Secret: Those years when I was a foreign aid for the Aurora Club

235

I'm done.

I really, really, really have had enough.

I'm tired of looking at a boring world that is perpetuated by the selfishness of a few people. There is no hope, future or glory, and even fear and despair are tasteless. When time comes to the fifth era, and this land remains unchanged, the political system is indestructible, and the core of ideology and culture remains the same, I know that even if there is no Fusheng Xuanhuang Tianzun, even if the source essence is not lost, I will definitely come. on this planet.

Because here is an ugly and twisted Dead Sea that attracts me.

236

The royal band began to play the second dance music, this time with a bright three-beat rhythm. The author made a lot of innovations in chords and musical forms, and wrote a completely different style from traditional Intis dance music, which has become the current trend music. . If it were in the rigid and old-fashioned Loen, even the most popular music would not be able to enter the room. But this is Intis, Trier of Intis, the passionate city, the city of romance and joy. As long as it is moving enough, It's not surprising even if he appears in the circle of top nobles.

Adela finished the opening dance without any sweat on her forehead, and her breathing speed didn't even change at all.

She had a great time, and took the initiative to change four dance partners in a dance song, just like doing a warm-up exercise. Then, she followed the resting female family members to the corridor leading from the ballroom to the lounge. She stood in the shadow of the junction, secretly picking up the frame of the arch and looking into the corner.

She found her target next to the second sculpture on the wall, His Excellency the Viscount—after changing his title and identity fifty years ago, he has been living in isolation on a fiefdom to the west of Intis. The devil of a peaceful life - Edward Vaughn stood leaning against the wall, holding a glass of sparkling wine, talking to Russell Gustave.

The latter, an upstart who is not yet forty, is in a period of booming career, with various handicrafts, literary creations and mechanical products emerging in an endless stream. He is actually able to develop new pipeline designs and weapons orders for the Church of Steam at the same time as publishing in newspapers. Three serials were published, and this astonishing talent tripled the price of newspapers throughout Trier.

It's easy to guess Russell's thoughts, just look at the lingering expressions on the ladies' bodies. Florent used inappropriate solicitation methods and did not deal with him, but facing him, a beautiful woman, the other party still gave him more face. It was difficult to guess Edward's thoughts, but Adela still tried her best to guess. Maybe today is the time to put it into practice.

Although she was peeking, her lack of concealment still caught Russell's attention. He suddenly showed an expression that was one part gloating and one part watching the show. He patted Edward's shoulder hard with his own hand, and then whistled. Chasing the backs of other ladies and ladies.

So Adela walked up generously, covering the crazily raised corners of her mouth with the gorgeous feather fan in her hand, walking gracefully in front of Edward on stiletto-heeled dancing shoes, and faced Edward who seemed to be looking at a bird in the air. The peacock with its tail spread out in front of him said with eyes: "Gui'an, Viscount Vaughan, is the music and food not to your taste? Don't waste this beautiful night. Seeing a guest standing alone, this is a good thing. It’s my fault as the organizer.”

Her title was Viscount, so Edward nodded flatly and perfunctorily: "No, everything is fine." Then he stopped talking.

Adela was not surprised by this alienation. She covered her face with a feather fan and continued to smile: "I want to have a chat with you. Is it convenient for you now? Maybe a little girl like me can help you. .”

"No." Edward responded to her simply.

Adela was well prepared. She took a deep breath, lowered her voice to a level that only they could hear, and used the action of going to the long table to get the wine to cover up the conversation: "If you want to play a devil who learns about human nature, , there is still something missing, and I am willing to help you fill it in."

Edward didn't take it seriously: "Family? It doesn't necessarily need to be you."

"No, it's love. Adela smiled, and gently picked up a glass of champagne with her fingers wearing burgundy gauze hollow gloves, and invited Edward to toast with her. Edward was silent for a second, gently clinked the glass with her, and waited for her next words. , “If you want to be seen as human, you have to imitate love. No matter what kind of love it is, I can help you cover it up, decorate your indifference into inarticulate words, and weaken your sense of inhumanity. I do all this voluntarily, and there will be no flaws. "

"Are you negotiating terms with me?" Edward asked her, taking a sip of the golden sparkling wine. "I may not need it, and even if I need it, it doesn't have to be you. Why are you doing all this? To ask for help The Lun family is wooing me? You know that marriage has no binding or special meaning to me, it is as ordinary as breathing."

"Because I like you." Adela brushed the broken hair around her ears, straightened the little crown on her head, and showed a bright smile, "I like you, I love you, so since it's all about marriage, why not How about choosing the one I like? You need a family, a wife you 'love', I need a free home and someone I like, it's a win-win situation."

"You've convinced me a little bit."

Edward replied: "Then where do you want to start?"

