I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 532 Hermes Doesn't Go

As the carriage turned off the street from Phillips House, the fog began to rise.

Isabella sat opposite her, her mink collar turned up, her chin buried in it.

He then placed the tips of his boots on the stove lid, his eyes fixed on the window, saying nothing.

Richard waited for two blocks, but received no response.

The car wheel rolled over a ditch, and he couldn't resist asking McFaye why he was in such a hurry. He used the safest way to ask:

"Auntie, when did Professor McFee return?"

"This afternoon." Isabella didn't even look at him.

"From Marseille?"

"Yes, the French hospital ship took five days to arrive, and then they took an overnight train after disembarking."

She turned the gloves over.

"I heard from the staff on duty in the department office that he went straight back to his office after getting off the train, and then called me to come and get you." The carriage stopped at the intersection, where a long line had formed in front of the conscription office on the street corner.

Lord Derby's registration closes tomorrow, and half the men in line have already donned khaki armbands embroidered with small red crowns.

Wearing an armband will prevent girls from stuffing white feathers into your hand when you walk down the street.

If you are given a white feather, it means you are a coward who is trying to evade military service.

A public carriage squeezed past, and a female ticket seller in a long skirt stood on the back step, announcing the station names at the top of her lungs.

At this time last year, this job was done by men.

He'll come looking for you when he gets back.

Isabella watched for a while, then spoke again.

"Then they asked me on the phone where I live now and what time I usually leave home."

The aunt lifted her chin slightly from her collar and finally turned to look at him, her eyes filled with mockery.

"I've teamed up with many hunters on field missions and met quite a few people from the Highlands."

If a Highlander asks about someone's address and departure time upon meeting them, they're probably already armed. The carriage wasn't cold, but Richard inexplicably shivered, wondering what he'd been doing lately…

He tore off a merchant's business card in Genoa, then sold him a prescription for treating injuries.

He ate a dish of beans growing on a grave in the mountains; he ate them by a lake in Switzerland... and that's where his thoughts began.

None of these things had anything to do with McFaye.

Besides the rabbit messenger, the hare delivered his reply to Thessaloniki, and in that reply...

"Oh, right," my aunt said, a hint of doubt in her voice.

He also asked you what kind of camera you used to take the photos.

The carriage rolled over a pothole, and Richard's head hit the side of the carriage wall.

Isabella suddenly asked again, "Besides your sister, who else is sitting on the chair next to you?"

"Oh, Phillips is seated."

She glanced at her nephew and buried her face in her collar.

McFaye's office window was slightly ajar, letting in the smell of peat smoke mixed with the dry aroma of oatmeal. A wild rabbit perched on the windowsill, munching on oatmeal, leaving crumbs scattered all over the window.

Upon seeing Richard enter, its two black ears twitched and it stomped its hind legs heavily.

My aunt seemed to find it amusing and reached out to tease it.

Richard quickly stopped him: "Don't touch it, it will bite."

The white-haired giant sat behind the desk, facing the door.

Upon seeing the man arrive, he immediately slapped a photograph in front of Richard.

"Since you're here, let me explain."

The girl in the photo is asleep with her head tilted to the side, a strand of red hair falling across her face, and her lips slightly parted.

"Uh..." Li noticed that his face was flushed.

"Did you take this picture?"

Isabella leaned over from his side, looked at the photo, and raised an eyebrow.

"The photos aren't very good... The lighting is too dim, the composition is off, and the handrail takes up half the frame." She straightened up: "Next time, don't shoot girls from a slightly higher angle, it makes their chins look short."

McFee turned his head: "Isabella, don't interrupt."

Isabella met his gaze: "I'm giving professional advice."

Richard spoke, his throat a little dry:

"On that day in July, she handed me the manuscript of the sealed and deflected version of the manuscript, sat down, and fell asleep."

At that time, I had just... wanted to try out the strange transformation, so my hand acted before my brain could process it.

"Hands act before brains do."

McFee chuckled. "I've heard that a few times in the Highlands. Sheep thieves always say that when they get caught."

The rabbit on the window stomped its foot again, indicating that it agreed.

"Alright, I called you here because I have something important to discuss."

