Chapter 195: The Mechanical Palace is too beautiful. Let’s take a look at the town in the distance.
Ten days later?
Pushing Shilov out of the spire, Horn was still thinking.

According to Shilov, this substance called ether is invisible and intangible and only exists in the astral realm.

One of the main reasons for building it on Qiumu Island is that it meets all the conditions and is secretive enough. How many other places can do this?
Horn was quite confident about the application of star-cast gears. Not to mention the complicated gameplay of combining mountain copper springs and star-cast gears, just letting the Saints crank it by hand could surpass the efficiency of animal and water power.

Speaking of this, Horn remembered the clicking sound he had heard before. After finding Shilov, the annoying sound inexplicably disappeared.

"Shirov, do you have anything with you or in the palace that makes a clicking sound?"

"No." Shiloh pulled the tail forward and combed the hair with a small comb. "Where does the clicking sound come from?"

"Haven't you heard of it?"

With her head lowered, Shilov continued to comb her hair: "No."

This is really weird, could it be that I am really hallucinating?
Ignoring all that, Horn pushed Shilov past the little angels spinning around: "Is your mother a member of the Priory of the Scales?"

"The Scales Hermitage?" Shilov seemed unfamiliar with the term.

Picking up the branch, Horn drew the symbol of the Priory of the Scales on the muddy ground of the flowerbed and asked, "This is the Priory of the Scales. Wasn't this the banner used by your adoptive mother when she pretended to be the Moon Goddess?"

"I don't know. I have seen the words of the Priory of the Scales in some notes, but I never knew its symbol, let alone the relationship between my mother and them."

"What about your blood god symbol? The one that poops on a book?"

"What do you mean by pooping on a book? Those are my two favorite things, books and cream, okay?" Shilov whipped Horn's thigh with her tail to express her dissatisfaction.

"Stop hitting me, stop hitting me. It's all Paslick's fault. If you want to scold me, go ahead and scold Paslick." Horn took a half step back. The little girl was so strong that it hurt. "How did your mother leave? Did she tell you why?"

With her hands pressed against her thighs, Shiloh sat obediently, "No, she suddenly disappeared ten years ago. She didn't leave any news for me. Only Ah Fu was left."

"Do you know what your mother's name is?

Shilov still shook her head: "I don't know, I call her mother, and the craftsmen in the town call her Lord."

"Well, let's look at the town in the distance and see if there are any other clues."

Speaking of this topic, Horn thought of the subsequent placement of Shilov.

"There is one more important thing. Next, we are going to enter this island. What do you think?"

"I think I can sign a contract with you and give you some Star Forge Gears to use. I have no objection if you go and clean up those undead."

The wolf girl looked at the people in the yard. Compared to the few people in the narrow space before, she was still a little uncomfortable in front of the nearly three hundred people in the yard because she hadn't seen strangers for ten years.

Anyway, Horn saw her stuffing her tail into the crack of her ass.

"You must have requests, too?"

"That's right. I admit that you are the actual lord of this Autumn Dusk Island, but this Mechanical Palace is my personal property. I want to live here, and you can't kick me out."

"of course not."

"Then, once you have cleared the undead, I hope you can take care of my food, clothing, shelter and transportation. Don't worry, I will work for you in exchange for compensation."

There was a hint of cunning in the wolf girl's emotionless words: "I know you are very interested in my mechanical technology and alchemy knowledge."

"Of course, you can enjoy the same treatment as Jeanne, I mean in terms of material."

"Finally, if you are the lord, I hope you can live in the most prestigious place on this island, and so can your entourage. It would be even better if there are scholars like me among them."

"No, we can live in the town across the street..." Horn glanced down, and the wolf ears wilted like a withered flower in his sight. "But since you make this a condition, it's not impossible for me to move in."

"Great." Shilov looked up at Horn's chin, "Then we can have a tea party, dinner, debate, or poetry reading together, just like in Guel's plays..."

As if she had thought of something, Shilov lowered her gaze again and stopped talking.

Although her expression remained unchanged, Horn was acutely aware that she was shy.

"Of course we can do these things in our spare time, but you have to know that we are active during the day and sleep at night. You have to change your original schedule."

