India, Mumbai.
The large cities and ports that were once among the best in the Tianzhu region have now become equally huge ruins.
In fact, not many people specifically vandalize urban areas of Mumbai.
But most of the local population has left, and normal houses will become like ruins after being abandoned for a few years.
In the entire city, there is only a relatively complete construction area near the military dock.
Here lived the last British administrative institutions and garrisons in Tianzhu.
Early that morning, British intelligence officers, Liebot and Wang Weir, boarded the prepared reconnaissance aircraft at the temporary airfield inside the military dock.
Libot controlled the plane, slowly took off and then left the city, flying towards the northeast.
Wang Weir held the telescope and continued to observe the surrounding situation.
After leaving the city, the situation in the countryside outside became even more miserable and "desolate".
In rural areas of this era, residents' houses are inherently crude and will soon fall into disrepair without constant maintenance.
Over the past few years, many of them have completely collapsed.
Occasionally, you can see wild animals wandering in villages that originally belonged to humans.
Plants that grow rapidly during the tropical rainy season have even begun to obscure traces of the original villages.
Wang Weir took out his camera and took photos. He couldn't help but instinctively said and sighed:
“It’s all over, it’s really all over, this is the existence of the suburbs of Mumbai, now there is not a soul to be seen.
"Now I even doubt whether the city after the Black Death was as clean as this one..."
Libote glanced at the situation below, and then casually responded to his companion's words with the same emotion:
“The Black Death broke out naturally without any active human intervention.
“So the entire communication process is aimless and chaotic, and there are bound to be things missed.
"Now, with the Ming Dynasty's bacterial research, we all know that it is caused by bacteria.
"Under artificial sowing, the mortality rate is definitely more terrifying than the Black Death..."
Wang Weir sighed and nodded, and then added again:
"Also, those who were able to survive the plague were originally healthy and strong young adults...
“But now in Southern Tianzhu, all the young adults have been transferred to Mozhou.
"The remaining people in Tianzhu are the old, weak, sick and disabled. Even if there are no bacteria, a large part of them will die."
Li Bote said with emotion:
“During the Black Death, we had no idea how the Black Death broke out.
“People at that time probably thought it was divine punishment, and those who survived were the natural choices of God.
"Of course God's Chosen does everything right, which may indirectly lead to the Renaissance...
"At the same time, it may also have promoted the reconquest movement in Spain and Portugal, and they felt even more that they were the chosen ones.
“With Ming’s research, we know that it was just a large-scale plague caused by bacteria.
"If there is really a divine choice in this world, it should be the people of Ming Dynasty and not us..."
According to later reports on the Internet, some studies believe that the Black Death killed 25 million people, accounting for approximately one-third of the population of Western Europe at the time.
From the entire western continent to Dashi and Egypt, the entire Great Qinhai civilization circle was pierced by the Black Death.
For the Thai people at that time, the Black Death was of course the most terrifying nightmare.
But from the perspective of later generations, the Black Death added a special mental state to the Catharan and European civilizations.
Universal disasters are very similar to the world-ending disasters in the religious legends they believe in.
That is divine punishment.
Those who survive the disaster will naturally think that they are the "chosen by God".
The self-justifying logic of their beliefs is very strong.
In most cases, interpretations favorable to them can emerge.
In modern times, research on bacteria has allowed humans to realize the nature of plague.
The development of physics and chemistry research allowed them to understand more about how the world works.
This, of course, is constantly constricting God’s authority.
But the actual manifestation in the secular world is to compress the authority of the church.
But for ordinary people, they are constantly gaining new special mental states.
God is very "tolerant" of His discipline, even "ignoring" it.
No matter what ordinary people do, it will not actually trigger the legendary "divine punishment".
At the same time, the moral logic at the bottom of their entire society extends from their belief system.
In an era full of mystery, when the church controls the world, ordinary people's fear of gods and devils can play a role in maintaining the bottom line of social morality.
As the power of faith continues to weaken and more and more outrageous things are confirmed to not be "punished," the underlying moral restraints of the entire society will become increasingly weaker.
