Struggle in the Steam Age

Aunt Mia planned to decline Lawrence's invitation at the beginning. After all, he was going to the Church of the Passion the day after tomorrow to deal with the problems accumulated in his hands, and it might take a lot of time to go to the cotton fields, so that he could not catch up with the fact that he had to go to the Church of the Passion the day after tomorrow to deal with things.

However, Viscount Doropia quickly stated that he did not ask Lawrence to solve the cotton field immediately. In the past few days, you can think about it first, and then come to deal with the troublesome farmland pests and diseases after dealing with the affairs of the church. As for the cost of the Enterprise during the period of staying here for research, he said that the Viscount Mansion can bear it all by himself, and guarantees that it will be consistent with everything the church provides.

In addition, the Viscount Mansion is willing to provide enough remuneration to Lawrence New Shall Island if they can really solve the problems they are facing. In addition to giving him a private part, he can also let the Earl's Court of Lawrence act as a distributor of his own cotton textiles and make New Sauer the only textile distribution center in that part of the island.

"Since you are so sincere, it's inappropriate for me to push back and forth. How about this, I'll go and have a look as soon as the matter with the Church of the Passion is over." Hearing the reward offered by Viscount Doropia, Lawrence was quite satisfied nodded. It seems that the viscount didn't cheat him because the two parties were related, but gave him a very reasonable reward. If that's the case, it's no big deal to go and see for yourself.

After discussing the treatment of diseases in the cotton field, Mr. Viscount invited Lawrence to go hunting in the woods with them. But Lawrence declined with the excuse that since he wanted to study it, the sooner the better. Seeing that she couldn't hold back Lawrence, Aunt Mia could only ask her son to take him to a separate room in the manor.

When they came to the door of this so-called independent room, Lawrence and Nora unexpectedly discovered that it was a greenhouse set in the woods. The surrounding plants perfectly concealed this small greenhouse. If it wasn't brought by an acquaintance, ordinary people would not be able to find it even if they walked nearby.

"This greenhouse houses diseased cotton plants and samples collected from all over our territory." The future Viscount Ropiah, Lawrence's distant cousin, introduced him. "After finding the lesions in the cotton fields, we started collecting these samples, hoping to find something out of them."

"So have you found out now?" Lawrence asked while looking at the cotton that was full of insect eyes on these plants. In his opinion, these cottons that were plagued by diseases and insect pests were obviously attacked by the same disease and insect pests. If this is the case, it is obviously wrong that various methods cannot be eliminated.

"No, we haven't found anything other than confirming that the pests are cotton bollworms." Lawrence's uncle shook his head helplessly. "This is what we find strange, but because we consider that this kind of information must be kept secret, we can only study it secretly in this place."

Because Lawrence is now both a hereditary nobleman and a well-known scholar, the most important thing is that he has no interest in this side. That's why they allowed Lawrence to take Nora to inspect these damaged plant samples. If it were someone else, it is very likely that they would not even know about this matter.

Also because of this secrecy, not many people are now able to examine these first-hand samples. This also leads to the extreme scarcity of professionals who have studied these cotton diseases and insect pests. But after doing so, it brought another disadvantage, that is, although the pests and diseases had broken out for several months, everyone still couldn't find out where the source of the pests and diseases broke out.

After a few simple exchanges, the uncle retreated out of the greenhouse very consciously, and turned off the magic monitoring facilities in the room. As a noble family with a long history, they naturally know that when the caster is doing something, other people should avoid it directly.

"Okay, we should analyze all the samples first." After watching his uncle exit the room, Lawrence waved his hand and assigned the task to Nora, "Although it seems that this is just a A common infestation, but we all know that some of the messages behind it are not normal."

"No problem." Nora said and flew up, and at the same time released a large number of silver silk threads from both hands to connect to the specimens and the plants used as samples. Then he closed his eyes. A few seconds later, both the sample and the plant were shrouded in a veil-like mist.

Seeing that Nora began to carefully analyze the specific data of those samples, Lawrence also stepped aside and began to observe the cotton bollworm specimens taken from the cotton one by one under the microscope. After investigating more than a dozen samples, he accidentally found something suspicious in these specimens.

"The situation is indeed a bit abnormal." Just when Lawrence was about to raise his head and tell Nora about his analysis report, Nora also stopped casting spells and said to him through soul connection, and at the same time handed over two cotton leaves. "I just tried to touch these leaves with the power of pure faith, and now they have undergone strange changes."

"Oh?" Lawrence reached out to take the leaf and cast a few spells. He didn't feel anything at first, but under Nora's guidance, Lawrence felt a little bit of extremely weak divine power. This kind of divine power was different from anything he had seen before. It was full of vitality, but it also had a strong sense of aggression.

"Different gods have different divine powers." Nora explained to Lawrence through the soul connection when Lawrence stood next to the microscope and pretended to examine the leaves. "And the divine power above should come from a god that we don't know very well. If it wasn't for me to use the pure power of faith on a whim after repeated inspections and found nothing wrong, I would not have discovered this kind of power. Pests and diseases are actually related to gods."

"Is it related to the gods?" Lawrence asked with some doubts. "If I remember correctly, my relatives in the Viscount's Mansion should have asked spellcasters and clergy to check these samples, and even went to the place where the pest infestation occurred. But why didn't this group of people find the worthwhile thing you just discovered? place of doubt."

"Because the power of these gods is too weak, even those professional priests have no way to detect them, unless they can gather a lot of such leaves or plants and conduct targeted inspections." Na La explained to Lawrence, "I actually took a tricky approach and used the power of faith to maximize the power in it, so I discovered the power of the gods hidden in it."

"This is indeed a bit troublesome. After all, as long as there are gods involved, nothing will be too simple." Lawrence scratched his hair and said. "But the good news is that if we can figure out a way for ordinary transcendents to check out this divine power, we should be able to get enough reinforcements."

"Yeah, for example, the Orthodox churches will definitely be interested in this inexplicable divine power." Nora tilted her head and said after thinking for a while. "And I feel that the main part of this divine power has a very unpleasant aggressiveness of that person and carries some power of corruption and death. It is likely to come from evil gods or even some kind of lower plane existence with divinity."

"The lower plane? If it's true, then we have to remind them when we notify them." After all, the lower plane is not a good baby, once the church or something goes to investigate, they are likely to jump the wall. So advance warning is very important.