Mystery Detective of the Steam World

Chapter 240 After the Mist
What lies beyond this fog?

Before this, Li Wei had thought a lot and considered many things, but after he mentally prepared himself and stepped into the fog...

"It looks quite ordinary."

As he walked through the fog and looked at the scene before him, Li Wei couldn't help but complain.

What came into view was a valley. Below the valley, a small mine could be seen, next to which stood a large building with a chimney, which appeared to be the smelting plant the old man had mentioned. On the other side, there were rows of low houses. Perhaps due to years of neglect, most of the houses had collapsed, and from the slope, they looked like the ruins of an abandoned mine.

Of course, despite his complaints, Li Wei knew that this place must be full of dangers, otherwise those who went in wouldn't have never returned.

but……………

"Where is that statue they built?"

Li Wei looked around briefly but did not see the statue the old man had mentioned.

"Inside the mine."

"oh……………"

Li Wei nodded, then took out the Persuader.

"Okay, let's go."

"Ok!"

Katie put on her gloves and nodded vigorously, while the old man gripped his shotgun tightly. The three of them then walked down the hillside and carefully made their way toward the settlement below.

As the old man said, Silver Valley looks more like a small village or settlement, and most of the houses look neat and comfortable. It is obvious that the miners who worked here back then made a lot of money, and it is clear that their standard of living was indeed quite good at that time.

"I still remember this place..."

Looking at the house in front of him, the old man said in a low voice.

"These are the miners from my father's team, those are the production staff, and the clerical workers live further away. Back then, everyone looked down on those people, thinking they did far less than the miners who went down into the mines, just sitting at their desks all day writing and drawing, and didn't deserve to earn so much money. But in fact, they were the first to stand up against the priest... Several people were hanged because of this, while the miners remained silent and dared not resist..."

As they talked, the three of them walked through the residential area and arrived at the small square in the middle of Death Valley.

"People usually come here to sit and chat after get off work."

Looking at the square in front of him, the old man sighed.

“Back then, we kids would chase and play here while our mothers chatted nearby, watching us and waiting for our fathers to come home from get off work. But after that priest came to power, this place became an execution ground. Those who refused to obey him were hanged here.”

In the middle of the square stood a large, long-dead tree with thick, twisted branches. The entire tree was pitch black, and several ropes hung from it. Clearly, this must have been the execution ground.

However, what is even more eye-catching is the well on the other side of the square. Considering that the old man was talking about his parents' era, this must have been a place where residents drew water as well.

Every day, on my way to fetch water, I have to pass through here and see corpses hanging from the trees. To be honest, that's not good for my mental health.

"That's really going too far..."

Katie seemed to have thought of this too, clenching her fists and speaking softly.

"How could that priest go to such lengths? I can't believe it. Is he even human?"

"That's how religions are; many devout believers aren't actually that kind."

Li Wei shrugged, appearing quite calm.

Devout faith and kindness are not the same thing at all, and this is especially true for the more devout a person is. They follow the teachings of God, so to put it bluntly, they do whatever God tells them to do.

To take it to an extreme, if God tells me to do good, I will do good. If God tells me to do bad, I will do bad. If God tells me to save people, I will save people. If God tells me to kill, I will kill.

Anyway, God must have his reasons for making me do this, and as His believer, I just need to blindly obey.

Weren't all the others Li Wei encountered before the same? From the socialite killer to now, they've all been mindless believers, arguing with themselves.

Li Wei, in any case, looked down on those who believed in religion, especially those who proclaimed their own devout faith.

By the way, there's a really funny joke about this.

After Li Wei successfully used the priest to create holy water to combat the plague in the Rune Mine, the Holy Lord Church carried out a major purge.

However, this sweep did not mean concentrating those with devout faith in the center of power while burning those without faith to death.

Instead, the Queen established a Holy See within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where devout priests were elevated to a position primarily responsible for missionary work, prayer, and the administration of various religious ceremonies.

As for those priests whose faith was not devout and whose holy water was ineffective, although they were stripped of their status and position, they were not all executed or burned. Instead, they were demoted and primarily responsible for miscellaneous internal affairs of the Church, including the transportation of supplies, personnel records, etc.

According to the Queen, devout priests should not waste their energy on mundane worldly matters, but should instead preach, spread their faith, and better radiate the glory of God to the world.

As for those trivial mundane matters, let those downgraded pseudo-believers handle them.

When Li Wei heard this news, he laughed heartily.

Her Majesty the Queen is really dark-skinned.

Moreover, he is very clear-headed.

In fact, Her Majesty the Queen used the same approach as during the aristocratic reforms of that time.

When the Queen announced the civil service examinations, she replaced the lackeys loyal to the nobility with civil servants loyal to the royal family. This effectively stripped the nobility of their power. No matter what ideas the nobility proposed, the civil servants found ways to prevent them from being passed on.

Those nobles couldn't pass the message down; having power was useless because nobody was cooperating with them!
Today they say the document can't be found, tomorrow they say the team is away on a business trip, what can you do about it? Do you want to rebel?

The Queen used this tactic to regain royal power.

She is now resorting to the same old tricks at the Church of God. The Queen is clearly aware that the more devout the priests are to God, the greater the threat they pose to her.

If the Holy Lord were to tell them to turn around and overthrow him, those priests would actually dare to do it!
Would you dare give power to such a fanatical believer? Wouldn't that be asking for trouble?
So Her Majesty the Queen gave them a promotion in name only, but a demotion in reality. On the surface, those priests who believed in the Holy Lord gained fame and status, but—they lost their power!
After all, the Holy Lord may be otherworldly, but the Holy Bishop is not!
Paying salaries to staff, providing food, robes, supplies, and various religious items—which of these should not be handled by anyone?

