Chapter 553: The Professor's Will

"Don't attack!" Gerard gasped, holding the others back.

"Sir, he—"

"He's my son!"

The gunner's shocked gaze shifted between the man and Gerard. "Your son?"

The Bell chimed again. The man in the mud brushed his hair aside, revealing a heavy beard and a face flushed red by the sea breeze.

"Old man?"

Gerard looked down at this familiar yet foreign face. His first word was, "Idiot!"

Lauren stood up, his ether field slowly unfurling.

His ether field was entirely different from his old man's.

Gerard's moonlight was a thin blade hanging in the sky, sharp and precise.

Lauren's moonlight, on the other hand, blanketed the entire surface of the estuary, so wide and deep that the bottom couldn't be seen. When the father and son linked their ether fields, sky and water were completely flooded with moonlight, leaving the bell-shaped cluster of evil creatures with nowhere to hide.

The glaring moonlight also woke the sleepwalkers. The little girl at the very front looked at the mudflats before her, pulled her foot back in complete wakefulness, and burst into loud tears.

"Who told you to come here?" Gerard asked, his eyes still fixed on the Bell.

"Your grandson, of course!"

Lauren drew his Hunting Rifle and fired a shot at the bell rope.

Even after soaking in seawater for days, the gun still fired cleanly. Lauren was somewhat surprised. "How is this thing... working even better than it did at the Mouth of the Underworld River?"

He had actually intended to throw his short spear but had habitually fired the rifle first.

Gerard seized the opportunity, swinging his blade into a heavy slash.

One projected the moon from the sky, while the other pulled moonlight from the water, their blades striking from above and below.

Under their combined force, the Bell quickly plummeted from the sky, smashing into the mud of the estuary with a final, muffled thud.

By the edge of the marsh, people were waking from their dreams, looking at their surroundings in utter bewilderment.

That night, behind the clouds over the estuary, the Wild Hunt procession also caught the scent and hurried over, thinking they could harvest at least a little something. The Old Scholar glanced down.

"Gerard, Lauren... neither name is on the Hunting Register."

The figure with antlers on his head shuddered and muttered, "But these two have my Luck on them."

Just as the sky began to brighten, the fog completely dissipated.

The father and son sat side by side on the beach, neither speaking first.

Lauren pulled an oil-paper package from his coat and handed it to Gerard. Inside lay a fish that looked like a piece of charcoal.

Gerard took a bite, his face full of disgust. "How is your cooking even worse than it was twenty years ago?"

"You think I made this? It was done by some madman on the New Continent."

Lauren rested his hands behind his head and curled his lip. "Being able to return so quickly this time was all thanks to his help."

Gerard grunted in acknowledgment. It made sense.

For an ocean liner from the New Continent to reach this port, it would take a month or two even in peacetime, let alone now when the sea was swarming with enemy submarines.

"You've been gone so many years, and you didn't even think to write home?"

"The last letter you received was when your nephew finally recovered and got into Imperial Capital University. Margaret wrote it to you on her own initiative." Lauren scratched his head. "I wrote often during the first three years, but after that... I really didn't know what to say."

"Where's your money?"

"I sent it back most months. The rest I lost gambling..."

Lauren's face seemed to flush even redder. "I didn't have the face to come back before, but now I do! Plus, with that kid's letter, I got a reason too."

As the sun slowly scattered its light across the sea, Gerard used the flat of his blade to push himself to his feet. He raised his right hand and pressed it down at an angle.

Lauren watched quietly, the scene from twenty years ago surfacing in his mind.

Back then, the old man had never considered handing the hunting grounds over to him, saying it was still far too early for him.

"Old man, are you admitting defeat?" Lauren grinned.

"The East Coast garrison is yours! Don't shame the Ashford Family!"

Gerard didn't answer directly; he just waved a hand and returned to the telegraph room.

At noon on April 5th, Chelsea Road received a telegram.

Evelyn snatched it. "Still alive, blade is still there, picked up a son for free." She paused. "Huh? Grandpa picked up a child by the sea?"

