Old-time musicians

“Bang!”

Fan Ning pretended to be calm and put the notebook back on the table. The hard book ridge knocked on the stone slab with a dry sound.

Because he was leaning over the table to read, when he saw the word “above”, he felt that something was lying on the back of his neck.

For a moment, all the hairs stood up.

Is there something above that parasitizes the “Fountain in the Painting”?

The transmuted tissues of the human body transported by the cochlear-shaped tubes, most of the “nutrients” were robbed by that thing? When he went down the well from the secret door just now, could the changes of the cracked wall tiles and the mucus oozing out be related to this?

What kind of thing can parasitize the “Fountain in the Painting”?

Google search TWKAN

“Return channel.”

Fan Ning quickly cut off these associations that were not conducive to stabilizing his mind.

After reaffirming his purpose in his heart, he began to rummage around nearby boxes and cabinets.

Fortunately, the search area at this level was much smaller than that at the first level. It didn't take him too long to find what he wanted to know.

In front of him was a roll of human skin drawings. Perhaps because the skinning method was too simple and rough, the light and dark marks of the ribs were still clearly visible.

There were many mysterious graphics and text annotations on it, as well as several human anatomy illustrations, mainly close-ups of the skull, with the eyes and a small area of ​​the skull marked in different colors.

This recorded a secret ritual called "path reappearance method". Fanning didn't have the energy to interpret the construction method of the secret ritual in detail, but after a quick reading, he quickly confirmed that the Harmony School used this secret ritual to return to the waking world.

According to them, this site, which was first built in the third historical period, does have a return passage, but its direction to the waking world is already very vague, and the result of entering directly is to get lost in the layers of folds of migration.

The "path re-creation method" is a secret ritual used to re-stabilize the pointing relationship between the "return channel" and the "waking world".

[To be honest, I have been using the source change app to read books and follow the updates recently. It can switch sources and has many reading voices. It is available for Android and Apple. ]

The general principle is to find a "person for marking", let him hold a certain extraordinary substance that meets the requirements of mysticism as a "primer", stand at a specific place in the waking world to "mark the path", and then make some modifications to his eyeballs and skull to complete the closed loop, so that later people holding the same "primer" can enter the third historical re-entry channel and return to the path marked at that time.

It is unrealistic for Fanning to construct this secret ritual now, but the Harmony School has naturally completed the "marking" long ago, and the "primer" they chose is also very simple: a transmutation pigment with "cocoon" phase extraordinary ingredients as the main component, which is everywhere here.

Fanning used a simple method to determine that this "path re-creation method" is true, and it is likely to be effective now.

Because, Fanning compared the turning point of the waking world they described...

It was the back mountain of the Turner Art Museum!

Although I didn't know how my group escaped into the turning channel inexplicably last year, I found that the place I was in after waking up was the back mountain of the Turner Art Museum!

The successful harvest made Fanning in a good mood. He used his spiritual sense to look around, and then quickly grabbed a tin tube of green paint with "cocoon" as the main component and stuffed it into his pocket.

There was only one step left to escape: enter the turning channel!

"The channel, the next is the channel location..." Fanning suddenly frowned.

The information was deduced all the way down, and the first sentence in the discussion record book had not been verified.

What does "the turning channel trend is getting higher and higher, and each time it is a test of life and death" mean?

Fanning re-read the other notes that he had not had time to read in detail just now for the sake of saving trouble.

As he read, he suddenly felt a little uneasy.

According to records, the turning channel looks like a "well" suspended in the air.

Its position is not fixed. It changes every few days, and moves randomly up and down outside the vertical wall on the other side of the ⊿-shaped giant building.

According to the people of the Harmony School, from the statistical frequency point of view, it "likes" to stay in a relatively high place more and more.

"A relatively high place? How high?"

Fanning suddenly took a step and lightly jumped to the edge of the opposite layer.

