The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

Arriving at the small town outside Barbarisa Castle, Leo did not enter the castle in a hurry, found Barbarisa, and told him that he was indeed very likely to have the blood of the Primordial God. I sat in an open-air tavern, watched the carriages passing by on the street, and listened to the people in the tavern telling what they knew.

Leo had already made his choice on the hillside outside the sacred place of the beginning. Although he doesn't know the situation of the dryad Lutaxi and Devina now, he believes that with the current abilities of the two, they should not encounter each other. It's too dangerous. If you want to find them, you need to leave this world and go to outer space. In that way, it is possible to sense the mark on Devina's body. Now he doesn't want to leave this world yet, so he can only temporarily Put aside the matter of Devina and the Dryad, and wait to meet Sylvia and go to the Wizarding Academy together to see if you can find them.

Because he didn't want to look for Devina and the dryad Lutaxi for the time being, and he was not too far away from Barbarysa's castle, he decided to solve Barbarysa's problem first, and let Barbarysa send Germany Wen Na told the Countess of West Green Emerald so that she would not be worried.

It's just that after he came to Barbarisa Castle, he found that the situation here was completely different from the last time he came to the castle.

The last time I came to Barbarisa’s castle, apart from Barbarisa’s own guards, servants and townspeople inside and outside the castle, there were only some caravans passing through the town outside the castle, but now, the inside and outside of Barbarisa’s castle can be said to be Crowded, not only a large number of troops stationed in the open space outside the town, but also military tents and barracks as far as the eye can see, even the small town outside the castle is full of a large number of outsiders. It was full of military accounts.

From the flags floating above these barracks, it is not difficult to see that the troops in these barracks are the legions directly under Barbarisa, the coalition of lower-level nobles, and the coalition of vassal nobles. Looking at the past, it is basically certain that Barbarisa can summon troops in a short period of time. They're all gathered here.

Surely Barbarisa wasn't just doing it for fun when he called up so many troops outside the castle, obviously something big happened on his side during this time.

Soon Leo learned from the conversations between the townspeople and the noble generals who temporarily lived in the town that Barbarisa was assassinated just five days ago. He himself was not injured, but his children and his wife were. up.

Barbarisa was naturally extremely angry. He used all the intelligence organizations in his hands to find out the forces behind the assassin that day, and followed the clues to find out the instigator.

The force responsible for sending the assassins is an underground organization from other kingdoms. The members of this organization are all assassins. The purpose of their organization is to kill all the people in power in the world, because they think that the chaos in the world is caused by the evil of the people in power. , and the stronger the power held by the person in power, the more evil the person in power, even if the person in power was a saint before taking power, even if the person in power has done countless good things after taking power, in their eyes the person in power is still An evil target to be eradicated.

In the past, this assassin organization was active in various countries around the Middle Kingdom region, and had never entered the Middle Kingdom region. This was not because they did not want to expand their organization power to the Middle Kingdom region, but because there already existed a Inheriting a very old killer organization.

This ancient assassin organization in the Middle Kingdom might not be as large as that assassin organization, but in the three-acre area of ​​the Middle Kingdom, it has an absolute advantage, enough to deal with any incoming enemy.

However, this time the Assassins found an opportunity to expand their influence to the Middle Kingdom. Duke Joel, the owner of the largest power in the south of the Middle Kingdom, the Black Marsh Principality, sent people to find their organization and hired the strongest assassin in their organization with a lot of money. , Assassinate Barbarisa, Lord Protector of the Middle Kingdom.

In the Middle Kingdom, Lord Protector Barbarisa and Duke Joel of the Black Marsh can be said to be a pair of open enemies. The old Duke of Joel was also one of the most powerful contenders for the title of Lord Protector, but it was a pity that he lost in the end. He was given to Barbarisa, and he was seriously injured, and died less than two months after returning to the territory. As a result, Barbarisa and Duke Joel became deadly enemies.