Isabella took the telegram and glanced over it, the candy dropping straight out of her mouth. "I'm calling my sister-in-law."

On the afternoon of April 6th, the butler opened the door and was equally surprised.

Outside stood a man taller than the doorframe, carrying a fishy stench that could be smelled from afar.

Gerard followed behind him, his left arm wrapped in bandages.

"Young Master, you've returned!"

The butler had recognized him. Strictly speaking, he was of the same generation as Gerard and had watched the three Ashford siblings grow up.

Isabella was coming down from the second floor. Halfway down, she saw the man's face and stopped in her tracks.

The man teased his youngest sister, "Flower Fairy!"

This referred to the time someone had crowned their family hound 'Flower Fairy' when they were little.

Isabella's face grew visibly annoyed. She pulled a piece of candy from her pocket and hurled it at him.

The man nimbly sidestepped it, laughing heartily. "You're a grown woman now, and you're still throwing candy at people?"

Evelyn curiously peeked her head out from the kitchen. "Aunt, who is this?"

"Your uncle, also Vincent's dad."

Richard walked down from upstairs. Lauren stopped teasing Isabella and looked at him.

"You're the kid who wrote the letter. The last time we met, you were still a sickly little thing, and your mom was carrying you to the Imperial Capital to see a doctor."

He strode up the stairs and pulled Richard into a bear hug, squeezing him until his vision went dark.

"Cough, cough, Uncle... cough, cough, cough..."

As expected of a Major Adept Hunter with nowhere to vent his immense strength, he squeezed him so hard his ribs were about to break.

Lauren let go of his nephew and patted him on the shoulder, lowering his voice. "That day on January 7th... that had something to do with you, didn't it?"

Richard smiled but said nothing.

"Fine, I owe you a drink."

Lauren walked down the stairs. Halfway down, he suddenly turned back. "That madman on the New Continent, you're going to owe him another poem."

"Why?"

"I agreed to it for you!"

"You... agreed for me?" Richard's mouth twitched.

"So what? I'm your uncle!" Lauren went about rummaging through the living room cabinets, looking for liquor.

His old man usually didn't drink, but he always kept some on hand to entertain guests, which now perfectly benefited him.

He had just found the liquor cabinet and was about to drink heavily when Isabella snatched the bottle away. "Sister-in-law will be here at six. Go wash yourself clean first."

Lauren grew nervous. "She... knows?"

"Yes, I told her!"

Isabella locked the liquor back in the cabinet.

Lauren opened his mouth to say something, but ultimately swallowed his words.

It wasn't even six o'clock yet when the doorbell began ringing urgently.

Their eldest aunt was not tall, and because her face was extremely gaunt, she looked somewhat mean.

She tossed her gloves to the butler and strode into the living room on her own, not sparing half a glance for Lauren.

Evelyn shrank her neck and hid behind her aunt. "Eldest Aunt... looks a bit fierce."

Isabella sighed softly. "She's always been this way... First her husband left her and ran off, and then Vincent went to the front lines."

The door to the small living room slammed shut with a bang, but it didn't latch completely.

Evelyn pulled her brother and sneaked over to the stairs. Richard wanted to leave but his sleeve was tightly gripped.

Through the crack in the door, they could faintly see their eldest aunt staring daggers at the man in front of her. The guy still had two strips of kelp hanging off his clothes.

"...The total is four hundred and seven pounds, eight shillings."

"What do you mean?" Lauren uttered a confused noise, not having fully processed it yet.

"It's been thirteen years. I remember every single penny you sent back clearly, and I even remember the intervals between each one."

"In the winter of 1909, there was no news for three consecutive months.

"I thought you had already died over there... but then another sum of money arrived, and I knew you must have lost your money gambling."

Lauren scratched his stubble, feeling somewhat embarrassed.

He was just about to say something when her next sentence left him tongue-tied again.

"Do you have a woman over there on the New Continent?"

When the eldest aunt asked this, her expression was very calm.

The small living room fell silent for one second, two seconds...

The eldest aunt sneered, seemingly having guessed it long ago. "If you don't speak for more than three seconds, then the answer is yes."