Adela immediately beamed with joy. She closed the feather fan with a snap, stepped back a few steps, then walked back to Edward with a reserved and elegant straight step, bowed slightly, and put the hand holding the feather fan behind her back. She raised her other hand and said with a clear smile:

"This handsome and noble... no, this cold-faced gentleman who doesn't want to talk to anyone, can you dance with me?"

237

West End, outside Green Cemetery.

Klein accompanied Doctor Allen and walked for a long time in the nearby woods. From time to time, he was made to cough a few times by the falling gray dust.

"Maybe there is no such tree, and the things in the dream cannot be completely reflected in reality." At the end, Allen himself was a little unsure.

Fortunately, I'm good at finding things... Klein pointed in the direction with his cane and said, "Let's take a look over there and make a final effort."

"Okay." Allen breathed.

The two walked for a while, and Allen suddenly stopped, pointed diagonally ahead and said: "There, there!"

More than ten meters away, a birch tree with a ring of bark off its waist stood there quietly, as if waiting for the two of them.

"It's exactly the same as in my dream." Alan was very sure.

Klein smiled a little warily and said, "But there is no Will Asceptin."

Allen approached the birch tree, frowned and looked at it for a while, then suddenly pointed to the root of the tree and said: "Will Auceptin was sitting here at the time, and he was pointing at the soil below with one hand!"

Pointing to the dirt below? Klein stood nearby, looking down at the area with almost no dead grass: "You want to dig it up?"

Allen nodded: "I've found this place, always check what's there. Sherlock, go to the cemetery and borrow two shovels."

"It's better if I stay here and you go to the cemetery. I'm worried that an accident will happen." Klein said cautiously.

"Okay." Allen did not refuse and immediately left the woods.

After a while, he spent his money, returned with three shovels and a gravekeeper, and began to dig.

Klein dug and dug, and suddenly he smelled something familiar. As the soil on the surface parted, things underneath were gradually exposed.

That was the highly decomposed body of a child!

His skin and flesh felt like they were melting, and there were many bugs crawling in and out of his nose and mouth.

when!

The shovel in Allen's hand fell and hit a rock. He pointed at the legs of the corpse, his mouth moving crazily but unable to speak. Klein endured his nausea and looked carefully, discovering that the left leg of the child's body was obviously missing the lower half.

At the same time, Allen took two steps back, fell to the ground, and shouted in a high-pitched voice: "Will Auceptin! Will Auceptin!"

That's Will Asceptin's body!

died?

Will Asceptin is dead?

And it seems to have been dead for a while!

Could this be fake?

Klein looked at the child's body with surprise and suspicion, and many thoughts suddenly popped up in his mind. In his understanding, Will Auceptin is a child with special characteristics, and may have some involvement with the Sequence 1 "Mercury Snake" of the "Monster" pathway.

The divination game he played and his casual remark "Doctor, your luck will get worse" made Allen unlucky for a long time; the paper cranes he folded could allow Allen's astral body to be located in the spiritual world. He was instilled with man-made revelations; even Klein could only catch a glimpse of his whereabouts above the gray fog, making it difficult to draw effective conclusions... How could such a child die inexplicably? Died before Dr. Allen's dream? Where are his relatives?

Klein narrowed his eyes slightly, resisting the strong nausea, and carefully examined the highly decomposed corpse, and found some torn tarot cards in the surrounding soil.

His spiritual intuition told him that the corpse in front of him was most likely Will Auceptin.

It’s really shocking and puzzling... Go back above the gray fog to confirm whether Will Asceptin faked his death... Wait, what does this have to do with me? I have long decided not to get involved in this matter in depth, lest I be entangled by the "Snake of Mercury", which may be more terrifying than the Sealed Artifact "0-08"... Klein suddenly came back to his senses and said to the frightened The gravekeeper and Dr. Allen, who was about to collapse with fright, said: "Call the police!"

"Okay, okay!" The tombkeeper was stunned for a moment, then replied repeatedly.

He took the shovel, turned around and ran out of the woods as fast as if there was a living corpse chasing him. Klein sighed, then took a deep breath, walked to Dr. Allen, lowered his head, held the doctor's shoulder and comforted him: "There is nothing to be afraid of, he is already dead."

"...It's just because he's dead that it's even scarier." Dr. Allen calmed down a little and got up on his own. He looked at Klein and was about to say something when he suddenly caught a glimpse behind Klein. In the distance, on a tree that had lost most of its leaves, stood a crow wearing a black hat, tilting its head and looking at them. Seeing Allen looking over, it flapped its wings and flew to another tree with denser leaves, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

"Allen?" Klein saw that the other party was in a daze, and looked behind him suspiciously and warily, "Is there something behind me?"

"What? No, I seemed to have been distracted just now."

