On the morning of January fourth, the group gathered at the edge of town.
The guide was a stout man in his forties named Jenkins.
He had a reddish-brown beard that moved along with his mouth when he spoke, as if there were a squirrel hanging from his chin.
There were seven people in the group: Jenkins, Richard, and five hiking enthusiasts.
Among the five were three retired railway workers, a middle school teacher from Manchester City, and a local wool merchant.
"How old are you, lad?" Jenkins asked, sizing Richard up before they set off.
"Almost seventeen."
"Seventeen?" Jenkins’s beard twitched. "You came alone?"
"Alone."
"Done any long-distance hiking?"
"I have."
"How far?"
"Five miles is my longest in a single day."
Jenkins’s expression fell. He didn’t ask any more questions.
Before the group set out, he took a folded map from his pack and spread it out on the old boundary stone at the edge of town.
"Today, we’re taking the northern route."
He tapped a few marks on the map with his finger.
"This route is a two-day round trip. The first day, we’ll follow the ridgeline of the hills north and camp in the area around Saint Anne’s Spring. The second day, we’ll loop back."
"Saint Anne’s Spring?" The middle school teacher leaned in for a closer look.
"That’s the official name," Jenkins said with a smile. "We also call it ’Maiden Spring.’"
"Why is it called Maiden Spring?"
"It’s an old local legend." Jenkins folded up the map.
"About four hundred years ago, I’d say, there was a girl in Osborne named Annie Moore, the daughter of a local miller.
A plague broke out that year, and Annie caught it herself. Her family sent her to a small cabin by that spring in the mountains to be quarantined."
"And then what happened?"
"Then Annie didn’t die."
Jenkins’s telling was vague. "She lived by the spring for a month, survived the plague, and walked back to town on her own."
"The townsfolk thought the spring water had saved her, so they named it ’Maiden Spring.’ Later, the parish renamed it ’Saint Anne’s Spring.’"
"Is it really that miraculous?" the wool merchant asked from the side.
"Can’t say." Jenkins shrugged his shoulders.
"The older generation believes in these things. Every year in early spring, a few women from the city still make the trip to fetch a jug of water to boil back home. They say it can cure chills."
"Most people think there’s nothing special about it—just a very clean mountain spring."
Hearing this, Richard felt a faint stir of inspiration.
He remained silent, mentally reviewing the results from his Stone Reading Technique.
’Unfinished business... to the north.’
’If there’s really something to Saint Anne’s Spring, then it would line up with the Stone Reading results.’
The group headed north along the ridgeline of the hills.
The winter hills were barren. The heather bushes were nothing but grayish-brown branches that went CRUNCH CRUNCH underfoot.
The wind blew from the west, carrying the scent of soil and withered grass.
Richard walked in the middle of the group, his pace steady and his breathing even.
Both [Breathing] and [Walking] were operating automatically, each step perfectly synchronized with his respiratory cycle.
The guide glanced at him, a little surprised. He had expected the young lad to slow them down.
After walking for about two hours, the group rested in a hollow sheltered from the wind.
Jenkins pulled a metal kettle from his pack and set it on a portable stove to boil water.
"Here, have something hot to drink."
He poured everyone a cup of strong tea.
The tea was scalding. Richard cupped the mug with both hands, letting the steam warm his face.
"What do you do, young man?" the middle school teacher from Manchester City asked, moving closer.
"I’m a student."
"What are you studying?"
"Classical literature," Richard replied, taking a sip of tea. "Latin, Greek, that sort of thing."
"Oh?" The teacher’s eyes lit up. "I teach literature myself! Have you read Gibbon’s *The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*?"
That was a magnum opus of 3.8 million characters, covering everything from the Golden Age of the Roman Empire to the 16th-century Reformation.
Richard answered cautiously, "I’ve read the first three volumes."
"The first three volumes!" The teacher slapped his thigh. "I’ve been teaching for over a decade, and not one of my students has ever finished the first volume."
"The first volume is a bit dry, I’ll admit," Richard conceded. "But it gets better starting with the second."
The two started chatting about Gibbon.
As they talked, the topic shifted from the Roman Empire to the ruins of the Roman Great Wall within its former borders, and then from the ruins to the local history of Yorkshire.
The three retired workers joined in as well.
"Do you know where the name Osborne comes from?" one of the workers asked.
"It’s from the ancient Albion Language. ’Os’ is god, and ’burn’ is stream. Together, it’s the Stream of God."
"Whoa!" The worker’s eyes widened. "I’ve lived here for decades and never knew that."
"What about Whitcomb?" another worker pressed.
"’Whit’ is white, and ’combe’ is valley. White Valley."
"And Sheffield?"
"’Sheaf’ is the River Sheaf, and ’field’ is a field. The field by the River Sheaf."
"What about Brighton?"
"’Bris’ might come from the Celtic Language word ’brys,’ which means hill, and ’ton’ is a settlement. The settlement on the hill."
