The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

Although Emerald Island is one of the largest islands on Lake Beruk, it is not very suitable for human habitation, because most of the entire island is covered with bare rocks, without much soil, and naturally there is no vegetation. , very desolate.

However, a gem called green fluorite is abundant here. In order to facilitate mining, early mine owners built some houses on Emerald Island to form a miner's village.

It's just that as the mining of green fluorite mines becomes more difficult, and the benefits that can be obtained from mining are already very small, the mine owner can only stop the mining of minerals and seal up the mine pits. After the mining technology innovation in the future, consider Re-open the mine.

Although the mine has stopped, the miners living here have not completely left. Some people have become accustomed to this kind of life on the island, so they stayed and formed a village, which is the only village on the island, Green Stone Village. .

The villagers of Greenstone Village usually make a living by fishing. In recent years, with the introduction of cage farming from other countries, the people of Greenstone Village also took advantage of their superior geographical advantages to build the largest cage aquaculture in the Outer Federation. factory, which also made the villagers of Greenstone Village a lot of money.

Although the money they earned was not enough for them to improve the environment of the entire Emerald Island, it was enough to improve the living conditions of Greenstone Village. The simple houses that were originally piled up with shale and glued with lake mud have now been rebuilt into The small apartment in the urban area, if you ignore the surrounding environment, the isolated island village of Green Stone Village looks not too different from some urban areas in the urban area.

The state of Greenstone Village surprised people who came to Greenstone Island for the first time. In their opinion, Greenstone Village should be a primitive village full of old-fashioned houses. This made many people who wanted to show the superiority of urban residents People feel a little disappointed.

For the people in Greenstone Village, the people who flooded into the village these days are not only an opportunity to make money, but also a group of troublemakers.

The total population of Greenstone Village is less than 1,000 people, but in just a few days, more than 10,000 people flooded into Greenstone Island, seriously disrupting the order in the village, and more importantly, the houses in Greenstone Village simply cannot accommodate such Many people, on the day when so many people poured in, many people slept directly in the small square in the middle of the village.

Fortunately, the Baptist Church, which organized the evangelistic activities, discovered the problem in time. The next day, they cleaned up the abandoned residential areas in the nearby mining area, arranged some temporary daily necessities, and barely accommodated the people who participated in the evangelistic activities.

However, their troubles did not end here, because these people who came to Emerald Island in advance accounted for less than a quarter of the total number of people who came to participate in the evangelistic activities. When the evangelistic activities began, there were several times more. The number of people would flock to Emerald Island, so the Baptist Church responsible for the evangelistic activities had to continue to clean up the old mining area in order to clear out a large square and rest area that could accommodate tens of thousands of people before the evangelistic activities began.

Regarding the choice of Emerald Island as the venue for the evangelistic activities, most people in the Baptist Church expressed incomprehension, especially those who had been to Emerald Island to investigate the situation directly opposed it, and also selected some more It is suitable as the venue for the baptism mission, but in the end, the upper level still ruled out other more suitable locations, and decided to choose Emerald Island as the venue for the mission. This really made the church feel a little strange, and everyone was very curious about Emerald Island. There is something special that will be valued by the upper echelons of the church.

In fact, not only those who remained in the church who were left with this evangelistic activity were puzzled by it, but even all those who followed this evangelistic activity were also puzzled. Therefore, before the event officially started, many people and forces sent their own His eyes and ears sneaked into Emerald Island to investigate the situation.

It's just that it's a pity that no matter how you search, you can't find anything useful in the end, and the only thing that makes people feel that it may be related to the missionary activities is the legend that there was a mysterious item in the nearby waters, but In the eyes of many people, that legend is just a rumor, just as absurd as most baseless urban legends.

However, compared with the church, many of those who participated in the evangelistic activities were very interested in this legend, and they even felt that it was part of the evangelistic activities, even though they all knew that the federal government had carried out very special activities because of this legend. After careful exploration, they found nothing, but many of them still believed that the legend was true, so these boring people hired boats and boatmen from Greenstone Village to search for something in the nearby waters before the preaching activities started. , I hope I will be that lucky person.

Some people even think that the reason why they did not find anything in the waters is that they found the wrong place. In fact, the legendary mysterious items are not in the water at all, but on land, on the island, so there are many People searched together on the island, and even ran to the abandoned mines. Many people got lost in the mines, and people from Greenstone Village and the Baptist Church had to organize people to rescue them.

Fortunately, there was no trouble in the end, and everyone was rescued safely. Except for being weak and frightened, there was no other problem. In order to prevent people from running into the mine again, members of the Baptist Church People used stones to block the entrances of each mine and sent people to guard it.

After all, this evangelism event is the first public large-scale evangelism carried out by the Baptist Church after obtaining the official permission of the Otter Federation. If any accident occurs during the event, the reputation of the entire evangelism event will be severely damaged, even if an accident occurs Some people are to blame, but in the eyes of others, there is a problem as the organizer of the event did not protect the participants.

I don't know if it was because the Beiruk city government was worried about problems with the event, or because the Baptist Church felt that it could not take good care of the people on the day of the event. The day before the event, Beiruk City dispatched police officers 2,000 people, including reservists and soldiers, stationed on Emerald Island to help the Baptist Church maintain order, and the entry of police and soldiers also improved the chaotic situation. At least on the surface, everything is already very stable.

Leo and Sylvia came to Emerald Island on the day of the event, and at this time too many boats were docked at the small pier of Emerald Island, which made the new boats have to stop in the outer waters, and then they were sent by Greenstone Village The villagers of the village drove their boats through the gaps between the boats to take people to the island.

