When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#457 - Royal Ordnance Works and Mechanical Engineering Research Institute

Opening his eyes, he still saw the same bed curtains.

His head resting on the soft velvet pillow, Horn twisted his neck, glancing left and right before letting out a relieved sigh.

Good, there were no women in bed today. He had thought Jeanne and Carrie might be lying on either side…

Horn suddenly paused, then chuckled self-deprecatingly. He wasn't in the Gulag Monastery, but in the Mechanical Palace.

As for the Blood and Sweat Road, it had been almost a year since then.

He sighed softly, shaking his head. Every time he woke up with a hangover, the world felt too unfamiliar.

For a brief moment, he had thought he was still in September of 1444.

He remembered that after the Battle of Little Muddy Creek, he had also drunk heavily. The next day, Cici brought them devastating news—the arrival of Prince Condé.

The Horn of that time, the cautious and opportunistic Horn, had frantically decided to lead nearly a thousand people to flee Upper Reifer County.

They had to bypass blockades, traverse the High Plateau Mountains and the Black Bone Marsh, and head to Jeanne's Fort at that time.

Compared to the tedious political and military affairs after capturing Jeanne's Fort, Horn remembered this absurd and naive time most clearly.

How was Carrie doing? Why hadn't he heard from her in so long?

Dia still corresponded with Kirvis every month, but due to road blockages, she hadn't been able to return to Langsand County through the Copper Fortress.

Speaking of which, he hadn't even visited Frick's grave since returning this time.

Horn suddenly felt a strange sense of destiny.

At the beginning of the Blood and Sweat Road, his good brother Danji was buried in the High Plateau Mountains.

In the middle of the Blood and Sweat Road, he buried another good friend, Frick.

At the end of the Blood and Sweat Road, he buried a good man and a group of orphans. The common point was that they basically had no names.

The Holy Grandson Papal State at that time was still a ragged and fleeing ignorant rebel army, but now it was a heavyweight force in the southeastern Thousand River Valley.

After the victory, the voices supporting Horn to become the Archbishop of Thousand River Valley even surpassed Ludwig, the Dean of Blago Monastery.

Especially Little Pool City, a staunch supporter of the Juan Nuo faction, had unilaterally declared Horn as the Archbishop of Thousand River Valley in order to obtain the protection of the Salvation Army garrison.

However, to Horn's dismay, the people of Thousand River Valley still preferred an enlightened monarch to a theocratic republic or constitutional autonomy.

Madeleine had previously launched a sampling survey and found that even most people in the Salvation Papal State believed that the best situation was for Thousand River Valley to close its doors, with the Holy Grandson as Pope and Melia as Grand Duke.

In any case, there had to be a supreme monarch at the top.

The inertia of history was so strong that it couldn't be reversed in just one year.

In the history of Horn's hometown, modern Europe was a back-and-forth tug-of-war between feudal and bourgeois forces, lasting for hundreds of years, and some countries still had royal families.

It had only been a year since his side had risen up. To reverse hundreds or thousands of years of tradition, unless Horn could really control people's minds, as the church claimed.

The Salvation Army itself had to tolerate some remnants of aristocratic forces, striving to make the enemies as few as possible, survive first, and then settle the score.

Could the Horn of September 1444 have imagined his current appearance?

At that time, he was still thinking about running away to Black Serpent Bay as soon as possible, but a year later, he had become the person in charge of the three southeastern counties of Thousand River Valley.

Martin had sent a letter saying that Dean Ludwig would personally visit in mid-September.

According to the meaning revealed in the letter, Blago Monastery probably wanted to form an alliance of three or four parties.

That is, Catherine's Rapid City in Lower Reifer County, Ludwig's Kasha County, Horn's Langsand County, and the Secret Party of Black Serpent Bay.

If the alliance could be formed, they would be more confident in facing the church's possible crusade and Prince Condé's decree.

