Chapter 71#

Gears of Fate 13#

Five minutes after everyone else got off the train, when the whistle sounded again, the metal plates on the ground suddenly opened, and all the seats sank down and disappeared without a trace. Each train car became an empty corridor.

Yu Feichen was very familiar with this configuration—a coal car. The moment the word crossed his mind, he immediately made his way toward the engine room at the front of the train. Of course, he didn’t call Vincent along, and Vincent remained where he was, gazing out the window. Where he looked, his teammates were walking up an exquisite, elegant metal staircase. Warm yellow lights glowed at the corner of the staircase, making everything golden gleam brilliantly.

The fortress wasn’t built for people, so it had no convenient facilities for human use and consequently no safety measures to prevent human entry. The engine room at the very front of the train car had only the simplest slatted gate. The spacing between the slats was so wide that an adult male could slip through sideways.

After entering, Yu Feichen observed the engine room’s facilities—equally filled with complex, precise gear and torque structures. But at the center was a cylindrical steam boiler-like apparatus. From the top of the boiler, a pipe connected upward, running vertically toward the ceiling, then gradually branching into many small pipes at the top. Each small pipe ended in a metal valve with a transmission rod connected to a gear.

If Xue Xin, the mechanical engineering major, were here, he would certainly explain to everyone that this was a typical high-pressure steam boiler system. Coal in the furnace burns water in the boiler; water vapor pushes the pistons reciprocating to drive gear transmission and so forth. But the fuel used by the “furnace” here wasn’t coal—it was red hot crystals, and what burned wasn’t water but black motion crystals. Heat crystals catalyzed motion crystals, which then pushed gears to rotate. All quite logical.

After Yu Feichen examined the boiler thoroughly, the train car began to vibrate—a sign of imminent departure. Only then did Vincent enter the engine room.

The person entered looking somewhat mentally scattered, but Yu Feichen didn’t have time to observe carefully before the train began another round of jolting. There were no safety restraints here. They both grabbed metal machinery for leverage, pressing themselves firmly against the wall to barely avoid being thrown off.

The location where the train stopped was somewhere Yu Feichen recognized—the fortress’s main entrance from when they first arrived.

The moment the train stopped, the fortress gates thundered open. The skylights on the train roof slid open simultaneously. As gray light from outside poured in, an ear-shattering collision sound erupted.

Huge funnel-shaped machines stood suspended in mid-air. Metal funnels tilted downward as large chunks of gray stone fell from the sky, landing in the train cars. The series of changes happened extremely rapidly with no time to react. If they hadn’t moved to the engine room before departure, they would likely be flattened like pancakes by the falling boulders now.

Due to the obstruction of the metal grating, no boulders rolled into the engine room. Contrasted with the commotion of ore being loaded in adjacent cars, this place seemed almost serene and silent.

Vincent was similarly silent. His chestnut hair slightly tousled, he stared at the gray-misted sky outside, his eye sockets faintly reddened. Then, his chestnut-gold eyes glazed over with moisture, as if desperately suppressing sorrow.

Yu Feichen found this baffling.

The current situation was two people squaring off for a fight. They’d skipped class, ascended the roof—and suddenly the other party not only forgot about fighting, but seemed ready to cry on the rooftop instead?

He was starting to doubt whether his earlier judgments and deductions about Vincent’s intentions were completely wrong. Maybe this person really was just a dungeon traveler, solely focused on solving puzzles.

But then why cry?

Yu Feichen broke the silence. Looking at the gray stones falling from the sky, he said flatly: “The metal fortress needs ore. It’s transported from outside. Is there more structure beyond?”

In other words, beyond the fortress, is there a larger world with complete, self-consistent operating rules? Unlikely, since this is merely a fragment world.

Vincent’s tone was kept very low, his voice hoarse: “Perhaps not.” His eyes slowly swept across the sky, the metal funnels, and the ore in the cars. He said: “Matter is merely the manifestation of power… all worlds are just different manifestations of power in different structures.”

