Chapter 42: What You See in the Book

Chapter 42 What the Book Saw

The curfew state of the city was not conducive to going out and exploring, and Duncan stayed inside the antique store all night – the excitement of setting foot on land driving him to explore this entire building tirelessly.

It was true that the original owner of this body was a cultist, but while he was a cultist he was also an ordinary man in need of a normal social life; he needed the conveniences that modern civilization offered to sustain himself, to interact with people, and to have a variety of daily necessities.

Need to deal with the whole city.

And all of this would leave behind very many clues that could allow Duncan to roughly deduce how to survive in the city-state of Prand despite the blurred fragments of his memories, as well as the general level of technology and the state of people’s livelihood in this era.

He found a small amount of cash in a hidden compartment behind the counter on the first floor, including a handful of fractional coins and several sheets of blue and green currency of varying denominations, the legal tender common to most city-states, certified and issued by the consuls of the city-states and the Chamber of Commerce of the Boundless Sea, with the main unit of currency called a “sola”, and a coin of the equivalent of one-tenth of a cent of the main coin’s value. The main unit of currency is called “Sora”, and “Peso”, which is worth one tenth of the main currency, is issued as the secondary currency. The cash that Duncan found only added up to more than two hundred solas, and according to the information he had gotten from his memory, this amount of money was enough for a family of three to survive for about a month in the lower part of the city.

It seems that even though the store’s business was poor and most of the family’s assets were donated to the church, the original owner of this body still maintained a basic standard of living – this shows that this “antique store” still has its own stable customer base.

The entire first floor of the store has only two parts, accounting for two-thirds of the area is located in the front of the staircase store, the remaining one-third is located in the staircase behind the small door of the “warehouse”, behind the warehouse there is also a door, is the back door of the entire building, at the same time, should also be the entrance and exit of the purchase of goods.

The structure of the second floor of the store is a little more complicated, in addition to a washroom, there are a large and a small two rooms and a common plumbing room with the adjacent building, the large and small rooms are located on both sides of the stairway on the second floor, and the cleaning is quite clean.

In addition, there was a small kitchen on the second floor, but it looked like it had last been used at least half a month ago, and everything was covered in a layer of dust.

After checking everything, Duncan returned to the master bedroom located on the second floor, he looked at the room which was even smaller than his own bachelor apartment, his eyes fell on the small cabinet next to the bed.

There was a picture frame there, and inside …… was a black and white photograph.

On the photo was a family of three, there was a pair of young men and women with plain attire, with a little girl who looked to be only four or five years old, they were standing in front of a courtyard set with obvious traces of artificiality, with faint smiles on their faces, they were looking at the camera side.

Duncan came to the picture frame, and after picking it up, he scrutinized it carefully, and kept corresponding with the vague and messy clues in his memory.

The original owner …… of this body is not in the photo.

The person in this picture seems to be a very close relative …… of this body.

While gazing at the young couple, Duncan seemed to be able to feel a faint sense of longing surfacing from the depths of his memory.

Yet more information about the picture was blurred, as if …… more memories of them had disappeared into the world with that last breath of the original owner of this body.

He put down the photo and pondered what level of consumption such a black and white picture was considered to be among the civilians in the lower city, pondering what stage the photographic technology in this world had developed to, and what principles the equipment used was based on.

At the same time, his gaze fell on the neatly made bed, and a faint doubt flooded his heart.

Would a cultist who had completely fallen into the Sun Faith have a lot of time on weekdays to organize his room so cleanly?
The store on the first floor was obviously neglected, how did the beds in this bedroom manage to be meticulously organized?

He walked back out the door to the smaller room across the stairs and looked at the equally neat and clean bed as well as the desk.

Sorting through the memories in his mind, he confirmed that the original owner of his body had left the store several days ago, heading to the secret assembly grounds to attend a gathering of Sun God followers – it was the last time he had left, and the details were fuzzy, but there didn’t seem to be any recollection of cleaning up and tidying up the house before he left.