In fact, contrary to many people's inertial perceptions, the Middle Ages, when the church had strong control, was actually the most stable society on the Western continent and the highest moral level of ordinary people.
"Witch hunting" is a thing of the Renaissance era. The key is that it was carried out by the Protestants who broke away from the Holy See after the religious reform.
Everyone can communicate directly with God, and the logic of belief can be proven by the heart, which can certainly play a role in liberating the mind.
But this method of liberating the mind has a big side effect, that is, everyone can use this set of logic to justify all kinds of evil deeds they have done.
And using this logic to persecute minorities can provide theoretical support and endorsement for the behavior of recruiting groups to attack individuals.
Everyone thinks this person is a witch who made a deal with the devil, so she should be a witch.
I can devise a logic that will convince everyone that a woman is a witch.
Looking back at the traditional Holy See, they actually have a unified and clear interpretation logic for matters related to witches:
"All power belongs to God."
All supernatural phenomena in the world are extensions of God, and only God can release supernatural phenomena.
This logic is actually very simple. It is to draw the influence of various supernatural legends that already exist in the folk to one's own "god".
Therefore, their religious personnel do not recognize the statement of witches at all, and will not identify anyone as a devil or a witch.
Even if there really are witches, they are powers given by God.
This set of logic is completely opposite to that of the Protestants, which leads to completely opposite solutions.
Religious personnel in the Roman system would go everywhere where there were legends of witches to find the corresponding people.
If the other person did something good, let the other person admit that she was inspired by God, and then maybe take her away to become a nun.
If the other person did something bad, let her admit that she is not a witch and that she is just lying.
Therefore, the Holy See does not recognize the idea of witches at all, and of course it will not specifically hunt down witches.
Even if they were to arrest people who were considered witches by the people, their trials after being caught would be different from those of Protestants.
First, let the other party publicly admit that she is not a witch, and then punish her on the grounds of deception, evil, and blasphemy.
As historical research continues to deepen, more and more researchers are beginning to believe that the so-called Dark Ages in the Middle Ages, when the Holy See controlled the secular world, was probably caused by the smear campaign by the kings and Protestants during the Reformation era...
They are direct enemies of the traditional church. Both parties want to break away from the control of the church and are both enemies of the church.
The most stressful period in Thai and Western society can be considered the truly darkest and absurd era. It was probably just after the Renaissance began and before the Enlightenment fully took off.
Generally speaking, with the deepening of the religious reform and ideological liberation movements, and with the continuous progress of scientific research, the traditional belief and moral system established around God has continued to collapse.
The new free moral system promoted by the Enlightenment and centered on the Europeans has not yet been truly established.
It happened to be the era of great navigation and colonial expansion.
It has long been proven that killing pagans will not trigger divine punishment.
Even if you actively create a large-scale plague, you will not actually be punished by God.
The Spanish and British also proved this in Yinzhou.
At that time, they even believed that they were the chosen ones, and it was their destiny to destroy the heretics and rule the world.
Later researchers directly proved that the plague has nothing to do with God and is controllable. Then when they actually create plague again in the future, they will be even more unscrupulous.
These tangible proofs have attacked the prestige of the church from the outside and undermined the faith of religious personnel from the inside.
After the collapse of religious beliefs, various negative consequences also occurred simultaneously.
The evil deeds done by religious personnel in turn allow ordinary people to prove that they are right and believe that religion is indeed bad.
If all people believe in God, the moral principles laid down by the prophets in the name of God are extremely binding on all people.
When no one believes in God, then God’s morality is really of no use.
In today's world, the Enlightenment Movement, which was only influenced by Shenzhou Thought in the previous life, was directly purified into the Minghua Movement.
China's traditional Chinese moral system, which has no direct relationship with gods, began to play a role in the western continent.
Nowadays, when Taixi people do evil, they have more or less concerns.
Wang Weir concealed his discomfort with a dry smile that had no feeling of laughter at all:
"Ha...ha...Now that everything has been cleaned up, this land can almost be handed over to Daming, and we can leave this ghost place..."
