Chapter 261: Flim Mislet

Chapter 261: Flim Mislet

Chapter 261: Flim Mislet

"Let Joshua come to see me." Ning Zhe put on his coat and walked out of the room. He sat at the long table. A maid in a short skirt and cat ears brought him a plate of steamed lamb chops, a bowl of cream stew, a plate of cut fruit and two glasses of orange juice. The cat's tail under the skirt swayed as she arranged the dishes.

I never realized before that Van Dyke was a second-dimensional guy.

Joshua is a tall, well-mannered middle-aged man, about the same age as Van Dyke. The two met in college and Joshua is now his trusted civil servant.

Although he studied at the Royal Military Academy in Danzig like Van Dyck, Joshua was not from a noble family. Instead, he was a poor boy who had been admitted through his own ability.

——The reason why these famous schools are not completely monopolized by aristocratic families is not because the masters have left a promotion channel for the lower classes out of kindness, but to give the heirs of each family an opportunity to form their own team and practice the art of employing people.

On university campuses, there are both young aristocrats who come from prominent families but have little connections, and there are also common people students who are knowledgeable but lack opportunities. The two types of students hit it off immediately. This is a talent market that is rarely open to the outside world. Many future masters recruit their first batch of confidants in school.

Van Dyke belongs to the former, Joshua to the latter.

Ning Zhe had just finished his first piece of lamb chop when Joshua, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, came to the table.

"You're looking for me?"

"Yeah." Ning Zhe pushed the glass of orange juice that he hadn't drunk in front of Joshua and said, "Help me check something. The faster and more detailed the better."

"Okay, what specifically do you need to check?" Joshua took a sip of the orange juice, his expression becoming serious. If it was just to check some information, Van Dyke could have just asked an ordinary subordinate to come. Now that he had been called here, it meant that the matter was not simple.

Ning Zhe picked up a small tomato from the fruit plate and put it in his mouth, saying, "Vanessa Castle."

Ning Zhe gave Joshua a brief description of the characteristics of Vanessa Castle that he knew.

After the meal, Ning Zhe sat on the sofa and received the information sorted out by Joshua.

[Castle Vanessa is an ancient religious building located in the suburbs of Pavia in the northern part of the Apennine Peninsula. It was built in the 18s. Its earliest owner was the famous Archduchess Vanessa Frimmisret. Another identity of this duchess was that she was posthumously canonized as a "saint" by the Roman Catholic Church. ]

[After Grand Duke Vanessa passed away, the Flimmisret family held a grand funeral for her. In the following hundreds of years, Grand Duke Vanessa's family was responsible for the management and maintenance of the castle. It has never been owned by outsiders. However, the location of the saint's tomb has never been announced to the public. This move has caused dissatisfaction among many believers who hope to go on a pilgrimage...]

Joshua compiled in detail the life history of each official owner of Vanessa Castle, as well as the history of the castle's inheritance in the hands of the Flimmisret family, especially mentioning:
[During the World War, the number of members of the Flimmisret family decreased sharply, and the size of their property also shrank dramatically. However, even when the head of the family at that time was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to rely on selling his ancestral property to support himself, he still did not give up the Vanessa Castle and the surrounding land, which could no longer generate economic benefits.]

[In contrast, several families that were friendly with the Flimmisret family fled to the New World early after hearing the news of war, leaving them alone to guard their ancestral property in Vanessa Castle...]...

Ning Zhe turned to the second half of the information compiled by Joshua, and the history of Vanessa Castle also came to the post-war period.

The victors of the war established the United States of Europe on the ruins of Europe. In order to attract the old nobles who had fled overseas with their property to return to Europe for investment, the new country, which was in a state of disrepair, chose the strategy of spending a lot of money to buy a horse's bones. The Frimmisrate family who stayed in the castle successfully reaped the first wave of dividends from post-war reconstruction by virtue of their family background and first-mover advantage. The family quickly recovered and further climbed to become one of the most powerful nobles in the United States.

In the current European Senate, nearly 1/5 of the senators are directly or indirectly funded by the Frimmisret family, while their family members themselves never participate in politics.

[But the strange thing is that even during the most difficult years of the war, when the family was so poor that they could only rely on selling their property to support themselves, they did not give up Vanessa Castle. But after the war ended and the family recovered, the Flimmisret family chose to donate Vanessa Castle to the United States government free of charge, and no family member has ever set foot on this land in the northern part of the Apennine Peninsula since then. ]

"It's a bit strange indeed..." Ning Zhe carefully reread the history of the rise and fall of the Frimmisrate family. Apart from the very different states of the family members before and after the war, he did not find anything strange, so he shifted his attention to the history of Vanessa Castle itself.

Fort Vanessa has undergone three major renovations in its history.

The first major renovation took place after the death of Grand Duke Vanessa. When she was canonized as a saint by the Vatican, many believers donated money and built a complete set of churches and other religious facilities in Vanessa Castle.

The second major renovation took place during the war. At that time, the northern part of the Apennine Peninsula was experiencing an unprecedented rainstorm. The huge rainfall caused the mountain behind Vanessa Castle to collapse, and the mudslide carried the foundation of the entire castle from halfway up the mountain to the foot of the mountain. Fortunately, the main body of the castle did not undergo major deformation, and many believers regarded it as a miracle.

The then head of the Frimmisret family spent all his fortune and hired craftsmen at a high price to re-solidify the foundation of Vanessa Castle and carried out a thorough reconstruction and renovation.

The third major renovation took place in the post-war era of the United States. After Fort Vanessa was donated, the United States personally hired a company to renovate and maintain the historic castle, apparently intending to open it as a historic attraction.

But later, for some unknown reason, this idea was shelved and no one has mentioned it again since.

"Hmm..." Ning Zhe's eyes narrowed slightly, and his gaze remained on the rainstorm that caused the second major renovation of Vanessa Castle.

"After lighting the corpse oil lamp in the castle, what I saw was..."

He still remembered the bathhouse filled with debris, the wet bricks on the city wall that were soaked with water, the yellow mud on the floor of the execution ground, and the weeds growing in the cracks between the bricks...

"After lighting the corpse oil lamp, the light illuminates what Vanessa Castle looked like when it was just destroyed by the flood?"

(End of this chapter)