The sweep continued until the afternoon.
The professor went through dozens of threads, marking them off one by one.
With a final flourish, he pulled back the hand resting on the edge of the water basin.
The net enveloping the city slowly unraveled within Richard’s inspiration, silently retreating from every corner.
"Done."
The old professor picked up his teacup, found it empty, and passed it to Mr. Hutton.
"Another cup. Weak, just like before."
"Yes, Professor."
Richard used the floating thread of his Hidden Spiritual Vision.
He counted and recounted, examining the dozens of threads that had been caught in the net and erased.
He was looking for someone.
The "true manipulator."
The one Winterworth and Mrs. MacNeil had spoken of—the one hidden behind all the poor souls who had been pushed to the brink.
The "external port" in the Answering Head Thorax had been connected by someone from the other side of the Curtain.
And as for the one who lent power to the Answering Head, Winterworth had said they "were most likely not on any roster."
Richard had thought that this time, under the great net Professor Mortimer had cast over the entire city, that person would surely be exposed.
He was wrong.
The dozens of threads caught in the net were all just pawns.
All of them were pitiful souls who had been modified, implanted with external ports, and clearly connected to the other side of the Curtain.
The female textile worker in the West Suburb, the unemployed man in South City, the skinny young girl by the canal... none of them was the one.
The "main line"—the one that should have been the thickest and deepest, the source connecting all the other threads—was never caught in the net.
Richard’s inspiration scoured the receding net again and again, checking every corner.
He wasn’t there. He had probably left long ago, or perhaps had never even been in Brighton.
A Master Scholar who had lived through the entire railway era had personally laid a net over the city.
It was effective against the dozens of poor, deceived pawns.
But against the one who most needed to be caught, it was useless.
Richard placed these dozens of lives onto the Balance Scale of the city of Brighton.
The deaths of dozens of people meant terror for dozens of families.
Bewilderment among neighbors, the wails of families identifying the bodies.
"They were fine just yesterday"—a phrase that would be repeated time and time again.
All this fear, pain, bewilderment, and resentment sank down.
It sank into the nascent weak point in Brighton, a point fed by smokestacks and industrial accidents.
The solution itself had fed the very thing it was meant to suppress.
...
The sealing of the pit was scheduled for the day after the sweep, at the Unyielding Pit, of course.
Richard went into it this time with a clear idea of what to expect.
Professor Mortimer was going to join forces with the Gale Tradition Expert who "hadn’t fully left yet" to create a completely impenetrable Seal.
The same group as last time descended to the bottom of the Unyielding Pit.
This time, Richard wasn’t even allowed to bring his camera; he was only told to stand and watch.
"About today," Mr. Hutton instructed him before they descended into the pit. "You only watch. Do not act."
"Mm."
"One more thing. The person the professor is meeting today is something of an acquaintance of his."
"An acquaintance?"
Mr. Hutton added a reminder. "When you hear them talking, let some things go in one ear and out the other. Whatever you hear, forget it once you leave this pit."
Richard nodded gravely.
In the core area of the Nine-Layered Stone Ring, Mr. Hutton helped the professor sit down in front of the central silver plate.
He was still holding a cup of warm water.
This time, a very thin slice of ginger was steeping in the water.
Before they left, Richard had overheard Mr. Hutton telling the kitchen staff that the professor would be walking a lot today and needed something to ward off the chill.
The professor sat down and took a sip of the ginger water.
After sipping, he said something to Hutton beside him.
"Little Hutton, did you cut this ginger a bit too thick?"
Mr. Hutton sounded a little helpless.
"Professor, I watched them slice it myself. It’s paper-thin."
"Then it must be my own tongue that’s too thick," the old professor began to grumble.
"Don’t bother changing it. At my age, I can’t taste anything anyway. I can only blame my mouth, not you."
As he spoke, a wind stirred at the bottom of the pit.
They were buried thirty feet below the surface, surrounded by the Nine-Layered Stone Ring. It should have been a completely windless place.
But now a wind was rising, seeping from the cracks between every object, a wind of unknown origin.
Richard understood. The Expert had arrived.
A voice came from the wind.
"Professor Mortimer, you haven’t changed a bit."
"When was the last time we met? What year was that?"
The old man thought for a moment.
"Eighteen ninety-two?"
"Eighteen ninety-one."
"Ah, eighteen ninety-one," the old man repeated, taking another sip of his ginger tea.
"You see? I can’t even remember the year correctly.
"I can tell Little Hutton the same story three times and give him three different years."
Professor Mortimer said slowly,
"But I do remember our first meeting. It was at the Imperial University Library. You wanted to borrow a book from me."
"The book was called *Seven Chapters of Wind*."
"I remember."
"When I handed you the book, you said, ’Professor, I can’t understand this book.’"
"I said, ’If you can’t understand it, you can’t understand it. Just let it sit in your mind. One day, when you’re ready to understand it, it will greet you on its own.’"
"Mm."
"Did that book ever greet you?"
The wind fell silent.
After a long time, the wind replied.
"It did."
"When?"
"The day I dismantled my own body."
The entire core area grew still.
The work of sealing the pit didn’t seem to take much effort from the Expert and the professor.
Richard stood in the innermost circle watching, and he gradually began to understand the process.
The body of the Seal was still Mr. Hutton’s usual set of procedures: chiseling, replicating, waxing, and activating.
What the professor and the Expert did was add another layer on top of that.
The professor was responsible for "reading."
Sitting in his chair and holding his ginger water, he read through the pit’s Seal structure layer by layer, its weak points, and its accumulated damage over the years.
Then, using terminology Richard couldn’t quite understand, he would tell Mr. Hutton where and how to make the repairs.
The Expert was responsible for "suppressing."
The wind followed the Nine-Layered Stone Ring, pressing the entire pit firmly down on this side of the Curtain.
