Europa Universalis 1867: Start by inheriting an armory

As Richard walked out of the courthouse, the London sky cleared up, a rare treat. Although it was already afternoon, he was delighted to see the sun again.

Part of the street outside the gate had been cleared, and the police had used wooden fences to create a narrow passage, which was crowded with people on both sides.

Richard carefully navigated around the crowd and finally emerged.

Finba was already swallowed up by the crowd, the Irish workers surrounding him as they surged toward the other end of the street.

He turned his head in the crowd, and his gaze briefly met Richard's.

From a distance of several dozen steps, Richard smiled at him, and Finba nodded. Richard was unable to express his gratitude for what he had done, but he did not ask anything of Finba.

The two exchanged a knowing wave, and then Finba was pushed around the corner by the crowd and disappeared.

Richard stood on the steps and took a deep breath. He usually found the smell here pungent, but now he felt relaxed.

Because this day has finally come to an end.

He patted his chest, but unfortunately, the secret gear he had specially prepared for today, the one he had attached to his body, hadn't come in handy and had left him sweating profusely in the winter heat...

Richard was pondering this when he saw Louise.

She stood on the street corner opposite the courthouse, her long dress resembling a rose blooming on the gray street. Her veil was pulled down to cover her face, but Richard could still recognize her posture.

Richard strode across the street to her: "Why did you come out alone? There are reporters all over here; you might get recognized."

Louise, with her hands behind her back, revealed a hint of schadenfreude in her eyes beneath her veil: "They can't afford to worry about me."

She tilted her head slightly, gesturing for him to look behind her: "Aren't they all coming for you?"

Richard turned around and saw five or six reporters rushing down the courthouse steps, notebooks in hand, heading straight for him.

Richard frowned. He was exhausted today and had no energy left to deal with those questions like, "Mr. Brian, are you satisfied with the verdict?" and "Do you have any other evidence?"

Louise stretched out her arm, tucked her hand between his fingers, and pulled hard: "Come on, big star, I've had the car ready for a while."

The two men crossed the street and ran toward a dark-colored carriage parked at the entrance of the alley.

The driver had already opened the car door, and Richard bent down and got in, with Louise following behind, her skirt fluttering slightly by the door.

The car door closed, and Richard leaned back in his seat, peering out through the gap in the curtains.

The reporters saw him get into the car, chased after him for a few steps, and then gave up.

The coachman cracked his whip, and the carriage slowly started moving.

Just then, Greenwood's black carriage passed by on the other side of the street, its paint dull and lifeless. The two thugs in the driver's seat looked sullen, like two dogs that had been soaked in the rain.

The curtains on the car windows were drawn tightly shut, obscuring the view inside, but Richard could imagine Greenwood slumped in his seat, probably not much better than those two.

Richard watched the black carriage recede into the distance, and just as he was about to look away, another carriage passed by his window.

It wasn't a flashy carriage; it had no family crest, no decorations, and the curtains weren't fully drawn, revealing half a profile through a narrow gap.

Richard's fingers twitched on his knee, because he had seen that face before.

Sera opened his eyes wide, trying to see the gap more clearly, but the carriage had already accelerated, closely following Greenwood's carriage, and disappeared from his sight.

Richard stared in that direction and nervously adjusted the brim of his hat.

I must have misread it.

The riots in Fennia were quelled, Greenwood's factory was shut down, and Sierra had no reason to follow Greenwood.

"What's wrong?" Louise looked at Richard's face and thought he had an upset stomach.

"It's nothing, I guess I was just seeing things." He drew the curtains, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes to rest.

The carriage headed toward Kensington, the monotonous rumble of its wheels carrying him further and further away from his senses.

Suddenly, Hans's face appeared in his mind: "The clockwork has been wound up for a long time, just waiting for the moment it tightens."

But what if the relaxation of tensions wasn't about a riot, but something else? What if Sera's motives weren't just about Fennia, but also about personal vendettas?

Freedom is something you have to fight for yourself, she said. But what if she were talking about herself?

People like Hans are like the stinger of a bee, always stinging at the very end.

Richard suddenly opened his eyes: "Stop the car!"

The carriage suddenly stopped, and the driver pulled on the reins.

