The sky was dark, the clouds were rolling, and the waves on the deep blue sea were undulating. The "Black Pearl" was rising and falling in the docking area made of huge rocks, like a rocking crib.
This is the sea. Whether it is anchored in a port or sailing in the deep sea, no matter how powerful it is, it seems small enough in front of it.
Black Forest Islands, pioneer city, Gresham!
The Black Forest Islands are also called the Black Thorn Islands, mainly because these islands are covered by dark and dense thorn forests. Among them, Gresham is the largest independent island in the Black Forest Island Group, occupying an astonishing land area. More than 80 percent.
When the Age of Discovery just came, the first colonists of the Kingdom of Ghent took the lead in setting foot in this area. After a year-long "cleansing", they finally achieved a staged victory and named the largest island. "Gresham" means pioneer city in Ghent, in order to commemorate the pioneering spirit of the heroic adventure of the warriors of the kingdom.
Jack D. Sparrow silently shuttled among the crowds on the pier. In addition to the patrolling Ghent naval soldiers and foreign tourists, there were also many strange-looking people among them.
Their skin color is tanned and dull, their ears are pointed, and they have two tiger teeth. Their overall appearance is similar to that of the elves, but most of them are ugly in appearance. These are the natives of the Black Forest Islands or foreigners who often live here.
The Archbishop is right. As long as you stay on the Black Forest Islands for more than three years, your skin, ears, and teeth will be contaminated by unknown forces, resulting in irreversible changes.
But then again, despite the irreversible pollution, it cannot stop the liveliness of the port city of Gresham. Compared with the pollution and troubles of other colonial islands, the change in appearance is only the slightest. .
After quickly passing through the pier made of boulders, Jack stopped in front of the huge arched stone door at the entrance. He took out the badge unique to the Poseidon Church's expatriate teachers and handed it to the navy guard wearing a blue and white striped shirt standing nearby.
The naval guard took the badge, glanced at it with his eyes, and immediately stood at attention, standing like a benchmark and saluted Jack:
"Sir, what are your orders?"
"Which bishop of the church is presiding at mass today?" Jack took the badge back from the guard's hand and put it into the inner pocket of Poseidon's robe.
"Sir, it's Bishop Just."
"Well, I understand."
After speaking, Jack pressed the black tricorn hat on his head with his hand, turned around and walked out of the pier, rushing towards the street.
Seagull Street!
Gresham's largest main street runs in both east and west directions. Among them, casinos, red light districts and other places that are officially prohibited by the Kingdom of Ghent are blooming in Seagull Street, almost every house is next to each other, and the flow of people is booming.
This is a phenomenon unique to maritime colonies. As long as you are on the sea, any express prohibitions will become a blank sheet of paper. No one will abide by them, and the kingdom will just turn a blind eye to this.
Therefore, similar maritime colonial islands are extremely prosperous. Among them, the trade exchanges of steam merchant ships alone have reached an astonishing hundreds of times a day, especially for island cities like Gresham, which are extremely lightly polluted. A place where many wealthy travelers spend their money and unleash their desires.
Of course, in the lively neighborhood of Seagull Street, in addition to the rich, travelers and patrolling naval soldiers, there are also a group of thin beggars in ragged clothes, disabled or deformed.
Most of them were adventurers who hunted for treasure at sea, with their own legendary stories, but in the end they all ended up wandering back to the Black Forest Islands or other colonial islands.
No one knows what they have gone through. The only thing that can be seen is a group of beggars lying or lying on the side of the road all day long, muttering words and sentences that only they understand.
This is both unfortunate and fortunate.
Because from some perspectives, they are at least alive. In most cases, adventurers who encounter unknown pollution or extraordinary species can only disappear with the steam ship in the end. Of course, if they are lucky, they may disappear in a few months. Someone found a thigh bone from the belly of the fish.
After walking for about ten minutes, Jack followed the prompts in his memory and found the bar closest to Poseidon Church after passing through a cross street and a row of circular buildings of different heights.
"Golden Wutong..."
Jack glanced at the sign and found that the double doors of the bar were covered with various reward orders.
Among them there are many "Plague Church" envoys worth 30,000 pounds: Gottfried Samper, and there are also ordinary pirate leaders with bounty orders of nearly 1,000 pounds, from high to low, one after another, blown by the sea breeze. , fluttering, forming a unique scenery.
"It's so expensive..." Jack stopped where he was and looked at it for a long time.
Withdrawing his gaze, he put his hand on his three-cornered hat, pushed open the double doors and entered the bar. He found that it was unusually quiet inside, without the usual noise of bragging, bug fighting, wrestling, etc.
Um? what's going on?
Jack looked up and looked around, and saw the bartender's hand holding a linen cloth to wipe the beer glass hovering in the air. In front of him, there were two people tensely confronting each other at the bar.
