Sitting in front of the window of the sanatorium's library, looking at the vibrant vines with small pale yellow flowers hanging from the tower opposite, Sean was "reminiscing" about the past.

In a world where illiteracy is still overwhelming, Shaun was fortunate to be the adopted son of a priest in the southern province of Genoa, and although the priest treated him very coldly, at least he received a relatively complete education.

After the death of the priest, just as the war in the North was at its most critical, Sean, who was just sixteen years old, signed up for the army, which was one of the few opportunities for civilians to change their fate. For the literate Sean, the chances are even greater.

After less than three months in the boot camp and before he could adjust to his new role, he was assigned to the 21st Infantry Division and left for Northern Xinjiang in July 1827, before joining the war. This new round of war has been going on for ten years, and countless young people in the empire have been lying in the north forever, and the minimum age threshold for conscription has been set at the age of fifteen at the most difficult time.

From recruit to private, first class, private, and then to corporal, it only took him a year, because his comrades around him died too quickly. And Sean had just turned eighteen when he became a sergeant—if the old priest hadn't mistaken his birthday.

The name of the planet is "Hope". The meaning of the name is exactly the same across ethnicities and languages, and even the pronunciation is highly similar. There have been countless scholars who have tried to explain this academically, but unfortunately none of them have been convincing.

Devout religious believers believe that God or some other god created human beings, depending on which religion you believe.

At first, humans were no different from beasts, and they drank blood, but they were far weaker than beasts in terms of athleticism, physical strength, and fighting skills, and it was the gods who gave humans a higher intellectual enlightenment, so that they could hope to defeat nature and thousands of living beings, and eventually become the lord of the world.

That's why humans call this world "hope."

The Church of God, which once ruled the Western Continent for 500 years, could even appoint and dismiss kings at will, and decide when a certain bull in the countryside should be mated.

In the year 470 of the Dragon Age, the Europa fought a religious war that lasted for 100 years because of their opposition to the dark rule of the Cult of God. In 589 A.D., Pope Arroyo I abdicated and did not interfere in secular affairs, but the Church retained many privileges as a result.

The Reformation of 1200 A.D. established that religious law was limited to churches, and that clergy were not allowed to be tried by secular courts and searched by the army except for rebellion and murder.

They attribute everything to God.

This seems to make sense.

But now after all, it is the year 1830 of the Shenlong Era, and the theocratic era has long entered the history books, and now it is the era of civilization.

Although the Cult of God still played an important role in the political and social life of the Europa Empire, and there were frequent conflicts between theocracy and imperial power and the secular, it was clear that people were no longer satisfied with religious interpretations.

They used astronomical telescopes to observe the movement of the planets and the mysteries of space, launched ocean-going expeditions and expeditions to understand the differences between the creatures in the Southern Ocean and those on both sides of the Eastern Ocean, and dissected the trunks of animals, including humans themselves, with scalpels to understand the source of diseases.

For Sean, this is really a "promising" planet, because everything is so backward, and conversely, it is thriving, and science and technology are advancing with each passing day.

This sanatorium was originally a large monastery in the city of Ars, called Evans Abbey.

Due to the failure of the Red Moon Project, the Barbarian Empire launched a long-planned surprise attack, which led to the rapid fall of this small border city.

More than 30 nuns in the Evans Monastery, along with all the city's 50,000 soldiers and civilians, were slaughtered. After the Imperial Army struggled to regain it, the monastery was abandoned and used by the military to temporarily house soldiers wounded in the war.

Sean was in a coma for a month, waking up two lives in the world. If you don't look at the language and writing, it's the same as the earth, for example, there is a sun overhead.

As for the moon, of course, there are, but the month of March is called the Red Moon because of the red halo of the moonlight on the night of this month, hence the name Red Moon.

The past round of war with the barbarians lasted for ten years. Based on past experience, the Imperial Military Command Department judged that the barbarians were exhausted, so they confidently formulated a counterattack plan, planning a nationwide conscription, expanding the army in three years, and deploying to the front line of the Als Mountains in advance.

Obviously, there was a fatal error in the judgment of the Military Command Department. Because the main forces were deployed to the front line, and the rear was empty, those big men did not think that the fatigue of the barbarians was just an illusion, and when the barbarians suddenly attacked first, the senior officers of the imperial army did not even know where their subordinates were, and the various troops on the front line were mixed together, unable to form a unified combat force.

In one day and one night, the Ars line collapsed, especially on the night of March 18, because it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe, and a considerable part of them died at the hands of their own men.

