Mystery: When the Lost Homelanders Meet the Lost Homeland Call

The crimson moonlight spilled onto the rooftops of Tingen, as if draping the industrial city in a dark red veil.

Lynn stood on the balcony of Old Neil's house, his hands in his pockets, his gaze sweeping over the layers of buildings and landing on the gray, impenetrable slums of the dock area in the distance. The night wind blew in from the river, carrying the mixed smells of coal smoke and river water.

Old Neil stood behind him, holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold, and hesitated several times before speaking.

"Say what you want to say." Lynn said without turning her head.

"Sir," old Neil said carefully, "are you really planning to make your move tonight?"

"Um."

"But... the Hammer Gang has been operating in the dock area for over a decade, with at least a hundred men under their command, and their strongholds are scattered throughout the slums and dock area. There are only two of us..."

Old Neil gave a wry smile.

"Sir, I don't doubt your abilities. I'm worried about... how to find them all. The Hammer Gang's hideouts can't all be exposed. Some are hidden in residential buildings, some are disguised as legitimate shops, and some may be underground. If we miss even one, the fairness you're seeking cannot be achieved."

Lynn nodded: "You're right. So we need a way to find all the outposts."

He walked back to the living room, sat down on the sofa, and tapped his fingers on the armrest.

"What suggestions do you have?"

Old Neil pondered for a moment, then his eyes suddenly lit up.

"Sir, those who practice the esoteric arts are proficient in rituals and magic. As long as there is a connection, they can locate the other party's location through the spirit world. In occultism, gangs can also be considered as a whole. If you find one member, you can locate all gang strongholds."

"But I know of a ritual magic that can locate and re-establish contact, so that all that is needed is something related to the members to complete the process of locating the members and then locating the base in one go."

He paused, his tone becoming somewhat hesitant: "It's just that the workload is too great, and the 'connections' in the spirit world are incredibly complex. With my spirituality, I would simply lose control. Directly searching a city, I think, would probably require a powerhouse of at least demigod level to oversee it."

While the knowledge imparted by the hidden sages is undoubtedly deadly, it also contains some precious knowledge, and this ritual is one of them.

The various strongholds of the Iron Hammer Gang must have some kind of mystical "connection" with their core members. People who frequently enter and leave will leave spiritual traces, and frequent transactions will form fixed "spiritual paths." Places that have been occupied for a long time will accumulate projections of the "collective unconscious."

In theory, all the strongholds could be found by following these connections, but in practice, a Sequence Nine Seeker simply couldn't handle such a massive amount of information.

"What if I were to act as the core of the ritual?" Lynn asked. "Spirituality or the spirit world is just another structure that can be analyzed and manipulated to me. You conduct the ritual, I provide the energy, and at the same time, I filter out all the irrelevant, redundant, and distracting information, leaving only what we need."

Old Neil began to think seriously.

This direct search means being bombarded with a massive amount of spiritual information from different times, spaces, and levels, some of which are even contradictory illusions. If a Sequence Nine esoteric seeker were to forcibly receive so much information, at best their spirituality would be exhausted and they would fall into a deep sleep; at worst, they would be overwhelmed by the flood of information and lose control on the spot.

Old Neil didn't know exactly how strong Lynn was, but he had personally witnessed Lynn effortlessly sever the Hidden Sage's spying and crush those "eyes." That effortless ease was as natural as breathing.

If Lynn were to do it, he could definitely do it.

"Understood, sir." Old Neil took a deep breath, put down his coffee cup, and headed to the basement.

Behind the iron door to the basement was a small room with walls covered in intricate magic circles and shelves filled with various bottles and jars. The air was thick with the scent of herbs and burning candles. This was where Old Neil usually performed ritual magic, and where he had repeatedly tried to connect with his wife's spirit.

Old Neil opened the cabinets in the basement, took out various materials, and began to construct the pattern for ritual magic.

  

Old Neil's hands were steady, his movements were practiced, and every step was precise. As a veteran who had performed the ritual countless times, his movements had long become muscle memory.

“Sir,” Old Neil looked up, “I need an item with a strong enough ‘connection’ to the core members of the Hammer Gang. Ideally, it should be something that has been carried by its owner for many years and has been imbued with a great deal of the owner’s spirituality.”

Lynn thought for a moment, looked at his palm, and then focused his mind. He controlled the blood left on his hands when he beat up the gang members, and it turned into blood droplets that flew out.

"Is that enough?" Lynn placed the blood droplet on a piece of paper and handed it to Old Neil.

Old Neil took the paper, closed his eyes to feel it for a moment, then opened his eyes and nodded.

"That's enough. The residual spiritual energy above is very strong."

He placed the paper in the center of the black cloth and began reciting Hermesian incantations.

Lynn could sense that as Old Neil chanted, the spiritual energy in the room was flowing in a specific way. Those unseen and intangible things seemed to be drawn together by invisible threads, gradually converging at the center of the magic circle and wrapping around the IOU, while Old Neil's spiritual energy was also disappearing at a rapid pace.

Lynn raised his right hand and placed his palm on Old Neil's shoulder. The primordial, dissipated energy in the spirit world was reconstructed by him and gathered into a vast, usable spirituality.

Old Neil felt as if his spirit was being held up by a gentle, large hand. He no longer needed to squeeze energy from his meager reserves, but could draw energy directly from the "fuel" provided by Lynn, as easily as drawing water from a river.