"After my mother passed away, I once changed to a daytime schedule, but I changed to a night schedule only to make it easier to watch the stars and charge my gears."

Pushing Shilov's wheelchair, Horn walked forward aimlessly. For some reason, he suddenly thought of the Blue Blood Orphanage in the Wild Spider Forest not far away. Was that orphanage forty or fifty miles away from here?

The distance is actually quite close. Judging from various indications, both of them are doing extremely secretive things, and it is impossible not to investigate the surroundings thoroughly.

Do the two know each other?

Horn was suddenly startled.

He thought of the wild spiders in the Wild Spider Forest. How did the Blue Blood Monastery know that they could use bone whistles to control the wild spiders?

Besides, how could the people from the Blue Blood Monastery use the bone whistles to disperse the giant spiders?
He also thought of the demon hunters who came to Autumn Island to carry out de-urbanization after Shilov's adoptive mother was suspected of defecting.

How did they get through the spider forest? How did they get past the lycanthropes? How did they get past the undead who formed a circle around the edge of the island to defend it?

The water in the small Daze Township is quite deep.

"Why did my big cock head fall off?"

Hearing what Shilov said, Horn stopped. He looked up and found that he had arrived at the gate of the Mechanical Palace without knowing when.

It was almost evening now, but the fog had dissipated a lot, and the whole world seemed to be covered by a layer of withered yellow filter.

Puffs of smoke rose from the mountains, and the rippling water reflected the moving gray clouds and the sky with a yellowed film texture.

The fishermen's songs of beastmen came from afar, echoing in their ears. Beside Horn and Shilov, black-clad soldiers ran in and out, making beds on the floor in the side halls on both sides of the garden palace.

If nothing goes wrong, they will spend the night in this palace.

Horn felt around the corner with his hand and the unusually wet soil told him that it would probably rain again that evening.

"Shilov, you..."

He looked down at Shilov, who just sat there blankly, leaning back in her chair. As a wolf, the tip of her overly long tail was unconsciously twitching rapidly in her hand.

She sat in a wheelchair, confusion or fear in her eyes. As long as Horn pushed her a few more steps forward, she would come to the world outside the palace walls for the first time.

"Want to go outside? Or to the next town, the place you've seen countless times on the terrace?"

The wolf girl gripped the wheelchair's rims tightly. She looked deeply into the new world before her, her tail tip tense and straightened. After waiting for a long while, she let out a soft sigh:
“No, I’m not ready yet, but one day it will come, just like I’ve been practicing for ten years to talk to people other than puppets and grandmas.

Give me three years, and I will be able to push myself out into the world and see it.”

Horn didn't say much. This mechanical palace was both the wolf girl's home and her prison.

For more than twenty years since she was a child, she has never left this place and has never spoken a word to anyone other than Alfu, the doll, and her vampire adoptive mother.

Thinking of this, Horn suddenly understood the significance of the words the wolf girl said when she first met him.

A word from the stage takes ten years of hard work off stage.

Holding the wolf girl's wheelchair, Horn leaned against the door and also looked towards the gray clouds in the distance.

In this way, not only did he find the engine for his industrial engine (questionable), but he also opened up a living space for subsequent refugees.

I had thought of completing it in three days, but I didn't expect to complete the occupation of the island in two days. As for the remaining undead, I could send people to the island and clear them out while setting up a camp first.

There is a solution to the food problem, which is to make peat, extract brine, catch fish, refine salt, and make salted fish.

The production of peat can be done by the saints, which does not require high technical skills and can help them accumulate alchemical experience.

As for the problem of pumping brine from salt wells, we can try to solve it with Star Cast Gears. Wasn’t the first generation of steam engines created for the purpose of pumping water from mines?
Fishing can be completely left to the beastmen, as they are very familiar with it. The same goes for refining salt and making salted fish.

After solving the food problem, there is also the housing problem. Coincidentally, there is a small town on the other side of the river from the Mechanical Palace. After some repairs, the town can still be inhabited and does not require too much effort to rebuild.

Then the only remaining tasks would be weapons manufacturing and military training.

"Today is November 11rd."

(End of this chapter)