The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

"Mr. Leo, what did you do? Those primitivists would respect you so much and give you the heart of nature as a gift. You must know that even the Academy City took a long time and paid a lot of money. An astonishing price was exchanged for a heart of nature for the study of the Academy." Standing on the carriage, Delkan looked at the crowd of shaman colleges who had not dispersed in the distance, and he couldn't help but look at Leo asked with the Heart of Nature in his hand.

"It's just a small favor." Leo put the Heart of Nature into the box and put it aside casually. Although the Heart of Nature was very precious in Delkan's eyes, compared to Leo who bought it from the treasure house of the Shaman Academy yesterday Among the various strange things found in the search, the heart of nature can only be ranked outside the top three.

Two days ago, Leo and Sylvia's transformation of the tree city of the Shaman Academy went very smoothly. Whether it was the transformation of the spirit-absorbing vines, or the spiritual stimulation and subsequent transformation of the tree heart, they did not encounter any difficulties. It is doubtful whether the retrofit program will actually work.

However, in the subsequent test, Sylvia used the secret technique of the abyss to stimulate the characteristics of the spirit-absorbing vine to produce a large amount of abyssal breath in a short period of time, imitating some unexpected situations. As they thought, all the produced abyssal breaths were directed toward Before the spill was released, it was introduced into the blood fruit along the trunk, branches and leaves, and the internal environment of the tree city did not leak a trace of the abyss.

And when the abyss breath absorbed by the blood fruit reached the critical point set by Leo, the tree heart activated the purification ability, greatly neutralizing and purifying the abyss breath, so that the abyss breath in the blood fruit was always kept within a controllable range Inside, the whole process does not require any human manipulation, just like a well-established program.

The only flaw is that the purification of the abyssal breath requires the natural power condensed by the tree heart. Once the natural power of the tree heart is consumed more than replenished, the hidden danger of the abyssal breath will reappear.

In this regard, Leo did not hide this defect, but told the shaman instructors when he left, and the shaman instructors did not pay too much attention after hearing it. In their opinion, the hidden danger has been truly eliminated, and the effect It's better than they expected, as for the defects, just need to be careful, and there will be no problems.

Although Leo and Sylvia had taken the rewards from the treasure house of the shaman academy to help them solve hidden dangers, those shaman instructors seemed to feel that it was not enough, so when the exchange team of the school city was on the road again, they gathered together A heart of nature was given to Leo and Silvia to express their gratitude and respect.

In shamanism, the heart of nature is divided into many types. The highest level is undoubtedly the heart of nature naturally produced by heaven and earth. It is said that it contains the mysteries of heaven and earth, and a great shaman who masters the mysteries can break through the limit of shaman power. Become the incarnation of nature, just like a god.

Among the great shamans in the past, there were many geniuses with extraordinary wisdom. According to the formation process of the natural heart, they artificially created various artificial natural hearts. Although each natural heart has different strengths and weaknesses points, but taken alone can be regarded as a top-notch strange item, and more importantly, these natural hearts can be used by anyone, even heretics and heretics can use the natural heart, and even directly transform it into evil spirits. Sacred objects or artifacts.

The natural heart given to Leo by the teachers of the shaman academy was not the best kind of natural heart. This kind of natural heart was formed after the shaman teachers separated a part of their own spirituality and merged. It contains part of their shaman power.

Although this part of the shaman's power is unlikely to produce any powerful abilities, it can bring some convenience to people who hold this heart of nature, especially those travelers, such as travelers who camp in the forest. Worry about mosquito bites, no need to worry about night attacks by wild animals, and you won't get lost in the forest, etc.

More importantly, the heart of nature also represents a status symbol. Not only the nature shaman will pay respect to the owner of the heart of nature, but even the shaman of other factions will give different degrees of kindness.

For others, the Heart of Nature is like a priceless treasure, which can be seen from Delkan's shocked and envious expressions when he saw those nature shamans actually gave Leo a Heart of Nature, even if Delkan contemptuously I call those nature shamans primitive believers, but I am also very aware of the precious value of the heart of nature.

But for Leo and Sylvia, the heart of nature is useless regardless of its actual value in daily use or its potential identity value. Leo, who can perfectly disguise as a great natural shaman, even without this The heart of nature can also have the same effect, or even better, this heart of nature can only be regarded as a memorial to them.

In the eyes of the two of them, the really valuable things are the collection of books they read in the shaman college and the few hidden treasures they took from the treasure house.

When they entered the treasury to select the hidden treasures, they were not polite at all, and directly picked out the most precious treasures in the treasury, including the shaman sacred artifact made of the skull of the founder of the academy.

Although these treasures are extremely precious and have extraordinary significance to the shaman academy, in the eyes of those shaman mentors, these treasures that they used to regard as sacred compared to the hidden dangers that Leo and Silvia helped them remove Now, it is not worth mentioning, not to mention that under Sylvia's bewitching, they have established a college management committee. Obviously, they have planned to reform the college and no longer let the big shaman dominate.

It's just that neither Leo, who is a bystander, nor Sylvia, who is an instigator, is not optimistic about the academy's management committee at all, and believes that failure is the final result. After all, what the world values ​​is power, which is respected as Great shamans not only have knowledge, but also have powerful power. What's more, there are too many hidden secrets in shaman colleges. How can the forces involved in all parties allow so many people to discover these secrets? .

Therefore, it is conceivable that in the end, if these natural shamans encouraged by Sylvia are lucky, they will only be asked to dissolve the management committee. If they are unlucky, they may face expulsion and exile. The situation may be sent to the branch hospital deep in the verdant forest, imprisoned for life, or sent to the hidden experimental city to be made into a shaman wonder.

