The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

The exchange team of the Academic City is back on the road. Although there are no other caravans, the number of teams has not decreased too much, because in the past few days in Omran, there are two more teams from other kingdoms and regions. The exchange team came to Omran, and the three teams merged together. In addition to the additional mercenaries hired to prevent accidents, the final number was still about three to four hundred people.

Because the team has become bloated again, it is not convenient to go by land, and some cultists who have not been wiped out are scattered in the nearby mountains. These cultists and heretics who are at the end of the road can do crazy things. In the event of an encounter, there may be casualties among the teams, so the main instructors of the three teams discussed briefly, and finally decided to rent a boat and go to the emerald city, an important port in the inner river of the Kingdom of Teresa, by water.

The Emerald City is located in the hinterland of the kingdom. It is much safer than the surrounding area of ​​the border city of Omran. Basically, there are no cultists and heretics who dare to operate there. It will be much safer to go overland again. , although doing so will take some long detours and waste a lot of time, but in terms of safety, it is much better than going directly by land.

So the main instructors of the exchange team directly found the city government of Omran, rented ten inland river cargo ships through the city government, and simply converted them into passenger ships, and then continued to march up the rapids.

In the past, boats could only rely on trackers to pull them along the shore when they went against the direction of the turbulent torrent river, but now most of the boats in Canada are equipped with steam engines, and through the power of steam engines, they can easily sail against the current.

It's just that these inland ships do not use propellers, but some special paddles. This is mainly because a very tough aquatic plant grows in the rapids. Using propellers will easily get entangled in aquatic plants. Using paddles There is no such problem.

Because the river water in the rapids is very turbulent, in order to keep the boats stable and avoid the sudden rapids from overturning the boats, the ten boats were connected in two rows side by side with live buckles, and there were still some gaps between the boats. Fixed planks to walk around each other.

Although the scenery on both sides of the Bailiu River is very good, you will feel tired if you look at this scenery for a long time, and everyone's attention will naturally shift to the inside of the team. For example, are there any outstanding students among the students recruited this time? What interesting things and so on, and the four outsiders, Leo and Sylvia, quickly became the center of the topic.

Scholars from the other two teams that came together learned about Leo and Sylvia from Delkan and others, and they all showed great enthusiasm for them, and even in the subsequent exchanges, they In his enthusiasm, there is not only respect for those who are knowledgeable, but also some pleasing behaviors that should not have appeared on them.

However, what makes people puzzled is that this kind of ingratiating behavior also appeared on Delkan and others. Compared with the previous attitude of Delkan and others towards the two of them, there has also been a significant change.

Leo was also puzzled by the change in the attitudes of Delkan and others, so he inquired around, only to find that the slight changes in the attitudes of these scholars were all caused by money.

The research subjects in the academic city are various and countless. There are more than 700 official research projects in statistics alone, and there are thousands of other research projects generated because of scholars' hobbies. These research projects need to be obtained from the academic city. Only funds can be started, and although the school city has huge wealth, it cannot withstand the consumption of so many projects, so some research projects that have no future in the management's view will only provide basic research funds, or even provide no research at all. funds.

In this case, if the research project wants to continue, the scholars who lead the project can only find financial support themselves.

However, the merchants and aristocrats who can provide them are not fools. Naturally, it is impossible for them to spend a lot of money to support some research projects that cannot bring them any benefits, and the scholars in the academy city themselves have a kind of arrogance and cannot let go of their dignity. Come to deal with nobles and businessmen, let alone please them, so basically the research projects abandoned by the management of the school city will become dead projects.

In addition, almost every scholar in the academic city has a dead project or two that was born out of their interests and is waiting for funding to be brought back to life.

Today, the appearance of Leo and Sylvia is undoubtedly a great surprise to scholars like them. The relevant knowledge shown by Leo and Sylvia is not weaker than, or even surpassed, the great mentors of the Academy City. Scholars It is not unacceptable to lower your posture in front of these two people, show respect and please.

The most important thing is that the two of them have a lot of wealth, and they also clearly expressed their interest in various research projects in the school city and are willing to invest in them. Naturally, the scholars in the exchange team will not let go of this investment in their own projects. Opportunity, in their opinion, it is best to get enough financial support for their research projects on the way back to the school city, lest Leo and Sylvia find out the real situation after arriving in the school city, and transfer their investment to other places. project.

After learning about the situation, Leo and Sylvia did not show any dislike for these people's deceitful way of raising funds. Instead, they asked these people to write a detailed research project plan and hand it over to them. Interested projects will be selected to invest sufficient funds.

Afterwards, all kinds of weird research project proposals were successively sent to the cabin where Leo and the others lived. When Leo and Sylvia looked at these proposals, they felt that the school stopped accepting these research projects. Financial support is definitely a smart move.

Although Sylvia had expected that the research subjects in these proposals must be very weird before getting the research project proposals, but after reading them carefully, she had to admit that she had somewhat underestimated the degree of weirdness.

For example, the research subject of a proposal is to find out the laws of hair growth differentiation in various parts of the human body. Why hair can continue to grow, but the hair on the nose and private parts stops growing after a certain amount of growth. Why do some people The body hair is abundant, but some people's body hair is like a baby's hair and so on.

Although this research project on hair seems a bit weird to Sylvia, the ultimate goal of the research project is very potential. Bottom volume.

Compared with Sylvia, Leo has seen more weird research projects than these research projects, such as projects such as the degree to which the nasal secretions of the Moss people stimulate human taste buds.

