Chapter 261

"Let Joshua come to see me." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe put on his coat, walked out of the room, and sat at the long table. The maid wearing a short skirt and cat ears served him a dish of steamed lamb chops, a bowl of cream stew, a plate of cut fruit, and two glasses of orange juice. When she set the table, the cat tail under her skirt swayed.

I really didn't see it before; this guy Van Dyke is actually a two-dimensional fan.

Joshua was a tall, refined, middle-aged man, about the same age as Van Dyke. The two met in college and he was now his trusted civil official.

Although he studied at the Danzig Royal Military Academy like Van Dyke, Joshua was not from a noble family, but a poor child who relied on his own ability to get in.

—The reason why these prestigious schools were not completely monopolized by noble families was not because the masters specifically left a promotion channel for the bottom layer out of kindness, but to give the heirs of various families an opportunity to build their own team and practice the art of employing people.

In the university campus, there were noble young masters with prominent backgrounds but shallow roots, and civilian students with extensive knowledge but lack of opportunities. The two hit it off; this was a talent market that was rarely open to the outside world. Many future masters recruited their first batch of trusted aides in school.

Van Dyke belonged to the former, and Joshua belonged to the latter.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe had just finished the first lamb chop when Joshua, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, arrived at the table.

"You were looking for me?"

"Hmm." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe pushed the glass of orange juice he hadn't drunk to Joshua and said, "Help me check something, the faster and more detailed, the better."

"Okay, what specifically needs to be checked?" Joshua picked up the orange juice and took a sip, his expression becoming serious. If it were just checking some information, Van Dyke could have found ordinary subordinates. Now that he had been called, it meant the matter was not simple.

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

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe roughly described the characteristics of Vanessa Castle he knew to Joshua.

After the meal, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe sat on the sofa and received the information Joshua had organized.

【Vanessa Castle, an ancient religious building located in the suburbs of Parma City in the northern Apennine Peninsula, was built in the 1750s. Its first owner was the famous Grand Duchess 'Vanessa Frimmissret'. Another identity of this duke was the 'Saint' posthumously canonized by the Roman Curia.】

【After the passing of Grand Duchess Vanessa, the Frimmissret family held a grand funeral for her. In the hundreds of years since then, it has been the Vanessa Grand Duchess's family that has been responsible for the management and maintenance of the ancient castle, and it has never changed hands to an outsider. However, the location of the saint's cemetery has never been announced to the public, which has made many believers who hope to go on a pilgrimage quite dissatisfied...】

Joshua detailed the life resumes of every official owner of Vanessa Castle, as well as the inheritance history of this castle in the hands of the Frimmissret family, among which it was specifically mentioned:

【During the World War, the number of members of the Frimmissret family plummeted, and the scale of their assets shrank sharply. But even when they were on the verge of bankruptcy and relying on selling ancestral property to struggle to support themselves, their head of the family at that time still did not give up this Vanessa Castle and the surrounding land, which could no longer create economic benefits.】

【In contrast to this, several families who were on good terms with the Frimmissret family fled to the New World to take refuge after hearing the wind of war, leaving only them to struggle to guard the ancestral property in Vanessa Castle...】...

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe turned the information Joshua organized to the second half; the history of Vanessa Castle also came to the post-war period.

The victors of the war established the United European Republic on the ruins of Europe. In order to attract the old nobles who had fled overseas with their family property to return to Europe for investment, the new country, which was waiting to be rebuilt, chose the strategy of buying horse bones with a thousand gold. The Frimmissret family, who stayed behind in the ancient castle, successfully ate the first wave of dividends of post-war reconstruction by virtue of their family background and first-mover advantage. The family quickly recovered its vitality and further climbed to become one of the top noble families in the Republic.

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

【But what is strange is that even during the most difficult war years, when they were so poor that they could only rely on selling family property to struggle to support themselves, the family did not give up Vanessa Castle. But after the war ended and the family recovered its vitality, the Frimmissret family chose to donate Vanessa Castle to the Republic government for free, and since then, no family member has ever set foot on this land in the northern Apennine Peninsula.】

"Sure enough, it's a bit strange..." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe carefully reread the rise and fall history of the Frimmissret family. Apart from the different states of the family members before and after the war, he couldn't find anything else strange, so he shifted his attention to the history of Vanessa Castle itself.

Vanessa Castle has undergone 3 major repairs in history.

The first major repair occurred after the death of Grand Duchess Vanessa, when she was canonized as a saint by the Roman Curia. Many believers enthusiastically donated money to build a full set of religious facilities such as churches in Vanessa Castle.

The second major repair occurred during the war. At that time, the northern Apennine Peninsula was ushering in an unprecedented heavy rain. The huge rainfall, which was contrary to the heavens, caused the mountain behind Vanessa Castle to landslide. The mudslide carried the foundation of the entire castle from the mountainside to the foot of the mountain. Fortunately, the main body of the castle did not undergo major deformation. Many believers regarded it as a miracle.

The then head of the Frimmissret family exhausted the family property, spent a lot of money to invite craftsmen to re-consolidate the foundation for Vanessa Castle, and carried out a thorough reconstruction and repair.

The third major repair occurred in the post-war Republic era. After Vanessa Castle was donated, the Republic personally hired a company to renovate and maintain this historic ancient castle, seemingly intending to open it as a tourist attraction.

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

"Hmm..." Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe's eyes narrowed slightly, and he kept his gaze on the heavy rain that caused the second major repair of Vanessa Castle.

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

He still remembered the bath pool full of debris in the bathhouse, the damp stone bricks soaked with water on the city wall, the yellow silt accumulated on the floor tiles of the execution ground, and the weeds growing in the brick cracks...

"After lighting the corpse-oil lamp, what the lamp light illuminated seems to be the appearance of Vanessa Castle when it was just washed away by the flood?"

(End of chapter)