Feeling guilty, Lauren finally confessed, "Before I went to the Mouth of the Underworld River to escort the ships, there actually... was one."

At the corner of the stairs, Evelyn's hand gripped Richard's sleeve tightly.

"And now?"

"When I left for the Mouth of the Underworld River, I let her get married. It was about six or seven years ago.

"I heard she later found a train conductor on the railway and has already had two children."

The woman gave a short laugh. "She sure knows how to marry, and she sure knows how to breed."

The fire from the fireplace cast a very red glow on Lauren's face.

The eldest aunt looked at him calmly. "Did you know? The wife of the pharmacy owner down the street died the year before last, and he's been asking me ever since if I was interested. I turned him down."

Lauren looked up, somewhat moved. "You..."

In the firelight, the deep wrinkles on the woman's face were clearly visible.

"Do you actually think I was waiting for you?"

"I can only blame myself for not making anything of my life these years... I could only rely on the Ashford Family and live off your father's charity."

"If I remarried, what kind of reputation would Vincent be left with in our circles? That his own mother ran off with another man?"

When the eldest aunt spoke of her son, her expression finally softened slightly.

"Speaking of Vincent, he just went to Mesopotamia a while ago."

Lauren finally had a chance to interject and hastily spoke up.

"I know about this, I know... I saw the list. That kid..."

The eldest aunt waved her hand, cutting him off. "The day he left, do you know what he said to me?

"That child said, 'Mom, if you get any news about Dad, you have to remember to write a letter over.'

"What do you expect me to write in the letter? That you only sent a money order without a single word?"

Lauren's head slowly lowered, his hands resting on his knees.

Those very hands that had rowed out from the Underworld River and crossed the ocean now had absolutely no idea where to put themselves.

"Once this quarter's guard duty is over, I'll go over there and drag him back..."

"Wait for you to go?"

The eldest aunt shook her head. "You almost didn't make it back yourself. You took a broken boat and nearly crashed yourself to death."

"Wait..." The eldest aunt frowned and looked at him. "Don't tell me you really rowed all the way back like that?"

"Yeah."

"What an idiot!" The eldest aunt's scolding was exactly identical to Gerard's.

Two days later, the deputy director personally visited.

"Mr. Lauren Ashford already registered as a Major Adept at the General Administration yesterday, and is now garrisoning the East Coast for the moonless Wild Hunt.

"According to regulations, the Ashford Family's deployment quota for this quarter is already full."

"Therefore..."

He pulled a piece of paper from his briefcase and handed it to Gerard.

"The requisition order for the supernatural item belonging to the lord is officially revoked."

Gerard took it in his hands and inspected it meticulously.

The deputy director's eyes held a strange look. "The report from the Air Defense Command explicitly records that on the night of April 4th, a gentleman steered a small boat across the ocean, arrived at the Thames Estuary to join the battle, and even captured nine Germanic airship soldiers."

"The entire General Administration has been talking about it for the past two days. If anyone ever says again that the Ashford Family is a family hiding behind regulations, they'd better think about the Bell at the Thames Estuary first."

The deputy director stood up and saluted Gerard. Before leaving, he looked again at Richard, who was sitting by the fireplace warming himself, with a complicated expression.

Gerard leaned back in his chair, resting his bandaged arm, his empty gaze drifting out the window.

"Next quarter, they will definitely come again."

Richard closed his eyes, silently calculating.

There wasn't much time left until April 23rd.

That was the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death, and it also coincided with Easter. The theaters would definitely perform Hamlet, all the churches would sing "Christ is Risen," and school children would be led by their teachers to recite "to be, or not to be."

Richard took a deep breath. The Professor successfully advancing would naturally be the best outcome.

He was both a newly-advanced Virtuoso of the Classics tradition and his own Mentor.

The people from the General Administration would absolutely not dare to touch him again, and after that, the Blackburn Family's marriage contract or whatever wouldn't matter anymore.

But what if... the Professor's advancement failed?

...

The density of trucks on the road from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun was very high. Sometimes one would pass every dozen seconds or so. The local garrison's biggest job every day was shoveling crushed stone under the tires.