McFee flipped the photo over, his mischievous smile completely vanishing.

The back of the photo shows the curtained side, where Catherine is still lying on the sofa, a scale hanging above her head. The left pan of the scale is piled high with small gray pebbles.

There was only paper in the right pan of the scale, and the scale rod was tilted so much that it was about to fall to the ground.

Richard's gaze fell on the paper on the scale pan on the right; it turned out to be an IOU she had written to herself.

Clara had seen the photos taken with the Sphinx lamp and said that the back of the lamp represented a time that was blocked off and moving very slowly.

He always thought that "sealed off" meant stopped.

But now it seems that time in the photos really has been passing.

Isabella stopped commenting on the lighting. She took off her gloves, picked up the photo, and examined it carefully again. Suddenly, out of the blue, she said:

"In Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' the story tells of a beautiful young man who wished that the portrait in the attic would age for him, with sins and wrinkles growing on the canvas."

She glanced at her nephew.

"Your photo is a bit like one of Oscar Wilde's stories, capturing all the changes and traces that time brings to people."

McFaye picked up the photo and said:

"On November 28th, Rabbit brought the letter back to Thessaloniki at night." "The girl read the letter immediately, then tucked the photo face down into her notebook, not letting anyone see it."

"That damn rabbit, it even helped her bite me once."

The white-haired giant raised his left hand, revealing a white mark on the web of his hand that hadn't completely faded.

"It has never been this fierce to me before, which means there must be something in the letter."

McFaye stopped, his old face showing not a trace of remorse.

"...Later, while she was asleep, I peeked at her."

The white-haired giant picked up the photo and turned it over.

"When I saw your face, I almost mistook you for a thug. I thought the first thing I would do when I got back to the capital was to wring your neck."

Isabella coughed awkwardly, then raised her hand and delivered a chop to the back of her nephew's neck, intending to apologize as an elder.

McFaye's next sentence followed immediately.

He turned the photo over again, tapped it with his knuckles, and said with a serious expression:

"When I sensed the ethereal traces and turned it over to see the other side, I actually felt grateful for your photograph, which revealed all her flaws." Richard was puzzled: "You're an expert, and she was right in front of you..."

"I can only see the changes every day."

McFaye leaned back in his chair:

"I followed her in Macedonia for more than a month, watching her grow thinner and thinner every day, and her voice becoming more and more hoarse, but I couldn't see the root of her illness."

He then began to recount his experiences during his fieldwork in Greece.

It is said that a large barbed wire fence was erected around Thessaloniki, which Imperial soldiers called a birdcage.

During those days, the retreating side blew up the railway bridge in the Iron Gate Gorge, leaving the Serbian refugees on the other side.

The station quartermaster preferred to burn all the flour in the warehouse rather than give it to the hungry refugees.

An imperial sergeant beat Macedonian villagers until their faces were covered in blood for the sake of a mule.

Each time, the mask of Nemesis urged Catherine to speak and to judge her from the back of her throat.

The passage to the sealed deflection ceremony led this impulse toward the inscription, but there were no rubbings to copy in the snow.

She wasn't a military judge and couldn't pronounce judgments on the soldiers on her side; McFaye also strictly forbade her to speak. Finally, Catherine wrote "Why" in her notebook and collapsed in the snow.

Lying on the hospital ship in Fran, she still clutched that photo in her hand, flipping through it from side to side the whole way.

After McFaye finished speaking, only the soft crackling of peat in the stove remained in the office.

"How is she now?" Richard asked.

"In the sanatorium, she was separated from her uncle by only one wall."

McFee sighed. "She can't even write anymore."

Richard stood there, his hand now resting on his left chest.

"Who else have you photographed like this?" McFaye asked again.

Richard counted in his mind: the family photo in Ashford's backyard, the two in room 314, Duncan in the sanatorium...

"I took pictures of my family, all the students in my aunt's research group, and Catherine's uncle. That's it."

"Lock them all up." McFee frowned.

"If this photo falls into someone else's hands, it will be a window through a curtain. Even if it's not used as a medium for spellcasting, having this photo will allow them to know your family's situation and when is the best day to strike." "...I understand."

