Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

"Face? Oh, you are talking about those things painted by Lao Goli." The strong woman easily carried the mining pick, threw the water bag into the basket on her back, and led them to climb up the slope without breathing at all. promote.

She did not shy away from talking about the painting on the rock at the entrance of the village, and even talked about it casually, almost making Craft doubt whether his judgment last night was correct. "Since then, he seemed to be a different person, chattering about them all day long. If I can come back, then I’ll just paint and lead people into the hole.”

"But please don't tell others that he still has those paintings. Some people really believe those nonsense and cannot be persuaded."

Thick hands wiped the sweat from his forehead, and the salty liquid seeped into the dead skin and calluses, moistening the red wounds caused by tools that didn't fit.

Even in this place where women have to do quite a lot of physical labor, it is rare to see someone like their landlord wielding a mining pick himself. There are a few such examples in the village. On the contrary, men are not as common as in villages of the same size. Most of them had childlike faces, no older than Yvonne, or they were old people who were unable to work.

"after that?"

"Lao Goli lost his son when the old cave collapsed." She wiped the sweat from her palms on her sleeves and opened the old stories as casually as if she were dealing with chapped hands. "You can see it a little higher. Now we have to To dig a few pieces of ore, you still have to go to the top of the mountain.”

It sounds like a mining accident, not too unexpected. Kraft felt that he had not heard of similar incidents in other villages. With the tradition of mining relying entirely on natural caves, the sense of security brought by hard rocks made people lose vigilance about supporting structures. In other words, they had no awareness of prevention at all and blindly During mining, an unexpected collapse left almost all the prime-age labor force underground.

The son of old Goli, the husband and father of several families, including her husband.

The winding path took them past the cave entrance, which was two people high. It was dark and deep, no different from the mines they saw on the road. The collapse should have occurred deeper into the ground, where the sun has not been able to reach for millions of years. An unintentional failure in the rock formation suddenly collapsed under repeated hammer blows, like an esophagus that was scratched at an ulcer and was stimulated to contract. Swallowing, inadvertently blocking the incoming insects inside the mountain.

This seems to suggest that mining in "safe" caves is just a small accident on a natural scale. The rocky mountain can close its jaws at any moment without warning or reason.

It happened so suddenly and so deeply that the villages at the foot of the mountain were not aware of it. It was not until the evening that they found that no one who had gone out had returned. They faced the jagged, cavities-like congested rocks with torches and fear. A thicker wall of collapse lay between them—the mine took some people away forever.

"The foreigner and his followers also died inside." She picked up a round stone on the ground and put it back on the distorted mark made of several stacked stones at the entrance of the cave. This served as a kind of tombstone. Others can tell that it once swallowed half a village and two strangers alive.

Something seems to have gone wrong here. Kraft looked at Yvonne, pulled her up, and helped climb up the khaki rocks blocking the road. The girl who was busy keeping up obviously didn't notice who the "foreigner and his followers" referred to. The road here was too difficult for Yvonne. If she hadn't insisted on following, perhaps it would have been a better choice to let Coop stay in the village with her.

Although she was severely frightened last night, Yvonne still flatly refused the suggestion after hearing it. I don't know whether it was because she wanted to force her mind to trouble her, or because it was a matter of letting Coop take care of this option.

It is not difficult to notice the recent subtle relationship between the two, although most of the time it is Yvonne's one-sided competition. It is impossible for Kupp to regard a little girl as a similar player on the track. This attitude seems to make her even more resentful.

Kraft paid attention to her at all times. It is important to take care of a child's psychology, but if she is ill, a sailor must be found to take her down.

If that's correct, there is at least one exception. Her father, the alchemist's follower, did not die in the landslide. He did not even stay in the village, but fled the place without stopping, returned to Solace Harbor, and spent several years in pain.

He escaped, but he could not completely escape the malicious intent of the southern hills. The dust that strangled his throat was always with him. Until the last moment of his life, his breath was filled with the smell of dust and blood from the grinding of rock powder and inflamed lung cavities.

The round, quiet shadow that was insoluble in the morning light that caused all of this was temporarily quiet. The cool air from the ground blew out like a weak breath, hitting the thin clothes prepared for the day's activities. Even Kraft's constitution felt a chill. He felt like being breathed into by a stranger, which prompted him to walk quickly and uncomfortably, "What's it like inside now?"

"It's blocked halfway and there's nothing."

They no longer lingered at the entrance of the cave and continued to climb to the top of the mountain.

There is little vegetation on the side of the trail, and it is difficult to find a gripping point. You need to press the edges of the raised rocks with force, some of which are almost sharp, like serrated blunt knives that scratch your palms. Surprisingly, no one complained. They were silently walking around a full-bellied dormant snake, not wanting to wake up the long body embedded in the mountain.

