There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

Old Yorkson, upon hearing the news, finally looked up from his interaction with reading through his nose, his face beaming with immense joy.

As he had done countless times before, he took charge of the planning and design of the hot spring resort, and even went down into the kiln to fire a batch of bricks with beautiful patterns to serve as the foundation stones for the resort.

…………

On the day the hot spring house was completed, old Yorkson personally laid down the foundation stone.

We couldn't help but burst into laughter when we saw the names engraved on it.

He ridiculed us mercilessly for carving our names on the wooden planks of the house.

He said that for a long-time resident of this landlocked country like himself, doing such a thing was blatant naiveté.

Seeing us teasing him, old Yorkson didn't refute us. He just sighed softly, pulled Dolanco, a carpenter who had switched careers to build wooden houses, and started talking about various trivial things from his youth that he had never wanted to mention before.

We had a feeling that this old man's vast knowledge far exceeded what we, as miners, should have been. But no one was willing to delve into the story behind it.

After all, we all have a past that we'd rather not talk about again.

Chapter 21 Three Strange Things

.........

Something strange happened.

The strange things I'm talking about aren't the sensational rumors circulating among the ignorant masses in the countryside.

After all, telling ghost stories had long been a popular form of entertainment among miners. Old Yorkson, in particular, always managed to come up with some strange and ever-evolving tales.

The strange things I'm referring to are a series of odd rumors circulating among the miners that seem rather unusual.

The first thing was what happened near Little Hook's ranch.

After leaving his life as a miner, young Hooker was filled with great passion and devoted himself to agriculture, successfully cultivating some land.

Although his paranoia was not cured, he spent even more effort than he had in cultivating the land, building a tight wall around the land and spending a considerable sum to rebuild a house on his own land.

To build this house, he even demolished all the houses in the town to obtain building materials.

However, one day, a miner from the foot of the mountain, after drinking too much, accidentally wandered into his territory.

Under the moonlight that night, a drunkard, carrying a half-empty bottle of liquor, sat down on a rock outside Little Hooker's plantation, his bleary eyes trying to discern the right way back.

Later, he always made a habit of drinking heavily in bars, and before his alcohol-numbed brain completely failed, he would tell the people around him about the terrible experience that day, like a hardworking farmer, infecting the minds of every listener with fear.

"You know I'm not a coward... hiccup..."

"But that night, in that wasteland, I heard a sound."

"The sound came from a distance, and maybe because I had a little to drink, it sounded as indistinct as if it were coming from the surface of the water to the bottom..."

"It has nothing to do with me being drunk, you know my alcohol tolerance... I said... don't interrupt me..."

“I thought it was Jeffrey and his group coming to find me, so I answered their calls loudly.”

"But as my voice continued to travel, I felt that voice getting closer and closer..."

"That was definitely not a human sound!"

"It could be some kind of wild beast, some kind of large bird, or even a whale surfacing... Whatever it is, it's definitely not a sound that any of the bastards here could make..."

"The alcohol in my head slowly wore off, and after realizing something was wrong, I stopped responding."

"But the sound kept getting closer to my location, and it became clearer and more urgent, as if it was waiting for me to reveal my position further."

"That thing is tracking me!"

"The alcohol instantly turned into cold sweat and seeped out of my body... Oh my god, I still feel the same way when I think about it... Is there any kind person who can help me replenish some of the lost alcohol?"

“Thank you, Pablo… glug glug, I’ll continue…”

“I recognized the sound. It was hoarse and rapid, unlike any other sound I had ever heard before. I knew the panting of wild beasts, the flapping of birds' wings, the leaping of fish, the fluttering of insects. These sounds were full of life…”

"But the voice was deathly still and silent, as if speaking was not its instinct, but a means of self-torture..."

"I describe it as a wild dog..."

"That sound was the guttural noise made when chasing, intimidating, or deterring the enemy, exactly like the hunting dogs my family used to have..."

"Oh, right, I also remember the dog's last growl when it was slaughtered by its starving family. It was full of hatred and fury towards the living..."

"I was paralyzed on the ground, unable to move, and could only hear the sound slowly approaching from afar. Eventually, I pinpointed its location..."

"It stopped right behind Little Hook's fence! It was just a wall away from me!"

"It found me!"

This absurd story appears multiple times in his descriptions of being drunk.

But when we found him the next day, there were no animal footprints at the spot, and his body had no wounds. He was just curled up in extreme fear, lying under an old tree.

As the town's sheriff, all I can do with my limited knowledge is conclude that this was an incident of auditory hallucination caused by alcohol.