Later, the succeeding Duke of Joel once attacked Barbarysa's convoy when Barbarysa went to a certain area near the Black Swamp to mediate noble disputes, but was ambushed by Barbarysa. The attacker suffered heavy losses and led the team himself. The Duke of Joel was taken prisoner.

At that time, Barbarisa did not kill the Duke of Joel for some reason, but chose to give him a special punishment, that is, he personally took the Duke of Joel to several major cities and aristocratic territories in the Middle Kingdom. The whipping of him directly caused the reputation of Duke Joel, who had a fairly good reputation at that time, to a large extent.

However, this Duke of Joel can be considered capable. Even though his reputation has plummeted, he still quelled the civil strife in the Black Marsh through several years of conquests, negotiations, and marriages. Kingdoms on the fringes of the Middle Kingdom area are allied.

Although the Duke of Joel's main energy has been put on mastering the Black Marsh over the years, his hatred for Barbarisa has not weakened at all, and he has been looking for opportunities to deal a fatal blow to Barbarisa.

In the end, he found that Barbarisa would meet with ordinary civilians and farmers at close range every time during the Autumn Harvest Festival, listen to the opinions of these low-level people, and use this to modify his policies, and at the same time show his people Possession and confidence.

Therefore, he found a foreign assassin organization that had absolutely no connection with Barbarisa, and hired them to take this opportunity to assassinate Barbarisa.

Although the assassin organization was very capable, he directly disguised himself as a few ordinary civilians, deceived Barbarisa's various personnel in charge of security inspections on the day of the interview, and successfully carried out a near-perfect assassination of Barbarisa.

The reason why they say it is close to perfection is because they underestimated Barbarisa's ability. As a result, when the assassination was about to succeed, all the assassins were disturbed by Barbarisa's thinking. The cavaliers captured him, but Barbarisa's wife and children were seriously injured.

If Barbarisa himself was injured, maybe even if the assassination is found out, there is still a possibility of negotiation, but this time it was his wife and children who were injured, which directly touched his taboo, so after the investigation of the assassination behind the scenes Afterwards, he didn't abide by any rules at all, and first sent envoys to ask for accountability, but directly issued an assembly order to the direct legion, subordinate nobles, and vassal nobles, ordering the army to gather at the castle, and at the same time declared war on the Black Marsh, and drove out the Some centrist nobles who tried to persuade him to use negotiations to resolve this matter seemed to want to make a complete break with Black Marsh.

Now about 70% of the army called by Barbarisa has arrived. The other four nobles who are close to the south have not come. confluence.

The war that is about to take place in the south can be said to be a matter of concern to the Middle Kingdom and its surrounding countries. First of all, it is because the Middle Kingdom has not had such a war of 200,000 to 300,000 people for many years. There are frequent regional wars, but those wars are only tens of thousands of people at best, and they are all local battles. There are very few large-scale wars. Now this upcoming war will undoubtedly set a new record for the number of people in regional wars in the Middle Kingdom. It's hard not to pay attention.

The second is that many people think that this war may be the candidate to determine the future unified king of the Middle Kingdom.

Legends about the emergence of a unified king in the Middle Kingdom and the establishment of a unified kingdom have been circulating for a long time, and there are hundreds of versions in total. Now it is recognized that the person who is most qualified to become the unified king Naturally, it is Barbarisa, the protector of the country who was consecrated by a living person, but below Barbarisa, there are several lords of duchies with large territories, and now the Duke of Yoel who hired someone to assassinate Barbarisa is one of them. One of the most powerful people.

After this war is fought, whether Barbarisa wins or the Duke of Joel wins, they will inevitably annex the other party's territory, unify most of the southern and central lands, and become the southern overlord of the Middle Kingdom. There are still some principality lords in other parts of the kingdom, but their strength and power are already too far behind the new southern overlords, basically there is no possibility of confrontation, and the unification of the Middle Kingdom has become a general trend.