The Huangchen Trail turns back and forth along the slope. The time required to see the height drop from a distance is several times longer than expected. Frequent changes in direction interfere with the sense of direction. Only intermittently, when you look up, you can see that the top of the mountain is getting closer. The old mine cave and the unfortunate accident were Leave it behind.

The road becomes gentle near the top, skirting half the summit and leading to the shady side of the hill. The sun, which had not yet reached its highest point, could not shine on this side, and most of the area was still in the half-light and half-darkness between morning and dusk. The shadows of the rocks were long and thin, and they only saw the so-called new mine when they walked in front of them. Hole.

Another hole two people high.

Craft heard the commotion from the sailors behind him. They all stopped and looked back at the way they came. The direction had changed and the winding route they had taken was no longer visible under the cover of the mountain rocks. But a very similar scene reappeared before him: he walked through a rocky area and came to a deep, two-person cave.

Of course it is not an old mine, but the two are exactly the same in size, except that there are no stacks of stones at the entrance, as if they have come back to the original place in a circle.

The strong middle-aged woman picked out a lighting torch from the basket behind her and lit a fire from the smoldering ashes at the entrance. The burning flames dispersed the shadows, "That's it. Do you want to go down and have a look?"

"Let's take a break first. Thank you for showing us the way." Kraft declined the invitation and pulled William to the side of the road. "By the way, where can I find that old Goli? I know two of them. A friend who likes to collect strange things, maybe he will be interested in his paintings."

"I don't see him often at the well. You can look for it yourself, or ask those who believe his lies." Even if you don't like the self-taught abstract trauma art painter, for the accommodation fee For her own sake, she answered the question readily and walked into the cave alone with the pickaxe. The firelight quickly disappeared completely in the darkness.

"Don't you want to go down and take a look?"

"Wait a minute, William, I don't think something is right." Kraft stretched out his hand to stop him from looking at the entrance of the cave. Since the night walk last night, the nature of the matter has changed.

He felt some kind of uneasiness brewing. First, it was the mules and horses that stumbled, and Coop seemed to have encountered something, and then there was the unique style of painting, the winding things, the human face-like patterns on the painting...

【connect】

There should be a connection here. He didn't need reminders to help him realize their differences. They just needed to be clarified and expressed, and this in turn required a logical enlightenment. "Go to Lao Goli first. I want to know what he is." What did you draw?"

"Does this have anything to do with our business? Pagan gadgets are everywhere in remote places, nothing special."

"This time is different. Have you ever heard of paramorphology? There is some research on this in my family." Kraft lowered his voice and whispered to William alone, "Koop said that in the painting he saw last night, His face feels familiar. As you know, it's not normal for him to look like that on the mountain road."

Considering that the captain is only a semi-pragmatic believer, he may not reject the possibility of non-Church supernatural phenomena, and informing him now will not cause panic, so he can discuss his ideas.

"Does your family do this too? I thought you were as uninterested in this as you are in the church." William held up his beard nonchalantly and blew off the dust, "Abnormalities, I did listen to some small noble family. People have said that, if hysteria can be taken into account, it is much more visible at sea."

"I used to be able to see them if I stayed at sea for a little longer, but since I stopped at Solace Harbor every time I went there, I saw a lot less of them."

This thing is far from making the captain feel weird. Those who are careless may have been forced to retreat during the long voyage. All those who have been screened out are rough and tactless, and he is the best among them.

"Most of them are not even as good as my stories. For example, the noble boy who told me that his family likes anomalies, and a lecturer from your college who helped me." Looking at Kraft's worried look, William changed the subject and tried to talk to him. As usual, he used anecdotes to distract him.

"It is said that someone from the School of Liberal Arts knows several languages ​​and can even recognize a few words from before the founding of the Kingdom. He was asked to bring an 'abnormal' antiquities back from the port, but how can there be such a thing in Wendeng Port?" For some reason, Today's anecdote may not be very appealing at first, but the effect is quite good.

The discerning audience, who usually has to come up with bottom-of-the-line stories to impress, was suddenly diverted from the original topic.

"oh?"

It's just that the expression on his face looks very strange.

"I gave him an idea. Use the stonemason's training parts and carve a few lines that no one can understand as pagan symbols." The beard couldn't hide the proud smile of the little clever man who succeeded. Thinking about it now, he still couldn't help but feel happy.

"If you get recognized when you go back, say you were deceived; if you don't recognize it, say it was an overseas item bought from a certain crew member. Anyway, you can't find any proof."

He spoke with great immersion and emotion, and also imitated the mysterious action of taking out objects from his arms and offering them to him.

"It turns out that no one can see where this thing comes from. Haha, it's just a fool's errand. How could anyone have seen it?" William concluded confidently, "So, most of the pretenders in this world are like this. Maybe most of them are in the church as well.”

"I'm just telling you this, don't spread it out."

"..."