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

That holy water was completely unnecessary!

The first three are enough to accomplish the mission!

Good heavens, how did the Holy Spirit Church manage to develop gunpowder and blow it up wherever they want? If they do what they say, won't my ranch be blown to smithereens?

I looked at Father Carter with a probing gaze, and the unscrupulous man nodded heavily.

“I’ve studied micro-expression psychology. Just as you suspected… it’s not that the Vatican has no way to handle this, but rather that you can’t accept their method. If I were to report it to the cardinals according to procedure, you would soon find that a trench has been dug along the edge of the pasture and filled with alchemical sulfur…”

...So it turns out this guy wasn't without options, he just didn't want to tell me. This method of treating and saving lives sounds so old-fashioned Western medicine. I wonder how many patients he could kill with just one meal?

The art of conversation lies in psychological weighing. Having discussed the harsh aspects of the situation, Father Carter finally revealed his true stance.

"Don't worry too much. The effects of the magic mirror fragments are just external forces and won't fundamentally change this land. I can basically determine that the distortion here is dissipating over time. So I suggest you adopt conservative treatment; it will get better after a while..."

This solution, which mediates and harmonizes the conflicting elements, is definitely from Traditional Chinese Medicine. It's truly remarkable that besides Dort, this medical prodigy, there's also such a learned itinerant doctor, well-versed in both Chinese and Western medicine, in Mineral Town.

(╯°□°）╯︵┻━┻

Also, I don't know if when he said "it will get better" he meant that the problem of the spirit gathering in the ranch would return to normal, or that I would gradually get used to this eerie atmosphere.

If it's the latter, I would definitely hang it on the spire of the church to greet the first rays of the rising sun, a symbol of hope.

"Well, this is the only thing we can do for now..." I looked at the ranch with a headache. It had finally started to get a little better, and now this strange thing had happened again.

Father Carter shrugged. “That’s precisely why I don’t like dealing with the Vatican. They take the rules more seriously than anything else and never know how to be flexible or tactful. For example, if the old men of the local church find out about the kappa I left with you, they’ll definitely send an exorcist priest to investigate immediately.”

I asked, "What are you here to investigate?"

"Of course, it's about investigating the threat."

The priest said helplessly, "These secretive clans are all related to some unknown entities. If they pose little threat, and the group is inclined towards order and willing to live peacefully, they will be relocated to special uninhabited areas."

"What if they don't listen?" I continued.

Carter said, "That would be more troublesome—they would usually be completely wiped out, especially notorious and brutal races like the Deep Ones. That's why I used the Secret Instrument to render it harmless, as a double insurance policy. Otherwise, if the information were leaked, both Gotz and I would be in mortal danger."

Indeed, if Dolanco's affair were to be exposed, Gots, as the sole heir to the Deep One bloodline, would inevitably meet a tragic end.

Carter handled this matter quite well, willingly hiding the kappa on my ranch. What annoys me, though, is that he kept this from me for so long, pretending to be too lazy to report it, all to deceive this 69-year-old...

"Father, may I ask one more question...?"

"You say it."

Carter answered absentmindedly, focusing on the still-unresolved darkness of the sky, as if deep in thought.

"That's strange... It's been so long since the purification, why hasn't the starry sky recovered yet..."

"Ah... I don't know which star is which, or which moon... I just want to know, if a lot of people gather together to do ghostly things, do you have a way to deal with it..."

I numbly pointed behind him, my voice trembling slightly. Father Carter noticed something was wrong and finally turned around, following my gaze…

…………

In the early hours of the morning, the mountain mist flowed slowly as usual, invading the land. Desolation and bleakness coexisted; as far as the eye could see, there was only the shadow of the mountain mist, the images pale, the fields windless, time and space seemingly frozen, only the film reel in the projector slowly moving, changing the strange phenomena before one's eyes.

The once empty pasture is now filled with countless blurry, paper-like figures, floating automatically a dozen centimeters above the ground without any wind!

These people are translucent, dressed in rags, and drift in the air like mist, oblivious to everything around them. Once the mist drifts into the pasture, it automatically transforms into these terrifying beings.