Li Bote asked worriedly:
"Do you think Ming Dynasty would want a place like this? It's impossible for Ming Dynasty not to know what we are doing here.
"Now this is a complete hell of death. Do Ming people dare to come to such a place?"
Wang Weir thought for a while and said:
“It’s been so long, it should be fine, the Black Death has stopped spreading because all the carriers died.
"The situation here should be the same now, and here... the death is cleaner and more complete.
“If it doesn’t work, we will rush the Tianzhu people from several strongholds on the edge of the continent into the wilderness to do an experiment.
"If they can survive, then it will make sure that this land is really safe..."
The remaining strongholds around South Tianzhu are all strongholds reserved by the British to control and observe the situation.
The remaining Tianzhu people also serve the British here.
After Wang Weir finished speaking, he twisted his body subconsciously, always feeling a bit chilly around him.
Of course it will be cold if you open the airplane windows in the sky.
Although Libot felt a little awkward, he did not express any objection in the end.
In the next few days, the two of them continued to observe and record the situation at several remaining strongholds.
Finally, the observed information and photos were compiled into documents and sent to the British mainland via telegrams and faxes.
And put forward a test proposal to drive the remaining Tianzhu people into the wilderness.
The report was sent to British Prime Minister Grenville.
In the original history, Grenville did not remain prime minister for long before resigning.
But in this world, Grenville persisted.
The more complex environment in this world actually makes Grenville more mature than he was in his previous life.
Moreover, Grenville has the awareness to unite people from all walks of life, otherwise he would not have the so-called "cabinet of meritocratic".
He brought talented people from various factions into his cabinet.
Of course, it is possible that conflicts will break out and the platform will not be able to operate at all.
But it is also possible for all parties to communicate quickly and complete compromises, thereby maintaining the overall stability of the situation.
When Grenville was prime minister in his previous life, the Napoleonic Wars were in full swing.
The meritocratic cabinet assembled by Grenville was simply not equipped to deal with various emergencies.
Grenville's character is not strong enough to suppress various factions and concentrate his efforts to deal with the situation on the mainland.
In addition, his views on religious issues were inconsistent with the still sober King George III, so the prime minister resigned after fourteen months.
In this world now, the World War and the Yinzhou War have stopped, and the most complex problems have been almost solved by his cousin, former Prime Minister William Pitt Jr.
The current situation just allows Grenville's harmonious thinking to be brought into play.
At the same time, as a diplomat, Grenville was dealing with the Ming Dynasty and in the process of signing a naval treaty, his "contributions" were actually seen by his colleagues and newspapers.
Coupled with the fact that the king was mentally ill, the regent Prince of Wales had no idea and actually allowed Grenville to hold on.
Two years on, Grenville has even somewhat adapted to life as prime minister.
But now that he saw the special information from Tianzhu, Grenville suddenly felt that the backup was a bit chilly.
Grenville could not estimate how many people had died in the Tianzhu area over the years.
But it must be in the tens of millions, and not ten million...
More than ten years ago before the World War, so many people did not die in the Tianzhu area.
Now only Northern Tianzhu, controlled by the Ming Dynasty, still has people, and the population of Tianzhu as a whole should be less than 90 million...
This is obviously something my cousin did...
After a while of adapting, Grenville regained his mental state.
Then start thinking about practical issues.
No matter how this decision was originally determined, this matter will eventually come to an end.
The completely abandoned land of South Tianzhu can almost be officially sold off.
After solving the Tianzhu problem, the last thorn between Britain and Ming Dynasty was completely removed.
The relationship between Britain and Ming Dynasty will probably be more harmonious in the future.
Especially when Her Royal Highness Charlotte is willing to accept the title of Princess of Great Food after taking the throne.
However, there was another thing that made Grenville even more worried.
The Ming people pulled the Lucians, Prussians, and French people to negotiate privately.
What are these countries on the mainland doing, leaving aside the British on the islands?
This bunch of useless intelligence agents never got accurate information.
(End of chapter)
