Chapter 74#
Gears of Fate 16#
After returning to the dormitory, Anphiel continued studying spell patterns while Yu Feichen organized his thoughts.
Today was already their third day here. The fortress’s constraints on them were gradually strengthening. The breakfast and dinner weren’t human food but more like mechanical energy sources. On the dormitory wall directly across from him hung a mechanical dummy decoration—one could hardly call it anything but a hint. He suspected if they kept drinking like this, they would physically become mechanical dummies. But if they didn’t drink, without energy the machinery would stop, and they wouldn’t have a good outcome.
The key to survival wasn’t to agonize over passing each day’s lessons but to leave this place as quickly as possible.
Currently, the only passage out was the fortress gates… did they all have to hop on the train and rush out when the doors opened? But today when the fortress doors opened, massive ore rolled in—there was no gap to escape through. Should they build some lethal machinery and physically break this place apart?
Better to rely on Anphiel creating a spell pattern that directly opens the fortress gates. Like Chen Tong and Bai Song today, he could simply and purely complete the level.
His gaze was noticed by Anphiel.
Under the warm lamplight, Anphiel’s quill paused. He looked at Yu Feichen: “What are you thinking?”
“You’ve experienced many dungeons,” Yu Feichen said. “Do you have any tricks?”
Anphiel blinked.
“I do,” he said.
Yu Feichen: “What are they?”
“The first method is understanding how this world came to be, like with the temple. The second is finding what it lacks compared to complete worlds,” Anphiel said. “What’s missing often hints at where this world will break apart and indicates the path to escape.”
What he said seemed quite logical. Previously, Yu Feichen had understood this world’s operating mechanism precisely through the fact that “there are no people in the fortress.”
Besides lacking people, what else did this world lack?
Yu Feichen: “I always feel…”
“What?”
“You actually know how to escape but just want to watch the show,” Yu Feichen said.
Anphiel smiled slightly: “That’s not the case.”
“Then you know some clues but haven’t said anything.”
This feeling had existed for a long time, appearing even in the temple. Pope Ludwig seemed to passively follow at his side in a carefree manner, yet understood the situation completely. This person didn’t seem to be here to complete a dungeon but to… observe something.
The moment this thought flashed, Yu Feichen stared straight at Anphiel. The golden-haired young man looked at him under the lamp, his frost-green eyes serene and calm. From a distance, they seemed to hold a wisp of smoke-like smile.
The feeling of being observed intensified.
“If I can discover a clue, so can you,” Anphiel said.
This sentence—uncertain whether it should be classified as encouragement or provocation—caused Yu Feichen to sleep poorly that night. He rarely dreamed, but that night he found himself in a vast, grotesque maze. Many people around him knew some truths to varying degrees, yet he knew nothing. He desperately searched for answers but repeatedly came up empty. It was the kind of dream that left one exhausted. Upon waking, Yu Feichen irritably rubbed the hot water bottle that had somehow rolled against him.
Anphiel paid no mind to his rubbing. He calmly got up to wash, then left to discuss patterns with Jililigulung.
Before boarding the train, Lingwei asked: “Will Yu-daoyou also accompany the train to explore the fortress today?”
“Not today. I’ve already understood the four workshops,” Yu Feichen said. “If this lesson doesn’t bring new clues, I plan to follow the evening train and return in the morning.”
Chen Tong slapped his forehead, then gave a thumbs up: “Right, there’s another train in the evening.”
On the train, Yu Feichen gazed at the fortress outside.
A circular mechanical fortress with countless internal machinery in complex arrangement. And they, as outsiders, continuously learned skills along a pre-designed processing line. The classroom, dormitory, and train all had purpose, but what about the other machinery in the fortress? Was the fortress’s entire existence just to laboriously cultivate qualified maintenance workers?
“This is a paradox,” he said.
Bai Song turned from the front: “What?”
“The factory cultivates and selects workers. Qualified workers enter the job and maintain the fortress’s operation,” Yu Feichen spoke almost to himself. “But what is the entire fortress’s operation for? To cultivate qualified workers?”
It was obviously an infinite loop.
“Exactly!” Chen Tong slapped his thigh. “Even the smallest factory has products, right?”
Bai Song said quietly: “The products are us. We’re semi-finished goods now. After graduation, we’re finished products.”
Chen Tong: “So this fucking factory produces and sells to itself. What does it gain from that? Besides, you wouldn’t need a fortress this big just to train people like us, right?”
His language wasn’t refined, but his words were genuine insight. A factory has workers, has equipment, yet no products have been seen—this was the greatest abnormality.
Was this the “point of rupture” Anphiel mentioned last night?
Yu Feichen looked toward Anphiel. Anphiel remained as quiet as always, showing no indication. But once the thought “this person is watching from the sidelines” took root, even his blink seemed like feigned innocence.
Arriving at the classroom, the loudspeaker broadcast as usual.
“Students, we meet again! Next, please enter classroom 14 and begin day four’s curriculum. Tip: This is a very~difficult history lesson!”
“Very difficult?”
“History?”
Vincent: “What did it call the spell lesson?”
Lillia mimicked the loudspeaker’s tone: “This is an un~simple spell lesson.”
Super simple transmission lesson, very simple power lesson, un-simple spell lesson, and now “very difficult history lesson.”
