands of years..."

At this moment, the hunter leader spoke up as well, clearly having been listening the whole way:

"When an expert loses their essence, they become chaotic... becoming an indescribable thing in the deep realm."

"One last reminder about the time: the reason it's set for the night before Yul is because Yul is our last hunt of the year."

"Go downstairs to finish your business, then come back up and continue running errands; it saves everyone trouble."

"The entrance is right next to the Gotthard Hill in Helvetii, don't get it wrong."

The old scholar added from the side: "The four great rivers of the Western Continent converge on that ridge: the one to the north goes to the Rhine, the one to the west to the Rhône, the one to the south to Ticino, and the one to the northeast to Reuss."

"That is a boundary within a boundary. If you stand on the stone and take a step in either direction, the drop of water under your feet may end up in a different place."

Richard retrieved information about the four rivers from his database and discovered that they flowed into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Po River, or into a lake, respectively.

The event ended, and the old scholar took a piece of paper out of his saddlebag.

"Someone asked me to pass this on."

Richard's shadow took over.

"……who?"

"Skadi".

Upon hearing this name, Richard wanted to ask more questions.

The old scholar shook his head:

"I'll just pass it on; I don't read what's written inside, and you don't need to report back whether you reply or not."

He pulled on the reins and headed east. ………………

In Copenhagen, the sun doesn't rise above the sea until 8:30 in the morning until the end of November, and then sets again at 4:00.

For those seven and a half hours, it was still quite dark outside.

In the attic of Freeport Backstreet, Loki sat at the table, spreading out a piece of paper.

The paper clearly stated that it was a job posting.

He scattered his efforts throughout the north over the past month, in Gothenburg, Bergen, Christiania, and several unmarked taverns.

He revised the message on GG several times, until only the most crucial few lines of information remained.

More people came than he had expected; six came in the first week and eleven came in the second week.

By the third week, one morning he opened the door and found four people sitting on the stairs, one of whom still had fish scales on his trousers.

Ticket revenue is flowing in steadily, which is much less effort than trying to become a middleman yourself.

Loki picked up his pen and added another line at the very bottom of the poster's "GG":

"This time we're going down to the Deep Realm. Those who can't hold on don't need to come." This is what the Hunter Lord asked him to write.

On the eve of Yul, the procession was to go deep into the veil.

The people you recruit must first know where they are going, otherwise they may die on the way due to the pressure.

If you die in such a place, your spirit won't be recorded in the hunting register; it will simply dissipate in vain.

Loki himself was more than happy with this, so he could make a fortune for free.

However, the hunters still abide by some rules. Participants must have the right to know before the hunt begins, which is a very important rule.

Loki put down his pen, clasped his hands on his stomach, and stared at the line of text for a long time.

The hunter is going to descend into the deep realm; this news is actually quite valuable.

Moreover, this is a very time-sensitive piece of information; the sooner it is sold, the more valuable it becomes.

He had another piece of information.

Loki later researched the records and discovered that the position of Envoy had never existed in the Wild Hunt before.

In other words, this envoy was likely someone who had only recently appeared... Combined with Apophis's recent inquiries, many clues connected. Soon, a buyer arrived from Marseille.

That man's ancestors were Venetians, and they moved to Marseille three generations ago.

He's also a middleman, handling everything; today he might be transferring a boatload of olive oil, tomorrow a clue from the mystical side.

The two sat in a pub on a back street of the harbor for an hour and a half.

The buyer asked several times where the information came from.

Loki answered without hesitation: "The Hunter Lord told me to post a recruitment ad. Do you want to see the original?"

Upon seeing the original document, the middleman's hands trembled.

The original document bears the neat handwriting of an old scholar, and there is a dent in the lower right corner caused by the pressure of a deer antler tip.

Anyone who works in this line of work knows who those dents represent.

This guy is actually approved by the hunter's side.

After negotiating the price for forty minutes, the final deal was made in cash for 10,000 crowns. It was an old, strange object from Alexandria, deeply soaked in ether, and of clean origin.

One more piece of intelligence—the person at the Iberian table changed again last month. It was snowing when I returned; Loki stood outside his iron gate, snow covering his hood.

Frost formed on the glass on the other side of the iron gate, and the frost automatically opened, forming a series of hoof prints.

He sold the information to a buyer in Marseille, who then passed it on to the supplier in Alexandria.

The supplier in Alexandria then relayed the message to an unmarked house in southern Cairo.

Apophis sat in the room and read both news items.

One version says the Hunters are heading down to the Deep Realm, while another says a Venerable Envoy has appeared in the Wild Hunt's ranks.

Each piece of information is fine on its own, but when put together, Apophis felt he had grasped the key point and finally found a clue about the Black Earth River Master.

Apophis stood up, took down the bronze mirror hanging on the innermost wall of the room, and poured ether into it: "Priest."

There was no sound from the other side of the bronze mirror for a long time. Apophis was not in a hurry, so he just stood there and waited.

About fifteen minutes later, the mirror became so dark that no light could penetrate it.

The expert from the Black Soil River finally turned his gaze over: "What's up?"

Apophis bent down: "There's been progress on the matter you entrusted to me."