.........

Secondly, we witnesses swore never to tell anyone, but I don't think anyone here will find out, so let me briefly describe it.

On a certain day, perhaps the day after the full moon, Sirius hung high in the sky before dawn had fully broken.

A few of us old buddies returned to the mine to continue the work we hadn't finished a few days ago, to widen the pit another layer.

For safety reasons, our mine is mined layer by layer. After each layer is mined, the structure is reinforced, and then a new layer is dug after determining a direction. This process is repeated, and we have already dug out twenty or thirty layers.

This structure achieves a balance because the minerals and soil layers above are transported away, which reduces the gravitational force on the lower layers.

But when Antonio was searching for the first level of the mine stairs, strange things happened.

The wooden ladder that we remember being located in the northwest corner of the first floor has been moved to the northeast corner.

The two are at least ten meters apart, and there are no signs of filling or digging at all, as if it was meant to be there all along.

We suspected that our senses were being affected by the harmful gases in the mine, so we quickly ran outside and took deep breaths for a long time. We also did some of the sensory tests that old Yorkson had taught us before we went back into the mine to check again.

But the situation remained unchanged; the mine ladder was still firmly fixed in the northeast corner, where it shouldn't have been...

We checked fifteen floors down, and found that the third, fifth, eleventh, and twelfth floors showed the same obvious displacement, with an unbelievable magnitude.

The other floors have also changed to varying degrees, but their locations are not that far from where we remember them.

Originally, due to the different soil structure and mineral distribution of each layer, we were looking for the breakthrough point of the next layer according to the optimal solution, which resulted in the different ladder positions of each layer.

Unexpectedly, this behavior has now caused our perceptions to deviate to varying degrees.

However, in the following days, we did not find that this change had any special impact on our mining, so at Old Yorkson's call, everyone kept it a secret.

After all, life goes on, doesn't it?

.........

The third thing!

The third thing happened!

This incident has truly saddened me so much that I don't want to describe it further...

You'll never know how much this incident damaged my fascination with this place!

Antonio is dead.

I discovered it.

One morning, we were about to go up the mountain to mine as planned, but Antonio never showed up.

We assumed he was just like usual, getting completely drunk at the bar the night before, which caused him to skip work the next day, so we didn't pay much attention.

But on the way to the mine, near Little Hook's plantation, we saw Antonio's mangled corpse.

It was like being thrown down from a great height by a giant and landing on a hard rock.

Miserable.

I was allowed to omit the investigation of various clues, the questioning of the townspeople, and the interrogation of the most suspicious criminal, Little Hook.

Ultimately, we had no concrete evidence to prove his involvement. However, on the advice of old Yorkson, we placed young Hook under protective control, on the grounds that the murderer might be hiding around Hook's plantation.

That is, another type of imprisonment involving more than one person.

Little Hook's expression at that moment was a complex mix of calm, humiliation, fear, and forbearance, so complex that I couldn't glean any meaningful information from his face. He eventually gave up arguing and simply instructed us to remember to harvest the nearly ripe pumpkins from his plantation.

I must have been so angry that I was so preoccupied with Antonio's misfortune that I forgot to pay attention to other aspects of the town.

This led to the fourth strange event, which occurred again in an extremely short time that I never expected…

Chapter 22 Did You Hear the Song?

…………

Alright, while waiting for the ship at the dock, I've decided to finish telling the fourth strange story.

While Hook was being interrogated, another violent riot was taking place in the tavern.

The main force behind the riots remained the newly arrived immigrants. Their equal rights movement had evolved from numerous factions into a clear main faction—the Representative Faction.

They called for adequate representation among them to ensure equal access to the mines, while distributing the profits as dividends to all.

After the plan was proposed, it immediately gained the support of most of the subsequent miners and was put into practice.

In Antonio's words, these people were "shameless vampires" and "ungrateful country bumpkins," so this man with courage flowing in his veins also fought against them.

But this time, Antonio's death became the catalyst for the miners' gathering.

In the tavern, they all looked at their spontaneously elected leader, awaiting his orders.

Our demands are very simple!

"It's about filling the vacancies left by the three withdrawing players: Little Hook, Antonio, and Old Yorkson, and taking over 50% of the mining rights to this mine!"

"Although we have a large number of people and sufficient manpower, we respect the priority of those who arrive first."

"What we oppose is their self-imposed exclusive rights and inheritance rights! This is completely unequal treatment!"

"As long as we keep going, we will be able to realize our goals step by step!"

"This is their weakest moment! This is our best chance!"