Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 864 You will definitely not agree to it?

The court that Xino mentioned is located in the northwest corner of the Chardouri Manor, and is shaded by a dense cypress forest. It is very quiet. The configuration of the court is also very professional. In addition to a 36x18 meter field and a two-meter-high net, there is also a wire fence surrounding the entire court, a rest area for players with a sunshade, and even a referee's seat. It is almost the same as a professional stadium.

"If you two don't mind, let's practice here." Xino took Alice and Gloria into the court and said with a smile: "Maybe the effect will be better."

Alice stepped on the rubber court and nodded with satisfaction: "This is exactly what I want. Only on this kind of professional court can I, Alice, show my true strength!"

After that, she raised the racket in her hand and pointed it at Gloria at the other end of the court, and said arrogantly: "Let's fight, Gloria! Today I will let you taste the taste of defeat!"

"You'd be glad to see me, Alice."

Gloria raised her hand and sent the gray-feathered falcon perched on her arm into the sky. Then she held the racket with both hands, lowered her body slightly, and assumed a standard fighting stance, with a gleam of eagerness in her eyes: "But let me make it clear in advance, I won't let you win!"

Alice sneered repeatedly: "Gloria, you are too arrogant. Your conceited and arrogant mentality is the sign of failure. Wait until you repent and cry for your failure!"

Gloria was full of fighting spirit: "This is not arrogance, but confidence! I am no longer the same person as I was yesterday. Alice, you'd better be careful!"

"How much can a mere day change? I will beat a weakling like you to pieces!"

Hearing this, Xinuo smiled slightly: "But there are always people who can't suppress their curiosity. Besides, they have their reasons. They always think that this is not prying, but concern."

"Don't underestimate the possibilities of humans, you guy!"

This question is so profound that even Saint Xia Liya, who holds the power of fate, can't explain it clearly. She pondered for a long time, and finally realized: "This may be the psychological tactics mentioned in the book? Use strong verbal offensives to put great pressure on the opponent and create an advantage before the game begins. I didn't expect that Alice and Gloria have learned such advanced tactics in just one day. This is a precious opportunity, Metien, you must watch carefully and learn well."

When this was mentioned, a flash of embarrassment flashed across the girl's face, but she quickly hid it and replied calmly, "I... really don't have much interest in polo. This court was actually built when my mother was still alive. She loved playing polo, and my father always responded to all her requests."

This reaction surprised Xinuo. She couldn't help but glance at the young man: "I thought you would continue asking, Mr. Ling."

Xinuo: “…”

She can call other people by their first names, but she uses honorifics when calling Lingge, and Lingge does the same. This may mean that the two are similar in some sense, but not the same.

"He sounds like a very famous person." Linger said, "Like the great pioneer knight, or the white knight Hibernton?"

"They kept talking," sitting on a bench outside the field, Metien looked at Saint Shalia beside him with a puzzled look: "When will the game start?"

Ling Ge's expression remained unchanged: "What are you asking? Your father and mother? To be honest, it's not polite to pry into other people's family affairs."

"I see."

The two of them tacitly decided to ignore the topic.

Their stories are also circulated in Grindelwald, from exhibits in museums to gossip among the villagers. The inscriptions on the ancient obelisks are documents of time, and the music on the lyre is an immortal crown of glory. The only family in the entire province of Saint-Denis who enjoys this honor is Gostave the Whitethorn.

"Oh!" The pink-haired little girl nodded vigorously, then opened her eyes wide and stared at the court without blinking, trying to remember all the trash talk from the two people on the court, and decided to practice it on Shaymi and Leticia when she returned.

"That's even worse." Linger said, "Nothing in this world is more offensive than self-righteous concern."

……

Ling Ge: “…”

"If everyone thinks like Mr. Ling, I'm afraid our private lives will become much easier." Heno paused, and the smile on his face seemed to fade a little: "However, as for my father, even if you don't deliberately ask, his story has already spread all over the land of Grindelwald. So I think it doesn't matter if it's offensive or not."

Lingge nodded slightly, then stopped talking and did not ask any further questions.

