Chapter 102: Anecdotes

"Face? Oh, you mean those things Old Gori drew." The robust woman casually hoisted the mining pick, tossed the waterskin into the basket on her back, and led them up the slope, showing no sign of panting or breathlessness.

She did not shy away from discussing the painting on the rock at the village entrance; in fact, she was quite casual about it, almost making Kraft doubt whether his judgment from last night was correct. "Since then, he's been like a different person, constantly rambling about how 'they can come back' and such, then just drawing, leading people into the cave."

"But you must absolutely not say in front of others that his paintings are wrong. Some people truly believe that nonsense and can't stand to be advised."

A thick hand wiped the sweat from her forehead; the saline liquid seeped into dead skin and calluses, moistening the red, raw wounds caused by the ill-fitting tool.

Even in a place where women also shoulder considerable physical labor, it was rare to see a landlord like hers personally wielding a mining pick, yet she had seen a few such examples in the village. Conversely, men were seen less often than in villages of similar size before; some faces were still childish, barely a few years older than Yin Feng, while others were elderly people incapable of labor.

"Since then?"

"When the old cave collapsed back then, Old Gori lost his son." She wiped the sweat from her palm on her sleeve, flipping through the old story as carelessly as she treated the cracks on her hands. "You can see it a bit further up. Now, to dig out a few ore chunks, we still have to walk to the mountain peak."

It sounded like a mining disaster, not entirely unexpected. Kraft felt he hadn't heard of similar events in other villages. Under the tradition of mining relying entirely on natural caves, the hardness of the rock gave a false sense of security, making people lose vigilance regarding support structures, or perhaps they simply had no concept of prevention, mining blindly until an unexpected collapse left almost all able-bodied laborers buried underground.

That son of Old Gori, the husband and father of several families, including her own husband.

The winding path led them past the two-man-high cave entrance, dim and deep, no different from the mining caves seen along the road. The collapse must have occurred deeper within, in the sunlight-inaccessible depths of the earth for millions of years; an unintentional flaw in the rock strata, under the repeated tapping of iron picks, suddenly gave way. Like an esophagus stimulated by an ulcer contracting and reflexively swallowing, it inadvertently sealed the insects that had scurried in within the mountain body.

This seemed to suggest that mining in "safe" caves was merely a minor accident on a natural scale; the rocky mountain body could snap its jaws shut at any moment without reason, without warning, without cause.

It happened too suddenly, too deep, that the village at the foot of the mountain didn't even realize it had occurred until dusk, when they discovered no one who had gone out had returned. Facing the interlocking, tooth-like jammed broken rocks with torches and fear, a barrier thicker than the collapsed layer blocked them—the mine had forever taken some people away.

"That outsider and his lackey also died inside." She picked up a round stone from the ground and placed it back on the crooked marker made of stacked stones at the cave entrance. This served as a sort of tombstone; nothing else could tell of how it had once swallowed half the village and two outsiders.

Something seemed slightly off here. Kraft looked at Yin Feng, pulled her up, and helped her climb over the yellowish-brown rock blocking the path. The girl, busy keeping up with their pace, clearly hadn't noticed who "that outsider and his lackey" referred to. The path was too strenuous for Yin Feng; if she hadn't insisted on coming, perhaps having Kup stay in the village with him would have been a better choice.

Although she had been severely frightened last night, Yin Feng still flatly refused the suggestion, whether due to her stubborn nature or because the option of having Kup look after her was problematic.

It was not hard to notice the subtle relationship between the two recently; although most of the time it was Yin Feng's one-sided competition, Kup could not possibly view a little girl as a fellow competitor on the same track. This attitude seemed to make her even more resentful.

Kraft always spared some energy to watch over her. Caring for a child's psychology was important, but if her body was unwell, he would have to find a sailor to take her down.

If he wasn't mistaken, there was at least one exception. Her father, that is, the alchemist's lackey, did not die in that collapse. He didn't even stay in the village; he fled the place without stopping, returned to Consolation Port, and spent a few years in illness.

He escaped, but failed to completely shake off the malice of the southern hills. Dust that choked and stifled the throat followed him like a shadow until his last breath, carrying the dusty, bloody scent of rock powder grinding and inflaming his lung cavities.

That round, quiet shadow that did not dissolve in the morning light, a temporary quiet, the cool air from underground blew out like a weak breath, hitting the thin clothes prepared for daytime activity. Even with Kraft's constitution, he felt a chill, a sensation of being approached by a stranger whispering into his ear, urging him to walk past uncomfortably and quickly. "What is it like inside now?"

"Blocked halfway, nothing there."

They no longer lingered at the cave entrance and continued climbing toward the mountain peak.

There was little vegetation along the path; it was hard to find handholds. They had to exert force along the edges of protruding rocks, some of which were nearly sharp, like a serrated dull knife rubbing against the palms. Strangely, no one complained, as if silently bypassing a satiated, hibernating snake, not wanting to wake the long body crawling and embedded within the mountain.

