He walked in the endless tunnel, the rock walls were dry, cold and rough, and the darkness was thick and solid.
There was no lamp or torch in his empty hands, and his eyes could not see anything, but it seemed that he did not need visual guidance and just walked forward instinctively.
There was an icy air blowing past my ears, coming from infinite depths, with a force that even clothes could not shake, but it caused the stone walls to tremble slightly, and the rock formations trembled like drifting leaves with the arrival of the cold current.
Something is approaching, the cold current is its deep and long breath, and the vibration is its steps.
Rock scales, long link-shaped bodies, and mountain ridges with wills travel through the darkness, and the force that makes the rock formations tremble is quickly approaching.
The structure between the valve and the pincers splayed open, adhering to countless model lake faces, hill dwellers, sailors, acid-burned faces, warts, and blister-like mosaics clustered in the gaps between the rock shell segments.
, tiny arthropods manipulate a flat, pale smile.
Tremors threw up gravel, cold air surged, fear clenched the heart, squeezed the blood, and the sharp increase in blood pressure caused a dull pain behind the orbit. Sufficient oxygen supply awakened the brain from the haze and realized the current situation.
I had no time to think about where I was and why I was here. With nowhere to hide, my subconscious made conditioned reflex actions based on existing experience.
…
"Peng!"
The desk and chair were moved, the uncapped ink bottle was swept away, and the slightly viscous black liquid was poured on the table, seeping into the messed up manuscript and spreading across the paper.
The dark black spreads out, crawls along the messy and pressed fibers, quickly eats into the quasi-Gothic title, swallows the introduction, and moves towards the straight-faced text.
The brain that had just woken up interrupted the previous process between scene switches, reloaded the content related to the situation at hand, and watched the ink contaminate a corner of the desktop before reacting.
"Oops." Kraft hurriedly evacuated the remaining paper. In the rush, some of the incompletely dried writing was printed on the completely dry manuscript paper, mixed with the loose pages with some ink on the corners.
The table full of manuscript paper became a mess. Fortunately, the candlestick had been extinguished long ago and did not fall down and ignite the paper.
After taking two steps around the table, some old wooden boards groaned slightly under my feet, accompanied by an obvious hollow sound, indicating that the bottom was a cabin rather than a solid rock formation.
A long wooden tube for storing bundles of charts hangs on the wall. This is the captain's cabin of the Iceberg.
They marched as fast as possible through the hills for two weeks, and returned to the ship with firm orders to set sail. From dusk to sunset, the sailors were called back to the ship from the tavern or under the covers with double pay, and no one asked why.
The captain was unwilling to stay one more night on land.
Few people discussed those who had not returned during the hasty departure and busy river voyage. Only the first mate habitually greeted the young man named Walker and offered drinks to the captain who had not put down the steering wheel all night.
Then he felt the inexplicable gaze under the tricorn hat, as if accusing him of triggering taboo words at sea that would bring bad luck, such as "drowning" and "capsize".
A small box was taken out from the secret compartment and placed on the deck. The coins were only barely covered with a shallow layer on the bottom of the box, but the golden metallic luster made Craft pay attention.
Rationally speaking, when many sailors consciously save money, it is not that they cannot collect seven kingdoms of silver coins that can be exchanged for one gold coin, but their consumption habits prevent them from saving this money, and their insecurity does not allow them to condense all their wealth.
On a small thing that can be lost at any time.
For most of these people who have never touched gold, the impact of this box is greater than anything else.
After William promised that half of the box would go to the people on the ship, and the other half would be handed over to the family of the deceased with their own eyes, the remaining objections that he did not dare to discuss on the deck disappeared. From the moment the gold coins fell into the bag,
The names of the three faces that reminded William would not ring out from the most hidden wood cracks in the ship.
Instead, there were rumors that the captain had actually found some kind of treasure, and this kind of rumor that would spread immediately after landing was exactly what William needed.
[To be honest, I have been using Yeguoyuedu to read and catch up on books recently. I can switch sources and read aloud with many sounds. Yeguoyuedu is available for Android and Apple.]