The Franc army used a rotation system, breaking the entire army down and sending them up division by division.

All troops passed through this road. Back in March, Richard had written a poem for Matthew titled The Waterwheel, and this very road was what it was about.

The core meaning was: "This is a road of no return."

After reading it, Matthew had excitedly run to that road in the middle of the night to drive a truck.

He just drove it backward against the flow of traffic, carrying a truckload of hitchhiking souls toward the rear, scaring the wits out of the passing vehicles. Matthew's behavior gave Richard a new understanding of the capriciousness and whims of a Virtuoso.

A rumor soon spread among the soldiers: at night, a driverless truck would drive against traffic, filled entirely with their dead comrades.

Richard compiled these observations and wrote them into his Collection of Strange Tales, titling it The Road of Coffins and placing it right after the Old Cough piece.

Sophia had nothing to do these past few days, so she spent all day lying on the sofa reading it.

Hearing that the story Richard was currently writing was meant for the Franc people, she rolled over and sat up, offering to translate it herself.

"You know the Franc language as well, senior?"

Richard was somewhat skeptical.

He was unsure at first, but then he remembered that his blonde senior was always quite reliable at critical moments.

"Hah, I'm much better at it than you are, anyway." Sophia snatched the manuscript straight over.

"The way you speak Franc... is no different from a cow grunting."

Richard smiled sheepishly and didn't argue, because it was indeed the truth.

His Franc relied entirely on rote memorization, which was fine for passing exams and looking up information. Sometimes learning a language really didn't just depend on rote memorization; it took long-term immersion in the local environment to sound authentic.

For the entire afternoon, Sophia lay sprawled across the desk, translating diligently.

Richard occasionally came by to bring her tea, and when he stole an uneasy glance, he found that his senior really was translating it extremely well.

Many words were adapted flexibly to fit the local context, and she had even employed dialects and slang for some.

For an obscure term like "coffin-resting stone," Richard would have simply translated it directly.

Sophia, however, used a word that only the elderly in the Franc countryside would know: pierre des morts, meaning the stone of the dead.

As for the classic rule of "do not answer until the third call," she broke it down into a Brittany fisherman's colloquialism, making it read exactly like a local telling a story.

After Richard's manuscript paper ran out, Sophia, as if addicted, casually pulled a sheet from her own handbag and continued writing.

The increased observational ability brought by [Perception] allowed Richard to sharply notice... the front of that paper seemed to be Russian text, with hard signs at the ends of words and several Cyrillic letters in the middle.

'Could she really be from some great Russian noble family, coming to the Imperial Capital early for political asylum?'

Just as Richard thought this, Sophia tossed her blonde hair and covered the paper so he couldn't see it anymore.

In early April, a letter enclosing printed materials arrived at the house, sent by the Franc military liaison officer. The letter stated that a major, after reading the Franc translation of the Collection of Strange Tales, felt that some parts made a lot of sense, so he simply altered the wording and distributed it as a sanitation regulation.

After the notice was posted, everyone followed it, and even the voices calling out people's names by the roadside at night had grown scarce recently.

The panel flashed before his eyes.

[Learning lv.5, progress 34% -> 42%]

Richard realized that this counted as a special event.

If he wanted to reach the unlock conditions for lv.7, he had to make a piece of long-buried knowledge be used by living people again, and the number of people couldn't be fewer than one hundred thousand.

Unfortunately, this didn't count as dead knowledge.

True dead knowledge had to be dug out from ruins or graves, just like that Czech scholar who had previously uncovered the Hittite civilization.

Even though he was busy writing manuscripts, Richard didn't waste this period of time.

Every morning, he would take out a condensate block from the Frost Branch Box and eat it.

With [Tailoring], the effects of eating these things were much better, and the side effects were vastly reduced.

At the bottom of his stomach, [Decay Digestion] burned madly, smelting the condensate, fusing the nutrients into his flesh and blood while the ether slowly seeped into his circuits. He could now eat three blocks a day without his stomach protesting in the slightest.