After landing on the island, looking at the bustling crowd on the pier, Leo and the others couldn't help but frown, while Solander said bluntly to the villagers of Green Stone Village as the guide: "I don't like this place at all. dislike."

Hearing Solander's words, the villagers smiled wryly and said, "I don't like it just like you do."

"You can refuse?" Solander said again.

The villagers just smiled, looked at Solander, and said nothing.

Although the villagers didn't say anything, everyone present could feel that what the other party wanted to express was that they had known it earlier and rejected it, and they used what you said.

"Don't take us to the venue yet." Leo took out the map of Emerald Island, pointed to a place, and said, "Go to this place first."

"Giant Shield?" The villagers looked at the location where Leo was, and immediately recognized where it was, and smiled with a little deep meaning, and said, "You also believe in those legends, and want to find the place that was lost in the water. Is it a mysterious item in it? It’s useless, many people have already explored it, and they can’t find anything.”

"Just take us there." Leo said without explaining to the other party.

"Okay, you are employers, I listen to you." The villagers shrugged, then turned and led a few people through the pier square, detoured a small road by the side of Greenstone Village, climbed a stone step, and then opened up a road along the edge of the island. A small path, walked towards the point pointed out by Leo.

While on their way, the group encountered an episode. The policeman in charge of maintaining order on the island recognized Solander, Leo and Sylvia as well. Surprised, he wanted to step forward to ask Solander, but was held back by the crowd around him, so he could only watch the group leave.

The villagers as guides are very familiar with the roads on the island. After leaving the pier, it took less than half an hour to arrive at the place designated by Leo, Giant Shield.

The reason why it is called the Giant's Shield is because it is a cliff, and the shape of the cliff is very similar to a shield. Although the surface has become bumpy after a long period of wind and rain, if you look carefully , but it can still be seen that the cliff is very flat, giving people the feeling that it was cut out with a huge knife.

The Giant's Shield is very famous in Beiruk City, and it is also a place that anyone who comes to Emerald Island will definitely visit. The reason why it is so famous is not because of the shape of the Giant's Shield, but because there was once a person who lived in the New World. The very famous Barron chose to jump off the Giant's Shield after writing his long poem "The Game of the Gods", ending his short life when he was less than thirty years old.

After that, for a period of time, this place also became the first choice for some people who committed suicide. According to incomplete statistics, at least 2,000 people chose to commit suicide by jumping off the cliff here. Only less than half of the bodies were recovered, and the rest Half have either sunk to the bottom or been eaten by fish growing in the water.

The reason why Leo and Sylvia came to the Giant's Shield immediately after arriving on the island was partly because of the great poet Barron.

When Sylvia was looking through the information of Emerald Island, she accidentally saw the introduction of the poet Barron, learned about his life, and became interested in reading the last game of the gods written by the poet Barron, so she went to I found this long poem and looked through it, and soon found that this long poem was actually about the religious war that year, and in the poem Barron described that war as a battle fought by some gods when they were bored. game.

Although a lot of embellishments, adaptations and beautifications are mixed in the poems, Sylvia, who is particularly sensitive to various intelligence materials, can still find the hidden real content under the cover of these gorgeous words, and in these real The small war related to the mysterious item is recorded in the content.

After extracting this content and removing a large number of descriptions about the battle process and the personnel involved in the battle, Sylvia found the most useful part, which is the place where the mysterious item last appeared, and this place is near the giant shield waters.

Leo and Sylvia don't know if anyone discovered through this poem in the past that the Giant's Shield was the last place where the mysterious item appeared, but from some past data, it can be confirmed that the various forces that searched for the mysterious item also searched for it. The waters of the Giant's Shield, but it turned out to be nothing.

Even so, Leo and Silvia still chose to take this trip, mainly because they felt that the people who searched the waters in this area might have found the wrong place.

They read Barron's life and found that after writing the long poem "Game of the Gods", Barron's reputation reached an unprecedented height. He was hailed as the poet of the New World who was most likely to become a golden-crowned poet. In fact, he was indeed so , because shortly after Barron's death, the Poetry Association of the Old Continent transported his golden crown to the New World. Judging from the speed of poetry dissemination and the time it took for the golden crown to be transported, it should have been confirmed before Barron's death. It's the Golden Crown Poet.

Moreover, at that time, Baron was not only extremely successful in his career, but also very proud of his love. Before his death, he was already engaged to the only daughter of the Grand Duke at that time. It is no exaggeration to say that after the death of the Grand Duke, he was that Principality. No matter what, such a person does not look like a person who would commit suicide.

But at that time, the whole world generally had a prejudice against poets, thinking that poets were extremely unstable emotionally, and could easily do unexpected things due to impulse, and suicide was the most common thing poets did impulsively, almost more than half of them. Famous poets finally choose to commit suicide and end their own lives, so Barron's death is also considered a tragedy after this emotional impulse.

However, Leo and Sylvia didn't think so. They thought that Barron's death might just be an accident, and Barron chose to come to the Giant's Shield on Emerald Island alone because he was collecting various materials to write poems. At that time, he discovered the location of the mysterious item from the data, so he came here to look for it, but he obviously overestimated his ability, and finally slipped and fell from the cliff, which was regarded as suicide.

As for the location of the mysterious item guessed by Baron, it should not be in the water, but most likely on the cliff, because according to the data, everyone was looking for it in the surrounding waters, but none of them had ever searched for the giant. Shield Cliffs.

"Did you find anything?" After arriving at the Giant's Shield, Sylvia asked Leo in a low voice.

Leo's response to her was a smile.