The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

In the evening, the house agent took the best construction company manager he found to the hotel to discuss with Leo about the renovation of the Monte Manor. Before coming, the construction company had formulated several sets of renovation plans based on the actual situation of the Monte Manor. Leo and Sylvia choose.

Sylvia quickly picked out a refurbishment plan that seemed a little bit in line with her aesthetics, while Leo modified part of the refurbishment project under the existing plan, leaving room for his future arrangement of runes. The array space, and also to avoid renovation will destroy the original layout of the manor.

Originally, according to the estimate of the manager of the construction company, the renovation project of the entire manor would take at least three or four months to complete, but under the effect of money, the construction period was compressed to within one month, but after hearing Leo say that every day in advance, After adding a certain amount of bonuses, he immediately stated that he would speed up the construction period as much as possible while ensuring the quality.

After solving the renovation of the manor, Leo and Sylvia had nothing else to do for the time being, so they wandered around Beiruk, a city where they might live for a long time in the future, and got familiar with the streets of the city and the urban area.

The political structure of Beiruk City is similar to that of the emerging cities in Vinylon World. The city government, the city council, and the city court jointly manage the city. There is no difference in status between the three, but there are some gaps in power. Among them The authority of the city government is the lowest, while the authority of the city court is the highest. From a certain point of view, as long as there are sufficient reasons and evidence, the chief justice of the city court has the right to recall any member of the city council and any member of the city government. An official, including the supreme mayor and speaker.

The reason for this is that the vast majority of those who unified the Seven Kingdoms and established the Otter Federation were supporters of the rule of law school from the bottom, and they had a natural distrust of the parliament and government officials composed of gentry and nobles, so Referring to the very popular system of the rule of law in the New World, they constructed the current political structure of the Otter Federation with the separation of powers and the rule of law as the leader. In order to prevent noble merchants and other forces from infiltrating the court system, they also imposed strict regulations on the court system. The selection of officials in China has a set of extremely strict standards, the lowest standard of which is poverty.

The people at the beginning had a very good idea, thinking that only the poor can appreciate the hardships of the poor, and they will speak for the poor. After a long time after the establishment of this system, it has been perfectly implemented, and it has allowed the Otto Federation to be in It quickly stabilized during the war, and developed steadily in terms of economy, military and diplomacy, and became one of the few major countries in the New World.

But no matter how good the system is, it is impossible to implement it perfectly forever. The people who imagined all this obviously did not expect that the poor will be more greedy and cruel than the rich and powerful after they gain power. The continuous emergence of scandals has shaken the system headed by the rule of law, and the power of the government and the parliament has gradually begun to exert force, bit by bit destroying the reputation and reputation accumulated by the court over the years, and gradually tightening the power of the court.

Beruk City is located in the center of the Outer Federation. The Beruk Lake next to the urban area is the largest lake in the Outer Federation. More than 70% of the rivers converge here. These rivers run from north to south and east to west, connecting all of the Outer Federation. The province, so this is the most important transportation hub city of the Oeter Federation, and almost 90% of domestic goods have to pass through Beiruk City.

It is precisely because of the importance of Beiruk City that the political forces of all parties regard it as the center of power struggle. The media controlled by these forces speak out for the forces they belong to, attack political opponents, and then follow various goods and commodities Spreading this kind of voice to the whole country has resulted in more than 3,000 newspaper offices in Beiruk, and more than 3,000 newspapers are listed every day, and most of them are political newspapers, with only a small number of newspapers. other types of newspapers.

It is precisely because of this special political atmosphere that the citizens of the entire Beruk City like to talk about politics. Even in the tavern, the hottest topic is politics.

Leo and Sylvia just walked around the city twice, sat in some pubs, restaurants or public places, and they have already figured out the political structure, system, forces and characters of the entire Otter Federation. This also saves a lot of time for the two of them, allowing them to spend more time in the National Library of Beruk City, reading books from all over the world, and understanding the culture, religion, and politics of this world. , history, geography, etc.

Although Beruk City is not the capital of the Federation, it is the political center of the Otter Federation, so some institutions that should have appeared in the capital also set up their headquarters here, such as the National Museum, the National Library, and so on.

The National Library is the largest library in the Otter Federation, occupying the entire 70-storey building. No one has counted the number of books here, but a rough estimate is that there should be tens of millions of books, and there are still a lot of them every day. Books from all over the world came together. It is said that all the bookshelves in this building are almost full. The city council has already started discussing the conversion of another 70-story poor apartment building into a new library. In the eyes of the government, increasing the cultural knowledge of citizens is far more important than providing low-cost housing for a small group of poor people.

The rich collection of books is a very good thing for Leo and Sylvia. Afterwards, the two of them stayed in the library all day, looking through the collection of books. Compared with Sylvia, they read more books. Focusing on history, religion, and geography, Leo does not have a specific category. He is reading almost all books, and the reading speed is very fast. Basically, he can read a book with more than 400 pages in a few minutes. books.

At first, the library staff just regarded Leo and Sylvia as some boring dignitaries, because in the past, many boring dignitaries and their companions bet that they would do some strange things in the public library. Things, it is normal for Leo and Sylvia to flip through books quickly, and what's more, they will take off their clothes and do some indescribable things on the bookshelves of the library.

However, it didn't take long for them to find that things didn't seem to be what they thought. They were just playing a game of flipping books, but they really memorized and integrated all the books they flipped, because they would let each other know each other from time to time. The staff of the library help them find some textbooks related to the books they read to judge whether they have fully learned the content of those books, and then they completely answer those textbooks in front of everyone, And all are full marks.