Linger looked up and around, scanning the entire court, then his eyes fell back on the girl and said, "I remember Miss Xinuo once said that she had no interest in wind flower balls. I didn't expect that there is such a professional court hidden in the manor. This seems a bit... insincere?"

But Xinuo shook his head gently: "I'm afraid this reputation may not be as good as you imagine."

She raised her head, her gaze passed over the court and the tall wire fence, and fell on the boundless blue sky. Her wine-red eyes, which were slightly drunk in summer, showed a look of nostalgia or sadness. "Baron Vince the Pioneer, Hibberthon the White Knight, and... Reynard the Bigot. The last one was my father. The people of Grindelwald all called him that, but they didn't think it was an offense. They were just stating the facts."

Paranoid? Linger chewed on the name carefully, thinking: "Did he do anything?" Xinuo said: "He participated in a war."

"White Knight Hiberdon also participated in a war."

"But their natures are different." Xino's thick eyelashes brushed lightly, and it looked like he closed his eyes facing the sun. "The war my father participated in was not for justice, but for profit. It did not take place in this homeland that needed to be protected by the white thorn flower flag, but in someone else's homeland. In other words, it was a war of aggression."

At this point, Ling Ge suddenly realized: "The colonial war in the East Continent?"

"kindness."

Xino's voice was almost like an unconscious dream talk. If Linger's attention was not on her, it would be absolutely difficult to hear. Moreover, the two people on the court finally started practicing after dawdling for a long time. The clanging sound of hitting the ball drowned out the conversation here, so that the sound did not spread very far: "Only the flower of kindness watered with justice can bloom for a long time - this is one of the ancestral precepts of our Gustaf family, and it is also a motto that we have adhered to for generations. As noble and innocent knights, we should fight for justice and never bully the weak. Therefore, when the overseas war broke out, almost all the nobles and chambers of commerce devoted themselves to the vast new continent, trying to gain greater benefits. Only the Gustaf family stayed out of it, abided by their duties, and never overstepped their boundaries."

"However, the development of maritime trade changed the direction of the times. Cheap raw materials and agricultural products from across the sea impacted the local traditional industries at a rapid pace, leaving the Gustaf family far behind. The times are like waves. If you don't move forward, you will be eliminated. If it were just that, it wouldn't matter. The descendants of Whitethorn Flower have never been greedy for luxury. Although the family business is sluggish, it is enough to maintain our normal life. But at that time, the Gustaf family happened to encounter a problem that required a lot of money to solve, and it was imminent."

A problem that requires a lot of money to solve... Lingge was a little confused at first, but he quickly thought of something because the answer was right in front of him: "Lose Forest?"

"That's right." Xino nodded gently. "In order to protect the oath made by our ancestors and the aliens, the Gustaf family has been making preparations since the Middle Ages to buy back the Loser Forest, and money is an indispensable price. However, we are not the only ones who want to buy the Loser Forest. All traditional manor owners or emerging factory owners know how much profit this large piece of undeveloped land can bring. If Loser Forest is bought by them, the aliens will be homeless and will face the fate of being jointly exterminated by the church. Because of the ancestors of Hiberton, the Gustaf family has a close relationship with the Republic government, so it has a certain advantage in this matter, but if there is no money, all this is just empty talk."

Ling Ge hesitated to speak: "So, your father..."

Xino slowly opened his eyes, his eyes were clear: "He ignored the opposition of his grandfather, led his horse - Brandi's grandfather, boarded a ship to the East Continent, and participated in the war. Three years later, he returned to his hometown with a sum of money, and raised the final funds to buy the Forest of Loser, and finally repaired the oath. However, in the years that followed, I never saw him smile again."

No wonder Xino looked so embarrassed when he mentioned that his father also contributed to repairing the oath. It turned out that behind this matter, there was a not-so-glorious past.

Ling asked: "Does he regret his aggressive behavior?"

The question was quite straightforward, but the young man asked it very frankly, as if he was not exploring or confirming anything, but just chatting.

