The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 153 The Secrets of the Bastille: Understanding the World Without Leaving Home

After that day, Zhang Chang'an became part of the daily life at the Bastille.

To call it integration was really just sitting in the garden during his daily exercise time, basking in the sun, reading books, and occasionally exchanging a few words with René. The days were monotonous, but that also made it convenient for him to observe the situation.

He noticed that the guards here didn't seem to care much about the prisoners.

They changed shifts on time, delivered meals on time, and herded prisoners back to their cells during their exercise time, but other than that, they paid almost no attention to what the prisoners were doing. Forget about private conversations; even the movement of supplies or fights had little to do with them.

But this doesn't mean they're lazy, because the reason they don't care is that they always have more important things to do.

Zhang Chang'an noticed that every afternoon, a few guards would leave their posts and head deeper into the prison. They would stay there for most of the day.

There were similar shift changes in the evening and morning. Everyone returned looking exhausted and rather disheveled, as if there was something else hidden in the prison.

However, he was new to the place and hadn't yet fully explored it. It was the outside world, so different from the prison interior, that gave him more surprises.

Yesterday's delivery of supplies was just the beginning.

Half a day later, another cloth bag arrived. It was still made of coarse linen, and the same agricultural products and coins had been embezzled.

However, a letter was also included in the bag. The paper was rough scrap paper, and the handwriting was crooked. He glanced at it and saw a lot of grammatical errors. It was obviously written by someone with little education.

"Mr. Zhang, after you saved my father, he was finally able to get out of bed and work again."

Our family saved up for six months and now we've bought a small cart near the market to sell roasted chestnuts. I've also gotten an apprenticeship at a leatherworker's shop in the Saint-Antoine district. Our family is finally on the right track. Thank you so much, and may God bless you.

A little over half a day later, a second letter arrived: "My sir, it is as if we are meeting in person. I am Jeanne, the Jeanne from the Bièvre district. Do you remember? When you came to our district, you said my son looked like a little angel."

Bijevl district is still the same Bijevl district, just as when you came. The stench of the tanneries is everywhere, and the river water is never truly clean. The noble lords still don't care about us; they collect every penny of the taxes due, but they don't concern themselves with our well-being whatsoever.

The things I'm bringing you this time were collected by the neighbors. It's not much, less than a tenth of what the noble gentlemen took.

Please don't find it offensive.

Indeed, there are many such letters, which are all about trivial matters, full of the flavor of everyday life, and may not even have any focus, or may be completely incomprehensible.

It looks and smells like the narrow streets of Paris, like the drab walls of the poor.

But precisely because of this, the guards would not detain them, even though many of them were cursing the noble lord.

It's probably because people are criticizing them that these letters seem so normal; given the lives of ordinary people at the bottom of society, it would be strange if they didn't criticize them.

But in this way, these letters seem to have no value, yet for Zhang Chang'an, these things are of extraordinary significance.

First, the sheer number of letters received in just one or two days proves that Lan Gong, this "Eastern Sage," enjoys an even more astonishing reputation among the lower classes in Paris than he had imagined.

Secondly, through the fragmented information in these letters, he could sketch out the situation in the outside world even without going out.

Just like how emperors in ancient times were very keen to read the memorials sent from below. They might seem like useless clues, but as long as they were corroborated and intersected, a lot could be found out.

Which district is the domain of the rich, which district is struggling to survive, which street's aristocracy has recently raised taxes, and which area's poor are secretly forming alliances. Even politics, economics, and current events are being discussed.

Although it was a bit troublesome, it was enough for him to grasp the situation outside and gain a deeper understanding of this era.

As a result, they obtained more important information, such as: "These days, it seems there is only one way to learn alchemy."

""

The Royal Alchemy Society.

Although phlogiston technology has become widespread to some extent, it is the use that has been popularized, not the knowledge. Ordinary people can use phlogiston lamps, use tools and fuels produced by alchemy, and even buy those bottles and jars of alchemical products.

However, the technology itself, from its principles to the drawing of the transmutation array, is entirely monopolized by the Academy.

Learning or using alchemy without permission is a serious crime. So serious that it can land you in the Bastille and send you to the guillotine.

However, this information does not mean that he is out of luck when it comes to alchemy. Although he cannot leave here to study at the Royal Alchemy Society, the president of the Royal Alchemy Society is also the warden of this prison.

That Marquis de La Motte.

"Poor Mr. Zhang, being locked up in that kind of place must have been very uncomfortable."

"I heard the warden there is a ruthless man who never goes home, only shuttling between the mansions of various nobles and the prison. That Marquis de Lamothe seems to be a complete workaholic; I heard he spends all his time studying alchemy and managing the prison. With a warden like that, the sage must have a very hard time every day—"

As Zhang Chang'an pondered this information, a guess gradually formed in his mind: "If this warden really doesn't even go home, as the letter says, and only travels between nobles and prisons, then he can't possibly have any other research facilities."

In other words, his alchemy research lab might be located somewhere in this prison.

For example, behind that iron gate where guards come and go every day, deep inside the prison.

But he didn't make a fuss or act rashly. He simply continued living his daily routine.

Until tonight.

He was awakened in the middle of the night tonight.

The sound came from deep within the prison; it wasn't ordinary noise, it was screams. Human screams.

Sharp, short, and then abruptly stopped.

Zhang Chang'an thus moved quietly to the iron fence without making a sound.

A flickering light appeared at the end of the corridor, accompanied by chaotic footsteps and someone shouting something too fast to understand. Then came the sounds of heavy objects being dragged and metal clashing.

There were also suppressed curses, as if they were being squeezed out from between teeth.

"Damn it—I'm so badly injured!"

He saw several guards rush out of the door leading into the depths of the prison, carrying a stretcher.

A person was lying on a stretcher, covered with a sheet. A human shape could be vaguely made out under the sheet.

The dim light from the guard's lamp shone from that direction.

As they passed the prison cell door, Zhang Chang'an only saw a hand sticking out from the edge of the stretcher.

The hand hung limply outside, a bloody mess, its skin covered with all sorts of messy cracks, with strange black and red fragments of all sizes tightly embedded between them, and continuing to drill inward.

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