Isabella, who hadn't spoken until now, turned around and asked, "Where's your grandfather's?"

"In the drawer in the dorm room."

"Give it to me tonight." She crumpled the glove into a ball.

Sparks from the stove bounced out of the grate and landed on the carpet.

McFaye broke the half oat biscuit on the window in half and handed the larger one to Richard.

"eat."

Richard took it.

"If you won't eat it, I will."

The white-haired giant began to eat the smaller half himself: "I was starving in Macedonia for over a month."

Isabella watched him chew on an oat cookie and secretly popped a candy into her own mouth.

McFee chewed on a biscuit and mumbled, "There's an old ritual in the Highlands called the Blood Oath."

"Back then, the McPhee family and the Blackwood family fought for the hunting grounds on the north shore of Lake Arryn for generations."

Later, someone from the McPhee family fired a shot in the fog, using an enchanted bullet, which instantly killed the eldest son of the Blackwood family.

McFee finished the biscuit and patted the crumbs off his hands.

"The younger brother buried the older brother, and then he went home and stopped talking."

He ate, hunted, and chopped grass for the cattle as usual, without saying a word.

His mother begged him through tears, so he helped her to a chair, turned around, and went back to chopping wood.

The girl who was engaged to him waited for half a year, but could only marry someone from another place.

The elders in the clan all say that the child has gone mad.

"How long has he been holding it in?"

"One year and one day."

In the old code, many time limits were set at one year and one day: serfs who escaped from the manor were considered free as long as they lived in a chartered city for one year and one day.

When that day comes, there will be no going back.

"The following autumn, at the livestock market in Influx."

He walked across half the market to the man who had fired the shot and uttered a single word.

The man collapsed on the spot, lifeless, yet he had not a single wound on his body.

Which word?

"That person's name."

The rabbit on the window stopped talking.

"I've heard this story twice."

McFee said, "It was told by an old man with missing teeth at the pub that McFee's family frequented."

One of them was Elpayen, Catherine's great-grandfather, who told me this around the campfire the year he took me on a field mission.

Isabella placed her gloves on her knees and slowly smoothed them out. "So, Catherine these past few weeks..."

McFee nodded: "The mask forces her to speak, but she refuses, gritting her teeth and enduring it every day, but the traces in her blood believe that the ritual has begun again."

"And now that girl has shaken hands with Maggie, neither of them cares about the old grudges between their ancestors, which makes things even more troublesome."

"Every time she endures it, a stone is added to this place."

McFee pushed the photo toward Richard.

"Take a look. Old Mo just said you've improved your skills in Milan."

Richard spread out the stilling mirror technique, and the still water fell onto the slowly flowing time on the back of the photograph.

After the self-check of 【Critical Thinking and Deconstruction】 was activated, he viewed the photos almost like he was looking at blueprints:

If the left pan keeps falling, it will fall into Catherine's throat;

The fulcrum in the middle of the balance beam is a knot, tied in an old way, with a vow inside: I will tell.

There was originally a space after this sentence, reserved for the person to whom it was meant to be spoken, but now it's empty.

He shifted his gaze to the scale pan on the right. The IOUs were all tied with thin threads to the hand of the person holding the photo—himself.

Richard raised his head: "The problem is that the blood oath has no fixed address, but the IOU does have an owner, and it clearly states who owes whom and who the creditor is."

He gently placed the photo back on the table.

"Professor, there's a way on the other side of the subcontinent."

If a divine weapon is released and cannot be retrieved, then point it to a landing spot.

"Since the IOU has an owner, let's put our vow on the IOU."

McFee raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Where did you learn your knowledge of the subcontinent's mystical aspects?"

"Borrowed from a book."

"Who lent it to you?"

"...an administrator."

The white-haired giant stared at him for a long time. "...Old Mo mentioned Milan in his letter, but the next three lines were crossed out."

Upon hearing this, Richard suddenly turned his face to the window, but he couldn't see anything through the fog.

"Alright, let's go see her today."

McFee stood up, his head almost hitting the chandelier.

When the three arrived at the sanatorium, Duncan sat in the glass greenhouse, holding a copy of The Scotsman.