Lillia murmured: “But I feel like what it called simplest was actually hardest for us… what it said was difficult is actually quite simple.”
“I want to see what the hell this loudspeaker is selling,” Chen Tong said, stepping into the classroom.
Upon stepping in, they heard his frustrated voice: “Damn it, we’re really back in a classroom this time.”
In the classroom were a dozen metal desks and chairs. Paper and pens were on the tables. Where a blackboard should be was a smooth metal plate, and beneath the blackboard someone had built up an additional twenty centimeters, creating an actual-looking lectern. Beside the lectern stood a mechanical dummy holding a tray, completely motionless, the tray empty.
“Dear students, lesson four—History class officially begins~
Lesson objective: Listen to the teacher’s narration and complete class notes~
Tip: After class, remember to write your name on your class notes and submit them together, okay?~
Class time ends: when the hour hand is next vertical to the ground~
Teaching complete. Please take your learning tasks seriously~”
Yu Feichen thought this fortress was impressive. Previously, he’d assumed it was simply training assembly-line operators, but now it had a history classroom. Just when he thought he’d grasped the pattern, this place would deliver unexpected developments.
As the loudspeaker finished, the metal plate in front trembled slightly, slowly rolling upward into the mechanical apparatus. A new plate appeared in its place, with several simple figures drawn in rather clumsy, rigid script.
The first was a hammer.
The second looked like an axe.
Xue Xin named them one by one: “Hammer, axe, shovel, drilling chisel… is this a complete tool collection?”
Lillia: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen these things.”
Chen Tong: “Hold on. Didn’t the loudspeaker say we need to listen to the teacher’s narration?”
Yet the classroom remained silent—no narrating voice was heard. Just a pattern hung quietly at the front.
Lingwei said calmly: “We are living beings who speak with words. The fortress is an object, expressing itself to us through patterns. That is its narration.”
Lillia rested her chin on her hand and asked: “So what about class notes?”
As she spoke, she looked toward Anphiel with expectant eyes.
Anphiel didn’t speak. Yu Feichen said: “Summarize based on the images.”
There was no other way to create “class notes.”
He marked a number one on paper, then wrote down the tool names in order. On a new line, he wrote a summary: Simple tools.
Previous lessons had physical products as testing basis, but this time only written notes. The fortress could read text—at least when they wrote their names, the loudspeaker could pronounce them. But did this mechanical world truly understand human language? Did it grade their notes by judging meaning or capturing keywords?
The image didn’t change for a long time. Yu Feichen decided to write more, so he summarized each tool’s function. Others came to look and began copying. Lingwei wrote a neat, flowing “A craftsman’s tool is honed before their craft,” which was also copied. Jililigulung wandered among the people, struggling to copy text for text, his strokes extremely mechanical due to language unfamiliarity.
After everyone had emptied their bellies of ink, exhausted possibilities for copying from each other, and even begun staring blankly at the blackboard, the metal plate finally rose and left. A new one appeared.
Chen Tong laughed a “hey”: “This slideshow is pretty good.”
The new metal plate also had several figures, but they were more complex than before. The first pattern was a horizontal bar with something at each end.
Zheng Yuan: “Is this a lever?”
“The first is a lever for moving heavy objects. The second is an incline. Then there are pulleys, axles, spirals… these are the five primitive simple machines!”
With professional explanation of names and functions, the class notes came along smoothly.
After the second slide displayed for a long time, the third appeared. This time, the machinery in the pattern was much more complex, showing gear-to-gear transmission, and—this image had people in it.
A simple drawing of a human stood at one end of a mechanical arm, holding a crank. The crank connected to a rotating shaft, driving the initial gear, which in turn drove the entire mechanical arm to move. Complex machinery showed its initial form.
On the fourth image, the machinery was indeed more complex and enormous. Xue Xin identified this as a large bellows, used to drive large amounts of fuel combustion, aiding metal smelting or other work. The people in this image multiplied—several dozen simple figures pulled ropes attached to the crank, providing power to the bellows.
In other words, the machinery in this world was originally powered by human strength. Based on what they now understood, red-black crystals would soon appear, replacing human power to drive the machinery. What was odd was that in all these patterns, the machinery parts were detailed and specific, while people were merely sketched with a few strokes.
Everyone gathered in a circle, craning their necks to observe others’ answers, talking continuously. This was the most classroom-like lesson since entering this world, also the liveliest, with only the metal blackboard and the mechanical dummy before it standing silently like sculptures.
Lillia rested her chin on her hand, looking at the blackboard: “History class… so we’re listening to a big machine tell us the history of how it gradually grew up? It thinks this is hard to understand, so it warned us beforehand that this lesson wouldn’t be simple.”
Yes, that was how machinery understood history. It perhaps spent considerable effort constructing these patterns and tried earnestly to “narrate” them to the humans taking the class.
But for the humans listening, this lesson was simpler than all previous ones. Those mechanical gear transmissions and conveyor line sorting praised as “simple” were actually difficult. This fragment’s greatest abnormality was led by the machinery itself.
Yu Feichen looked at the simple stick figures in the images, impossibly small and simple compared to the machinery, and a question surfaced in his heart—did the machinery itself know that these people had created it?