The moment this cryptic tone emerged, Yu Feichen immediately reconfirmed that this person was definitely Murphy.

He heard Murphy continue slowly: “Perhaps the gate is the crack through which this fragment connects to the outside. The fortress captures scattered power from outside. Power enters the fortress in the form of ore, sustaining the fortress’s operation.”

Yu Feichen: “You mean the gate is one of our possible escape routes.”

Vincent nodded.

Yu Feichen continued: “Scattered power from outside?”

Vincent: “When fragment worlds completely collapse, they become scattered pure power, captured by other worlds or people in the eternal night… you don’t even know this?”

In a world Yu Feichen once experienced, there was a saying: no need for deep conversation between acquaintances. What Vincent just said was knowledge concerning the very essence of these worlds. That two people with a grudge, strangers to each other, could have such a conversation—only two reasons explained it. First, Vincent loved spreading knowledge, hopelessly so. Second, he wanted to grant high-level knowledge to demonstrate the difference between them and gain a sense of superiority.

The first seemed unlikely; the second was utterly meaningless. Yu Feichen once again found Vincent extremely strange today.

“Claros never told me these things,” he said flatly. “Are you going to teach me in his stead, Murphy the official?”

Murphy’s gaze froze slightly, then deepened into greater sorrow. Combined with his reddened eye sockets, Yu Feichen thought this official’s mind was on the brink of collapse.

“They told you?” Murphy said.

“They?” Murphy’s non-sequitur left Yu Feichen confused. “Claros?”

Yu Feichen’s own non-sequitur left Murphy frowning. Just then, the whistle gave a long blast. The car was full; the train set off again.

In the classroom.

The fine rings of the gyroscope rotated spontaneously according to some mysterious rule. Lights flickered. The deep color of the metal walls resembled warm, smooth wood. A small bookcase sat quietly in a corner, making the small classroom seem more mysterious and elegant—like a wizard’s classroom.

A dozen or so light, thin-legged metal tables were arranged in rows, with paper, pen, and ink on each. On another wall were several complicated mechanical devices with light flowing subtly within them.

“Dear students, the third lesson—Spell Class officially begins~

Prerequisite knowledge: Spells require black quill pens dipped in ink, written on papyrus, then placed in the spell reader to be effective~

Lesson objectives: Read all spell books in the bookcase, write a spell collection satisfying the requirements list on pages 243-274 of the green book, then place each in order into the spell reader on the table. Don’t make mistakes~

Tip: Each student must place their badge in the spell reader’s sensing section for it to open properly~

Class time ends: when the hour hand is next vertical to the ground~

Teaching complete. Please complete your learning tasks seriously~”

The enchantingly magical lesson name was so at odds with the entire fortress that Chen Tong scratched his head: “What… Spell Class? Fortune telling? Aren’t we here to work in a factory?”

When he opened one of the dozen massive tomes in the small bookcase, his expression turned to despair: “What is this????”

—The pages were dense with incomprehensibly complex symbols resembling tangled yarn balls, each character baring its teeth and claws menacingly.

“We’re done for,” Chen Tong said. “We’re going to die. Damn it, we’re going down to cultural subjects. Yu-xiong, Vincent-xiong, we’re sorry we’ll let you down.”

Xue Xin and Zheng Yuan exchanged a look. Xue Xin: “Part of this looks similar to engineering drawings we studied. We should be able to understand some, but the rest… not really.”

But Lingwei said: “I specialize in swordsmanship but also study talismans. These symbols don’t seem overly complicated.”

Lillia looked and looked, then smiled with understanding: “Doesn’t seem difficult. The spell patterns I was punished to copy before I came here were much harder than this.”

Jililigulung’s language remained hard to understand, but their expression was extremely excited: “&&%#@@!!!!”

Anphiel’s voice remained its usual graceful refinement as he said: “Let’s begin studying.”

In the classroom, Chen Tong and Bai Song exchanged a silent look: “…?”

Perhaps we should be on the train instead of in the classroom.