Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

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

After two days of searching in the humus layer of books, Kraft successfully proved that the Wood family really did not have any archaeological and historical talents in their genes.

It's normal to think about it. Old Wood and Teacher Anderson have studied paramorphology for most of their lives, but they haven't collected even a single relic with a touch of unnatural power. Facts speak louder than words, which is enough to explain the problem.

It has nothing to do with memory or learning ability. A professor in a medical school can accurately clamp the stump of an artery that is shrinking and spasming in a bloody mess, but it doesn't mean that he can find useful information from a pile of paper paste that can be considered for recycling.

Brother Raymond, Coop, and Yvonne were successively recruited into this huge project to help clean up a corner of the sea of ​​books.

The actual effect is relatively limited. All the texts that can be saved are seriously incomplete, with a beginning but no end, an end but no beginning, or simply only half of it. The rest are in a contradictory state where you can't see the full content if you don't peel it, but peeling it will directly damage the paper.

There should be high-difficulty puzzle lovers who like it, but unfortunately everyone here has some traumatic stress disorder related to decryption.

The previous initial guess was correct. The main component was contributed by the monastery library, highlighting a large and comprehensive information. In addition to the religious academic documents that account for the majority, it also includes practical reference books such as regional hydrological and geographical records and crop planting.

Kraft even found a book on herbal medicine in it. It is not a general textbook, but about how to use local unique products to simply treat some common and frequently occurring diseases.

It is probably a practical guide summarized by early pioneering monks. It takes a wild path and has significant personal characteristics. You can see some ingredients that are not mentioned in conventional pharmacopoeias. Unfortunately, it is severely damaged and can only be collected as an antique.

"Leave this one for me." After eliminating the suspicion, it may be sent back to Dunling to give it to Dr. David. I believe he will be interested.

The remaining few books may belong to personal property, but for some reason they are also uniformly collected.

These books usually do not have titles on the cover, and the contents are even more varied. You can find almost anything, such as personal notes, diaries, income and expenditure accounts, hobbies and other miscellaneous items. They have no literary value and lack practical significance, and also mean that they lack identifiable characteristics.

From them, we can get a glimpse of the life of the monastery. Under the restrained and conservative rules and regulations, almost everyone maintains a repressive and regular life, a bit like some kind of endless closed management school.

Even the hobbies are "formal" contents such as calligraphy transcription, plant medicine, hymn music, and historical and literary research. They have to be written down in notes in a rigid manner. It is difficult to judge whether it is a real hobby or an attempt to convince oneself that there is a hobby.

In the long run, it is normal to have some mental illness.

These records are already the only personal expressions. Objectively speaking, they are indeed more interesting than those long-winded theological classics.

So Kraft handed over the task of referring to the big books to professionals without any burden, and picked and read these selected niche texts by himself.

At first, he was still thinking of finding something, but as he read more deeply, perhaps because he hadn't read leisure books for too long, he did resonate with some subtle pleasure.

The lower-level monks are often the group that interacts most with the locals. Through their records, we can see how the church has gradually entered the fragmented mountainous areas and ruled its spiritual world territory in a tangible and intangible way.

First, several inconspicuous missionaries arrived. They did not reject the unfamiliar local humanities and primitive and unique belief systems, but rather had normal contact with them, and even took the initiative to participate in them, observing, understanding, and recording.

After just flipping through a few books, he discovered several natural spirits and ancestor worship behaviors. The recorder tried to describe these things with words or hand-drawn pictures. Due to the mountainous terrain, the natural totems are mainly wild beasts in the mountains, and the birds that can cross the mountains and guide the water source are the most prominent.

And many burial customs and ancestor worship are also related to mountains. They advocate being in high places where they can get long-term sunlight, and further developed more intuitive imaginations such as ascending from mountains to heaven and entering the clouds.

After understanding the customs and taboos, missionaries began to spread the doctrine in a localized way, focusing on universal values, persuading people to do good, obtain blessings after death, and attracting small groups willing to listen and accept.

When the scale reaches a certain level, the church groups that gradually obtain resources will build churches or monasteries. The main purpose is not to gather people for prayer, but to carry out social services based on this.

Missionaries provide residents with almost free comfort medical care, valuable basic education, shelter when necessary, and a small amount of food and clean water distributed every Sunday.

With the long-developed and mature social service capabilities, the local primitive beliefs cannot compete at all, and in terms of debate, they are even hit by the dimensionality reduction of monks who have received relevant education.

Generally, within two generations, the mainstream doctrine will be completely localized and replaced. For a few pagans who are really capable and want to resist, the church does not mind letting them see their traditional teaching methods more than a hundred years ago.

Various superstitions scattered in small settlements gradually became text specimens, quietly rotting in these notes. Then studying these primitive beliefs became a subject and hobby.

To this day, we can still find some traces of the past in the localization of folk and church adaptations, and monks are also happy to record the relevant content collected during the field trips.

In folklore, those who failed to return and did not find their bodies after going up the mountain often believed that they were taken away by some huge flying creatures, so they disappeared without a trace.

Similar rumors mentioned repeatedly are the source of most early worship, that is, the fear of the unknown nature.

The unattainable mountains and unfathomable clouds provide too much space for imagination to breed, giving various elements that bring fear, such as fangs, bat wings, claws, and scales, and the elements are constantly piled up with rumors.

Some monks speculate that this description may be related to the evolution of some classic monster images in traditional stories, or at least it has served as a reference.

The enduring worship of mysticism has made mountains, clouds and monsters always have a special status in the hearts of local people, which in turn has influenced the foreign lords and churches. The former got inspiration for family emblems from it, and the latter moved the sites of many churches and monasteries to high and dangerous places.

"Very interesting." Brother Raymond was still sorting the piles of religious books, and Kraft had already read through more than a dozen essays.

He would definitely not be willing to force historical and religious knowledge on him, but it would be different if he read it as a hobby.

With his memory, it was actually not much different from memorizing it. The texts from various sources were like grains of sand and gravel piled up, forming a half-old and half-new sand table, presenting the concrete image of this land.

"I have an idea. How about adding folklore as an elective in the future?"

"As long as you are willing to hire someone or write the textbook yourself, I have no objection." Raymond straightened up from the waist-high pile of books, slightly worried about the future workload, "Why do you suddenly mention this?"

"I don't know if you realize that Dunling's story has brought great inspiration. Some things are not actually taken away by time. They have never left and are always around us, but they exist in other forms that we are accustomed to."

"For example, some inexplicable habitual tendencies and familiar stories. You can't feel them because they are already part of us."

"Say less, Mr. Kraft, it's a bit creepy." Coop wrapped his clothes tightly, feeling that something colder than early autumn was wandering around.

He didn't know if there was a problem with the monastery, but Kraft really made him feel something was wrong recently. It was time to find an opportunity to talk privately.