From American Internet Celebrity to God Among Men

185: Chapter 185 Echoes of Iron and Ice and the Second Piece of the PuzzleWithdrawing from the humid stickiness of the tropical jungle and suddenly plunging into the crispness of a Nordic fjord was like jumping from a heavily saturated oil painting into a print with sharp strokes and a cold color palette.

The air was so clean it stung the lungs, carrying the scent of pine needles, seawater, and rock.

Massive granite cliffs, as if cleaved by the axe of a god, plunged vertically into the bottomless, ink-green seawater, with waterfalls hanging like silver ribbons, and the cries of seabirds echoing far across the expanse.

The Viking petroglyph site was located on a relatively gentle terrace by the bay, backed by rock walls and facing the open fjord.

Dozens of rocks of various sizes were covered with patterns chiseled out with primitive tools: twisted serpentine shapes, abstract sun wheels, longships, spear-wielding warriors, and a large number of undecipherable runes.

There were no magnificent buildings here, only these silent stones scattered among moss and low shrubs, appearing small compared to the vast nature, yet exuding a stubborn and mysterious sense of presence.

The local contact was a museum researcher and historical reenactment enthusiast named Eric, who was tall, red-bearded, dressed in practical outdoor gear, and had enthusiastic and knowledgeable eyes.

He was very supportive of the team’s research permit (applied for under the name of ”Transnational Acoustic Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Recording”) and provided a wealth of materials regarding local legends and academic research.

”This place is called ’Helgard’ by some of the older generation, which means ’the place of listening’,” Eric said, pointing to the largest slab covered in runes.

”Legend has it that on certain nights, when the aurora appears and the wind blows from the sea, these stones will ’sing’, with a sound like ancient iron scraping against ice.

Of course, modern science suggests it might be the whistling sound produced by wind blowing through specific rock crevices, or rock resonance triggered by fjord tidal vibrations.”

The team’s camp was set up in an abandoned cabin (which had been renovated) about one kilometer away from the petroglyph group, maintaining a research distance while providing basic protection against the cold.

The working environment here was more comfortable than the jungle, but the cold and potential wind and rain were new challenges.

On the first day, after familiarizing themselves with the environment under Eric’s guidance, work began quickly.

Valentina and Joe focused their equipment deployment on monitoring the acoustic coupling relationship between the petroglyph group, the fjord water, and specific wind directions.

Alex, meanwhile, began his ”perceptual stroll” once again.

The energy field here was completely different from the Mayan jungle.

The energy of the rocks was solid, cold, and highly inert, like a sleeping giant beast.

The life energy of the moss and lichens was thin but tenacious.

The fjord’s water contained deep and slowly flowing massive energy.

The overall atmosphere was one of empty, metallic ”cold silence.”

Alex touched those cold carvings.

Information Texture Discrimination meticulously scanned the energy differences between the chiseled lines and the original rock surface.

Thousands of years of weathering had made the two nearly merge, but at the microscopic level of perception, he could still ”feel” the extremely faint ”stress memory” left by the instantaneous violence of the tools applied, as well as the subtle energy gradients produced by the different erosion rates of rainwater, frost, and microorganisms along the carvings versus the flat surfaces over the subsequent years.

However, when his perception swept over several slabs with specific patterns (especially those complex spiral-shaped sun wheels and intertwined serpentine shapes), he vaguely caught a hint of something unusual.

It was not the ”energy imprint” like in the Mayan ruins, but more like a trace of... ”guidance” or ”focusing.”

The chiseling direction and depth of these patterns seemed to have unintentionally (or intentionally?) formed some kind of extremely rudimentary ”receiving” or ”reflecting” structure for specific frequency energy flows in the environment (possibly geomagnetic micro-variations, extremely low-frequency sound waves, or even ionospheric disturbances triggered by auroral activity).