Louise was jolted and reached out to hold onto the edge of the car window: "What happened? What's wrong?"

"A bad idea," Richard said, sticking his head out to the driver. "Turn around and head to Blackwell Armory."

The driver didn't ask any further questions and turned the carriage around. The horse's hooves clattered twice on the stone pavement, and the carriage headed off in another direction.

Louise reached out and placed her hand on his clenched fist: "What's wrong?"

"No matter what happens next, don't leave the carriage," Richard told her.

Greenwood's carriage bumped along the narrow streets of Blackville, where few people were on either side, most shops were closed, and the whole street was deserted.

A homeless man was sitting on a bench by the roadside.

He held the cello between his legs, the bow slowly moving across the strings. He wasn't playing any famous piece, but just a slow aria, just a slow aria.

The sound of wheels approached from afar, and his eyes immediately locked onto Greenwood's carriage and the two thugs sitting in the coachman's seat.

The carriage drew closer and closer to him, twenty paces, fifteen paces, ten paces.

The thugs in the coachman's seat didn't pay him any attention at first; vagrants were nothing new in Blackwell, and he was just a street musician playing the violin to earn a living.

But one of them felt the man's gaze, which pierced his chest like an arrow.

He glanced at the homeless man, and unconsciously reached into his coat to touch the grip of his gun.

"Feed—" he began.

The cello bow stopped.

Suddenly, the homeless man threw down his violin and reached into the violin case in front of him.

When he pulled his hand out, he had a rifle in his hand. He picked it up and pulled the trigger without any hesitation.

boom!

A gunshot rang out, and the lead bullet struck the thug on the right squarely in the chest. Blood seeped from his dark coat, almost black in the twilight.

He scrambled his fingers, let out a short wail, and then stumbled to the side, crashing into another thug.

Unfortunately, he was holding the reins in his hand.

Startled by the gunshot, the two black horses pulling the cart neighed, reared up, and began to gallop.

Without the reins to control it, the carriage began to jolt violently, the carriages swaying from side to side, the wheels screeching against the ground.

The thug on the left lunged forward, trying to grab the reins that had slipped from his companion's grasp, but he was too slow.

Once the carriage loses its straight-line traction, the pulling force of the two horses is no longer parallel to the axle, and a huge torque is applied to the wooden pole connecting the horses and the carriage.

It first bent, then broke instantly, like a sycamore branch snapped by the wind.

Click!

The carriage tilted sharply to one side due to inertia, its two wheels left the ground, and then the entire carriage overturned, its sidewalls crashing into the stone wall by the roadside.

boom!

The carriage lay on its side against the wall, its wheels still slowly turning in the air.

The homeless man who had just fired the gun climbed over the bench, squatted behind the low wall, and used a cleaning rod to remove the residue from the gun barrel before stuffing in new gunpowder and bullets.

The wooden door on one side of the carriage was kicked open from the inside.

The thug still alive on the hood of the car struggled to push away the corpse of his companion that was pressing down on his legs. There was a cut on his forehead from broken glass, and blood was flowing down his nose.

He heard Greenwood roar from inside the carriage: "Damn it! Come help me! My leg's stuck!"

"Stop shouting!" he yelled back.

He pulled out his pistol, used the overturned carriage as cover, and aimed it in the direction of the homeless man.

He had just poked his head out when a bullet struck the wooden planks of the carriage, sending splinters flying.

He gritted his teeth and pulled back, then stuck out his pistol and fired two shots haphazardly without looking in the direction.

Suddenly, a lead bullet pierced his lower back and went through his body.

He glanced down at the blood-gushing hole in his chest, then at the gun in his hand, leaned back, and slowly slid down against the wreckage of the train car, leaving a sticky, dark red trail.

Sera jumped down from another carriage, still clutching the smoking revolver in her hand.

She flung her hat off, her hair falling loose over her shoulders, walked around the overturned carriage, stepping on broken planks and shards of glass, and then reached out and pulled open the carriage door.

Greenwood was curled up in the carriage, one leg stuck in the deformed seat, his face covered in blood from cuts on the glass.

He looked at her, his lips trembling uncontrollably.

Sera bent down and pointed the gun at him.

"You've got your comeuppance, you bastard."