Paris! Paris!

Summer in Paris in 1932.

In the last years of peace before the Great Catastrophe, the Great Depression was sweeping the planet with inexorable force. Paris, the flower capital of the world, is also unable to escape hunger and decay, with more young girls taking to the streets to sell their bodies, and workers marching to protest layoffs and unemployment. The royalists looked forward to the fall of the Third Republic. The soldiers planned for the next world war, either by continuing to dismantle Germany or by being pushed back by Germany.

Ouyang Anna wore a white soft hat, the most fashionable skirt and high heels of the year, and slowly walked down the Paris train station. She dropped off her luggage at the Ritz on Place Vendôme, changed into a sleek cargo jumpsuit, a black fox hunting hat and a pistol hidden at her waist, and headed to Notre-Dame Cathedral on the Île de la Cité.

Under the Parisian sun, a pair of towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral soar into the sky. Anna stepped into the main hall inside the arch, and the coolness of the 800-year-old building reached from her feet to the top of her head. The rosette-shaped stained glass windows refract the scorching sunlight into dark, brilliant and fine fragments, like a little starlight sprinkled on her glass-colored eyes.

Anna finds the spiral staircase and climbs the stone steps to the tower. More than ten years ago, this was the hiding place of Qin Beiyang and the injured Nine Colors, and it was also the coffin of Qin Jin, the first generation of the Great Venerable of the Craftsman Alliance.

On the stairs, two large men dressed in black appeared, with the "One-Eyed Pyramid" logo on their chests. Anna remembered that the Craftsman Alliance was still offering a bounty on Qin Beiyang's head, and her heart was cold. But she could not run away at once, lest there be no three hundred taels of silver left here. She pretended to be a tourist and asked in standard French why she wasn't allowed to go up. The other replied only in vague French, which the archbishop meant, and violently pushed her to the ground floor.

Ouyang Anna felt a headache, so she went to the small pavilion of the confessing priest in the main hall.

The priest asked her what sin she had committed.

Anna thought for a moment and said, "I'm missing out on someone I love."

The priest said you should love God more.

Anna also said, "I love God and want to go to the tower of Notre Dame and feel God's love."

The priest said that the tower was a forbidden area to Notre-Dame, and that the archbishop had knights to guard it, and no one was allowed to go up it.

Ouyang Anna understood that the so-called "knight" was the big man of the Craftsman Alliance, and it was impossible to break through.

It's dusk, and there aren't many people left in Notre Dame. Anna sat down in the last row and prayed to the statue of the Virgin, how could she enter the tower and open the secrets of the first Great Venerable, Qin Jin?

She saw a man.

Anna sat in the first row and looked back at the man—unkempt hair, black hair turning to silver strands, and a German name jumping to her lips—Dr. Karl Holstein.

He was once the most deviant weapons expert in Europe, working as an engineer at the Nanyuan Arsenal of the Beiyang government for many years, and spent his life researching the "soul machine" to transform the first modern tomb beast. During the Paris Peace Conference, Qin Beiyang almost killed him, but let him go out of compassion. Dr. Holstein disappeared for thirteen years.

At this moment, why is he at Notre-Dame Cathedral? Did the Wise Men come to pray for God's forgiveness? No, this guy must have had another purpose when he was excommunicated from the Holy See.

Ouyang Anna sat down next to Holstein and asked in a low voice in French, "Tell me your sins?" ”

The doctor was so startled that he almost jumped up, and was about to turn and run away, when he saw a fairy-like Chinese girl. Ouyang Anna is thirty-two years old, even if she doesn't apply powder, she still looks like a young girl in her twenties.

"You ......"

The doctor subconsciously spoke his native German, then French, and finally Beijing, turned around and rushed out of the main hall.

Ouyang Anna chased after her, rushed out of Notre Dame Cathedral, and turned into the alley behind her. Anna was wearing cargo pants and sneakers, and naturally ran fast. Dr. Holstein's force value is almost zero, not to mention that he is almost sixty years old, and he is quickly knocked out from behind by Anna.