The dusty yellow path zigzagged up the slope, going back and forth. The elevation difference that didn't look high from afar consumed several times the expected time; frequent changes in direction interfered with their sense of orientation. Only when they occasionally looked up could they see the mountain peak drawing closer, leaving the old mine and the unfortunate accident behind.

The road near the top became flatter, curving around half the mountain peak and leading to the shady side of the hill. The sun, not yet risen to its highest point, could not reach this side; most of it remained in the half-light, half-dark shadows of dawn and dusk. The shadows of the rocks stretched long and thin, so they only saw the so-called new mine when they walked right up to it.

Another two-man-high cave entrance.

Kraft heard the sailors behind him stir; they all stopped and turned to look back at the path they had come from. With the change in position and the mountain rocks blocking the view, the winding route they had walked was no longer visible. But an extremely similar scene reappeared before them: walking through a field of scattered rocks, arriving before a deep, two-man-high cave.

It was certainly not the old mine, yet the two were identical in size. Except for the lack of stacked stone piles at the entrance, it felt as if they had gone in a circle and returned to the starting point.

The robust middle-aged woman took a lighting torch from the basket on her back, ignited it from the smoldering ash pile at the entrance, and the burning flame dispelled a corner of the shadows. "This is it. Do you want to go down and take a look?"

"Let's rest for a while first, thank you for showing us the way." Kraft politely declined the invitation, pulling Xiang Weilian to the side of the road. "By the way, just asking, where can I find that Old Gori? I know two friends who like collecting strange things; they might be interested in his paintings."

"By the well. I don't see him often. You can look for yourselves, or ask those who believe his nonsense." Even though she wasn't particularly fond of that self-taught abstract trauma artist, she answered the question quite readily for the sake of the accommodation fee, shouldered her pick, and walked into the cave alone. The torchlight soon vanished completely in the darkness.

"Not going down to take a look?"

"Wait a moment, Xiang Weilian. I feel something isn't right." Kraft reached out to block his view of the cave entrance. Since the night road last night, the nature of the matter had changed.

He felt some unease brewing: first the mule's stumble, then Kup seemed to have encountered something, followed by that uniquely styled painting, the coiled thing, the human face pattern on the painting...

【Connection】

There must be a connection here. He didn't need a reminder to realize their strangeness; they just needed to be sorted out and articulated, which required a logical inspiration. "Let's go find Old Gori first. I want to know exactly what he drew."

"Does this have anything to do with our business? Heretical stuff is everywhere in remote small places; nothing special about it."

"This time is different. Have you heard of Abnormalology? My family has done some research on this." Kraft lowered his voice, speaking quietly only to Xiang Weilian. "Kup said the face on the painting he saw last night felt familiar to him. You know, his behavior on the mountain road wasn't normal."

Considering the captain was only half a pragmatist and might not reject the possibility of some non-church supernatural phenomena, telling him now wouldn't cause panic; they could just bring the idea up for discussion.

"Your family does this too? I thought you were as uninterested in this as you are in the church." Xiang Weilian casually straightened his beard, blowing off the dust stuck to it. "Abnormalology. I did hear some young noble talk about it, but if hysteria counts, I've seen plenty of that at sea."

"You used to see it if you stayed at sea a bit longer, but since every trip relies on Consolation Port, there's definitely much less of it now."

This was far from enough to make the captain think it strange. People with small hearts would have been driven away long ago by the long voyage; the ones left were all thick-skinned, and he was the standout among them.

"Most of them aren't even as good as my stories. For instance, that noble youth who told me his family liked Abnormalology, and there was even a lecturer from your academy helping out." Seeing Kraft's worried expression, Xiang Weilian changed the subject, trying to distract him with anecdotes as usual.

"From the Faculty of Literature. It's said he knows several languages, even recognizing a few words from before the kingdom was established. I asked him to bring back a 'heretical' artifact from the port, but where in Wendeng Port would you find such a thing?" For some reason, today's interesting story, though clearly not very attractive at the start, had quite a good effect.

The picky audience, who usually needed a top-shelf story to be moved, was suddenly diverted from the original topic.

"Oh?"

It was just that the expression on his face looked very strange.

"I gave him an idea: take the practice pieces from the stonemason, carve some lines that no one can understand, and pass them off as heretical symbols." The beard couldn't hide the triumphant smile of a clever trick succeeding; thinking about it now still made him laugh with delight.

"If they recognize it when we return, say we were cheated; if they don't, say we bought it from a crew member as a foreign object. Anyway, there's no one to verify."

He told the story with great immersion, vividly, even mimicking the action of mysteriously taking an object out of his chest to present it.

"As a result, no one could tell where the thing came from. Haha, it was just randomly carved; how could anyone have seen it before?" Xiang Weilian confidently drew his conclusion. "So, most of the people pretending to be gods or ghosts in this world are just like that; who knows, maybe half of them are in the church."

"I'm only telling you this; don't spread it around."

"..."