It is precisely because of the difference in knowledge that Leo easily found a large number of research projects that can produce different benefits from these private research subjects of scholars who were considered by the city to have no research value and potential. The hair research that Ya thought was too weird was the first investment subject that Leo picked out and signed a contract with.

After that, Leo successively selected more than a dozen research projects from these hundreds of research projects. Although most of the projects were not selected by Leo, for these scholars, it was considered a very good result. And those academics who were not selected were not too disappointed.

In order to celebrate the relaunch of more than a dozen research projects with new funding injections, the main instructors of the three exchange teams discussed holding a celebration competition for the Omniscient Card. Even students were allowed to participate, but Leo was rejected. Excluded.

The scholars of the other two teams were puzzled by this, but they knew that Leo had won all the scholars with a perfect record before, and they were all shocked, and their admiration was beyond words.

When the ship arrived at the Emerald City, Leo had already become the most prestigious and status person in the entire communication team, and even some daily affairs of the team would be discussed with him, an outsider.

Delkan jokingly said that if Leo could win all the games in the Academy City with a perfect record, then he would definitely become the most admired and popular person in the Academy City. In the next election for the President of the Academy City, he might surpass everything. Rules and procedures, from an ordinary scholar to directly become the dean of the academy city.

Although Delkan was joking, the people who heard Delkan's remarks discussed it seriously, felt that this matter was indeed feasible, and discussed a set of implementation methods, which also made Sylvia and Leo, who didn't care at first, had some small thoughts.

After a few days of safe sailing on the rapids, the fleet arrived at the Green City.

Under the guidance of the dock staff, the ships docked at the corresponding docks one after another. When everyone got off the boat, they all felt that something was wrong with the atmosphere of the city.

The Green City is one of the important inland ports on the Rapid River, but it is not famous for its port, but for the emerald green of the whole city.

All the stone materials needed for the construction of the Emerald City use a kind of local green rock. Before this green rock is mined, it presents a very ugly gray-green color, so no one has ever used it as a building materials.

Until later, someone discovered that this kind of green rock was polished and soaked in water for a period of time, and the color would change from ugly gray-green to extremely beautiful emerald green. Then more and more people used green rock to build houses, and finally Buildings throughout the city have been replaced with greenstone.

The Emerald City seems to have a special liking for green. They not only replaced all the buildings with emerald green, but also specially hired the most outstanding garden scholars in the city to plant greens in every available place in the city. Various plants were added, and finally the green city and the green forest next to the city were perfectly integrated.

On the streets of the Verdant City, you can often see some primitive animals of the Verdant Forest walking on the city streets. Even some ferocious carnivorous beasts become very well-behaved after entering the Verdant City, as long as they do not attack or tease them , it will not attack humans.

Some people once suspected that the scholar who planned the garden for the Green City was a nature shaman, so when he planted every plant, he cast the spell of the nature shaman on it. Primitive animals are affected by nature spells. Influences will become peaceful and live in harmony with others.

Regarding this, Xuecheng and Green City neither admitted nor denied it, as if they were playing charades with those good-natured people.

Although the natural shaman has not been included in the list of heresies by the Church of True God, the church does not have a good impression of this kind of master of extraordinary power outside of its control. Whenever there is an opportunity, it will suppress it, and the Kingdom of Teresa has become one of these natural shamans. The first choice of refuge for shamans, the Verdant City is their most recognized place to live, so many natural shamans can be seen living freely in the city, which is also a very famous sight of the Verdant City.

On the way to the Emerald City, when the scholars introduced the Emerald City, they repeatedly mentioned the natural shamans who lived freely in the city, and some people even called the Emerald City the City of Shamans.

However, on the streets of the Emerald City, there are very few natural shamans in strange costumes mentioned before, only a sporadic two or three walking on the streets, and the residents of the Emerald City seem to have any concerns. When the natural shamans approached, they would avoid them from a distance, and faced with this situation, those natural shamans did not show dissatisfaction, and their faces were always worried and sad.

The people who felt that the atmosphere was not right did not stop on the road, and went directly to the apartment in the school city, settled them down, and when they unloaded their luggage, they also found out the reason why the atmosphere in the emerald green city was so wrong.

It turned out that just a few days ago, the leader of a shaman organization in the city and his followers suddenly mutated into some treant monsters in public, attacking the people around them. When the city guards and heretic hunters arrived, the scene There have been hundreds of casualties.

Although in the end the city guards and heretic hunters teamed up to eliminate all the natural shamans who mutated into treants, the casualties were also very heavy. Even ordinary people, there were more than 500 casualties in total. It has never been seen since the city was built.

The natural shaman who was still highly respected in the city immediately became the object of rejection and suspicion, and the city government immediately imprisoned and detained a large number of natural shamans who might be related to the shaman organization that caused the tragedy. After the interrogation is over, he will be allowed to leave after confirming that there is no involvement.

Although many natural shamans have been determined to be innocent by the city government and released immediately, the aftermath of the tragedy has not disappeared, and the rejection against them is gradually fermenting. Being able to provide them with shelter and food, I am afraid that now they can only go to the verdant forest to live with primitive animals.

For the rejection of city residents, those innocent natural shamans are very wronged, but besides the grievance, they are even more worried that this rejection and resistance will affect them to continue living in this city that perfectly suits their wishes, and they are also worried. It grew in their hearts and affected the surrounding plants. The plants of the Verdant City that never withered actually withered, and these yellowed plants also made the Verdant City look as ugly as if it was full of abscesses. .