The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

For many people, yesterday was an extremely turbulent day. The fate of them and their families changed drastically yesterday. Some people just disappeared, no one talked about them, and no one would remember them. There are still some people who are still remembered, but no one dares to mention them, as if those people have become taboo overnight.

Although most of these people who have changed and disappeared are only the middle and lower levels of the government, there are also some high-ranking dignitaries among them, such as members of Congress, a certain minister, and even a judge of the Supreme Court, etc., no matter how high their status is No matter how much power they have in their hands, they are all as fragile as bubbles in the face of the fully functioning state machinery, which will burst as soon as they are poked.

During the entire arrest process, some people did try to resist, but the various departments responsible for the arrest have already prepared corresponding measures, and they can use corresponding measures in time to completely suppress these resistances when encountering resistance. Except for a few people who escaped from the captors because they possessed unexpected extra abilities, all other targets recorded on the lists distributed to various departments have already been caught.

However, because the list of spies appeared suddenly, and the verification time was very short, it could only be verified according to the evidence attached to the list, and it is very likely that the wrong person will be arrested. For example, Minister of Finance Caimen may be arrested. Wrong, because it was not found that he had done anything that endangered the Federation, it was only because he was on the list, and several people in his family who had been identified as spies were arrested together. .

It's not that the federal government has thought of secretly investigating for a period of time, and then arresting these people after fully confirming their spies' identities, so as to avoid some unjust cases.

But time, manpower, financial resources, and the situation are pressing the federal government to act all the time. Although the people on the list account for only a small part of the number of civil servants in the entire federal government, they are almost all in the The key parts of the federal economy, people's livelihood, military and other functional departments, once these people try to destroy, the entire Otto federal government will enter a state of disorder in a short period of time, and may even collapse completely.

The more important point is that they don't know whether the list in their hands is unique. If the list is distributed and found by the people recorded on the list, will those people take the risk and do something in advance.

All kinds of concerns forced the federal government to confirm the existence of the evidence recorded on the list as quickly as possible, and began to arrest the people on the list without further reviewing more carefully.

Fortunately, the results of the arrest operation in Miltaros were satisfactory, and the incident did not affect the order in the urban area. Many people did not even know what happened, and the federal government also blocked all news and newspapers. The whole thing is completely covered.

This is not just to avoid floating people's hearts. More importantly, the arrest of Miltaros is only the beginning of the entire arrest operation. The clean-up work in other cities in the Federation has just begun. The federal government even blocked the access roads of the entire Miltaros on the grounds of military mobilization, stopped all non-essential trains, and everyone was only allowed to enter and not exit.

However, at this moment, the busiest department in Miltaros is not the department in charge of catching spies, but the departments in charge of personnel transfer. They are struggling with how to fill the vacancies that arise.

If it is just a general position, they can completely fill the vacancy by transferring someone from other places or from the subordinate positions of that position, but the problem is that the vacant positions are all very key positions in various ministries. Civil servants need to be inspected for a long time and weigh the interests of multiple parties before they can be seated. Generally, those who occupy that position will not be transferred for a long time to ensure the stability of the operation of the entire department.

But now, dozens or hundreds of such positions are vacant overnight, and there are only a few candidates who are qualified and can make all parties compromise.

There are some ordinary small departments that think that this department is not a key department, and no one should have any opinions on the change of a key position here, so they try to directly recruit a capable employee from the subordinate department Temporarily fill the vacant position.

But not long after the transfer order was sent out, before the person reported to the new position, the letters of reproach from the heads of the higher departments had been placed on the desks of the heads of those small departments together with the transfer order sent out. , it's clear that what might seem like a small job to others is actually a very important job to someone.

Gray income has always been the default hidden income of federal civil servants. The federal government knows this kind of income. This part of the income is limited, mainly because the income of federal civil servants is too low and has not been adjusted in more than fifty years.

In some small cities, civil servants are not bad, and they can barely support their families with the income of civil servants, but if they are placed in a big city like Mirtaros, then this income is not enough to meet daily expenses. If there is no additional gray If the income is used to support it, let alone the small staff working in the office building, even the policemen who patrol the streets on a daily basis will probably be diverted to other jobs.

In the past, some people have indeed seen the various disadvantages of gray income and the unreasonable salary of civil servants, and thought of canceling the gray income and directly increasing the salary of civil servants, but in doing so, the federal government's finances have increased hugely out of thin air The huge spending that stunned everyone will only result in the federal government declaring bankruptcy on the day of the reform, so this reform was abolished only at the discussion stage.

Someone once proposed to nationalize the gray income, and then use the gray income to increase the salaries of civil servants. As a result, the day the person proposed this proposal, he was thrown to a small town in a remote suburb by his supervisor. The reason why the income is called gray income is the income that cannot be seen. The civil servants at the bottom do it, and the federal government still has a way to reverse it. If the federal government ends in person, the final result will only be in the near future. civil riots.

Therefore, all key positions related to gray income are very important, and they cannot be held by ordinary civil servants. Among the positions that happen to be vacant, almost all of them are closely related to gray income. These positions are definitely not suitable for dispatching a capable The person can be appointed, but it also involves business and political organizations outside the government. The issue of candidates needs to be discussed and compromised by all parties before a decision can be made.

