Chapter 1 The City Under Curfew

A city under curfew was not a good place for exploration. Duncan stayed in the antique shop all night – the excitement of being on land drove him, tirelessly exploring the entire building.

The original owner of this body was indeed a cultist, but while being a cultist, he was also an ordinary person who needed normal social life. He needed the convenience provided by modern civilization to maintain his survival, he needed to communicate with people, and he needed various daily necessities.

He needed to deal with the whole city.

All of this would leave a lot of clues, allowing Duncan to roughly deduce the way of survival in the city-state of Pland, as well as the approximate technological level and people's livelihood in this era, even with fragmented and unclear memories.

He found a small amount of cash in the hidden compartment behind the counter on the first floor, including a handful of loose coins and several blue and green banknotes of varying denominations. This was the legal currency common in most city-states, jointly certified and issued by the magistrates of the city-states and the Boundless Sea Chamber of Commerce. The main currency unit was called "Sola," and there was also a subsidiary currency called "Peso," worth one-tenth of the main currency. The cash Duncan found totaled just over two hundred Sola, and according to the information he had gleaned from his memory, this amount was enough for a family of three to survive in the lower city for about a month.

It seemed that even with the dismal business in the shop and most of his property donated to the church, the original owner of this body was still maintaining a basic standard of living – which meant this "antique shop" still had its own stable clientele.

The entire first floor of the shop had only two parts. Two-thirds of the area was the storefront in front of the stairs, and the remaining one-third was the "warehouse" behind the small door under the stairs. Behind the warehouse was another door, which was the back door of the entire building and should also be the entrance for goods.

The structure of the second floor of the shop was a bit more complicated. In addition to a lavatory, there were two rooms, one large and one small, and a pipe room shared with the adjacent building. The large and small rooms were located on either side of the stairwell on the second floor and were kept fairly clean.

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

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

There was a photo frame there... with a black and white photo inside.

The photo showed a family of three: a young couple dressed in simple clothes, with a little girl who looked only four or five years old. They were standing in front of a clearly artificial courtyard backdrop, with faint smiles on their faces, looking towards the camera.

Duncan went to the photo frame, picked it up, and carefully examined it, constantly comparing it with the vague and disordered clues in his memory.

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

The people in this photo seemed to be relatives of this body... very close relatives.

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

However, more information about this photo was vague and unclear. It seemed... that more memories about them had disappeared from this world along with the last breath of the original owner of this body.

He put down the photo, thinking about what level of expense a black and white photo would be among the common people in the lower city, thinking about what stage the photography technology of this world had reached, and what principles the equipment used was based on.

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

Would a cultist who had completely fallen into the sun worship have much time to keep the room so clean on weekdays?

The shop on the first floor was obviously neglected, how was the bed in this bedroom so immaculate?

He walked out of the door again and came to the smaller room opposite the stairs, looking at the equally neat and clean bed and desk.

He sorted through the memories in his mind, confirming that the original owner of this body had left the shop several days ago to attend a gathering of sun worshipers at a secret assembly – that was his last departure. The memories of the details were already vague, but there seemed to be no impression of cleaning up the house before leaving.

In other words... there was someone else?

There was someone else living with this "cultist"? A relative?

Duncan frowned slightly, searching for corresponding clues in his mind as he came to the desk in the small room. His gaze swept over the neatly arranged pens, paper, and stationery, and finally fell on a book.

The book was placed in the most conspicuous position on the desk, with a dark blue cover and a pattern of gears and connecting rods on the cover. Beautiful italic letters spelled out the title:

*The Art of Steam and Gears – General Textbook iii*

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

On the Forsaken, there were no books available to read. No paper or words could be found in the master bedroom or elsewhere in the shop. This book might help him understand things about this world.

After opening the cover of the book, the inner pages with illustrations came into his sight – this was indeed a "textbook" about engineering and the principles of steam mechanics, and between the paragraphs of the textbook, he could see many annotations left by the owner of the book.

The slender, beautiful handwriting seemed to be from 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 scenes or "impressions" in his memory had a cold and lonely color, but after sorting through his memories several times, he finally vaguely "recalled" a person... a girl with dark brown hair.

That seemed to be the only figure that the cultist named Ron had any attachment to when he exhaled his last breath.

Duncan's gaze fell on the pages of the book. He didn't bother to read the specific technical words and drawings, but instead focused on the parts like the editor's introduction and conceptual discussions.

A line of text suddenly caught his eye:

"...Fire, or more strictly speaking, the specific flame released by burning oil from the deep sea and mineral crystals from the offshore, is the cornerstone that supports the operation of modern society and protects our civilization...

"The prosperity and order of modern civilization are built on fire and steam... Clean and convenient electricity cannot replace the exorcising effect of fire, nor can it make large machines operate stably for a long time... Experiments have proved that steam is the most stable form of power when affected by deep space...

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

Duncan's eyes narrowed slightly.

He remembered the gas lamps, torches, and oil lamps that were everywhere in the sewers before, as well as the gas streetlights on the city streets, and he also remembered the doubts he had when he saw the electric lamp in the shop.

So... the reason behind these seemingly "weird" situations was actually this?

Even at the risk of using open flame lamps in the sewers, and using gas lamps to illuminate the streets even when electricity had developed to a certain extent, the reason was that "fire" could, to some extent, resist the spread of certain "dangerous and bizarre" things?

Duncan felt an indescribable emotion in his heart. His gaze continued downward, and he saw complex drawings, dense annotations, and the notes carefully left by the owner of the book.

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

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

Those precise gears, those extremely complex cylinders, and the connecting pipes and valves between the various components, all went far beyond the concept of a steam engine. It was more like some kind of equipment that jumped out of a fantasy-style encyclopedia, revealing a contradictory and bizarre sense of beauty everywhere.

This was the "heart" that supported the civilization of this world today.

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

Because he couldn't understand it at all.

As an earthling, even if he had been a teacher, he couldn't understand what those steam-powered engines developed to the extreme state in this book were all about.

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

The development of civilization in this world seemed to be on a path completely different from what he knew.

In order to survive in a world surrounded by crises, mortal kingdoms also presented a bizarre appearance, but no matter how strange the world was, as long as it could still be called "civilization," it must have its own reasons and logic for developing to this point.

Those gas lamps burning in the sewers, the electric lamps lit in the shops, and the steam engines depicted in the books, condensed from the wisdom of countless people, all vaguely revealed a kind of... resilience.