Chapter 342: Labyrinths and Saints

Hardly anyone walked along the stone-paved path by the canal.

Occasionally, a barge or two drifted slowly past, the boatmen squatting at the stern wrapped in thick cotton coats.

Richard followed the route marked in the fishing guide.

He walked for about half an hour, passing two water gates and several numbered wooden stakes along the way.

"The seventh stake downstream from Gate Three" sat on an extremely secluded stretch of the riverbank.

The river narrowed here, the water taking on a dark greenish hue.

A large rock sat on the bank. Beside it stood a crooked wooden stake tethered with a fishing line.

Someone was sitting on the rock.

Beside the figure rested a mug with a chipped rim.

Richard couldn't make out the man's face, but he recognized the mug from a distance.

"Professor!"

He stopped five paces away.

The man flicked a finger against the fishing line.

"How did you find this place?"

Half of a wrinkled face peeked out from under the brim of his hat. The wrinkles were bunched together, making it impossible to tell whether he was smiling or just drowsy.

"Divination," Richard answered honestly. "I did a reading on myself."

Mortimer burst into laughter.

"Smart kid. So your reading told you to 'go to the canal'?"

"It wasn't that precise."

Richard crouched down on the grass next to the rock.

"The result was 'follow your curiosity.' Then I found a fishing guide at a secondhand bookstall with your handwritten notes inside."

"A fishing guide..." The old professor tapped his temple, struggling to remember.

"I must have bought it when I was young, then cleared it out when I moved offices. I didn't expect it to end up at a bookstall."

He shifted his posture, his spine popping in the process.

"Have a seat."

Richard moved from the grass to the edge of the rock.

"Professor, why are you out here fishing by the canal?"

"Fishing is just a pastime." The old professor flicked the line again. "Hiding from people is the real objective."

"Are a lot of people looking for you?"

"The Compilation Group's business just wrapped up, and the frontline is already pushing for the next batch of seal designs."

The old professor picked up the chipped mug and took a sip.

"Then there's the crowd from the School of Theology. They've been arguing with our department for two months now.

"Both sides keep coming to me to mediate, as if an old coot like me could influence the entire faculty."

He pulled his felt hat down a little lower.

"If I stay in my office, that door gets knocked on dozens of times a day. I can't even go to the bathroom without coming back to find two notes shoved under the crack.

"So I left."

He gestured toward the slanted wooden stake with his chin.

"I discovered this fishing spot ten years ago.

"Both sides of this section of the canal are full of abandoned buildings. No one ever comes here, though there aren't many fish either."

He took another sip of tea.

"But I don't care about a few fish. I just wanted a quiet place to sit."

"Professor." Richard didn't beat around the bush and started pulling things out of his canvas bag.

"I came to find you for actual business this time."

"Heh." Mortimer shot him a glance.

"Don't you bring 'actual business' every time you come, kid?

"Last time your aunt dragged you over, your hands weren't empty either."

"Last time was my aunt pestering you." Richard placed three items on the grassy bank, one by one.

"This time, I'm the one here to pester you."

"Alright, alright." The old professor waved him off.

"I've got nothing better to do anyway, and the fish aren't biting."

Three items rested on the grass.

A rubbing of the Cretan Labyrinth Fragments, a Carolingian saint's statue, and Demeter's clay bowl.

Mortimer pushed his felt hat back, his gaze turning sharp.

"Oho, you've saved up quite a haul."

He reached for the rubbing.

"Which one first?"

"The Labyrinth Fragments."

Mortimer unfolded the rubbing and spread it over his knees.

"Have you tried this yourself?"

"I have." Richard pulled his notes from his bag.

"I couldn't identify the path of any of the strokes. None of them match the reference charts I have."

Mortimer nodded.

"The labyrinth tradition is unique to Minoan civilization.

"The greatest characteristic of the Cretan labyrinth inscriptions is that the strokes themselves form a labyrinth."

Richard furrowed his brow.

"What do you mean?"