It was not until 7 o'clock in the morning of March 21 that Marshal Pierce rushed to the front line from the imperial capital, gathered the guerrillas and dispersed, barely resisting the attack of the barbarians, and the battle line was less than 700 kilometers away from the imperial capital holy city.

On 27 April, after more than a month of hard fighting, regardless of losses, the imperial army finally regained lost ground and drove the Assyrian army out of the Ars Mountains, and after the battle, the losses were counted, with more than 700,000 army casualties and 10 times the number of civilian casualties.

The grapevine said that this figure was the result of deliberately keeping it down.

However, seeing this statistical result, Marshal Pierce was psychologically unable to bear it and immediately committed suicide by drinking bullets.

The death of Marshal Pierce cannot hide the pain caused by this tragic war, nor can he take all the blame for the defeat on himself.

Whatever the purpose, whether it is to blame or take the opportunity to dump, figuring out why the Red Moon Project, which consumes too many resources, failed in the end, and why the Ars Line, which has gathered millions of troops, is the most important thing for the big guys.

However, none of this has anything to do with Sean. As one of the 20 survivors of the 21st Infantry Division, Sean has the right to be rewarded for being a mascot.

Separate rooms, meticulous care and two complimentary bottles of Reggie wine per week, although of a modest grade, are also desirable.

Unlike the other 19 lucky men of the 21st Infantry Division, Sean preferred to bring his own wine and read in the small library of the monastery.

Chinese have always been easy to adapt to the environment, and so is Sean, who has blonde hair. After fainting last time, the lieutenant colonel, who was said to have a great background, never showed up again, and no one else asked him about the war, so the lieutenant colonel sent a soldier to bring a box of duff cigars from the Omaha Islands in the south of the empire, and told him to recuperate in peace.

This is one of the most popular cigars of high society, worth 50 silver louis or 5 gold louis.

Of course, this is only the price before the war, and in the post-war era when prices skyrocketed, you could still buy a fake for 7 gold coins. Sean's salary in the army is only 2 gold coins a month, which is still because of the war, and the empire's "generous reward" to soldiers.

A Concise History of the World and The War of Saint-Louis are two of Sean's favorite books, the former giving him a general understanding of the world, and the latter telling the story of the foundation of the Europa ancestors until the birth of the Europa Empire, which was supposed to be the Fifth Empire in 1765.

Legend has it that Louie was the only incarnation of God in the world, and when the great flood came, Louis turned into a dragon boat and carried the ancestors to this continent that was not flooded, teaching the ancestors to farm, fish and hunt, make clothes, build houses, heal diseases, and lead the people to fight against aliens, nature and wild beasts, so that all people can live.

So, the Europa people consider themselves to be the descendants of Louis, Louis is the dragon, and the dragon is Louis.

Today, however, in this small library, Sean finds another thin pamphlet that arouses Sean's greater interest.

This pamphlet appears to be a manuscript of an essay by an unknown disgruntled young scholar entitled "A Critique of Several Absurd Views of Historians of the Great Xia Kingdom":

"The Xia are a rigid, timid, selfish, and extremely brazen people, and their blatant claim that the Xia are the only descendants of the dragon is a grave provocation to our great Europa. I have never seen such a shameless people in the world who like to pretend to be the ...... of their ancestors."

"The 12 zodiac signs correspond to the 12 months of the year, and the Bactrian people actually claim to have the zodiac sign of 'cat', what kind of animal is 'cat'? Who has seen it? This must be made up by them, and from the description of their cultural classics, it should be a domestic animal like 'raccoon', so they should do it according to the norms of our Europa people, and replace 'cat' with 'raccoon'. You know, 'Draw a tiger from a raccoon' is a phrase in their language. ”

"We should admit that the Xia people have a very long history, a civilized world, especially poetry, and their civilization has had a great influence on us, but it would be shameless to think that scientific notation is their invention. A large number of archaeological studies have shown that we Europa people have an equally long history, and that our ancestors used the same counting method...... At some point 5,000 years ago, the histories of both sides seemed to stop advancing into a much more distant era at the same time, which is inexplicable......"

"I believe that the Great Flood should have happened, that more than seventy percent of the surface of our planet is ocean, and that the depths of the ocean must be buried the ...... of our lost civilization."

"I call on all the Europa people to take up arms, cross the ocean, kill all the Xia people, and seize the Bible that belongs to us. ”

"Just because there are very few words in the Bible that are the same as those written in the Xia Kingdom does not mean that they are theirs. Rather, I think they are inventing their own words according to the words of the Bible, just as they have stolen the genius discoveries of our great thinker, Earl Campbell. ”

"If they copy more, they will become their own. It's like legends and stories say that even dragons have become their exclusive property, and there are also many ways to write 'dragons'......"

