Europa Universalis 1867: Start by inheriting an armory

Abel rubbed his temples, picked up a pen from the table, and tore off a blank page from his notebook.

Then he twisted his wrist, the pen tip moving swiftly, writing each letter with great force.

"I, Frederick Augustus Abel, hereby formally declare that my former assistant Thomas was never my student; he was merely a rat lurking in the ranks of science."

He slowly wrote down these words, carefully considering each one before completing this public statement.

Tomorrow it will be sent to the Royal College of Chemistry and read by every member and everyone who knows Thomas.

Those scholars who once sincerely praised "that young man is good" will only sigh with regret and add, "I knew it."

Having finished all that, Abel bent down and took out a tin bucket from under the test bench.

He threw all the documents about Thomas into the box, including Thomas's answers during his first interview at the Royal Chemistry Institute. He remembered how deeply the young man's passion for chemistry had moved him.

Abel's hand trembled slightly.

He picked up the tin bucket, walked out of the laboratory, went outside, lit a match, and threw it in, watching as the pages slowly curled up and finally turned to ashes.

Abel stood beside the tin bucket and sighed deeply until the bucket had completely lost its temperature and meaning.

The next day, at the shipyard in Dartford.

The large hydraulic press has been assembled and stands upright on a cast iron base. The hydraulic energy storage tower stands close to the wall, with pipelines running out from the top of the tower and extending along the ceiling.

Richard leaned against the iron table, unconsciously drawing circles on the surface with his hand. Beside him was Reginald, and the two were discussing what happened last night.

"She counted down from four and forced me to shoot, or she would kill me," Richard said. "I had no choice."

Reginald, with a pipe dangling from his lips, mumbled, "For a civilian, you've done more than enough. If I were you, I would have shot you when I was stupid enough. Don't feel too guilty."

Richard forced a smile and nodded.

"And you? Has Thomas's problem been resolved?"

"Pretty much. There was a little hiccup in the middle, but it's all been resolved." He straightened his wrinkled shirt. "This kid has been providing Prussia with details of our work from the Royal Arsenal."

Richard hummed in agreement. It turned out that Thomas had been Prussia's informant all along, but he was only providing updates on new compounds.

In those days, Britain and Prussia maintained a facade of harmony, and this level of probing could hardly be considered espionage.

Until he was activated and involved in the theft of state secrets.

He stared at the enormous hydraulic press: "If he hadn't chosen the wrong path, maybe we could have gotten along."

Reginald chuckled coldly, his voice tinged with weariness: "Then I advise you to give up on that idea. How can you get along with someone who's willing to flip the table just because they don't like the food?"

He looked Richard straight in the eye to confirm, "Am I right, Richard?"

Richard paused for a moment, then nodded.

Reginald took a puff of his pipe, white smoke slowly billowing from his nostrils. He patted Richard on the shoulder: "I'll be going now if there's nothing else. Take care."

Richard watched Reginald's departing figure, recalling the scenes from the rooftop the day before.

"Four."

Eleanor whirled around, but she wasn't holding a gun; she was just gripping an ivory cigarette holder like a gun, pointing it at his chest.

Richard, who actually had a gun, did not pull the trigger; he had long seen through Eleanor's bluff.

"You're crazy for not shooting me." Eleanor twirled the cigarette holder between his fingers. "If I actually had a gun, you'd be dead."

Richard lowered his gun and said to her with a smile, "I knew you didn't have a gun, that's why I didn't pull the trigger. Even if the Dellinger pistol is small, it's still a three-and-a-half-inch long, thirteen-ounce lump of iron."

He looked at the small, close-fitting handbag on her wrist: "If you really had that gun in your handbag, the shape of the bag and the way it swayed when you went down the stairs would never have been so natural. You can't lie to a gun expert like that."

Eleanor gave a wry smile, stuffed the expensive cigarette holder back into her bag, shook the small bag, and then smiled helplessly.

She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender.

"You saw right through me," she said. "So, what do you want?"

"Keep the promise you made to Millie a long time ago."

A few minutes later, Eleanor was already in the dark alley.

She knew about the secret passage downstairs; Richard had guessed its existence, and he was right.

It's hard to imagine that a spy like Eleanor, who hides a secret room covered in intelligence in a clothing store, wouldn't have a backup plan in her private salon.

The hidden door was behind the closet in the dressing room. Behind it was a staircase that could only be passed by one person at a time, leading to the storeroom on the first floor. Climbing out of the storeroom window led to the dark alley.

She lifted her skirt and walked into the dark alley, sprinkling the pig's blood that Richard had prepared on her.

Eleanor crouched down, took out a few ice cubes from her pocket, and put them in her mouth.

They slowly melt on the tongue, lowering the temperature of the entire oral cavity.

She stared at the pool of pig's blood on the ground, looked at her velvet dress with heartache, and then gritted her teeth and lay down on it.

Her long dress was soaked in pig's blood, and the downy hair on the hem was wet with blood. She ripped off the pearl necklace and let it fall to her side.

Upstairs, Richard kept an eye on the movements in the alley and the guests downstairs. He patiently waited for Eleanor to finish preparing, and Millie was supposed to stand by the window as agreed.

His fingers gripped the gun handle.

Timing is everything.

He pulled the trigger.

boom!

Gunshots rang out in the night sky, and at the same time, the sound of wine glasses shattering echoed from the lobby downstairs. Everyone's attention was drawn to the ceiling at the same moment.

He quickly turned around, picked up a sandbag from the corner of the balcony. The burlap was filled with wet sand, and it was heavy, about the weight of a person. The sound it made when it hit the ground was closer to the muffled thud of a human body.

Richard pushed it off the railing, and the sandbag arced through the night sky before crashing onto the cobblestones of the dark alley.

Bang!

Downstairs, Millie's screams arrived as expected, even penetrating the walls and glass.

But what she actually saw was just a sandbag falling down.

Richard knew without even looking that the young masters would rush to the windowsill and stick their heads out.

Then they would see the figure in the dark alley, the pool of dark red blood and the scattered pearls, while ignoring the inconspicuous sandbag in the corner.

Finally, their brains automatically filled in the remaining images: gunshots, being shot, falling from a building, death.

The remaining details are left to their imagination.