The gloomy night sky was dark, and the lights in the main house were not yet turned on. The neatly arranged fields, which had been cleared during the day, were now lying low and still, as if they too were avoiding the terrifying atmosphere around them.

"Father..."

"Don't reveal your identity! Where did this number of evil spirits come from...?"

I looked up and saw the misty, malevolent spirits, thin as a sheet of fluttering white paper, constantly twisting into strange shapes. On these indistinct faces, the eyeballs had vanished, the corners of the eyes were swollen and festering, the drooping hands were dripping with blood, the nails were broken and mangled, and their feet were gone, leaving only bits of flesh and bone, a purplish-grayish hue…

“Father, these are miners who disappeared in the mines decades ago… The strange occurrences here seem to have attracted them, and they don’t seem to be here with good intentions…”

Father Carter, watching the evil spirits closing in, couldn't help but say, "I don't want to know how they got here, I just want to know when they're leaving..."

These evil spirits of the miners, unable to see, slowly approached us, extending their mutilated hands. Just as we were about to be completely surrounded, a piercing howl suddenly echoed through the pasture…

Amidst eerie cries like those of an infant, nimble and agile figures broke through the darkness, leaping from the fence at the edge of the ranch. Their hair stood on end, their bodies arched, and they howled at the evil spirits, forcing the wooden spirits back a few steps!

...Is it a cat?

For some reason, the town's cats all gathered on the pasture at midnight, twenty or thirty of them following one after another, forming a circle, with Father Carter and I protecting them in the middle.

"Are you a follower of the cat god?"

Father Carter asked in surprise.

I said irritably, "No, I'm a dog lover. And you're called Carter? I seriously suspect you've established diplomatic relations with cats!"

"What does this have to do with my name?!"

"It's extremely important. If you can produce the silver key today, we'll really be saved..."

While I was still wondering, I suddenly noticed two exceptionally burly gray figures leap over the ranch fence and stand majestically among the cats. They roared to the sky, commanding the cats to launch a fierce attack on the evil spirit!

Chapter 581 Hand over the little man in the bottle

Did you protect everyone?

Police Leopard, you are so powerful!

There were no large, ferocious wild animals in Mineral Town, so when the first immigrants arrived on the island, every household kept domestic cats to keep out rodents. Over time, this inevitably led to the emergence of a group of stray cats.

Two large gray cats had somehow become the leaders of the town's cat tribe, and had unknowingly built up such a large group. Lately, they'd been disappearing every night, only lazily catching up on sleep during the day. Who would have thought they'd been doing this?

There were about thirty of these furry little creatures in total. They gathered together and transformed into brave warriors, brandishing their sharp claws.

Strangely, the paper-like evil spirits seemed genuinely afraid of the cats' sharp teeth and claws. Where the evil spirits that were nearby had been scratched by wild cats, the mist that made up their bodies dissipated into a thin fog, unable to take shape for a long time.

Meanwhile, the evil spirits that were further away sensed the threat and began to disperse instead of gathering, their bodies swaying erratically in the thick fog.

"Great!"

I watched with great joy as the cats triumphed. Two police leopards, after their battle, even ran back to my side, proudly displaying the fur on their necks and rubbing against my calves.

I ruffled their fur, and the police leopards ran off again, majestically attacking the hundreds of evil spirits that were constantly approaching the ranch with their front paws.

"Marcus, it's not time to be happy yet..."

Father Carter nudged me in the back with a serious expression and said warily.

"Why? The situation is clearly not just slightly good, it's extremely good!"

The unscrupulous priest said, "Look at the way those cats are behaving...look closely..."

I observed carefully for a while with some skepticism, and indeed found some things that weren't quite right.

The diverse array of cats appeared fierce in their attack, each strike leaving indelible marks on the evil spirit. However, the swirling clouds of mist did not dissipate or vanish; instead, they gradually condensed into a chaotic fog, taking considerable time to re-emerge the evil spirit's form.

But after the attack, the cat, which had been moving so easily, was covered in a layer of gray gas, its landing became slightly stiff, and its howling sound became a little weaker.

This shows that cats capable of dealing with evil spirits are not as powerful as I imagined. Without a way to completely expel and eliminate the evil spirits, this war of attrition will inevitably end in the cats' defeat.