The three workers looked at each other, their eyes full of amazement.
"This lad’s got a whole dictionary in his head."
Jenkins, who was listening nearby, was equally astonished by Richard’s Scholarship.
"Alright, finish your tea. We’re moving on." He stood up and began packing away the stove. "We need to reach the campsite before dark."
The group continued north. Around two in the afternoon, they reached a fork in the path.
Jenkins stopped and unfolded his map again.
"Two paths." He pointed them out for everyone to see.
"One goes straight to the campsite—gets us there in half an hour. The other is a detour past Saint Anne’s Spring and adds forty minutes to the walk."
"So, do we want to take a look at the spring?"
"Yes!" the teacher immediately raised his hand.
"Yes!" the three retired railway workers echoed.
"...I’ve no objection," said the wool merchant, stroking his goat-like beard. "It’s only an extra forty minutes, after all."
Jenkins glanced at Richard.
"Lad?"
Richard nodded. "Let’s go."
The group turned onto the side path.
The path was much narrower than the main trail, flanked on both sides by thorn bushes that grew higher than their heads.
Bits of wool were caught on the thorns.
Sheep must have passed through here during the summer, their wool snagging on the spines and remaining there into the winter.
After about twenty minutes of walking, the path began to slope downward.
The slope wasn’t steep, but a layer of moss grew on the flagstones underfoot, forcing them to plant each step carefully.
The group descended into a small hollow.
The hollow was enclosed on three sides by stone cliffs. In the center was a small, stone-lined pool.
The pool was about three paces in diameter, filled to the brim with water so still it looked like a sheet of glass.
On the north side of the pool stood an old stone tablet, half-buried in the earth.
"This was erected in 1487," Jenkins said, pointing to the tablet. "The parish put it up for the spring after the plague subsided that year."
"The writing on the tablet looks like Latin." The teacher leaned in for a look. "Lad, can you read it for us?"
"’Saint Anne’s Spring, Anno Domini 1487,’" Richard read aloud.
"Is that all?"
"That’s all."
"...I thought there’d be more to it," the teacher said, a little disappointed.
Richard said nothing.
He was looking at the tablet with his Spiritual Vision.
Beneath the surface was a second layer of text, hidden by the crude Latin on top.
The words in the second layer were older, an early variant of the Celtic Ancient Script, with strokes that were almost entirely curved.
Richard recognized a few of them:
"Tobar," Gaelic Language for "spring."
"na nIngean," meaning "of the maidens."
"Faoi an mBrat," "Under the Curtain."
Put together, it was something like: "The Spring of the Maidens Under the Curtain."
’This spring was marked over four hundred years ago.’
Richard used his Spiritual Vision to look into the spring.
Beneath the surface of the water was another sight entirely.
There were no stones at the bottom, no mud or sand.
At the bottom was a slowly flowing, extremely faint gray light.
The gray light was not deep, not dense, and not aggressive. It was like a thin layer of gauze spread across the bottom of the pool.
This was a weak point in the Curtain, but a very shallow one.
It was so shallow as to be completely harmless to ordinary people. At most, they might feel the water here was cooler than elsewhere and find it refreshing to drink.
It was also mostly harmless to a Low Tier. As Richard stood by the pool’s edge, he felt his microcirculation being "pulled" at, ever so slowly, by the spring water.
But the pull stopped after a single tug. The spring itself had no malice.
The gray light in the water even possessed a somewhat... soothing Strength.
He thought back to the story Jenkins had told.
Four hundred years ago, Annie Moore had lived by this spring for a month and survived the plague.
’For someone like her, whose body had been pushed to its limits by disease, the seepage from this weak point must have had a "mildly harmonizing" effect.’
Richard crouched down.
"What are you doing, lad?" Jenkins asked.
"Getting a drink of water."
"Is it clean?" the wool merchant asked, somewhat skeptically.
"It’s clean," Jenkins answered for Richard.
"For hundreds of years, no one’s ever gotten an upset stomach from drinking this water."
Richard cupped a handful of water.
The water was very cold.
He brought it to his lips and took a sip. An extremely faint sweetness touched his throat as it went down.
He thought silently, ’Thank you, spring.’
The gray light seemed to "hear" him.
The water’s surface stirred. A ripple spread out and vanished at the edge of the pool.
The progress bar for [Perception] ticked up by one notch.
Richard stood up.
"How is it?" the teacher asked him.
"The water’s excellent."
"Clean?"
"Clean, and a little sweet. It would probably be great for making tea or soup."
"I’ll have a sip then, too."
The teacher squatted down and cupped some water.
The three retired workers followed suit.
The wool merchant was the last to squat down.
Before he did, he muttered, "I’ve got running water at home, what am I drinking this for?" but he still took a sip.
Jenkins stood by and watched.
"Aren’t you having any, guide?" the teacher asked, looking up.
"I’ve drunk from it many times," Jenkins said with a wave of his hand. "I’ll leave it for my guests."

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