After boarding the ship, Kraft borrowed the only fixed large square table on the ship to rush to record the principles of acid making and experimental descriptions. The other was in the hands of the cook, used to place the soup pot and handle the occasional fresh meat.
A new item has been added: appreciating the gold coins you just received.
"Is this a dream again?"
For half a month, that weird forgetfulness didn't happen again, or it happened somewhere no one noticed. It seemed that the only meaning of its appearance was to let the wound go away in my mind.
On the other hand, nightmares from time to time have become new worries, most of which are related to the experience of that night. Either he couldn't find the torch in the mine, or he was fighting against the arthropods protruding from the darkness, or being chased by something.
The side effects of a good memory were evident at this time. He could not quickly forget his dreams after waking up, would react with a frightened aftertaste, and spend a difficult night.
This can easily develop into "William is still awake".
After several secondary awakenings, the captain would rather give up the comfortable bed in the captain's cabin, temporarily give up the entire place to Kraft, and go squeeze in with the first mate.
So Kraft was the only one here at night.
The bright and white moonlight spilled onto the table from the lattice wooden window through the semi-transparent curtains. Even without candlelight, it did not look dim. He looked through the manuscript in his hand and did not leave any impression, but he clearly realized that half of his
The result of the night has become a pile of waste paper.
It was so bad that Kraft stopped lighting the candle and walked to the bedside, preparing to take a nap and resume work tomorrow morning.
We still have to discuss with William how to use the information in his hands. Whether to build his own production workshop or sell it to others to make a lot of quick money.
The former obviously has greater long-term monopoly interests, but in fact they do not have a ready-made industrial base and reliable manpower in this area, and they dare not continue mining from the remote mine in the southern hills. This makes everything from scale to confidentiality difficult.
question.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Perhaps setting up the workshop on the territory of the Wood family can solve the problem to a certain extent, but the value of this technology is too great and the confidentiality is too poor. If it were not for the alchemist back then
If they die quickly, the place of production is hidden, and the surviving insiders suffer strokes, it will be a matter of time before the craftsmanship is discovered. This time may not allow them to make enough money from scratch.
Another problem was that William began to refuse to go ashore. At the strong request of the crew, he reluctantly docked to replenish the things that had not been replenished during a hasty sailing, and refused to disembark. This state could not manage the shore industry.
The latter does not have this problem. You can sell it directly and make a lot of money. At worst, you can find an acquaintance or even a church to act as an intermediary, notarize it, and it will be 30% or 70%. It is a big profit if you get 70% of the unexpected surprise and 30% of it.
Don't talk about the unique glass wing ring, just ask the bishop if he wants gold coins or the broken wings? The things belong to the church, the money does not.
It happened that Kraft wanted a large amount of money for equipment, experiments, publishing books, and even taking in patients. If time was limited, money could be the catalyst for everything. William also showed the need to buy a large ship that could be offshore for a long time.
tendency.
Thinking of this, Kraft got up and left the bed, picked up the penholder, leaned over the ink bottle, and wetted the tip of the pen with the bottom of the bottle that had not been emptied. He pressed half of the torn waste paper on the table, intending to write it down by moonlight.
The pros and cons of both will be presented directly to William tomorrow.
He sat down at the table, only to find that the tabletop had fallen into darkness again, the light strip was illuminating the bedside, and the candlestick stood in the shadow of the window frame.
【Moonlight,Move】
There was a knocking sound outside the window, as if some polite sailor had passed by during the night watch and heard the noise and came to inquire.
Wet, soft things were placed on the wooden board, adsorbed in the sound of waves outside the ship where no one could stand, and the light was bright. Kraft stood up in shock and drew his sword, and the sticky and malicious memory jumped from the tail vertebrae to the back of the head.
…
The empty hand lifted up the sheets, and the body suddenly bounced up. The room was dimly lit. There was a strip of hard object behind the pillow, which was the long sword that was put down before going to bed.
The windows were open, and the evening breeze with the smell of water vapor and sandy soil blew into the cabin. The turbid yellow water flowed under the not-so-bright crescent moon, and the hills on the shore were silent. It was a lackluster night scene of the Tobid River. They were sailing here normally.