The part about the crow was completely taken away, and Allen didn't realize that he had lost more than ten seconds of memory. He even forgot about the nervousness just now. He quickly recalled what he wanted to say and said to Klein: "Thank you, Sherlock. I feel much better already. If you weren't with me, I wouldn't know what to do now."

Seeing that he had adjusted his mood and no longer pursued the matter, Klein also let go of his worries and smiled relaxedly: "But before that, we may have to be summoned by Silveras Field. .”

238

A barefoot ten-year-old child deliberately bumped into Richard. Richard reached out to fish it up, lifted him up by his belt, and said to him with a smile: "Children are not allowed to steal, right? "

The height of nearly two meters was extremely oppressive. The child, whose feet were more than one meter above the ground, struggled violently for a few times. When he couldn't get away, he simply started to cry loudly while fluttering his limbs. Richard was not angry and continued to preach to him in a good voice: "Don't steal. If someone forces you to steal, run away, buy something to eat, and then have a good sleep. Go to the dock to work, or give money to others." As an apprentice, you can survive on your own, don't be a bad example, you are still very young..."

Richard patiently talked about temperance and discipline, initially leaving the seeds of "goodness" in the child's confused mind.

Alger, who was next to him, clicked his tongue: "Mr. Ernst, it's almost noon, don't waste your time on these children. They have probably spent more time as pickpockets than we have ever seen. They can't be broken off."

"But you can't pretend not to see it, you're still a child."

"I'm not blaming you, but there's no point in trying to reason with them, they won't listen..." Alger continued to frown, although the child in Richard's hand had gradually turned into sobbing and no longer crying loudly, as if Richard's preaching really had some strange power. Could it be that the Ernst family is the "audience"? Alger made a guess in his mind, and then he saw Richard put the child down and wiped away the dirt and tears on the child's face with a piece of lint, revealing a malnourished and thin little face. .

"Okay, let's go, no more stealing."

He saw Richard's dirty hands becoming brand new as if by magic. Alger also saw Richard secretly fold a 5-pound note into a handkerchief and stuff it into the child's hand. inside.

"If you really can't survive, go to the Ernst Foundation and we will help you survive until adulthood smoothly."

The child clutched the handkerchief and banknotes, and looked at Richard with alert and uneasy eyes like a small animal. No one had taught him to say thank you, so he nodded hastily to Richard and squeezed into the crowd.

Alger looked at Richard with a complicated expression, and he understood a little bit why there were so many charitable organizations, but only the Ernst family was in the most need. At that moment, he even had the idea of ​​charging a few dozen pounds less, but for the sake of his own future and the potion, Alger suppressed this idea. He walked up and reminded him in a calm and humble tone: "It's time to continue buying supplies."

"Okay. Thank you for waiting so long."

Richard answered with a smile and followed Alger, watching with interest as the other party selected dried seafood, dry bread and some easily preserved fruits. The Sailor Path can filter salt by itself, create clean water, and go into the sea to fish in the waves. It basically solves the biggest problem for ordinary people in navigation: fresh water. So there wasn't much to buy, just some dry food that could be stored for a long time, and a necessary change of clothes.

Things on the list were crossed off one by one, and people came and went in Bayam's commercial street. Adventurers, businessmen, pirates and sailors were mixed together. Richard followed Alger, watching and listening in all directions. He heard a certain pirate say that he was about to rob a passenger ship and do something big... Notify Garland that a certain businessman was talking about human trafficking in black language... Notify Garland de.

A group of people came bustlingly in front of him. Richard heard one person shouting "Two pounds, give me ten pounds of red clay!", and he heard someone laughing and saying, "Frank, you are doing those cult experiments again!"

So the voice just now defended itself by saying, "Hybridization... is not a cult experiment! Let the cows grow like wheat, and let the milk be in the fruits that grow on the trees like coconut milk..." So many people in front laughed. "I saw you conduct those experiments last time, and then your captain threw everything into the sea!" Frank blushed and tried hard to explain what "mother", "hybridization", " "For more people", these are some difficult words to understand, and the market is filled with a happy atmosphere.

Alger uncomfortably lowered the brim of his hat to cover his blue hair, not wanting others to know from any clues that he was going to sea.

Richard frowned slightly and listened to this quietly, confused and enlightened. Finally, he nodded and said astonishingly:

"It turns out it can still be like this. What a genius idea."

TBC

——————

Who asked Decay before if he would find Mushroom King pleasing to the eye? The answer is yes.

Garland De, the person in charge of the sea of ​​the Pilgrimage Sect, Sequence 5 of the Path of Death, a Bailang native, who jumped over from the Spiritual Sect.

Rejected an offer to serve as "Admiral of Hell" on the grounds of seasickness.