15. Colombo

Flowing down the Iron Tree River and passing through Bellafa, is the mouth of the West Forest and the earliest human settlement in the West Forest area, Edgar Allan Poe. The pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info sailed from Edgar Allan Poe and walked for twenty days in an alchemical boat along the coastline of the windless sea, which was Colombo, the capital of Colognia.

In Coronia, all the slightly larger towns were built along the coast or riverbank. Where the river and the sea want to meet, there are usually settlements. Colombo is also a city built at the intersection of the river and the sea. The abundant Pervas River plunges into the windless sea in Colombo. The huge amount of river water, even on the gray-blue surface of the windless sea, forced out a turquoise waterway thirty kilometers long and fifteen kilometers wide at its widest point.

When you don't see the turquoise waterways in the distance, the Colombo Lighthouse will come into view. The 1,000-meter-tall building, which represents the highest achievements of Coronian architecture and occultism, is a legendary miracle and is synonymous with Colombo, the royal capital of many Coronians, even surpassing the 5,500-year-old palace of the Coronian family.

The whole lighthouse is made of pure white marble. Therefore, the White Pagoda has become another name for the Great Lighthouse. In the distance, it looks like a slender white tower, but when you get closer and closer, you will realize that it is actually so huge, covering an area of 350,000 square meters alone. Inside the White Tower, there are two hundred and five floors. The largest, strongest and most powerful guilds, government departments and holding companies in Coronia, including the General Association of the Alchemists of Coronia, the General Association of Coronian Warriors, the General Customs Department of Coronia, the General Tax Office of Coronia, the Coronian Wood Corporation, and the Coronia Mining Corporation, have all chosen the White Tower as the main office location.

The Great Lighthouse was built during the golden age of Coronia's greatest prosperity, and strange people from all planes gathered in the pearl of the Coronne family. All sorts of incredible, legendary architectural, occult, geometric techniques are used to build a true marvel of alchemy. The Coren family intends to create an anchor that can be used throughout the plane coordinate system. This great plan lasted for hundreds of years, until the arrival of the Great Shock. The loss of the support of the Mother Plane, isolation, and chaos caused the Great Lighthouse Project to fall halfway. When the Dark Ages ended, the Cologne family and the remaining builders found it impossible to establish anchors as originally planned. Many mages trapped in Coronia reigned supreme in the Great Lighthouse during the Dark Ages, and folding spaces, half-planes, portals, secret realms, ruins, and all kinds of terrifying laboratories were built in the Great Lighthouse.

In the years that followed, the royal family and the Alchemists' Guild launched three large-scale clean-up operations of the White Tower, clearing a large number of floors, eliminating many strange creatures, sorting out a lot of documents, and finally opening a safe passage to the top of the tower, igniting the inextinguishable flame at the top of the tower. Even so, in Colombo folklore, there are still many unknown places in the White Tower, and the actual number of floors of the White Tower is far more than the 205 floors announced to the public. The large-scale summit of the White Tower, held every year by the Coron royal family and the Alchemist Guild on the day of the harvest celebration, seems to confirm this legend. Every year, people go missing in the summit competition, and there are also people who become rich overnight after the summit. It is said that the missing person is an unlucky ghost who ran to an unknown place, and it was the lucky one who got rich and found a new floor. Although people disappear in the White Tower Contest every year, the dazzling championship rewards offered by the royal family and the Alchemy Guild make this annual event the most famous celebration in Coronia, and the attendees are even more flocking.

The city of Colombo is bisected by the Pervas River, and on the east bank of the river, on the highest hill of Coron, Cologne overlooks the entire city except for the White Tower. If the White Tower is the brain of Colombo, then Fort Colombo is the heart of the city. Especially for the old inhabitants of Colombo, the Coron royal family who live in Coromberg is the biggest protagonist of urban legends. It is said that the castle is lit day and night, with beautiful maids shuttling around, and a variety of fine food and wine. Even more talked-about is the wealth of the Cologne family, the discoverers of this plane, who have accumulated wealth at an unimaginable rate after restarting the interdimensional trade. This can be seen from the fact that the annuities paid by the Coron royal family to the knights of the local armed forces have risen again and again.

'Mouse' Sherif is an old Aboriginal of Colombo. From his grandfather's grandfather's generation, Shelif's family thrived in Colombo. The struggle of many generations finally came to fruition in Shelif's generation. Sherif officially became a tax collector at the Port of Colombo. Although such a tax collector is one of the smallest official positions in the whole of Colombo, it is still a great deal to guard the port. Shelv also relied on often doing some personal things for the son of the chief police officer of the port district to remove several professional tax officers from this official position.

Now, the third harvest season is over, and Colombo is about to start the biggest celebration of the year - the harvest festival. At this time of year, Sheliff is at his busiest and most lucrative.

Native veterans from all over the country have long admired the name of the Colombo Harvest Festival. Every year, countless villagers come to Colombo to take part in the various festivities held by the Harvest Festival. These events are so grand and interesting that they are enough for these countrymen to brag about their cattle for a year when they go back. Of course, it also attracted more listeners to the desire to travel to Colombo.

A grand festival and, of course, a festival for merchants. No, another large merchant ship is slowly sailing into Colombo's huge dock area under the guidance of a small rowing boat.