What's more, what makes the federal government even more troublesome is that the current arrangement of these positions is only in the one place of Miltaros. At that time, they dared not imagine whether the government would be able to function smoothly after these positions were vacant.

However, now that the cleanup operation has been promoted, it is impossible to suspend it, and if it is suspended, those positions will be in the hands of spies from other countries, and the threat to the Otter Federation's own security will only be greater.

Just when various departments of the Otto Federation government were overwhelmed with plans to fill a large number of key positions, an application document for Leo Dodd and Sylvia Belmont to participate in the research of relic No. 0 was placed on the on the desks of several relevant department heads.

If it was before the rational work, this document would definitely need to be reviewed repeatedly, and it is very likely that it will not be approved in the end, but the situation is somewhat different now.

In this arrest operation, some high-level government officials were arrested and their homes were also searched carefully, and contact information that was not destroyed in time was found, and some instructions related to the couple were found in these information , And from these instructions, it is not difficult to see that the surrounding church countries are very worried that the couple has developed the new weapon, so they let the spies they control prevent the federal government from cooperating with the couple at all costs.

Soon someone connected these instructions with their previous suspicions about the identity of the couple at the meeting, and also discovered that the person who caused this suspicion was the spy who was captured this time, so they knew they had been fooled , was thinking about how to repair the relationship with Leo and his wife, and the appearance of the application documents at this time just solved this problem.

"Your application has been approved. Here are the relevant research materials you need. You have two days to prepare. After two days, I will personally bring someone to pick you up. The two of you will be taken to No. 0 Relic depository, this time the two applicants have five days to conduct research, and the research time will be over after five days, and if you want to study again, you need to apply again." A soldier wearing a military-like uniform and a special badge held a A document that needs to be signed, while instructing his subordinates to bring in boxes of sealed research materials, he introduced the situation.

"These documents are..." Leo took the document and read it hastily, signed his name, then pointed to the dusty documents next to him, and asked.

"These are the materials left by some previous researchers." The soldier hesitated for a moment and said, "These researchers are all dead, and the materials of those who are still alive cannot be brought over. Mr. Langenus said that these materials are also useful to you. , so let us collect them and send them over, you can look through these materials at will in these two days, and I will send them back to the archives in two days, when you want to read them again, you need to apply for another one."

After finishing speaking, he put the documents signed by Leo and Sylvia into the briefcase in his hand, then asked the two of them what else they wanted, then turned and left, but the soldiers he brought did not He just left, and replaced the secret service security guards who were originally guarding here, and guarded around this small apartment.

After the soldiers left, Leo was not in a hurry to open the documents in the box, but smiled at Sylvia who was beside him: "It seems that the effect of the list has already been produced, but I don't know how long it will last." .”

"The time should be long enough for us to leave." Sylvia smiled and said, "And they were probably still busy chasing down the escaped spies at that time, so they wouldn't even realize that we were leaving." , she pointed to the boxes full of materials and said, "Do you need me to organize these materials together?"

Leo shook his head and said: "It's not necessary, most of these materials should be researched in the wrong direction, and they don't have much reference value except to let us know in advance what the so-called No. 0 relic is. , It will be faster for me to sort it out alone, after I finish sorting it out, you can look at the information I sorted out."

After finishing speaking, he casually grabbed a box next to him, opened it, took out stacks of documents with a musty smell, placed them on the table one by one, and began to quickly flip through them.

Although there were so many research materials on Relic No. 0 in the past, and more than 30 large boxes could be filled in, there were not many contents that really caught Leo's attention. Instead, focus on the various descriptions of Relic No. 0 in the data, and the various disordered and chaotic notes left behind by the researchers when they fell into an inexplicable state of madness.

Not to mention whether the research directions and methods of those researchers before are correct, even if they are correct, they cannot be applied to Leo. Leo has his own research style, and his ability is far better than the tools at hand of those researchers. Even more powerful, too much reading of the research reports of those researchers will only affect one's thinking. Sometimes the failed research plans recorded by those researchers may become successful under the influence of Leo's ability.

As for the notes left by the researchers after they fell into madness, they are of no research value to Leo. As other people who have studied these notes have said, those confusing words and symbols in the notes are of great importance to normal people. It's meaningless to humans, and unless someone is as crazy as they are, studying those things will just make people crazy.

The madness mentioned here is the real madness, not a description. According to some records Leo found in the box, it seems that someone has tried to decipher the meaning of the chaotic words on these notes, but in the end there is no one. Exception fell into madness before his death, just like the owner of the notebook.

This is not because the content recorded in the notes will cause the reader to go crazy, but the power contained in the notes will subtly affect the reader's mental state when ordinary people read these notes, and finally bring them into madness the abyss.

And when Leo got a crazy notebook, he sensed the crazy power in it that has the same source as the human sacrifice pillar and the twisting power, but has different energy fluctuations, and just like the power of the human sacrifice pillar he Just as it can be influenced and controlled by the power of the Stone Throne, this crazy force can also be controlled by him.