Chapter 332: Welcome to Elective Folklore Studies

"Actually, I think it's not impossible to consider using some rather extreme but more convenient methods to solve the problem."

After two days of searching through the humus layer composed of books, Kraft successfully proved that the Wood family's genes truly contained not a shred of talent for archaeology or history.

Thinking about it, it's quite normal; Old Wood and Teacher Anderson studied abnormality studies for most of their lives, yet didn't collect even a single relic touched by unnatural power. Facts speak louder than words; this already explains the situation quite well.

It has nothing to do with memory or learning ability. A medical school professor can accurately clamp a retracting, spasming artery stump amidst a mess of flesh and blood, but that doesn't mean he can find useful information in a pile of paper scraps that could be considered for recycling and reprocessing.

Brother Lei Mengde, Kup, and Yufeng were successively conscripted into this massive project, helping to clear a corner of the sea of books.

The actual effect was relatively limited. All salvageable texts were severely fragmented, having a beginning but no end, an end but no beginning, or simply half of one. The rest were in a contradictory state where not peeling them open meant not seeing the full content, but peeling them open would directly destroy the paper surface.

It should be something that high-difficulty puzzle enthusiasts would like; unfortunately, the people here all carry some degree of trauma-related stress disorder related to decryption.

The initial hypothesis was correct; the main components were contributed by the monastery library, highlighting a broad and comprehensive information scope. Besides the religious academic literature that made up the bulk, it also included practical reference books such as regional hydrology and geography records and crop cultivation.

Kraft even found a herbal medicine book inside. It wasn't a general textbook, but rather about how to use locally unique products to perform simple treatments for common and frequent diseases.

It was probably a practical guide summarized by early pioneering monks, following a wild path with significant personal characteristics, containing ingredients not mentioned in conventional pharmacopoeias. Unfortunately, it was severely damaged and could only be collected as an antique.

"Keep this one for me." After ruling out suspicion, it might be sent back to Dunling for Dr. David; I believe he would be interested.

The remaining few books might have been personal possessions, yet for some reason, they were also very uniformly gathered together.

These books usually didn't have titles specifically marked on the covers, and their contents were all over the place; one could find almost anything, such as private notes, diaries, income and expenditure accounts, and amateur hobbies. They lacked literary value and practical significance, which simultaneously meant they lacked identifiable characteristics.

One could glimpse a corner of monastery life from them. Under the restrained and conservative rules, almost everyone maintained a suppressed and regular lifestyle, somewhat like a kind of endless closed-management school.

Even amateur hobbies were "formal" contents such as calligraphy copying, plant pharmacy, sacred hymn music, and historical literature research, and one had to write them down in a rigid manner in notebooks; it was hard to evaluate whether they were genuine hobbies or attempts to convince oneself of having hobbies.

In the long run, it was quite normal to develop some mental illness from such suppression.

These records were already considered the only personal expressions. Objectively speaking, they were indeed more interesting than those lengthy theological classics.

So Kraft handed the task of consulting the heavy volumes to professionals without any burden, choosing to read these filtered niche texts himself.

At first, he held the idea of finding something, but as the reading deepened, perhaps because he hadn't read leisure books for so long, he did resonate with a subtle kind of fun from them.

Lower-level monks were often the group that interacted most with locals; through their records, one could see how the church stepped by step into the fragmented mountainous areas and, in tangible and intangible ways, ruled their spiritual world territories.

First, a few inconspicuous missionaries arrived. Regarding the local unfamiliar culture and the primitive unique belief systems, they were not averse but made normal contact, even actively participating in them to observe, understand, and record.

Having flipped through just a few books, several types of natural spirits and ancestor worship behaviors were discovered. The recorders attempted to describe these things with text or hand-drawn illustrations. Due to the mountainous terrain, natural totems were mainly wild beasts in the mountains, with birds capable of crossing high mountains and guiding water sources being prominent.

Burial customs and ancestor worship were also quite related to mountains, favoring high places that could receive long-term sunlight, and further developing relatively intuitive imaginations such as climbing mountains to reach heaven and entering the clouds.

After understanding customs and taboos, the missionaries began to spread the doctrine in a localized manner, focusing on universal values, urging people to do good and obtain afterlife welfare, and rallying small groups willing to listen and accept.

When the scale reached a certain level, the church groups that gradually acquired resources would build churches or monasteries. The main purpose was actually not to gather crowds for prayer, but to carry out social services based on this.

The missionaries provided residents with nearly free comforting medical care, precious basic education, shelters when necessary, and small amounts of food and purified water distributed every Sunday.

With already well-developed social service capabilities, the local primitive beliefs simply could not compete; in terms of theological debate, they even encountered dimensional strikes from monks who had received relevant education.

Generally, within two generations, the mainstream doctrine would be thoroughly localized and replace the old. For the few heresies that truly had some ability and wanted to resist to the end, the church didn't mind letting them witness their traditional methods of indoctrination from over a hundred years ago.

Various superstitions scattered in small settlements gradually became textual specimens, quietly rotting while sandwiched in these notebooks. Then, studying these primitive beliefs became a discipline and a hobby.

Traces of the past could still be found in the folk and the church's localized adaptations, and the monks were also very willing to record relevant content collected during their field trips.

In folk legends, those who went up the mountain and failed to return, with no bodies found, were often believed to have been taken away by some huge flying creature, which is why they disappeared without a trace.

The repeatedly mentioned similar rumors were the source of most early worship, namely the fear of the unknown in nature.

The unattainable high mountains and unfathomable clouds and mist provided too much space for imagination to breed, endowing various fear-inducing elements such as fangs, bat wings, sharp claws, and scales; these elements kept piling up with the rumors.

Some monks speculated that this description might be related to the evolution of some classic monster images in traditional stories, at least serving as a reference.

The enduring mystic worship gave mountains, clouds, and monsters a special status in the hearts of the locals, which in turn influenced the incoming lords and the church; the former gained inspiration for their family crests from it, while the latter moved the sites of many churches and monasteries to high and dangerous places.

"Very interesting." While Brother Lei Mengde was still classifying the mountain-high piles of religious classics, Kraft had already flipped through more than ten essays.

He definitely wouldn't be willing to have history and religious knowledge forced upon him, but if treated as hobby reading, it would be different.

With his memory, it was actually not much different from having memorized them; the text from various sources piled up like granular sand and gravel, forming a half-old, half-new sandbox that presented the concrete image of this land.

"I have an idea; how about adding folklore studies to the electives in the future?"

"As long as you are willing to hire someone or personally compile the textbooks, I have no objection." Lei Mengde straightened his back from the waist-high pile of books, feeling slightly worried about the future workload, "Why bring this up suddenly?"

"I don't know if you've realized, but the matter in Dunling brought great inspiration. Some things were actually not taken away by time; they never left, always being around us, just existing in other forms we take for granted."

"For example, certain unexplainable habitual tendencies, well-known stories. You can't feel them because they have already become part of us."

"Say a little less, Mr. Kraft; it's a bit creepy." Kup, half-laughing and half-crying, wrapped his clothes tighter, feeling something colder than early autumn wandering around.

He wasn't clear if there was a problem with the monastery, but Kraft had recently made him feel something was not quite right; it was time to find an opportunity to talk privately.