The two of them chatted idly as they worked.
"Professor," the wind said, "did you hear about the well at Hemms?"
"I heard."
"Where from?"
"The *Mirror*," Professor Mortimer said, scratching his sparse hair. "I saw it in a corner of page seven."
"You read the *Mirror* for your intelligence?" The Expert was clearly surprised.
"I read the *Mirror*, and also the *Morning Star*, the *Northern Literature Review*, the *Women’s Family Magazine*... That last one sometimes publishes recipes. I have the housekeeper follow them."
"She never makes them quite right, but the less right she makes them, the better I can taste what they were supposed to be."
A sound like a soft laugh drifted out from the wind.
"Professor, you really are still the same."
"I’m too old to change."
The old man took a sip of ginger water.
"Our old friend on Hemes Island has fallen. Why didn’t you go and stake a claim?"
"I couldn’t be bothered."
"’Couldn’t be bothered’..." The professor chuckled.
"Were you really not bothered, or were you just afraid to go?"
At those words, everyone present couldn’t help but break out in a cold sweat.
The old professor was truly daring. If he angered this Expert, he himself might be fine.
But the small fry who had come with him would surely be blown away without a trace.
Fortunately, the Expert did not get angry.
"A bit of both."
The wind was quiet for a moment before answering.
"Professor, there are children present. There’s much I cannot say."
"I know," the old man said slowly.
"I’m not trying to trick you into talking, just asking.
"Old friends meeting after several decades, I have to ask about something you’re willing to answer."
The wind stirred gently.
"If you were to ask about the fall of our old friend in Thrace, I could say a little more."
"Then speak."
What the wind said made everyone in the core area unconsciously slow their breathing.
"He wasn’t killed by someone."
"Oh?" Professor Mortimer raised an eyelid.
"He... starved to death."
Richard stood within the innermost Light Lock, silently recording this information.
He had originally thought that the fallen Grand Mastery on Hemes Island had been secretly schemed against.
That he had been caught in a trap, or erased by a higher-level existence.
He had never imagined that a Grand Mastery capable of guarding a thousand-year-old ritual scar could have "starved to death."
Professor Mortimer held his ginger water, waiting for the wind to continue.
"That trench left by the Thracians a thousand years ago... he guarded it for over a hundred years. He’d already drained its nutrients to the dregs."
"In the last few decades, he sacrificed several thousand lives to the scar, but the scar didn’t grow plump. Instead, it grew thinner and thinner."
Professor Mortimer held his ginger water.
"Everyone on the outside said it was a fertile field."
"The outside couldn’t see into his bones," the wind continued.
"He guarded that land for so long, it became his very blood vessels.
"To change to a new one would be like dismantling himself and trying to put himself back together. At his age, he couldn’t be put back."
"By staying put, he could live a little longer than if he left. That’s all."
"Those two old friends fighting over that land now, they’re fighting over that ready-made skeleton."
"The land can’t support a Grand Mastery, but an Expert can still modify it."
Professor Mortimer held his ginger water, and only spoke after a long time.
"...All the old lands can no longer provide sustenance?"
"More or less. They might hold out for another fifty years. Eighty, if we’re being optimistic."
"The few who are still clinging to the old lands, refusing to leave, will end up just like the one at Hemms—starving to death one by one on the territory they’ve guarded for centuries."
Richard was suddenly reminded of his own earlier deductions.
The Expert’s wind also began to blow again at this moment:
"Those new weak points you prophesied, they’ve been sprouting up one by one over the last fifty years."
"Our old friends on the Old Continent will all spend these fifty years cashing in their old lands for new ones."
"But you can’t grow a fertile field on factory accidents alone."
Richard felt a chill spread through his chest, as if a block of ice had been shoved inside.
’It seems war is unavoidable. For the Experts, this truly is a conflict over interests of the utmost importance.’
"Professor."
The wind’s voice grew softer, becoming almost like a heart-to-heart talk with an old friend:
"I am not on the side of ’snatching new lands’."
"I guessed as much."
"How did you guess?"
"If you were one of them, you wouldn’t have lent us a hand to seal this pit today."
The wind stirred gently again.
"...True enough. My main body is on the New Continent now. There aren’t many places I can protect over here."
"This pit is one. There are also a few old weak points in the North. I can’t manage anything further than that."
"Mm."
"When the fires start to burn on the Old Continent, you’d best move your students away from the battlefield’s edge."
"I’m old," Professor Mortimer sighed. "I can’t move many of them anymore."
"Every one you can move, counts."
The professor held his ginger water, speaking only after a long pause.
"...May I ask you one last thing?"
"Ask."
"When the fires ignite on the Old Continent, what... do you plan to do?"
The wind stopped for a very, very long time. So long that everyone thought it had already left.
"...Professor," the wind finally said.
"Yes."
"The village where I was born is in this area."
The old man didn’t make a sound.
"My body... I can’t even recognize whose it is anymore."
"When I look in a mirror, I’m not reflected there. There’s only a gust of wind."
"But that village... I still remember it."
"Where is the village?" Professor Mortimer asked.
"Fifty miles from the Unyielding Pit."
"What’s it called?"
"It’s called..." The wind paused. "I won’t tell you."
"If you knew, you would try to protect that village."
The old man held his ginger water, and only spoke after a long while.
"...Alright," he said. "We’ll each look after our own."
The final Inscription for sealing the pit was laid at that moment.
Richard’s breathing broke free from the rhythm it had been forced into.
The wind swept through the core area one last time.
"Professor, the next time we meet, I’ll buy you a drink."
"You don’t have a tongue."
"I’ll just buy it for you. I’ll watch from the side."
The old man smiled slowly.
"Alright. Until next time."
The wind dispersed completely.

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