Supporting himself up from the soft spider silk blended sheets, Horn leaned against the bed frame, raised his hands above his head, and stretched greatly.

His yawn turned smoothly into a pepper-flavored burp halfway through.

Obviously, this was the aftermath of last night's banquet.

Although he had set his meal standard at the ordinary middle-class level, Catherine personally paid for two cows and temporarily bought a dozen sheep, adding a hearty meal to the banquet.

Perhaps because the string in his mind was unusually tight after the two wars, Horn rarely didn't wear a bitter face in order to relax, and instead drank two glasses.

This drink loosened the string. Horn slept from ten o'clock last night to eleven o'clock in the morning. Looking at the black oak pointer on the clock, he rubbed his eyes vigorously before scratching his belly and getting out of bed.

Pulling open the curtains, the blazing sunlight shone on the foot of the bed.

He didn't know what design and materials were used in this Mechanical Palace, but in this hot weather, the room actually had a cool feeling.

He pushed open the door. Although there were two loyal orphans waiting at the door, Horn never liked others to serve him brushing his teeth and washing his face. It wasn't like he didn't have hands to do it himself.

But putting on clothes was an exception. The holy clothes of this world were more like soft cloth armor pieced together from different parts than holy clothes.

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Unless Horn grew two more arms behind his back and under his crotch, he might be able to put on his clothes himself.

Spitting out the tooth-cleaning agent, Horn looked at his slightly yellow teeth in the clear water, casually put on a cool linen stand-up collar shirt, and walked out of the room.

Standing on the second-floor corridor, Horn could directly see the hall next to the Mechanical Theater.

The sound of pen tips gliding across paper filled the air as the orphans grimaced and hunched over their desks.

In front of them, Silov sat upright in her wheelchair, holding a book, occasionally looking up at the clock beside her.

The ticking sound filled Horn with a sense of fear of returning to the past.

He tiptoed to the kitchen on the first floor, stole some cold bread and beef, and a pot of warm black tea, and returned to the second floor.

Chewing cold beef and drinking warm black tea, Horn leaned on the terrace railing, looking out at the view before him.

It had to be said that Witt's design was quite artistic. From here, he could see the distant official residence square and the statue under construction.

There were many people on Central Avenue, both buying grain and oil, and trading leather.

Looking closer, almost all the trees on the Mechanical Palace's hill had been cut down, revealing lush grass and shrubs.

On the crescent-shaped open space between the hill and the Parra River, Jeanne was leading Mitne and Carter in routine military training.

These Megdi Chamber of Commerce members and executives were running out of breath, not even recovered from their hangovers, while a dozen or so elders sitting in the trees watched the excitement with laughter.

At the two ends of the crescent shape were two newly built buildings.

The one at the south end was the Papal State Royal Armaments Manufacturing Plant, which mainly moved the Holy Gun Workshop previously smelted in the Mechanical Palace there.

But in addition to manufacturing holy guns, the Armaments Manufacturing Plant also had the function of researching new clockwork weapons and improving holy guns.

The one at the north end was the Mechanical Palace Engineering Research Institute, which was mainly responsible for researching star-forged gear-related machines, such as clockwork stone cutters, clockwork sawmills, clockwork oil presses…

To prevent the leakage of star-forged gears, these items were all claimed to be driven by clockwork. Ordinary people could not distinguish whether clockwork could release such great kinetic energy.

Swallowing the cold bread in two or three bites, Horn patted the bread crumbs on his hands and walked towards the inner room: "Duvalon, come help me change clothes. Raphael, go notify the Armaments Manufacturing Plant and the Engineering Research Institute, I will go inspect them later."

He had originally planned to rest today, practice breathing techniques a few more times, strive to break through the third stage of breathing techniques as soon as possible, or simply lie in bed and read the Witcher novel.

But before he could pay homage to the nameless monk and the blue-blooded orphans, he couldn't stay idle after all.