After reading the pamphlet in one sitting, Sean read the "Concise History of the World" against some of the specially folded parts of the "Saint-Louis Wars", his brow furrowed, and his expression was strange.

It's such an interesting world.

However, this world is not always so interesting, even terrifying, because of the existence of two human aliens, the Blood Samurai and the Blood Thirsty.

Barbarians, blood warriors, and bloodthirsty can be regarded as aliens of humans.

Among them, the barbarians seem to be no more different from normal humans than the white people of Europa and the black people of the Kenyan Empire in the southern continent, they are only ugly in appearance and slightly less civilized in development. They have been living in the northern ice fields and desert areas, and they have lived a life of drinking blood.

Relatively speaking, barbarians are not terrible, because they have a low IQ and a low civilization level, and it is difficult for them to pose a threat to normal humans.

Blood warriors are tall, skeletal and fierce-tempered, with a normal IQ but a penchant for killing. Legend has it that the creation of such human beings or creatures has an inexplicable relationship with the Church, which was a tool for suppressing rebellion in the Age of Ignorance.

As for the Bloodthirsty, they look like normal people, so it is possible for them to lurk in the civilized world. This kind of alien is even more terrifying, because they use human blood as *** through concealment, lurking, and assassination.

Both the Blood Warriors and the Bloodthirsty disappeared for a time until after the Reformation in 1200, when some of the clergy and nobles who had been excluded from the power struggle moved north into the barbarian lands, and they twisted the scattered barbarian tribes into an empire, calling themselves the Great Assyrian Empire. But in the eyes of the Europa, they were still accustomed to calling it a barbarian empire.

These two types of aliens reappeared.

At first, this power was particularly scarce and could not be used against humans. When they grew stronger, and had a certain number, humans invented gunpowder weapons, which largely offset the differences in individual force.

But now, not only did the number of blood warriors of the Barbarian Empire exceed everyone's expectations, but the ordinary barbarians were even equipped with advanced rifled guns, which caused the crushing defeat of the Europa Empire in the Red Moon War.

Knock, knock on the door interrupted Sean's thoughts.

"Mr. Connery, Captain Horns orders me to come to the chapel at half past five in the evening for the banquet, and be sure to wear formal attire and maintain good military appearance, for the military command department is here!"

The person who came was a young boy named Kim Carreyll, who was seven years old. He was of a similar background to Sean, the adopted son of a nun at Evans Monastery, who had been desperately protecting him on the night of the fall of Ars.

Kim hid in the convent's sewers for a month, but fortunately he was born malnourished and skinny enough to hide in the cramped sewers without being detected by the barbarian soldiers. When he was rescued, he weighed less than twenty pounds and was dying.

Alive, Kim was still allowed to eat in the convent and became an orderly for all the wounded soldiers, among whom Sean treated him best, often deliberately letting him run errands for him and giving him a small tip.

"Kim, thank you. Sean retracted his thoughts and pulled ten shillings out of his pocket, "Tell the Captain that I'll be on time." In addition, you take the time to buy me a copy of the latest Herald and send it to my room, and by the way you can find me Quartermaster Robert Charles, who has promised to mail order a batch of books from the Holy City for me, and if it arrives, you will help me get it back, and I will go back and make up the money. ”

"Thank you for your generosity, sir. King was very happy, because a newspaper cost eight shillings, and the remaining two were his errand money.

Sean noticed that Kim didn't walk away and asked, "Anything else?"

"The big-nosed sergeant said you were a little ......"

Because of his similar background, Kim is somewhat close to Sean. Sean Says:

"Does Sergeant Gary Norris think I'm weird, is he using my name to talk nonsense in the middle of a crowd of big-headed soldiers?"

Big Nose is Sergeant Norris's nickname, a guy who likes to brag and chatter, but is not in the same regiment as Sean, Norris is the most elite grenadier regiment soldier in the 21st Division, and Sean didn't know him before.

The 21st Infantry Division is not full, but it also has a size of 10,000 people, and it is normal not to know each other.

Jin nodded and said, "But I think you are very similar to our dean's grandmother." ”

"Where?" asked Sean.

"She loves to read, she has read all the books here, and she is a very good person. She used to say that she would teach me literacy when I gained weight. King replied, "Mr. Connelly, can you teach me to read? I can pay you, I've saved a lot of money." ”

"You're making it all these days?" Sean smiled.