Mortimer bent over and traced an extremely simple spiral in the dirt.

"In the labyrinth tradition, every stroke is a path."

His finger slowly traced the spiral inward.

"You follow it, and as you go, it forks.

"One path leads deeper in; the other doubles back and winds around near the starting point.

"You think you've gone far, but when you look back, you realize you're still walking in circles right where you started."

Richard stared at the spiral in the dirt.

"So the reason I couldn't read it..."

"Is because you walked into it." Mortimer wiped the spiral away.

"The harder you try to read it, the further it leads you down the wrong path."

"How do you solve it?"

"Don't read it."

"...Don't read it?"

Mortimer pulled his hand back from the dirt and wiped it on his trouser leg.

"Listen to it.

"Turn off your Spirit Vision, and use your Inspiration to 'listen' to it instead."

Richard was eager to give it a shot.

"Professor, can I try it right now?"

"Go ahead. I'll watch." Mortimer picked up his tea mug.

Richard rested the rubbing on his knees, facing it directly.

He first deactivated his Spirit Vision, leaving only ink lines on the paper.

His Inspiration clung to the surface of the rubbing like a layer of condensation.

At first, he couldn't hear anything. His ears were filled entirely with the sound of the canal's current.

In the distance, the motor of a barge still chugged away.

He filtered out those noises layer by layer, until the world grew so quiet that only the sound of his own breathing remained.

He didn't know how much time passed.

Just as his knees started to go numb, Richard read it aloud.

"Walker of the labyrinth, remember the entrance is behind you.

"Every step takes you further from the entrance, but every step also leads to the exit.

"The labyrinth traps no one; what traps you is the moment you stop walking."

Richard opened his notebook and copied down the deciphered passage word for word.

It was a warning about the nature of the labyrinth and a reminder 'not to stop', yet it held no operational Spell Formula effects.

It was just three lines of... well, true but useless nonsense.

Richard was somewhat baffled.

"Professor, is that it?"

"That's it." Mortimer didn't even bat an eyelid.

"Did you think the most valuable thing in the labyrinth tradition was a Spell Formula for 'finding the exit'?"

"...Is it not?"

"Anyone who claims 'I know the way out' is just trying to scam you."

The old professor lowered his fishing line back into the water.

"The only thing that works is to not stop, to find the path through your own actions.

"If you take the wrong way, turn back and walk again."

Richard closed his notebook.

If this passage wasn't worth encrypting like that, did the person who wrote it just have too much time on their hands?

Perhaps these three sentences would become more useful than any Spell Formula... when he truly found himself lost.

"Bring that one over too." Mortimer pointed his chin at the saint's statue on the grass.

Richard handed over the Carolingian saint's statue.

Mortimer flipped the bronze statue to its base and scanned the line of inscription.

"This is the closing record of a canonization ritual."

The old professor bent down and wrote a few letters in the dirt.

Their shapes were quite different from modern Latin letters.

They had more curves and shorter vertical strokes, looking like a row of hunched-over little dwarves standing on a line.

"The canonization rituals in the Carolingian era were different from the system the Church uses now.

"When the Church canonizes a saint today, a bunch of cardinals gather for a meeting to vote.

"After voting, they issue a decree, all the churches across the country hang up the new saint's portrait, and that's the end of it."

"It wasn't like that back then.

"Back then, canonization meant genuinely carving the deceased saint's 'Name' into an artifact, turning it into their proxy in the material world.

"The final step of the ritual."

His fingertip stopped on a specific spot in the middle of the scroll.

"Was to put a 'lock' on the saint's Name."

"A lock?"

"Look here."

Richard leaned in and pushed his Spirit Vision to its maximum precision.

Inside the stroke at that exact spot was a microscopic knot.

"This knot." Mortimer's finger hovered over the spot.

"That's the lock."

"After the ritual concluded, the saint's Name was locked inside the artifact."

He rotated the bronze statue.

"Whoever has the skill to untie this knot...

"Can bring out the Name."

"Right." Mortimer nodded.