The alleys of dusk, hidden in the shadow of the Notre-Dame tower, are simply unnoticed. Ouyang Anna stepped on the doctor's back with one foot, took out a gun and pointed it at the back of his head, and greeted him in French: "Doctor, don't come unharmed?" ”

"Ann...... Miss Anna...... How did you come to Paris......"

"I should have asked you, dear doctor." Anna pulled Holstein up and sat him down in the corner to smooth the wrinkles in his suit, "Honestly, if you lie to me, you'll be dead in no time." ”

The doctor knew that Ouyang Anna was powerful, and shrank back in horror: "I...... I'm here to find the Grave Beast......"

"Where?"

Holstein made a silent gesture and then pointed to the tower overhead.

"Notre Dame? There's a town grave beast on the tower? ”

Ouyang Anna also raised her head, she only knew that there were many small stone monsters around the tower, and interesting legends about them.

"Yes."

"The coffin of Qin Jin, the Great Venerable of the Craftsman Alliance?"

Anna spoke it in Chinese and French.

"You know that, too?"

Dr. Holstein simply poured the beans into the bamboo tube. For the past ten years, he has wandered around Europe, looking for the relics and stories of the first generation of the Great Venerable of the Craftsmen's Union. Legend has it that this master craftsman from China carried an ancient Chinese book with him, which recorded countless magical skills. In order to take revenge, the Assassin Alliance sent people to assassinate Qin Jin, the Great Venerable of the Craftsman Alliance. The Great Venerable survived for three months after being seriously injured before dying, during which time he planned to make a tomb beast for himself, but no one knew if the tomb beast was successful?

"If the Tomb Beast and the Ancient Book are true, it is most likely above our heads!"

Ouyang Anna remembered that during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, why did the four-winged angel fly to the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral with Qin Beiyang and the seriously injured Nine Colors?

"Tomb beasts are not a rarity in Europe." In French and German, the doctor said in Beijing, "The remains of the ten-horned seven-headed tomb beast that I personally transformed were originally sealed by the French government in a cave in the Alps. Just last month, someone stole its wreckage from a snowy mountain. ”

"Who did that?"

Ouyang Anna remembered that the seven heads of the ten horns, the tomb beast of An Lushan, after the mechanization of Holstein, became absolutely evil, and once caused a massacre in Versailles.

"Who knows? Europe is almost finished. Karl Holstein said something Chinese, "The fascist party in Italy and the Nazi party in Germany are eyeing the grave beast." Now that Germany is about to have a general election, hungry Germans will have to choose between Thälmann and Hitler. I had to do it sooner rather than later, and I couldn't let the Nazis get their hands on the grave beasts. ”

"Why?"

"The leader of that gang is a great demon - the ten-horned seven-headed tomb beast is a pet compared to him." Holstein let out a sigh of relief, "I must stop them, or there will be a catastrophe in Europe." ”

"Doctor, you've changed."

"In the thirteen years since the Paris Peace Conference, the world has changed dramatically, and I cannot remain the same."

Anna helped him up: "Mr. Doctor, shall I join forces with you?" ”

"You want it too?" Holstein pointed to the Notre Dame Cathedral tower above his head, "Could it be that Qin Beiyang is also here?" ”

"No, he can't come." Ouyang Anna frowned, "Qin Beiyang sent me to Paris, he is the heir of the Qin Clan's Tomb Craftsman Clan, and he deserves the inheritance of Qin Jin, the first generation of the Great Venerable of the Craftsman Alliance. ”

"Miss Anna, do you know that the Artisan Union has taken control of the Notre Dame Tower?"

"Yes, Doctor, you didn't come to the main hall of Notre Dame to pray."

Dr. Karl Holstein finally cracked the corners of his mouth: "Actually, I'm ready to act together tomorrow night." ”