In the eyes of some good-natured folks, Barbarisa occupies great righteousness, is famous as a teacher, and his personal prestige and charm far exceed all the nobles in the Middle Kingdom, and he is extremely loved, and his army is also one of the best among all the legions in the Middle Kingdom. , so his odds of winning can be said to be much higher than Duke Yoel, whose reputation has just recovered a bit.

However, the Duke of Joel is not without a chance of winning. In the past few years, he has quelled the chaos in the Black Swamp not only through negotiation, but also his Black Mud Legion is also very powerful and has rich combat experience. Barbarisa's legion, which has been on a truce for many years, is obviously much stronger.

In addition, in order to enhance his power, the Duke of Joel married several countries bordering his territory. Not only did he marry the princess of a nearby kingdom, but his daughter and son also married the nobles or royal families of the surrounding countries. Several secret agreements have been signed, and with the backing and support of countries outside the Middle Kingdom, his foundation is to some extent slightly better than Barbarisa.

Barbarisa is obviously also very aware of his shortcomings, so after he publicly declared war, he was not in a hurry to start the war. Instead, after the army was summoned, he carried out daily combat power recovery training within each legion, and called the noble officers of each legion He went to the castle with the generals to conduct secret training with the army. Although doing so would consume a lot of food and grass, Barbarisa didn't seem to care about the consumption of food and grass. It seemed that he was ready to fight a war of attrition .

After knowing the current situation of Barbarisa, Leo waited until night, and directly used the ability of the Shadow Witch Su, hiding in the shadow of the carriage entering and leaving the castle, entered the castle, and then found Barbarisa's identity through the spiritual net. position, and sneaked over there.

I don't know if it was just to prevent outsiders from sneaking in, or to avoid being assassinated again, Barbarisa arranged a lot of sentries inside and outside the castle, and also arranged some supernatural items for warning in some places.

For ordinary people and ordinary extraordinary people, this arrangement is more than enough, but for Leo, this arrangement is useless, he directly interfered with the thinking and cognition of everyone in the castle through spiritual energy, in the eyes of these people Leo is an acquaintance who works in the castle, even if he looks at each other, he won't feel anything wrong.

In this way, Leo sneaked out of the room where Barbarisa was in such an aboveboard manner, and then pushed the door directly and walked in.

I saw that this room was a very large bedroom. In addition to a large bed, there were two small beds in the bedroom. There were people lying on these three beds. They were Barbarisa's wife and children. It seemed that they had fallen into some kind of fever-like coma, and the servants in the room would apply iced towels to their foreheads from time to time to cool them down.

At this moment, Barbarisa was sitting on the edge of the bed where his wife was, with a sad face, looking at his wife lying on the bed with blank eyes, holding his wife's right hand tightly with both hands, and muttering words, which could be heard as some kind of prayer word.

Although Barbarisa was ordained as a saint by various churches of the true God, he himself does not believe in gods very much, but now he is like an extremely devout believer, asking for help from an unknown god. Obviously, his heart is now extremely desperate up.

Since he was assassinated that day, his wife and children have fallen into a coma, and their bodies have repeated fevers, as if they would die at any moment.

At first, he thought it was because the weapon was smeared with poison when the assassin assassinated him, and his wife and children had been injured by the weapon, and the poison seeped into their wounds and mixed with the blood, that's why He fell into a coma without interruption.

However, the doctor in charge of the treatment quickly gave a different answer. There was no poison in the wound. His wife and children were sick. If they want to recover, they need to use transfusion therapy to replace the sick blood on the patient. It is also the reason why Barbarisa is hesitant now.

Although transfusion therapy is an ancient medical technique, many well-known people in the past knew about this method, but this method is too dangerous. If it is wrong, it may cause the death of the patient. Barbarisa is not sure that his wife and children are now Whether his physical condition can survive the blood exchange process, so he is still hesitating and has not made any decision.