The green night sky outside was dripping with paint rain, and the smell of festering pus was lingering. He held the stone pillar with both hands and carefully looked down. There were straight building walls, endless abyss, and dense cochlear-like tubes that coexisted with the building.

He had a fluke mentality to see if he could hit some rare good luck, but the reality was that he didn't see any "well" hanging in the air below.

And above...

Fanning looked at the night sky above. The green water vapor was low and sticky, with extremely low visibility, and spiritual perception could not penetrate well.

His face looked a little ugly.

So the return passage, today, is not unexpectedly located at the upper level marked with red ink?

Maybe last year's luck was a fluke, but it's impossible to have good luck all the time.

Another sharp and dense sound brought about the discomfort. Since the closed-eye passage, this feeling should have appeared more than ten times.

With his leather shoes, Fanning walked around to the narrow stone staircase leading to the upper level.

He looked up with some doubt.

There were a few pitifully thin wooden doors and rotten screens blocking the opening in the distance.

This protective measure was not as good as the livestock pen of the farmer's house.

Fan Ning put himself in the shoes of the people and speculated on the situation at that time. It seemed that after suddenly discovering that something was parasitic on the tube, those people did not intend to really block it, but with a hint of panic, they grabbed something and piled it up.

It was similar to when ordinary people were sleeping in the middle of the night and suddenly felt that something seemed to rush in from outside the door, they might subconsciously throw a pillow over.

I just don't know whether these people from the Harmony School suddenly evacuated and left or not.

I also don't know if they came to the upper layer to investigate for the purpose of "approaching the holy spring" when they didn't find the problem.

"What should I do? If the return passage is above..."

After thinking for a while, Fan Ning decided to go up and take a careful look to see what the situation was around.

The only chance to escape is up there, and after analysis, he thought that since there was no movement due to the wooden door and the rotten screen blocking it, it meant that "that thing" might be at a higher place, and the small triangular space above was also divided into several layers.

This is a very realistic logic of weighing the pros and cons: if the stone steps were sealed with something solid or even a secret ritual, Fan Ning would not dare to make such a decision to open it so easily.

He now prayed that the "well" of the return passage was at the height of the upper level.

Not higher.

After calculating and deciding to do this, Fan Ning gritted his teeth and stepped towards the stone steps.

The stone steps were six or seven meters vertically high, and he walked slowly and cautiously.

Originally, he wanted to use invisible force to move the rotten screen and wooden door away, but he was afraid that the active inspiration would alarm something, so he chose to push them away with his hands.

Fan Ning's head trembled out from the hole on the surface, and his heart was in his throat.

The flat surface was covered with a layer of brown hair.

Carpet.

He looked around 360 degrees, and then found that he had not expected to see this.

He had expected many horror or nauseating scenes, even worse than what he had just seen.

But in fact, this seemed to be... an elegant and spacious aristocratic library?

Carpets were laid in large pieces, the ceiling was inlaid with cypress with petal patterns, the tall bookcases on the distant wall were decorated with gold cloth, silver satin or gilded reliefs, and in the middle were long mahogany reading tables.

After Fanning stepped onto the wide arched corridor of this library, he saw many other rare and beautiful objects along the way, including the stag head in the center of the fireplace hood, many white marble busts that he could not name, a large cabinet containing a complete set of armor, a sideboard with "Nileru style", a table with complicated regional and family emblems, feather costumes in the southern native style, and several crystal objects.

It was like visiting a palace.

The only two things that were out of place were that the smell was as wrong as always, and that the thing that a library should have the most, books, was basically absent.

It was "basically", not "completely absent". Most of the bookcases were empty, but in some places there were one or two books leaning against or lying alone. In several corners, you could see piles of severely damaged books that had been abandoned like rags. There were also many scattered papers or torn book pages on the wooden floor.

A few minutes later, Fanning pushed open the window on the vertical side of the building. The green water vapor that was so thick that it could not be dissolved instantly formed a dense layer of water droplets on his face.