During his Breathing, [Gushing Spring] was also imperceptibly nourishing his body.

If things continued to develop like this, he felt he had a tendency to evolve toward a state of limitless adaptation.

There was a comic book character in his past life with a wheel floating behind his head who had been exactly like this.

At night, Richard used that Mirror Fragment to assist in practicing the Condensed Mirror Method.

Most of his shattered spirit had already regrown. After three consecutive nights of practice, by the morning of the fourth day, the last bit of swelling pain in the back of his head had basically dissipated.

In his bedside drawer was a silk handkerchief, wrapped around the tongue of the abyssal Virtuoso.

Whenever he read the secular inscriptions of the Black Soil River, a "click" would often ring out from the drawer.

When he went to check on it, the tongue would merely twitch slightly and make no further sound.

But the moment he recited again, the tongue would let out another "click."

Richard paused, shifting the stress of the words to the back as he read them, and sure enough, the tongue remained still.

He stared at the tongue for a long time. In life, this tongue had read contracts and accounts for the Ptolemy dynasty; if it mispronounced even a single syllable, the contract would immediately be voided.

Even though it had been dead for two thousand years, it was still instinctively picky about these pronunciations.

"Mr. Scribe, your temper is exactly the same as my Professor's."

The tongue twitched again, this time rolling entirely over to turn its back to him.

With his remaining time, he continued writing manuscripts under the pseudonym l.

Chronicles of Wrong Doors had already reached its seventh chapter; the protagonist arrived at Elba Island in 1814.

Napoleon would take walks and inspect various parts of the island every day. He was accustomed to calling the island's residents "sons" while considering himself their "father."

As a result, the very first thing Napoleon said upon meeting the protagonist was, "You shall be my good son, and I shall be your good father."

The latest issue of The Prudent Mr wrote about the conscription law:

The minister declared that all single men must voluntarily enlist.

In response to this, the vice-minister explained that "voluntarily" meant, "We will register you, so you don't have to make the trip over yourself."

When writing these two pieces, Richard himself laughed as he wrote. But when he got to Wolf's Mouth, his mood grew less and less pleasant as he continued.

In the autumn of 1315, it snowed very early in St. Gotthard.

A man was driving a mule through the snow. The mule was piled high with salt sacks, and a secret letter was tucked inside, ready to be delivered to Schwyz.

When passing the checkpoint, Wolf personally inspected the goods and stamped them.

He even patted the mule's neck, remarking that this mule was well-raised.

Upon reaching the canyon exit, just one step away from being able to see the lake, the mule-driving man was shoved face-first into the snow.

Wolf was in no rush to kill him.

He had his soldiers string the man up from the checkpoint's crossbeam, then sent men to the village to fetch the man's twelve-year-old son.

Before the child left the house, his mother had stuffed two roasted potatoes into his pockets.

Wolf forced the man to stand on his son's shoulders while tightening the noose around his neck.

"If you can hold out until dawn, both of you will be pardoned."

He pulled out his Pocket Watch, checked the time, and sat back down by the fire. "Habsburg always keeps its word."

It snowed all night long, and the soldiers drank as they bet on how long the father and son could last.

At first, the son was brimming with confidence. This twelve-year-old half-grown boy could normally carry a sheep and walk for several miles.

His father's weight was equivalent to only two sheep, so he felt that standing still and holding him up all night would be no problem.

The man above kept talking to his son, trying hard to distract him so that time would pass faster.

They chatted about their family mule and the lake beyond the checkpoint, even saying that the whole family would go to Lucerne for the market when spring arrived.

Toward the end, the man's throat was so choked by the rope that only a raspy breath remained, leaving him no choice but to start humming.

In the second half of the night, the son's legs shook like a sifter.

Unable to watch this anymore, the man above struggled to force out the words: "Child, crouch down! Crouch down, I won't blame you!"

The child gritted his teeth and continued to hold on.

When the sky grew faintly bright, his knees finally gave way completely.

He knelt in the snow and raised his head; his father's boots were dangling right in front of his face, kicking endlessly like a drowning man.