As for Sylvia, who led all of this, she didn't encourage those natural shamans to become college reformers because of some bad taste. She just used these natural shamans to test the reactions of all parties and collect Some intelligence data that may be useful in the future.

In addition, in the shaman academy, in addition to being used by her as a management committee that asks the way and attracts the attention of various forces, she has also developed many apprentices who have the potential to become shaman mentors in the past few days to become her monitoring shaman. The eyes and ears of the Manchu Academy, even if the management committee is disbanded, she can still collect various internal information about the Shaman Academy.

She did this not because she was hostile to the shaman academy, but because her years of spy career had integrated information gathering into her life, and every time she came to a strange place, she would instinctively do something beneficial Information collection, otherwise, she would feel extremely uneasy, just like in the current college exchange team, more than one scholar has secretly expressed allegiance to Sylvia, and these scholars do not know the team There are others here who have also pledged their allegiance to Sylvia.

It is no exaggeration to say that as long as the journey to the Academic City is long enough and the journey takes enough time, with Sylvia's ability to develop spies offline, the entire exchange team of the Academic City may be developed into her own spies.

The next journey of the Xuecheng exchange team became much easier, because the Kingdom of Teresa did not have a large number of territorial nobles like other kingdoms, and it was very difficult to build a kingdom road in their territory. In the Kingdom of Teresa, Most of the land belongs to the royal family, so at the beginning of the founding of the Kingdom of Teresa, the Kingdom Road was built among the mountains, and now the Kingdom Road has connected cities and towns like dense spider webs Together, it greatly facilitates travelers and caravans traveling to and from various places.

However, some roads have become difficult to walk due to disrepair for a long time, such as the road near the border, and the road from the green city to the academic city is a new road, and both cities have many The wealth of the people can allocate a part of the funds to maintain the road every year, so the road has been repaired repeatedly to make it wide and stable, even if there are seven or eight carriages paralleling it, it is not a problem.

The speed of the exchange team was also much faster due to the road. In just three days, they had already arrived at the book town at the foot of the academic city.

The Academic City is built among the mountains. In order to keep students' learning and scholars' research from being disturbed by external factors, unless it is a few festivals, it generally does not accept foreign visitors. Everyone who visits the Academic City They will be arranged to live in several towns outside the Academic City, and then enter the Academic City after the open day. Book Town is one of the towns specially used to receive new students.

Although the book town is called a small town, it is actually more like a city. There are all the necessary facilities and departments such as the city wall, the army, and the city government. The function of the book town is very simple, which is to let new students A place where you can experience life in an academic city in advance.

In the past, it often happened that new students could not adapt to the boring and monotonous life in the academic city, and then dropped out of school, and some even failed or did not dare to drop out due to other external factors, and finally because of various psychological reasons As for suicide, all academic cities have specially built book towns on the outskirts to allow new students and scholars to advance the life of academic cities in advance to see if they can adapt to this kind of life, and then decide whether to join academic cities .

In Book Town, except for the city government that maintains the city's operations and the military that maintains its integrity, other city departments basically copy the city of academics.

New students who come to the Academic City have to live here for half a year in the way of the Academic City, and then they can officially join the Academic City.

In addition, the new students are not only studying here, they also have to work half of their daily time in the printing workshop of Book Town, and the salary after work is their daily living expenses.

This is not only to change the living habits of the new students, but more importantly, to allow the new students to get in touch with books from different countries in the world by working in the printing workshop, broaden their horizons, and even deliberately let them They come into contact with some banned books, test the bottom line of their beliefs, and make it easier for Academic City to arrange the study direction of new students, etc.

The daily maintenance funds of the Book Town came from the appropriation of the City of Academics in the early days of its construction, but now the Book Town not only does not need the appropriation of the City of Academics, but has become one of the sources of funds for the City of Academics, because the Book Town is an old The mainland is the largest concentration of printing workshops in the world. There are more than 2,000 large and small printing workshops in the entire city. Nearly half of the books in the world are printed here and then shipped to other places.

The reason for the formation of such a large scale, in addition to some external factors in politics and beliefs, is more important that printed books here can be said to have no taboos, even those banned books on the list of the Church of True God, or some kind of book full of evil gods. The heretical canons of thought can all be printed and published here.

So, don’t be surprised if you see people dressed as cultists driving a vehicle full of various evil scriptures on the streets here, because such people and things happen all the time, and the locals It's no surprise.

It is precisely because of knowing the importance of Book Town that heretics and heretics who acted without taboos in other places have become honest here, even more honest than ordinary people, and those who cannot restrain their desire to destroy do not need to wait. When the army in the city notices something abnormal, other cultists will take the initiative to wipe out these hidden dangers that cannot be controlled by themselves.

It is also for this reason that even though Book Town hides all kinds of heretics and heretics, there has never been an evil sacrifice or anything like that, and there are no gangsters or other forces in the city. The level of security is almost comparable to that of some holy cities of the Church of True God, which makes those insiders feel quite ironic.

Although foreign scholars like Leo and Sylvia who visit the Academic City do not need to stay for half a year like students before they can go to the Academic City, it still takes some time to go through identity procedures, and at the same time Some tests of academic knowledge are required.

However, because both Leo and Sylvia were jointly recommended by more than 20 scholars and mentors from the Academic City, there is no need for those tests. After completing their identity procedures, they can go directly to the academic city without even waiting for the opening day.

However, for Leo and Sylvia, they don't mind staying in this book town for a while. After all, the books and materials here are too rich, even if it is Leo's scanning recording method. It took more than ten days to record the first printed editions of the books in the town library, not including those banned books that were not publicly stored.