"Damn it, I still can't see any 'well'. Is it higher up?"

He tried his best to look up and down and let his spiritual sense probe, but he still couldn't see very far. After retracting his head, he wiped his face with his sleeve, which was stained with a large piece of green unknown mucus.

Then a square plaque inlaid with woodwork next to him caught his attention.

"Alchemist Ethics and Code of Conduct"

The ancient Hoffman title above, combined with a series of clues in the underground building, gave him a vague guess about the identity of the owner of this library.

At least this can explain why there are only a few scattered books and a pile of paper fragments in such a large library.

Alchemist Association-Eternal Life Esoteric Cult-Harmony School-Obviously, before they noticed the existence of "that thing", the Harmony School looted the books here, and all the hidden knowledge books with the same source reference value were moved away.

As for why only books were looted, and there were no other valuable things, perhaps the Harmony School's pursuit of characteristics is completely different from that of ordinary people, or perhaps as a knowledgeable person of the same lineage, they have a little symbolic courtesy to the identity of the owner of the library, which is hard to say.

Amid the sobbing green wind's strange cry, the papers and scattered fragments on the ground were running around the room like living things.

Just as Fanning was thinking whether to check the library on this floor in detail to ensure that the information obtained was sufficient and comprehensive, or to save time as much as possible and try to go directly to the upper floor to find the return passage -

His eyes accidentally swept across a piece of white paper floating under his feet, and his keen sense of perception allowed him to capture the content of the handwriting on it very clearly.

A familiar name jumped into his eyes.

The paper had already slid a few meters away, and Fanning quickly stepped forward and leaned over to grab it back.

Noa, a source language that is more ancient and obscure than Turangalian.

The white paper was torn and the content was incomplete. The ink of the handwriting showed a very profound colorful flash, which always reminded Fanning of Vincent's five paintings.

And there were many interruptions in the strokes, which made Fanning suspect that it was originally colorful, and it was only because of his sublimation practice that five-sevenths of it became visible.

"...Ha! I really admire the people who participated in the seminar today, especially McAdam, who always had a cautious and conservative constipated expression... Do you have to hide it? Do you have to pretend to be restrained? Why don't you say those words frankly? Let's put it on the table and discuss it in depth!!!"

"What kind of adult topic seminar is this..." The wording and tone of the diary writer made Fanning look strange, but he confirmed that his eyes were not wrong just now.

The familiar name was really McAdam.

When Fanning saw this name, his first reaction was Miss Luo Yin's father, but then he realized that it was not.

If I judged correctly, the owner and diary writer of this library was Oakgun, the last president of the Alchemist Association!

And the McAdam he mentioned should be Luo Yin's ancestor of a certain generation.

Only Oakgun's former identity before he went crazy could be qualified to address another core family head of the Bologna School in such a casual and equal tone.

This seemed to be Oakgun's private diary after a high-level seminar of the school.

Fanning was very curious about what topic they were discussing.

He did not read fast. The difficult Noah language and the two-sevenths of the strokes were disconnected. These were all obstacles, but when he saw a certain keyword in the next line, he was so shocked that even Tong Kong magnified it instantly.

This word may not be directly related to the current situation, but any knowledgeable person who saw it would not have a less strange reaction than Fanning!

"…"Can we thoroughly see a kind of true knowledge?", "On the fourth type of origin form?", "On the theoretical feasibility of ordinary creatures passing through the dome door?", "On the number of seats and noble deeds"…The speakers on the left are also interesting. They are only at the third level of profound understanding, but they are more interested than anyone else in the topic. Well, I admit that although this topic sounds more nonsense than how to popularize steam engines, it is indeed very enjoyable to talk about..."

"…Next time, I will definitely give it a simple and crude name so that you can get satisfaction at once - "On the promotion to the Lord of Witness", isn't that the end?"