He had gained a little weight since summer, but his complexion was worse.

The old hunter folded the newspaper, then suddenly grabbed Richard's arm with great force.

"Kid, you promised me last time you'd keep an eye on her for me, don't forget!"

Catherine's room was at the end of the corridor. She sat against the headboard, her red hair braided and draped over her shoulders.

On the bedside table was an enamel mug filled with broken pencil stubs.

The girl's eyes widened when she saw Richard come in.

She saw the photo in McFaye's hand again, and quickly jumped halfway out of bed. Then she snatched the photo from the professor's hand, turned it over, and stuffed it under her pillow.

McFee held up his empty hand, looking somewhat disappointed.

"...I'm your mentor, after all."

Catherine snorted and ignored him.

She touched the notebook, picked out the longest pencil stub from the cup, and began to write.

She wrote very slowly, each stroke of her pen feeling as if it were pressing down on a stone.

"……photo."

After I finished writing, the pencil snapped in half with a "crack".

She threw the broken pen tip into the cup and glared at Richard.

Duncan coughed at the door:

"The professor showed me the photos, and they were indeed just so-so."

Catherine grabbed a broken pencil from the cup and threw it toward the door. The pencil tip hit the doorframe, and Duncan, without even dodging, grinned and walked away.

On the other side, McFaye acted immediately and was already preparing to set up the ceremony.

He asked the head nurse for the least disturbed spot in the sanatorium.

The head nurse didn't ask anything, but took a key from a bunch of keys on her waist and slapped it into his hand.

"Return it before midnight, and don't touch the developing tank."

The location was a small darkroom next to the newly added X-ray room in the sanatorium, specifically for developing film.

Catherine was made to lie on the film developing table, covered with two blankets.

McFee pulled a stone from his coat pocket.

"I found it by Lake Erin," he said, pressing the stone down on the girl's stomach.

Catherine looked down at the stone, then looked up at him, her green eyes filled with question marks.

Isabella answered for McFaye: "Keep it to yourself, so it won't leak out."

McFaye sat down on the stool and held out his hand: "IOUs." Richard counted them and took the IOUs out of the notebook.

He counted them; there were seventeen pages in total.

Some were torn from notebooks, some were written on the back of train tickets, and one was even written in the blank space of a restaurant bill.

McFee untied the rope and reached for the antler chisel from beside Catherine's pillow—the one she'd brought back from Firelink Village, which she now never parted with.

The white-haired giant casually picked up an IOU and flicked it along the edge with the tip of his chisel.

He processed the report while simultaneously reporting:

"A chisel from Yanhuo Village, I owe you."

"I owe you money for treating my uncle Duncan's injury."

"Water horsehair, I will take it myself."

There was also a piece of paper with very small pencil writing, squeezed onto the back of an old train ticket:

"I fell asleep on the sofa one day in July and didn't serve tea to the guests. I owe them."

Isabella peeked at the IOUs and couldn't help but shake her head, thinking that her nephew's charm was growing stronger. McFee finished carving the last IOU, put the chisel back beside Catherine, and stood up, retreating to the corner.

"Alright, let's begin."

Isabella stood in the salt circle, facing the bed.

She cleared her throat, speaking in the tone of a bard.

"èisib. (Listen)"

The second sentence was in Latin, and she repeated the judgment in this alternating manner.

"Listen, you who sit by the fire."

"Words take shape in the darkness."

"It must land before dawn."

She then changed the text, using Albionese, the scripture that every child in the church had heard.

"There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under the heavens... a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak."

The fog outside the window slowly condensed, clinging to the glass and ceasing to flow. Richard activated his spiritual vision, and the scales of Nemesis quickly appeared on the other side of the curtain.

He took out a silver needle from the box, stared at the scales for a few seconds, and then suddenly raised his hand.

"i! (Settled!)"

The silver needle slanted across the air, just barely grazing the edge that was invisible to the naked eye.

With a snap, the scales that had been suspended for so long finally began to move.

The next moment, the entire stack of IOUs suddenly sank.

Richard's wrist was pressed down and almost couldn't be supported.

The other side of the curtain also changed.