Among the two people confronting each other, one of them was wearing a black woolen coat unique to the Kingdom of Ghent. He held a revolver and pressed it between the eyebrows of the man opposite him, but he was held against his neck by a crescent scimitar.
The owner of the Scimitar is also wearing a thick coat, but the style of the clothing is a notch lapel type. Compared with the stand-collar trench coat of the Kingdom of Ghent, this kind of notch lapel clothing mostly comes from the Tudor Kingdom and is the mainstream popular style there.
He had strong muscles, a beard, his eyes seemed to be erupting with flames, and he cursed:
"Shit Ghent people, is this the 'gentleman' and 'subtlety' you call yourself?"
"Hmph, our gentlemen are reserved and have never treated you reckless, brutal Tuduo people who only think about sleeping with women!"
The Ghent man with a distinct Huttonmar accent quarreled with him without showing any signs of weakness, and both sides showed off the dirty words used in the confrontation between "civilization and barbarism".
Jack watched for a few seconds, then walked around the edge, came to the bartender who was stunned, and said casually:
"A glass of black mash beer."
"Okay...Okay sir." The bartender finally came to his senses and responded blankly.
Black mash beer is a unique alcoholic beverage of the Black Forest Islands. It is brewed by fermenting the fruits of thorn trees with sea salt, berries and malt. It has a rich taste and is one of the best-selling cheap beers in the area.
Of course, this thorn fruit cannot be eaten directly, nor can it leave the Black Forest Islands with the cargo ship. Once these two restrictions are exceeded, the inside of the thorn fruit will immediately be filled with wriggling maggots, and it is poisonous and is a form of pollution.
Jack took the black malt beer from the bartender's hand, raised his head and took a big gulp. After letting out a satisfying burp, he asked casually:
"What happened to the two of them? Why did they quarrel?"
"I heard that they both fell in love with a local aboriginal street girl in the red light district at the same time, so they started to quarrel. According to the past, it would end with both parties scolding each other. It is a normal thing in Gresham."
"Now, one of them happens to be a Ghent and the other a Tudor. Sir, maybe you don't know. There was a fierce conflict between the Kingdom of Ghent and the Kingdom of Tudor because of the colonial rule of the 'New Bourbon Islands'." The conflict happened, and now it seems that the two men may have a duel."
After listening to the bartender's story, Jack nodded slightly. There are records in the church's classics. When the Age of Discovery came, the colonial exploration teams of the Kingdom of Ghent and the Kingdom of Tudor simultaneously discovered the Bourbon Islands on the edge of the Sea of Chaos.
Originally, the two countries planned to divide the island's mineral and slave resources from each other. However, on the night when the treaty was signed, the colonial rule of the Bourbon Islands unexpectedly fell into the hands of the Kingdom of Ghent.
It was the signing of the Bourbon Treaty that established the later hegemony of the Kingdom of Ghent on the northern continent of Phaedras, and also planted the seeds of hatred between the two countries.
"Your accent sounds like you're from Ghent. Why don't you go and help your fellow countrymen?"
The young bartender moved his eyes to the side:
"The Tuduo man seems to have companions. In the past few days, this group of people landed with merchant ships from the Baltic Sea. Now there have been several murders in Gresham, and the spearhead seems to be pointing at them."
"Although murders, rapes, duels, and thefts often occur in the island colonies, and official forces only show indifference, but..."
"Where are you from?"
Jack didn't wait for the bartender to finish, he turned to the topic and asked abruptly.
"I am of mixed race, my father is from Florence and my mother is from Ghent."
"Is it because I'm half a fellow countryman? If it was for other reasons, maybe I would help, but because I'm a street girl, there's no need."
Jack drank the last sip of black mash beer and tapped his fingers on the bar.
"4p."
The bartender took the cup, immediately put on a professional fake smile, and said enthusiastically while wiping it.
Just when Jack paid for the drink and was about to leave the bar and head to the Poseidon Church, there was a rush of footsteps at the double-door door.
Four or five burly men rushed in. Some of them held crescent scimitars, and some held steam revolvers. They took a quick glance at the crowd, and then quickly killed the Ghent who had been confronting them earlier. People formed a circle.
One of the shirtless burly men snorted coldly, then turned his head and shouted to the crowd watching in the bar:
"Anyone who doesn't want to die, pull your head back from me."
The big man's voice was extremely loud, and the fat all over his body was trembling. People with sharp eyes glanced at it, and when they saw the blood-red skull and coffin tattoo on the chest of the big man, they immediately looked away and closed their mouths.
"Oops...it's someone from the Coffin Bearing Church..."
"The Coffin Bearer Church, that tattoo is definitely the symbol of the Coffin Bearer Church..."
"Damn, why did I meet these crazy people..."
Whispers suddenly erupted in the bar, and the man from Ghent who was surrounded also clearly saw the tattoo symbol on the big man's chest, and his body subconsciously felt like mud, and he suddenly collapsed to the ground.