"Once it's out, how you use it is entirely up to you."

Richard took the bronze statue back.

"But then again."

The old professor added.

"The 'Names' locked by Carolingian canonization rituals belonged overwhelmingly to minor, localized saints:

"A monk who healed the sick in some parish, or a nun who drove a plague out of a village..."

"Bringing out their Names would only yield the power of a standard prayer."

Richard recalled Lecturer Pollock's class.

"The Church has spent centuries 'pulling the teeth' of ritual language.

"But if there's a canonization prayer that retains its original sharpness entirely intact, locked away in a Carolingian bronze statue that no one has touched..."

Mortimer looked at him.

"You're wondering if the Church missed a tooth or two after hundreds of years of pulling them."

"Yes."

"It's certainly possible." The old professor lifted his mug.

"But you have to untie the knot first to know whether the tooth inside is still there."

"And even if it is." He took a sip. "How sharp could the tooth of a minor Carolingian saint be?"

"Sharper than one that's been pulled."

"True enough." Mortimer set his mug down.

"Anyway, it's up to you. I'm not getting involved."

Richard put the bronze statue away and didn't press the matter.

What if?

That 'what if' made it worth spending the time to untie the knot.

The final item was Demeter's clay bowl.

The moment the bowl was brought out, Mortimer showed some interest.

"This one is the oldest. The layer of old ether in the bowl's walls is steeped all the way through, and the ether in the circle of carvings on the bottom... mm, two layers.

"The bottom layer is just as old as the bowl's walls, but it's coated with a fresh layer on top."

Mortimer bent over and flipped the bowl upside down.

"Look here, this curve represents earth, and the straight line represents a mouth.

"The curve on top of the straight line means 'a mouth beneath the earth'."

Richard leaned in.

"Now look at this section." Mortimer's finger shifted to the right.

"These symbols read together as 'a tongue in the mouth'."

When he reached the final segment, the old professor pulled his finger away from the bottom of the bowl.

"Try reading the rest yourself."

Richard applied his Inspiration to it.

Following the path the professor had just pointed out, he found the rhythm of the first half.

"The tongue tastes the grain... knows my reverence...

He pushed his Inspiration deeper.

"So it will not swallow my child."

As the final five symbols settled into place, the vibrational frequency of the ether at the bottom of the bowl suddenly plummeted.

Richard withdrew his Inspiration.

He wrote down the complete short prayer in his notebook:

"Beneath the earth lies a mouth, and in the mouth lies a tongue.

"I place the grain in the bowl, and the bowl upon the earth.

"The tongue tastes the grain, knows my reverence, and so will not swallow my child."

This was an invocation.

Three thousand years ago, farmers would kneel on the ridges of their newly sown fields, place the first handful of grain into the bowl, and recite these words.

The meaning was essentially: inviting whatever dwelt beneath the earth to come up and have a taste.

Demeter's field was likely right over a weak point.

The weak point was thinning, and the seeping ether was being absorbed by this three-thousand-year-old bowl.

The short prayer had been awakened, and it was attempting to fulfill its original function: summoning the subterranean entity up to enjoy the grain in the bowl.

However, three thousand years ago, the beings accepting these sacrifices were simple "spirits of the land" that coexisted with human agriculture.

The ecology of the veil three thousand years later was a completely different matter.

If the short prayer at the bottom of the bowl were to issue an invocation now... there was no telling what might crawl up.

Richard placed the bowl back into his earthenware jar and sealed the opening with coarse salt.

He folded the appraisal report and sealed it inside the jar along with the clay bowl.

He could just send it back to Demeter later using a Spirit Realm Messenger.

On the surface of the river, the fishing line returned to its motionless state.

Mortimer pulled his felt hat down again.

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Then get going. Go back and focus on your studies."

Richard shouldered his canvas bag and headed back the way he came.

After walking a dozen paces, he looked back once.

Mortimer was still sitting on that rock.

The fishing line dangled over the gray-green water, perfectly still.