Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Among everyone present, she was the one who disliked reading the most. Yet it was she—whose scientific literacy was the lowest—who had just listened with great relish.

Moreover, after listening, Zoe subconsciously compared it with what she had previously seen in textbooks. Thinking it through carefully… there seemed to be nothing wrong?

Whether it was universal gravitation or various basic knowledge points, setting aside those strange and bizarre stories, everything matched up.

Zoe even felt a vague sense of familiarity. Only later did she recall—it seemed that Nini’s newspaper followed this very style.

The people inside the cabin were momentarily stunned. They exchanged glances. Though each wore an expression as if wanting to speak yet holding back, in the end they still nodded.

“It seems… indeed.”

“Honestly, purely in terms of knowledge, there really isn’t any major problem…”

“Then that makes it a genuine Heretical God. Knowledge itself carries pollution—teaching knowledge is transmitting pollution, and besides, this knowledge isn’t even correct.”

“It’s not that serious. The conclusions derived from those stories are all correct. If the process were wrong, it would cause Cognitive Interference.”

“You’d better not let the Technical Priest in charge of assessments hear you say that, otherwise you definitely won’t pass your next evaluation!”

The cabin once again descended into chaos as the people of Castel argued, each holding firmly to their own views.

Meanwhile, Beatrice Joanne, still lying inside the combustion chamber of the Steam Engine, shifted into a more comfortable position and fell into thought.

To be honest, at first she had suspected it was some kind of blasphemous and twisted speech. Especially that voice when it first spoke—it sounded terrifying, low and eerie.

When Hughes had spoken in the Connection back then, he had frightened believers into fleeing. Beatrice had wanted to run as well, but where could she run? She could only lie there, listening while vomiting.

Yet as she listened, she became absorbed.

At first she had merely been attracted by those absurd stories, indulging a bit of curiosity. But gradually, she felt something else.

It was difficult for her to describe the feeling—so unfamiliar that in all her more than ten years of life, she had never encountered words capable of describing it.

Listening to the whisper, she seemed to enter those stories as well. Following the voice, she thought, categorized, and summarized.

And finally, she reached conclusions.

Most of those conclusions she had heard of before—whether the principles of the Steam Engine or the concept of universal gravitation.

But the reasoning in between was something she had never encountered.

Beatrice was a Transcendent. The Church of Candlelight had its own complete method for contacting the Sea of Unawareness, and within this whisper she seemed to sense something similar.

It was an entire system of thought—precise and rigorous—like a massive machine manipulating a giant steel hand, only to draw a small flower on the ground before her.

To be honest, Beatrice rather liked this feeling.

Those absurd stories only made her chuckle slightly, yet without realizing it she kept listening. By the time she came back to herself, she had gained quite a bit of knowledge.

Mm. It felt as if knowledge had slipped into her mind in a rather despicable way.

Watching the people of Castel arguing nearby, Beatrice drifted off slightly.

Could it be, as they said, a Heretical God?

But even if it were a Heretical God, it was an interesting one.

Beatrice herself did not notice that she had begun to look forward to those stories. As a Transcendent, perhaps she had grown somewhat lax.

Her Anchor was quietly shifting without her noticing.

Deep underground, at an unknown depth.

Xiao Bu opened her eyes in confusion.

“What just happened?”

“You fell asleep while reading the Holy Text that Lord Frey brought back!” someone beside her said. Xiao Bu raised her head and realized that quite a few companions were around her.

“That’s normal. I feel sleepy just looking at that thing!”

“You can’t even read. What could you possibly understand?”

“So what if I can’t read? Who’s born knowing how? Just wait—give me at most three days and I’ll learn to spell!”

“Heh, three days just to learn spelling—how embarrassing. Xiao Bu learned it in a single day!”

Xiao Bu scratched her head awkwardly, wanting to argue a little. She hadn’t learned it in a single day.

Counting the time spent searching through books, it had taken a full day and a half.

Ever since Frey had brought back the Holy Text, these Untouchables had been troubled. Not one of them could read—how were they supposed to understand the book?

In the end, it was Frey who proposed an idea. He told Xiao Bu to ask the Gear Sage, and it had actually worked.

The Gear Sage also could not read, but after spending some effort, it deciphered everything. It was said to have used an entire complex method—something about calculating probabilities of word occurrences.

Xiao Bu did not understand that much. She was simply happy: she could finally read!

In a single day, she had learned spelling, then eagerly began flipping through the Holy Text—

And then she fell asleep.

The contents of the Holy Text were too profound. She read until her head grew dizzy, and before she knew it, her eyelids began fighting to close.

The stories she heard in her dreams were much more interesting.

Wait, the stories in her dreams?

Xiao Bu scratched her head. She felt like she had just heard a lot of things, but could not quite remember them.

Her companions were still noisily arguing around her.

Xiao Bu lowered her head and looked at the Holy Text. It had turned to the chapter on the Steam Engine. She did not understand what a Steam Engine was, so she had never been able to comprehend it.

But now, when she saw the words Steam Engine, a phrase from the whisper in her dream suddenly surfaced in her mind—

“Boiled water, rising steam possesses tremendous power—it can push heavy steel.”

Heavy steel…

Xiao Bu’s eyes lit up. Her finger traced across the illustration in the Holy Text.

In the picture, boiling vapor was drawn inside a cylinder.

Lower Rhine, the Church’s relief distribution point.

The believers had just finished eating and were singing in unison, praising the candlelight.

But one believer suddenly faltered. He glanced left and right, then lifted his head in confusion.

He felt that he had just been dazed, as if he had heard something. But when he focused, there was nothing.

Perhaps it was an illusion, he thought, and habitually prepared to continue chanting praise to the candlelight.

Yet as soon as he began, his voice stuck again.

Frowning, he raised his head and looked at the believers beside him, then at the Father ahead, and finally upward—at the candlelight painted upon the dome of the sky.

“Universal gravitation… then Upper Rhine, built upon the dome—might it one day fall to the ground like a bamboo pole?”

Inside a sealed room, a group of people holding lanterns surrounded a man.

A keratinous sharp beak had been stitched onto his face. Beneath thick, cloudy round lenses, his eyes no longer held any reason.

“Another companion has fallen into Permanent Insanity…”

“Is this the fate of the Skin-Shedder?”

“Give him a swift end. Don’t let him turn into a monster!”

The surrounding people looked grief-stricken, yet in the end, amid sighs, they raised a heavy musket.

“Wait, don’t shoot. He seems to be… listening to something?”