The son tried to push back up, but his legs had long since gone soft, devoid of a single ounce of strength. Only when the morning light was bright did Wolf snap his Pocket Watch shut and glance at them.

"It's dawn. As promised, both of you are pardoned. We have always kept our word."

He ordered his men to drag the long-frozen corpse onto a sled and position it, then had the soldiers drive the mule to escort the child back to the village along with it.

Later on, there was a tavern landlady who, because she had delivered bread to the Covenant army, had a sign carved with "Loose Tongue" hung around her neck and was stripped bare to be paraded around the village;

A salt smuggler had his ears nailed to the gatepost; if he wanted to leave the checkpoint, he had to tear his own ears off.

There was a shepherd who, because he refused to reveal which pasture the Covenanters were meeting in, was hung from the rafters with stones tied to his ankles, and Wolf added another stone with every question asked...

Richard suddenly paused his writing here. At first, he had merely wanted to depict a villain.

But as he wrote, he suddenly realized that the line in his story, "Once dawn breaks, you will be pardoned"...

Was quite similar in meaning to reality's "Home victorious by Christmas" plastered on the station posters.

Upon finishing the final page, penciled words immediately surfaced on the library card.

"New collection added: Wolf's Mouth, chapter four.

"The story is passable; two errata noted."

Below that was another line of even smaller text pointing out the flaws in his manuscript:

"Potatoes crossed the sea only after 1570. In the era of the book, the Old Continent did not yet possess such a crop;

"Likewise, there were no pocket watches in the modern sense. People back then determined the time by looking at the sky, using hourglasses, or listening to the chapel bells."

Richard stared at the Librarian's errata and frowned.

Potatoes had been brought back from the Andes by the Iberians; he really shouldn't have gotten such common knowledge wrong.

He crossed out 'potatoes' and changed it to 'chestnuts.'

Over the mountain pass, the ground would be covered with chestnuts in autumn. It would be perfect for the mule driver to bring a few bags back.

He thought about it some more, then changed Wolf's promise to: "Once the chapel's morning bell rings, both of you are pardoned."

He also added another panel earlier on: before nightfall, Wolf called the bell-ringing monk to the fire, pouring him drinks until he was half-drunk.

The last few panels were all changed accordingly.

It actually got light very early that day. By the time the snow stopped, there was already light on the mountain peaks.

Under Wolf's "black box manipulation," the bell ringer wasn't allowed back until those two boots stopped moving, delaying the bell's toll by a full quarter of an hour.

After making the corrections, another line of text surfaced on the library card: "Chapter four, replacement collection added."

The Librarian did not evaluate the story again.

On Thursday afternoon, precisely at three o'clock, Clara and Sophia arrived on time.

One came to copy manuscripts, while the other came to freeload on snacks.

Clara copied very quickly, barely pausing through the first few stories, stopping only at the fourth one.

Sophia leaned over as well, a biscuit still clamped in her mouth.

After reading for a while, she took the half-eaten biscuit out of her mouth.

"I thought you only knew how to write about babies pretending to sleep and cattle thieves. I didn't expect..."

Richard stared at her blankly. For a biscuit to come back out once it had entered Senior Sophia's mouth—that was truly a rare sight.

Clara was silent for a long time before she resumed copying.

"Even though this Wolf is so detestable that his very breathing is annoying, you can't seem to find any major fault in his actions either. After all, he's the tax official for that checkpoint, representing the lord to inspect for smuggled salt and treasonous letters."

Clara turned to the fifth chapter.

"I thought chapter four was uncomfortable enough, but chapter five goes even further."

This piece depicted the family of the shepherd who had stones hung from his feet and was eventually forced to relocate by Wolf.

When they moved down the mountain and lodged with a farmer's family, an argument broke out over fodder, and they accidentally beat the farmer who had taken them in to death.

Commoners forced to the very bottom by desperate circumstances would occasionally help one another, but most of the time, they were just tearing each other apart.

Sophia sighed. "How should I put it... even though the protagonist in the earlier parts was a madman, it was at least a normal revenge drama. The moment these two chapters came out, things instantly became heavy."