The mask of Nemesis slowly emerged from Catherine's head.

The mask had only two empty eye sockets, and it remained motionless in front of Catherine.

Immediately afterwards, a voice, whose gender and age were indiscernible, resounded directly in her mind:

"Does this retribution have to be borne by you?" Catherine opened her mouth, but before she could utter a sound, blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.

She swallowed the blood: "It's not like I'm indispensable."

The room quieted down.

Catherine closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again, she was no longer staring at the mask.

She looked past the Nemesis mask and out the window at the lingering thick fog.

"...Precisely because it's not like I'm indispensable."

The girl's voice was hoarse, almost barely a whisper.

"If no one else will do it, then I will."

As the last few words were spoken, the IOU in Richard's hand began to change color.

At the same moment, the view outside the window also changed.

The fog that had been clinging to the outside of the glass suddenly receded to both sides, revealing the night sky.

A few stars hung inside, their brightness almost blinding. Then, all the windows of the sanatorium shook together, emitting a low hum.

In some ward, someone was disturbed by the noise and mumbled a curse in their sleep.

The scales behind the curtain swayed even more violently.

The weighing pan on the left, which had been pressed down quite low, suddenly bounced up, swung back and forth several times, and finally stopped at a position close to equilibrium, with only a slight tilt.

Nemesis's second divinely crafted weapon was finally completed.

McFaye, however, did not relax.

"It's not over yet."

After he finished speaking, he turned his head and looked at the door of the dark room, as if something had been drawn to it.

Richard spread the still water outwards and saw a patch of damp, cold air.

This evil creature was covered in the breaths of others, dozens, hundreds of breaths, each breath carrying a hint of blood and the metallic smell of rust.

McFee didn't intervene; he merely provided an introduction:

"This evil spirit is called 'consumption qi.' It loves to suck the breath of people with lung problems when they come out at night. It's most common near hospitals, and the nurses on duty just mistake it for a nighttime cough." The evil spirit outside the door seemed to sense that something was wrong with this sanatorium. It had just come close but then tried to leave.

"Try it quickly, or it will escape."

McFee said to Catherine, "Isabella and I both restrained our ether, but at this distance, even the slowest thing can react."

Catherine pushed the stone off her stomach, propped herself up, and sat up. The blood at the corner of her mouth had dried.

She looked at the door, where the eerie mist swirled rapidly.

Catherine only said one word.

"Disperse!"

As soon as the word was spoken, the red light in the dark room went off with a "snap".

The hundreds of breaths hanging on the tuberculosis-like body all fell off, it became more and more deflated, deflated into a layer of skin, then turned into ash, and finally even ash was left.

Upstairs, in some room, an old man let out a long sigh in his sleep.

McFaye hummed in agreement, the wrinkles on his face smoothing out:

"Remember what I just said. From now on, you will accumulate this blood oath. The longer you accumulate it, the stronger it will be." Catherine nodded.

"It can disperse evil spirits, interrupt someone's incantation, and preemptively define something, which is what you just did."

The white-haired giant glanced again at the blackened IOU in Richard's hand.

"If the loop can't hold it all, just put it on his stack of IOUs. If you need it, just ask him for one back."

"But there's also a risk here: if the IOU falls into the enemy's hands, it's as if our capabilities are rendered useless."

Richard re-tied the stack of IOUs, stuffed them back into the inner pocket, and then buttoned his coat on the outside.

McFee then said to Catherine, "You still cough when you talk, just a little. You should think about it."

Catherine touched the pencil next to the notebook and chisel and wrote: Then I'll talk less.

This time the pen didn't break.

She put down her notebook and turned to look at Richard.

Richard stared at it for a long time, so long that he began to wonder if he had developed some kind of developer on his face.

"I won't say thank you." Her voice was hoarse and soft.

Richard did not speak.

"Thank you because I want to pay back a debt."

She swallowed a mouthful of saliva tinged with blood.

"I'd like to owe you this."

The dark room was very quiet. She would even put the meat pie back in its place and write down on the back of the train ticket if she didn't pour a cup of tea for the guest.

For someone who always needs to balance things out, this moment is a willing loss of balance.