If all the questions for low-level students were answered correctly at the beginning, it was not a matter of concern, but later on, some senior scholars of the Federal College also answered all the exam questions correctly, then it is enough to shock people. It means that the two of them can become senior scholars of Federation College at any time, especially Leo is a scholar of all disciplines.

This matter quickly spread from the library, and naturally attracted the attention of the Beruk City authorities, and they planned to investigate the two of them, but when they learned that the two were senior customers of the Commonwealth Bank, all The investigations have stopped, as if they have never heard anything about it.

And Leo and Sylvia also stopped reading books in the library. This was not because the Commonwealth Bank sent someone to remind them that they realized that their behavior was inappropriate, nor were they worried. Continuing to read like this will cause more trouble, but because most of the useful books in the library have been completely recorded by Leo, and the contents of the remaining books are repeated, there is no need to read again, plus The renovation project of the manor has ended, and the two stopped going to the library to read books.

However, before they stopped reading books, they approached the curator of the library, showed that they had donated a sum of money to the library, and then expressed the hope that the curator would use the convenience of the library to help them collect all kinds of religion, folklore and related books. Books of the occult.

Naturally, the curator of the library would not refuse, especially when the price offered by Sylvia was very attractive.

The next day, Leo and Sylvia left the city and returned to their manor in the Great North Cape area. On the day Sylvia returned, she asked the hired servant to mark the Mont Manor logo on the entrance gate of the manor. It was taken down and put on the sign of Belmont Manor.

The renovation project of the entire manor did not make any changes to the main building and garden design of the manor, and the gazebos set up in the dead corners of the manor were also preserved. The garden only cleaned up the messy shrubs, leaves, and transplanted some flowers and trees, etc. .

As for the villa in the main building, while retaining the main structure, all the decayed and damaged rooms were completely renovated, and all the decorations and furniture were replaced with new ones, and they also helped Leo and Sylvia hire servants and stewards.

As for the basement, due to Leo's request, no changes were made, only some lighting equipment was added, a floor was laid, and the dust was cleaned.

After returning to the manor, Sylvia began to prepare to hold a reception in the manor in accordance with the local social rules, and the guests invited were not only city officials and judges, but also dignitaries living in the Great North Cape area.

In this regard, Leo had no intention of intervening, and handed it all over to the experienced Sylvia, while he stayed in the basement, studying the plan for arranging the magic circle, and at the same time studying the origin of the cube.

It is different from when he first came to the basement not long ago. Leo has now mastered a lot of folklore, religion and mysticism in this world, although the knowledge obtained from the library is some knowledge that is considered to be acceptable. It is public and worthless knowledge, but by analyzing the knowledge full of all kinds of conjectures and lies, it is still possible to find a lot of real content that can be hidden or completely unknown.

For example, Leo judged from the layout of the manor and the characteristics of the square living creature that the arrangement of the Monte family in the manor originated from the New World sect. The Monte family should be believers of the New World sect, and they are high-ranking believers.

Although there are many kinds of religions in this world, and churches are numerous, there are thousands of formal churches recorded in various countries, and the number of unrecorded churches is several times this number, but no matter how many religions there are, in the eyes of religious scholars, all religions are It can only be divided into two categories, that is, Old World sects and New World sects.

The difference between the teachings of these two sects is not very big, nor is it because religions originated in the Old World are Old World sects, and those born in the New World are New World sects. The core that really divides the two sects is a religious thought.

The core religious idea of ​​the Old World sect is to worship and worship the gods, to obtain the guidance of the gods after death, and finally to stand on the side of the gods to obtain eternal happiness and joy.

The New World sect believes that gods are just higher-level beings. As long as they master the correct method, ordinary people can also become gods.

The reason why this kind of new and old religious sects appear is mainly because after the founding of the New World, a new thought movement suddenly appeared among the people of the New World. The core of this movement is human supremacy, believing that human beings are the highest existence in the world. And this trend of thought not only affected the governments of various countries, but also affected religions, and even spread back to the Old Continent, affecting people in the Old Continent.

Therefore, after the spread of this new trend of thought, the Old Continent produced many religions advocating New World sects, and these religions were also unified and classified as New Continent sects. From a certain point of view, Leo and Sylvia are both Advocates of New World sects.

Although in all the books that Leo has read, there is no record about the reason for the outbreak of the religious war that led to the collapse of the Seven Kingdoms, and there is no detailed record of which sect the churches that participated in the war belong to, but some inspirations from them From the slogan of morale, it is not difficult to judge that the religious war that year may have also involved the struggle between the old and the new sects.

What's interesting is that the final decisive battle of the religious war took place near the city of Beruk, and after analysis by scholars later, the center should be the current Lake Beruk.

According to those scholars, Lake Beruk should have been a plain before the Great War, but after the Great War, its ground sank due to unknown reasons, and the surrounding rivers were diverted due to such a drastic change in landform. Finally, the current situation in which all the federal rivers converge into Lake Beruk was formed.

What's more interesting is that some geographers speculate that there should be many underground rivers at the bottom of Lake Beruk, because a large number of rivers converge into Lake Beruk, but there is only one river as an output. Obviously, the amount of water poured into Lake Beruk It is much higher than the amount of water flowing out of Lake Beruk, but the problem is that the water level of Lake Beruk is always within a range of ups and downs, and there is no abnormal rise, so geographers guess the bottom of Lake Beruk There must be underground rivers that can transport excess water.