Deep Sea Embers Chapter 42: In the book

The city under curfew is not suitable for exploring, and Duncan stays in the antique shop all night - the excitement of stepping on land drives him, and he tirelessly explores 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 own survival, and he needs to communicate with others. Communication requires all kinds of 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 survival in the Prand city-state, as well as the general technical level and people's livelihood in this era despite the blurred memory fragments. .

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, which are common in most city-states. The general legal 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" equivalent to one-tenth of the main currency is issued as a secondary currency. The cash that Duncan found only added up to more than 200 Sola, and according to the information obtained in memory, this money is 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 bleak 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 stable source of customers.

There are only two parts on the first floor of the entire store. Two-thirds of the area is the storefront located at the front of the stairs, and the remaining one-third is the "warehouse" behind the small door of the stairs. There is another one behind the warehouse. The door is the back door of the whole building, and it should also be the entrance and exit for the purchase of 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, as well as 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. Cleaned fairly 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 frame there, and inside... a black and white photo.

The photo shows a family of three. There is a young man and woman 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, with faint smiles on their faces. Look at this side of the camera.

Duncan comes to the frame, picks it up and examines it carefully, constantly matching the vague and messy clues in his memory.

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

The person in this photo appears to be a relative of this body...a very close person.

While staring at the young couple, Duncan seemed to feel a faint sense of nostalgia emerging from the depths of his memory.

However, more information about this photo is blurred, 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 and pondered what level of consumption such a black-and-white photo would be considered among the civilians in the lower city. He pondered what stage the world's photographic technology has developed to, and what principles the equipment used is based on.

At the same time, his eyes fell on the neatly made bed, and a faint doubt appeared in his heart.

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

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 followers of the sun **** - that was the last time he left, in the details The memory has been blurred, but it doesn't seem to have the impression of cleaning and tidying up the house before leaving.

In other words...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 pattern of gears and connecting rods on the cover, and the title of the book written in beautiful squiggly letters:

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

Duncan frowned, vaguely aware that this room should belong to "another person", but subconsciously picked up the book.

There were no books to read aboard the Lost Lands, nor a single half-word article to read in the master bedroom or elsewhere in the shop, and this book might help him understand the world thing.

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 mechanics, and you can read between the paragraphs of the textbook To the many annotations left by the owner of the book.

The slim, beautiful font appears to be the work of a young woman.

Duncan rubbed his forehead. The original owner of this body did not seem to have any relatives or friends. Most of the pictures or "impressions" in his memory were cold and lonely, but after combing through his memories several times, He finally vaguely "remembered" someone...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 related to specific techniques, but chose to read the parts similar to the editor's introduction and conceptual discussion.

A line of text suddenly caught his eye:

"...flames, or more strictly, the specific flames released by burning oils in the deep sea and crystals of offshore minerals, 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 stably for a long time... Experiments have shown that steam is affected by The most stable dynamic form under the influence of deep space...

"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 were everywhere in the sewers, and 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~IndoMTL.com~ When the electricity has developed to a certain level, you should use gas lamps for outdoor street lighting. The reason is that "fire" can Some degree of resistance to the spread of some "dangerous weirdness"?

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

It's a machine he doesn'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, and they are more like something that popped out of a fantasy series. The equipment reveals a contradictory and grotesque beauty everywhere.

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

Meditating, Duncan slowly put the book back in its place.

Because he couldn't understand it at all.

As an earthling, even if he has been a teacher, he still can't understand what the **** are those steam-powered organs that have developed to the extreme state in this book.

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 crises, the mortal kingdom has also taken on a bizarre attitude, but no matter how bizarre the world is, as long as it can still be called "civilization", it must have its own development. The reason and logic are in it.

Those gas lamps burning in the sewers, the electric lamps lit in the shops, and the steam engines depicted in books, which are formed by the wisdom of unknown people, all reveal a kind of... tenacity.