In other words, there is someone else at ……?
Someone else living with this “cultist”? A relative?
Duncan frowned slightly as he searched his mind for corresponding clues and went to the desk in the small room, his eyes sweeping over the neatly organized paper and pencil and stationery before finally landing on a book.

That book was placed in the most prominent position on the desk, with a dark blue cover with a pattern of gears and connecting rods on the back cover, and the title written in beautiful fancy letters:

The Craft of Steam and Gears – General Textbook III.

Duncan frowned, he had vaguely realized that this room belonged to “the other guy”, but subconsciously picked up the book. There weren’t any books to read on the Lost Country, and he hadn’t found a single article to read in the master bedroom or anywhere else in the store, so the book in front of him might help him understand things in this world.

After opening the cover of the book, the inner pages with illustrations caught his eyes – it was indeed a “textbook” on engineering and steam machinery principles, and there were many notes left by the owner in between the paragraphs of the textbook.

The fine, beautiful script appeared to be in the hand of a young woman.

Duncan rubbed his forehead, the original owner of this body does not seem to have many relatives and friends, most of the images or “impressions” in his memory, with a cold and lonely color, but after combing through his memory several times, he finally vaguely “recalled” the following A person …… is a girl with dark brown hair.

That seems to be the only figure in the mind of the cultist named Ron when he breathed his last breath that could be considered to be attached to him.

Duncan’s eyes fell on the pages of the book, and he didn’t bother with the words and drawings that dealt with specific technology, but instead picked out sections like the editor’s introduction and the conceptual discussion.

One line of text just suddenly caught his eye:
“…… Flames, or more strictly speaking, specific flames released by burning the oils in the deep sea and offshore mineral crystals, are the cornerstones that support the functioning of modern society and protect our civilization ……

“The prosperity and order of modern civilization is based on fire and steam …… Clean and convenient electricity cannot replace the exorcism effect of fire, nor can it keep large machines running steadily for long …… Experiments have proven that steam is the most stable when most stable form of power when affected by deep space ……

“In this chapter we will discuss the three typical architectures of steam cores and describe the mechanical principles and design ideas involved ……”

Duncan’s eyes stared slightly.

He remembered the gas lamps, torches, and oil lamps that he had seen everywhere in the sewers before, and the gas street lamps in the city streets, and the doubt that had arisen in his mind when he had seen the electric lamp in the store.

It turns out …… that these seemingly “strange” circumstances are actually behind this reason?
Even at the risk of using open-flame lamps in the sewers, even in the case of electricity has developed to a certain extent, but also in the outdoor street lighting with gas lamps, the reason is actually because the “fire” can to a certain extent to resist some “dangerous grotesque” of the spread? spread of certain “dangerous grotesques”?

Duncan’s heart was flooded with an indescribable feeling, his eyes continued to look down, and saw complex drawings, dense notes, and the owner of the book carefully left notes.

It was a machine he couldn’t even begin to understand.

And it was definitely not the “steam engine” he had known in his previous life.

Those precise gears, those extremely complex cylinders, and the connecting tubes and valves between the various parts were far beyond the concept of a steam engine, which was more like some kind of equipment popping out of a fantasy icon, revealing a paradoxical and grotesque beauty in every aspect.

This is the “heart” that supports the advancement of civilization in this world.

In deep thought, Duncan slowly put the book back to its original position.

Because he couldn’t understand it anymore.

As an Earthling, even if he had been a teacher, he couldn’t understand what the hell those steam-powered organs that had been developed to the extreme state on this book were.

But even so, a vague enlightenment surfaced in the bottom of his heart:
The development of civilization in this world seemed to be on a very different path from what he perceived.

In order to survive in a world surrounded by crises, the mortal world had also taken on a strange and bizarre appearance, but no matter how strange the world was, as long as it could still be called a “civilization”, it must have its own reasoning and logic for its development so far.

Those in the sewers burning gas lamps, in the store lit lamps, depicted in books, by an unknown number of people wisdom cohesion of the steam mechanism, are vaguely revealed a …… toughness.

(End of chapter)