"Mouse, go look at the ship. Look at what is being shipped, the formalities are not complete. "The chief tax officer at Pier 13, fat as if he were three bags of a hundred kilograms of wheat tied together, Zelge opened his bloody mouth and yelled at Sherleaf. "Go. If you rub it any more, I'll beat you with my giant fist that can kill an earth lizard. ”

"Yes, my lord, I'll go. "If Sheriff had seen a pig, he would have scolded the fat pig a few times in his heart to die. But there is no way, who called Zelge has a good surname, and the surname of the family is Cologne. This shows that the ancestor of Zelzhi is really wide, and it is an authentic branch of the Koren family. It is precisely because of this good surname that he climbed to the distant relatives of the famous Duke of Pervas, and relied on the power of the duke to make a fortune at Pier 13.

Sherif hurriedly trotted away from Zelge, and headed for the merchant ship that was docking, with two low-ranking tax collectors.

This is a ship from the West Forest region. Sherif didn't have to come close to know. Because only the hillbillies in the West Forest would uneconomically make merchant ships out of large quantities of iron trees. Ships made in this way are black in appearance, heavier than ships made of other types of wood, and require more energy to run at the same speed. However, there were no other dominant tree species in the West Forest area, so the entire ship had to be made from this material for the armor of the battleship. As an added effect, none of the ships in the Windy Sea, including the Coronian Navy and the famous Grand Thief Horseenbruce's Pirates, wanted to come into close contact with an ironwood ship from the West Forest. The old fur seals of the West Forest Shipping Company also skillfully used this advantage, relying on the characteristics of the alchemy ship's instantaneous acceleration and reversing speed to be the same as the straight speed, and invented the collision tactic of double collision angles at the front and rear. The people of the West Forest area are simple and fierce, and the sailors are the most fierce among them. After a few serious collisions that outweighed the losses, even Heathsonbruss's men were no longer willing to deal with these slow, but sturdy, ironwood boats.

It is a large ship, about 90 meters from bow to stern, and the shape of the ship is made very slender to maximize speed. Sheriff estimated the tonnage of the ship to be around 1,800 tons. Since he came from a wasteland like the West Forest, Sheriff didn't expect to get anything good out of the boat. Nine out of ten ships from the West Forest were supply carriers full of ironwood. There is also one, which is also at least half a shipload of ironwood. These ironworks are basically goods ordered by the Coron royal family, so they are all goods exempt from import tax in the port of Colombo.

"Is there anybody! I'm the tax officer, Sheriff, and I'm going to perform an inbound inspection. ”

"It's coming. Wait a minute, sir. "A bearded Humpty Dumpty, probably a first mate or a boatswain or something like a boatswain, with a few sailors, hurriedly lowered the wooden ladder so that Sheriff could get on board.

"The ship is tall enough, too. Although Sheriff had been a harbour tax collector for a while, he was still a little scared to get on and off the ship every time he got on and off the narrow ladder. There are no handrails and guardrails on both sides of the wooden ladder, so if you are not careful, you will fall into the water.

Climbing onto the board, Sheriff breathed a sigh of relief, and in what he thought was the most dignified pose, he asked aloud, "Which one is the captain?" ”

"The captain was not there, he had met an acquaintance before and went to another ship. I won't be back until tomorrow. Said the bearded sailor. "I'm First Officer Vlado. This is our ship certificate, we are the West Forest Company's transport vessel 'Potbelly Han'. As he spoke, he handed over the alchemy anti-counterfeiting ship certificate and the shipping list with the consignee's seal.

"Uh-huh. Sheriff pretended to look at the ship's license, this kind of stupid ship has West Forest. There is no other place to make it. The bill was stamped with the seal of a trading company owned by the royal family of Coron. There is nothing wrong with that.

"Is the ship all ironwood?" said Sherif, looking at the manifest, feeling that it was not full compared to the ship's load. And there were a lot of people who weren't dressed as sailors going back and forth on the ship. Most of them were huddled on the terraces at the top of the bow and aft buildings, watching the view of Colombo chirp, with an occasional exclamation or two.

"How could it be. There were also many people on the boat, all of whom were honest people from the West Forest area, all of whom came to participate in the harvest celebration. ”

The bearded Vlado's words did not surprise Sheliff either. Well, at this time, it's normal.

"How many are there?" said Sherif habitually.

"There are passenger lists, and these are the captain's business. I don't know how many people there are, but anyway, I just need to cook more food every day. This character is also the general character of the sailors of the West Forest area.

"Okay. "Sheriff didn't really want to look at the passenger list, after all, it was all domestic routes, and it was a bunch of hillbillies.

"Are the sailors going to the celebration too?" he asked in passing.

"Of course, of course, we're going to take part in the White Tower Climb!" said Vlado with great interest, "I don't think anyone will leave Colombo until the ceremony is over." I participated in the tower climbing competition three years ago, and although I didn't get a place at the time, I will never forget the meal that everyone had at the end of the competition! Do you know how delicious the tail of a roasted white-bellied lizard is? I ate ......."

"Uh-huh, I wish you all a great time at the ceremony. "I really didn't expect such a bearded man to be chatter. Sheriff was truly defeated. He hurriedly tore off a form. Fill it out and hand it to Vlado. "You're anchored at berth 8 at Pier 13. Don't run around. Take it. Don't lose it. ”