The two cheetahs were still charging forward and backward, just like when I first saw them hunting. Perhaps because they were so robust, the gray fog didn't affect them that much, and they were still fighting on the front lines.

"This doesn't seem like a human degenerate into an evil spirit; it's more like a contagious cult... They appear to be just ordinary dead people, so what kind of torment did they suffer to extinguish their individual thoughts and coalesce into this sinister being..."

After observing for a while, Father Carter couldn't help but sigh, put his hands together in front of his chest and closed his eyes in prayer, his posture even more focused than when he was taking a nap in the confessional.

These miners were drawn by an unknown force and disappeared into the hot spring mine, where they have remained unaccounted for for decades.

It seems these poor people have struggled in the darkness for a long time, wearing out their feet, breaking their fingers, shattering their bones, and perhaps even gouging out their own eyes after witnessing something indescribable, yet they have never found a way to be redeemed and escape suffering...

After such terrible torment, their concept of death had long since become blurred, and they could no longer distinguish between "you," "me," and "him." All that remained was the purest thought: to leave!

The changes that have occurred at the ranch today are like a bright lamp lit in the darkness, attracting moths that are frantically drawn to this land...

"Carter, if what you're saying is true, and the anomalies here are due to the influence of the Magic Mirror fragments, then why didn't this problem occur in the previous months? Even the last few days were peaceful until today?"

I suddenly remembered this question and quickly asked it.

Father Carter stared nervously at the distant, misty evil spirit. "The spread of the distorted contamination takes time. Although there were some changes in the past few months, ordinary people couldn't detect them at all... At most, people just didn't want to go near it at night..."

He swallowed hard. "Also, there seems to be something unusual about you, constantly accelerating this anomaly... Were you wearing a talisman a couple of days ago? Otherwise, you should have died long ago!"

"Pah! Pah! What bad luck! I should say I could have given everyone a whole hellish experience two days ago."

After thinking about it carefully, I realized that the unusual thing about me must be a product of the magic side.

Therefore, the colonizer system and portable reactors must be ruled out first—these two things may not be very Newtonian, but they might be very Einsteinian-Bohrian?

The biggest hidden danger is definitely the meme imprint of "ultimate disaster" on my body! The beings that appeared tonight are obviously related to the meme crisis of that year, so it's reasonable that they would find their way here by following the scent.

But meme imprinting has been around for a while now, so why did it suddenly erupt tonight?

...Could it be that it has something to do with me taking off the ring and giving it to Lady Lilia?

Holy crap, now that I think about it, something really doesn't seem right!

When the Death Mirror first tried to harm me, it seemed that "Namo Gatling Bodhisattva" protected me from the spatial turbulence.

Later, the "Lord of Light" infused the ring with his unique light of origin, transforming Mr. Rhodes's old bronze ring into a unique artifact.

As is widely known, "Namo Gatling Bodhisattva" is equivalent to "King of Light", "Zhonghuang Taiyi", "Wuji Laomu", and many other strange identities.

Beings of this caliber could very well have suppressed the anomalies in this land, just as the primordial gods suppressed the evil spirits that roamed the continent.

And since I gave the ring away tonight, it was left unprotected, and the land's mutations naturally grew wildly amidst the aura of the "final calamity"...

…………

I described the design of the ring, and Father Carter immediately looked shocked after hearing it.

"The ring that Rhodes was holding was in your possession before?! That was a sacred relic bestowed upon him by the Holy See, a piece of jewelry that a spiritual being would wear for life, capable of dispelling all distortions and contamination!"

I really want to tell you that you've got it wrong. The Rhodes I met is not the Rhodes you're talking about. Although they look alike, have similar experiences, and even have identical personalities, this Rhodes is not that Rhodes, and this ring is not that ring either...

But after going around in circles for a long time, I still couldn't figure out how to express it in words, so all my thoughts boiled down to one sentence.

"Yes."

"...The only way to suppress the anomalies here now is to retrieve that ring. Although the relic is ancient, its power should not be underestimated."

I nodded. "Hmm, you make a lot of sense. So, how do you plan to get out?"

Father Carter was stunned.

Break out? Don't be ridiculous.