Isabella suddenly turned around and pulled McFaye over.

"Professor, let's go check if the water has boiled yet!"

"What kind of water?"

"Any kind of water."

She dragged and pulled the old man, who was a head and a half taller than her, out the door. The door closed halfway behind them, only to be pulled shut tightly by Isabella from the outside.

Catherine turned her gaze back to the inside pocket of Richard's coat.

"...The photo is ugly."

"Then give it back to me?"

"I won't pay it back."

After she finished speaking, she leaned back against the film and pulled the blanket over half of her face.

Before long, the breathing under the blanket became long and heavy.

She was asleep, one hand draped outside the blanket, her red braid hanging down from the side, her lips slightly parted, just like that afternoon.

Richard stood beside her, watching her, his right hand unconsciously rising up, his thumb and forefinger spread out, forming a frame.

"You dare?"

McFee was still half-pulled into the hallway by Isabella, while the other half peeked out, his eyes wide open.

………………December 14th, 11 PM.

The atmosphere in the temple was colder than usual.

All seven stone chairs were occupied, the flame in Hecate's torch was kept low, and the key hung motionless on her waist.

She didn't exchange pleasantries.

"Winter Solstice, Gotthard Pass"

Her voice came from three faces simultaneously: the girl's voice, the mother's voice, and the old woman's voice, all maintaining a cold and hard tone.

"Anyone who dares to approach that mountain pass will have their chair taken back; this rule is above all else."

Hecate placed her hand on the torch.

"I've asked around about the situation there several times this month."

"No reply was received from any place."

"One person returned, and there was only one word: hungry."

As the word left her lips, the flames in the temple all receded, and the wheat above Demeter's head rustled. Hecate added, "The third place, they ate the messenger I sent."

No one responded, so Hercules shifted his sitting position.

"I also have an old friend up north, whom you all met during the last team battle," Hecate continued.

"She outlived everyone at our table combined. When I asked her about it, she only replied with one sentence."

The flame on the torch extinguished:

"Don't let anyone or anything related to you appear near the Gotthard Pass that night."

Upon hearing this, everyone present realized the seriousness of the situation.

"Alright, I've finished speaking."

Hecate tapped the table and looked around.

"Now each of you must swear an oath with your masks not to go near that place."

Dionysus was the first to raise his cup.

"I swear on this cup, I will drink in the cellar until noon the next day on the winter solstice, without even leaving my bedroom." He thought for a moment and then added.

"If someone invites me to drink on the mountain over there, I'll get them drunk too."

Hercules slammed his olive club to the ground.

"I am to the north, about seven or eight hundred miles from that mountain, with a sea in between."

I swear on this stick, even if my wife tries to drag me, I won't go.

Demeter placed the scythe across her knees.

"The land needs to be plowed around the winter solstice, and I will stay in the fields to watch over it."

Prometheus was silent for a moment, then opened his palm and held up a small cluster of fire.

"I'm not going. None of those furnaces in the workshop will go out on the winter solstice."

Nemesis's scales floated up, revealing two words: "Not going."

Hecate's gaze lingered on the steelyard balance for a moment longer.

She said nothing, and turned to the last chair. "Hermes."

Richard sat there, his face covered by a bronze mask featuring two golden serpents.

He knew what Hecate was waiting for: an oath sworn in the name of God would be weighed by the veil.

But on the night of the winter solstice, his body would remain in the capital, lying in bed and not leaving for a moment.

The one who actually went up the mountain was his shadow, wearing the "Rebellious Envoy Mask" with a golden snake biting its own tail.

The curtain did not recognize that the mask was Hermes; the hunter recognized the "Emperor," and the group at the Nordic table also recognized the "Emperor."

He spoke up: "Hermes will not approach that pass."

This sentence, even the punctuation marks, are genuine.

Hecate looked at him for a moment: "Just this one sentence?"

Just this one sentence.

The flame on the torch flickered, then straightened up again.

The curtain weighed the statement and found no fault with it either. Hecate withdrew her gaze.

The mask in Richard's arms burned, making his chest feel hot.

Two golden snakes slowly coiled around him where he couldn't see them.