The immense spirituality was inexhaustible, like an ocean, and completely obedient to the rituals he constructed, without any disruption to the rituals.

Lynn felt the spirit world tremble.

Those invisible, omnipresent flows of information, reflecting the entire world, began to converge on this room. They passed through the walls, through the floor, through the ceiling, like countless unseen rivers, surging from all directions toward the paper in the center of the black cloth.

He saw a thick line extending from the drop of blood, leading directly to a person's spiritual imprint. Then countless "lines" extended from that person, some as thin as spider silk, some as thick as cables, some stretching straight into the distance, and some winding and coiling nearby.

These threads connect different spiritual imprints, including those of people, objects, places, and even abstract things like organizations.

This is "connection".

This is a spiritual connection, a connection in a mystical sense.

The things a person uses leave a spiritual imprint, the places a person visits leave traces of their presence, and the roads a person travels, the words they exchange, the debts they owe, and the vows they make—all of these leave traces in the spirit world.

These traces are what Old Neil is trying to track.

The tracking worked; a massive amount of information was directed at them under the guidance of the ritual, and Old Neil's face turned somewhat pale. The flow of information was too vast and too chaotic; if he were to confront it directly, his spirituality would be like a small boat in a storm, instantly capsized.

Just then, a ghostly green flame surged from Lynn's palm, spreading along Old Neil's shoulder and throughout his entire body.

The chaotic flow of information was "cleaned" the moment it came into contact with the flames. Irrelevant, false, and misleading information was burned away by the flames, leaving only the real connections related to the core members of the Hammer Gang and their strongholds.

Old Neil felt his head, which felt like it was about to burst, suddenly relax.

The information was still pouring in, but it was no longer a jumbled mess; instead, it was organized neatly. Each piece of information was clearly labeled with its source, time, location, and credibility, as if someone had done all the sorting and filtering for him.

"Continue," Lynn's voice rang in his ears. "Find all the contacts."

Old Neil took a deep breath, focused his mind, and guided the filtered information toward himself.

He began to "see".

The Iron Hammer Gang's stronghold—a three-story building on the east side of the dock area—is ostensibly a general store, but in reality, the first floor is a casino, the second floor is an office for lending money and collecting debts, and the third floor is the boss's residence.

The Hammer Gang's outposts are scattered throughout the dock area, some being taverns, some pawnshops, some warehouses, and a few hidden in the basements of residential buildings.

The Hammer Gang's funding channels include secret dealings with several shops in mid-range areas. These shops appear to operate legally on the surface, but in reality, they serve as channels for the Hammer Gang to launder money.

Old Neil, the protector of the Hammer Gang, saw some names, some faces, and how those "gentlemen" in respectable suits and top hats sat at the same table with the gang leader.

"That's about it," said Old Neil.

He withdrew his hand, and the eerie green flames faded from Old Neil's body, returning to his palm.

Old Neil let out a long sigh of relief: "I never thought I could do this. I've memorized all seventeen outposts."

He subconsciously tapped his chest four times, then stopped halfway through and looked at Lynn embarrassedly.

Lynn waved her hand: "It's alright, just pray whatever you want, the goddess shouldn't mind."

Old Neil performed the gesture of praising the Crimson Moon with a strange expression.

Is it a problem that the goddess won't blame?

Shouldn't you be the one who gets a better response when praising a righteous god next to a non-righteous god?

The ritual I just performed was entirely based on my own power; I dared not rely on the power of the goddess.

Lynn himself didn't care whether the people around him believed in him or not. As for the goddess's reaction, the dark path's detection ability was relatively weaker than the hidden sage's path. Lynn estimated that the goddess wouldn't notice him just because of a gesture.

Even if they do notice it, it's because of something else.

Speaking of which, Lynn actually has a question: does the goddess know which church Pales is hiding in? If she does, wouldn't it be a bit unsafe for her to put Pales together with the walking Source Castle supply pack Klein?

Is it because you think Pales' personality prevents him from confronting the mysterious, or do you believe that Pales wouldn't dare to obtain any information beyond Leonard's capabilities?

Or perhaps Pales's injuries were so severe that his spiritual vision was even weaker than half a Sequence 9 monster?

Lynn has proven through his own experience that when even Leonard's inspiration can be extraordinary, Palles will step in.

Regardless of the possibility, the goddess has placed Klein in a rather dangerous situation, and Lynn hasn't fully figured out the scheming behind it yet.

Lynn also reflected on why she had attracted attention in the past.

When Lynn created his body and appeared underground at Night Watch, what other Extraordinary Beings noticed was that the commotion of creating spirituality was too great.

The main reason was that Lynn had directly imbued himself with an extremely powerful spirituality, exceeding the limits of Old Neil's spiritual barrier.

Leonard was just about to "bump into" Klein when he came out, which led to his "connection" with Lynn, who was delaying Klein, and then Palles realized something was wrong.

Of course, Lynn wouldn't cause such a big commotion now. He's already determined that the mysterious spirituality is like blocks in Minecraft to him. For creative mode, having a bunch of blocks in your inventory isn't very meaningful; you can just search for them when you need them.

Therefore, when reconstructing the body, it is only necessary to mobilize the spirituality of an ordinary person; there is no need to give oneself a high-sequence level of spirituality.

After reviewing some events, Lynn looked at Old Neil.

"Now, let's deliver a gift to each outpost."