"Maybe." Xino thought of her father, the upright and generous man, and could not help but be silent for a while. Then she said, "Strictly speaking, my father did not hurt anyone in that war, because when he first stepped onto the battlefield, he still upheld the chivalrous spirit that his ancestors had entrusted to his descendants. In this age of steam and steel, knights have long lost their place and have been replaced by rifles and artillery. Therefore, my father soon left the front-line troops and went to the rear to do logistics work. In the end, he left the army directly and chose to engage in business. The money he brought back to his hometown was not from aggression, but from wealth accumulated through trade."

"But what difference does it make?" She lowered her eyelids, hiding the deep thoughts in her eyes: "In this war without any justice, even if you only step onto the battlefield once, even if you only provide support in the rear, even if you have nothing to do with the army and are just involved in trade... it is considered an invasion. The Gustaf family is a noble white thorn flower. We once vowed to fight for the weak and protect the justice and fairness of the world, but my father hurt others in order to protect some weak people. No matter what, he was... wrong after all."

At the end, the girl sighed softly, and there were too many complicated emotions buried in this sigh, and Linger couldn't tell for a moment. He observed the girl's appearance with the corner of his eye, and vaguely saw a melancholy look between her eyebrows, but it made people feel that this was her original character - she was a girl who was born melancholy, but she was used to disguising herself with a cheerful and sunny smile.

Although he knew that the occasion was not right, Ling Ge couldn't help but wonder, is this what's bothering her? If this knot could be untied, would she agree to their invitation?
"It sounds like," the young man said word by word, carefully considering his tone, "you seem to admire your father very much? At least you used to?"

This sentence made Shino look up and glance at Lingge. After a while, she suddenly burst out laughing. Lingge hadn't figured out what was so funny about his words, but the girl had already spoken in a soft and firm voice. She didn't tell the answer, but the ending of the story: "In the few years after returning to his hometown, my father had been depressed and drank to relieve his sorrow, but he could never get out of the shadow of the war. Later, in the middle of a starless and moonless night, he rode his horse, took his gun, left Shadoly Manor, and charged towards a windmill standing on Grindelwald Field, just like a knight bravely challenging a ferocious beast."

Does this sound a little... crazy?
Lingge did not say what he was thinking, but asked: "Then what?"

"And then? And then I never saw him again." Shino said softly, "The people of Grindelwald all knew him, and they were very sorry for his death. The residents who knew his character well thought that he could not get rid of the guilt for the war, so he chose to commit suicide. The bards who pursued romance one-sidedly thought that he could not accept the decline of knights in modern wars, so he decided to die gloriously as the last knight... But no matter what, his stubbornness far exceeded people's imagination, so everyone called him: the paranoid."

Unlike the pioneer Baron Vince and the white knight Hibberton, it is a neutral and somewhat derogatory title.

"What do you think, Mr. Ling?" Xino suddenly asked, his eyes deep and intriguing: "A man who wanted to protect something but betrayed something, a knight who was abandoned by the times, and could never get out of the shadows in his life, chose to charge at a windmill and end his life in such a ridiculous way. Do you also think he is paranoid?"

Ling was slightly startled. He wanted to say that the answer could not be obtained by just listening to a story. He had to know more, such as Mr. Reynard's personality, life experience or emotional life, but Xinuo had already retracted her gaze. She did not expect to get an answer from the young man. Perhaps she was just asking herself from the beginning. Her wine-red eyes flashed like candlelight: "Now, let me answer your question - I have never worshipped my father. In fact, I used to hate him."

As soon as she finished speaking, before Ling Ge could react, she strode towards the court, her snow-white ponytail swaying slightly in the wind, and a bright smile appeared on her face: "Alice, Gloria, it's been half an hour, do you want to take a break first?"

Ling Ge looked at her back as if nothing had happened, and suddenly had a strange premonition in his heart, as if... this girl had actually seen through all his thoughts, including that inappropriate thought.

She has a beautiful appearance, a noble heart, a cheerful temperament, a melancholy inner self, and an extremely sharp intuition, which helps her maintain a perfect distance in her interactions with everyone.

Therefore, it is best not to repeat any invitation topics before you really get to know her.

She would never agree.

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)