So on the surface, those impious priests have been demoted to civil servants, but this also means they have a weakness, and they have been completely controlled by the royal family.

They had no choice but to do whatever the royal family told them to do.

Otherwise, burn them as heretics.

In this war, Li Wei remained a purely neutral third party, neither siding with the royal family nor the Holy Church. On one hand, he admired the Queen's "human will can conquer nature" and "I'm not afraid of the Holy Lord" spirit, and noted that the Holy Church sometimes acted irrationally. On the other hand, he was wary that if the Queen became arrogant and thought herself superior to God, who knows what trouble she might cause? After all, similar characters exist in many games and animations. Iron-bloodedness is one thing, but when it turns into cold-bloodedness, that's terrifying.

At least for now, we don't know if there is a true God in this world, but there are certainly mysterious beings.

So Li Wei's attitude was to stay out of both sides and just do his job. If you force me to take a stand, I'll abstain. If you don't let me abstain, I'll just run away.
The world is so big, I refuse to believe I can't find a place to hide.

With Li Wei's current abilities, escaping from the Empire would be quite a simple matter for him. Therefore, Li Wei wasn't worried, as he now had the capacity to handle all sorts of troubles.

"Mr. Li Wei? What's wrong?"

Just then, Katie's voice rang out, bringing Levi back to his senses.

"Hmm, it's really strange."

"Yes, all we've seen along the way are these abandoned things; we don't seem to have seen any corpses or anything like that...?"

Indeed, just as Katie said, they saw many dilapidated buildings along the way, but surprisingly, they didn't see a single skeleton. This was completely different from the horrific scene the old man had described. Of course, the old man was just a child back then and hadn't seen much.

But even so… this situation is too unusual.

Perhaps this is why the others couldn't get out. After all, if someone who didn't know the situation came in and saw this, they would only think it was an abandoned mine or something.

Otherwise, if you were faced with a bunch of monsters rushing at you as soon as you came in, you would have run away long ago. Why would you be so foolish as to go in and watch the show?

Not everyone is as reckless as the protagonist in a horror movie.

Or rather, you simply can't become the protagonist of a horror movie without courting death.

"The smelting plant is just ahead."

The old man stopped and stared at the smelting plant in front of him. It was a huge factory building, its exterior covered in rust, looking like it had long been abandoned.

The massive factory gate opened a crack, revealing that it was dark inside.

Incidentally, the sky was also very dark, with a thick fog covering the entire town. And unlike the outside world, you couldn't hear any animal sounds here, not even rats, cockroaches, or crows, which are usually rampant even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

"Let's go in and have a look."

Li Wei pulled himself out of his thoughts and looked at the smelting plant in front of him. Based solely on the old man's words, he still couldn't figure out what had happened here. However, factories like smelting plants usually keep work logs and production records. Since the old man said that the silver produced by the smelting plant was used to make idols, then as part of the standard process, there should be records here.

The smelter's gate was very large, with two large doors that looked like a warehouse. There were also tracks inside. According to the old man, the silver ore that was dug out used to be transported here directly for refining, then melted into silver ingots, and then transported out on the other side of the track to be loaded onto trucks. That was roughly the process.

Of course, because it is a precious metal, the entire smelting plant is under strict security measures. After all, this is where silver ingots are cast, and if anyone can't resist stealing some, the losses will be huge.

In fact, similar incidents seem to have occurred before.

The heavy door wasn't closed, but rather left a crack, just enough for one person to pass through. It was unclear whether this had been opened by someone who had been here before, or if it had always been this place. Li Wei first poked his head in, glanced left and right, then gripped his weapon tightly and cautiously stepped inside.

Next was the old man, and finally Katie.

"Waaaaah..."

Upon entering the factory and looking at the enormous furnace before her, Katie couldn't help but exclaim in amazement.

"Is this the smelting plant?"

“That’s right. Silver mines used to be melted down there and then solidified into a shape… I secretly watched it when I was a child, but children weren’t allowed to come in because it was too dangerous.”

The old man looked at the huge furnace in front of him and couldn't help but sigh, while Li Wei looked up and then chuckled softly.

"However, that shouldn't be a byproduct of the smelting plant."

"Hey?"

Hearing Li Wei's words, the old man and Katie were also taken aback. Then they looked up and followed Li Wei's gaze.

Then, the two were taken aback.

All that could be seen hanging from the ceiling of the smelting plant were countless bizarre human-shaped limbs!
Most of them were incomplete, hanging in the air like unassembled doll parts, and their silvery reflections could still be seen in the dim space.

"This, what is this?"

The old man was also dumbfounded.

"I've never heard of a smelter making this kind of thing before."

"We'll find out what this is soon enough!"

As Li Wei spoke, he raised the Persuader in his hand and then pulled the trigger!

"boom!"

The thunderous gunfire echoed through the deathly silent factory, like the ceaseless rolling of ocean waves.

The next moment, the dolls that were originally hanging from the ceiling fell to the ground with a "bang, bang, bang," just like ripe fruit falling from a tree branch.

Immediately afterwards…

"Waaah..."

A low growl, like that of a wild beast, rang out, and the tattered puppets all raised their heads, staring fiercely at Li Wei.

Hey, I knew it would turn out like this.

Looking at the puppets on the ground that began to wriggle, Li Wei sneered inwardly. These are all old tricks that horror games have been using for hundreds of years. Do you think they can fool me?
Do you really think I'm a fool?
"What should we do, Mr. Levi?"

Watching the puppets slowly stand up and roar like wild beasts, Katie clenched her fists, while the old man stood there dumbfounded, holding his shotgun, speechless.

"Don't worry, Katie, I already have a plan."

As he spoke, Li Wei reached out and grasped the origami in his pocket.

"Let these guys taste what real firepower suppression is like."

(End of this chapter)