Deep Sea Embers

A city under curfew was not suitable for exploring, and Duncan stayed in the antique shop all night—the excitement of stepping on land drove him tirelessly to explore the entire building.

The original owner of this body is a cult, but he is also an ordinary person who needs a normal social life. He needs the convenience provided by modern civilization to maintain his survival, needs to communicate with people, needs Various daily necessities.

Need to deal with the whole city.

And all of this will leave a lot of clues, which can allow Duncan to roughly infer the way of living in the Prand city-state, as well as the general technical level and people's livelihood status in this era, even when the fragments of memory are unclear.

He found a small amount of cash in a hidden compartment behind the counter on the first floor, including a handful of odds and ends and several blue and green coins of varying denominations, the legal fiat used in most city-states The currency is jointly certified and issued by the city-state consuls and the Boundless Maritime Chamber of Commerce. The main currency unit is called "Sola", and another "peso" worth one-tenth of the main currency is issued as a secondary currency. The sum of the cash Duncan found was only more than 200 Sola, and according to the information obtained from memory, this money was probably enough for a family of three to survive in the lower city for about a month.

It seems that even though the business in the shop is sluggish and most of the property is donated to the church, the original owner of this body still maintains a basic standard of living—this shows that this "antique shop" still has its own stable source of customers. of.

There are only two parts on the first floor of the entire store. Two-thirds of the area is the pavement at the front of the stairs, and the remaining one-third is the "warehouse" behind the small door of the stairs. There is a door behind the warehouse. The back door of the entire building should also be the entrance and exit for purchasing goods.

The structure of the second floor of the store is a little more complicated. In addition to a bathroom, there are two rooms, one large and one small, and a pipe room shared with the adjacent building. The large and small rooms are located on both sides of the stairs on the second floor, and they are also cleaned. Considered clean.

In addition, there is a small kitchen on the second floor, but it seems that the last time I used it was at least half a month ago, and everything was covered with a layer of dust.

After checking everything, Duncan returned to the master bedroom on the second floor. He looked at the room, which was a circle smaller than his bachelor apartment, and fell on the small cabinet next to the bed.

There's a picture frame in there...it's a black and white photo.

The photo shows a family of three. There is a pair of young men and women dressed in plain clothes, with a little girl who looks only four or five years old. They are standing in front of the courtyard setting with obvious artificial traces, and they are looking at Lens here.

Duncan came to the photo frame, picked it up and looked at it carefully, and constantly corresponded with the messy clues in his memory.

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

The people in this picture appear to be relatives of this body...very close ones.

When looking at the young couple, Duncan seemed to feel a vague sense of nostalgia emerging from the depths of his memory.

However, more information about this photo is unclear, it seems... more memories about them have disappeared in this world with the last breath of the original owner of this body.

He put down the photo, thinking about what level of consumption such a black-and-white photo would be considered among the civilians in the lower city, what stage of development of photography technology in this world has reached, and what principles are the equipment used based on.

At the same time, his eyes also fell on the neatly made bed, and doubts arose in his heart.

A cult who has completely fallen into the sun belief, will he have a lot of time on weekdays to tidy the room so clean?

The storefronts on the first floor are obviously neglected. How can the beds in this bedroom be meticulous?

He walked outside the door again and came to the smaller room across the stairs, looking at the same neat and clean bed and desk.

He sorted out the memories in his mind and confirmed that the original owner of his body had left the shop a few days ago and went to the secret meeting place to attend the gathering of the sun **** believers-that was the last time he left, and the memories in the details had already been lost. , but doesn't seem to have the impression of cleaning the house before leaving.

That is to say...anyone else?

Who else lives with this "cult"? Is it a relative?

Duncan frowned slightly, and while searching for the corresponding clues in his mind, he came to the desk in the small room. His eyes swept across the neatly stored pen and paper stationery, and finally landed on a book.

The book is placed in the most conspicuous position of the desk, with a dark blue cover, with a picture of gears and connecting rods on the cover, and the book title is written in beautiful squiggly letters:

"The Art of Steam and Gears - General Textbook III"

Duncan frowned, he had already realized that this room should belong to "another person", but he picked up the book subconsciously.

There were no books to read aboard the Lost Country, nor a single half-word article to read in the master bedroom or elsewhere in the shop, and the book in front of him might have helped him understand things in the world.

After opening the cover of the book, the inside pages with illustrations came into his eyes - this is indeed a "textbook" about engineering craftsmanship and the principles of steam machinery, and between the paragraphs of the textbook you can see the owner of the book. many notes below.

The slender and beautiful typeface seems to be the work of a young woman.

Duncan rubbed his forehead. The original owner of this body didn't seem to have any relatives or friends. Most of the pictures or "impressions" in his memory had a cold and lonely color, but after combing through his memories several times, he finally got the impression. Mohuhudi "remembered" a person...a girl with dark brown hair.

That seemed to be the only figure in the mind of the cultist named Ron when he exhaled his last breath.

Duncan's eyes fell on the pages of the book. He didn't bother to read the words and drawings that involved specific techniques, but chose to read the parts similar to the editor's introduction and conceptual discussion.

A line of words suddenly caught his eye:

“…Flame, or more strictly, the specific flames released by burning oils in the deep sea and crystals of minerals offshore, are the cornerstones that underpin the functioning of modern society and protect our civilization…

"The prosperity and order of modern civilization are based on fire and steam... Clean and convenient electricity cannot replace the exorcism effect of fire, nor can it keep large machines running stably for a long time... Experiments have proved that steam is the most effective when it is affected by deep space. Stable dynamic form...

"In this chapter, we will discuss three typical architectures of the steam core, and explain the mechanical principles and design ideas..."

Duncan's eyes narrowed slightly.

He remembered the gas lamps, torches, oil lamps that could be seen everywhere in the sewers before, as well as the gas street lamps on the city streets, and also remembered the doubts in his heart when he saw the electric lamp in the shop.

It turns out...the reason behind these seemingly "weird" situations?

Even if you take a certain risk, you should use open flame lamps in the sewers, and when the electricity has developed to a certain extent, you should also use gas lamps for outdoor street lighting. The reason is that "fire" can resist certain The spread of "dangerous weirdness"?

Duncan had an inexplicable emotion in his heart. His eyes continued to look down, and he saw complex drawings, dense annotations, and notes carefully left by the owner of the book.

It was a machine he didn't understand at all.

And definitely not the "steam engine" he knew in his previous life.

Those precise gears, those extremely complicated cylinders, as well as the connecting pipes and valves between the various components are far beyond the concept of a steam engine, they are more like some kind of equipment that popped out of the fantasy series, everywhere. It reveals a contradictory and grotesque beauty.

This is the "heart" that supports the progress of civilization in this world today.

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

Because he didn't understand it at all.

As a person on earth, even if he has been a teacher, he still can't understand what the steam-powered mechanisms in this book are that have developed to the extreme state.

But even so, a vague enlightenment still emerged in his heart:

The development of civilization in this world seems to be on a completely different path from his perception.

In order to survive in a world surrounded by crisis, the kingdom of mortals has also shown a strange attitude, but no matter how strange the world is, as long as it can still be called "civilization", it must have its own reason and development. Logic is in it.

The gas lamps burning in the sewers, the electric lamps lit in the shops, and the steam engine depicted in the book, which is formed by the wisdom of unknown people, all reveal a kind of... toughness.