What is Seen in the Book

The city was under curfew, making it unsuitable for outdoor exploration. Duncan stayed in the antique shop all night, the excitement of setting foot on land driving him to explore the entire building tirelessly.

It was true that the original owner of this body was a cultist, but even as a cultist, he was also an ordinary person who needed a normal social life. He needed the conveniences provided by modern civilization to sustain himself, he needed to interact with people, and he needed various daily necessities.

He needed to deal with the entire city.

And all of this would leave behind many clues, allowing Duncan to roughly deduce the way of survival in the Pland City-State, as well as the general technological level and living conditions of this era, even with his fragmented memories.

In a hidden compartment behind the counter on the first floor, he found a small amount of cash. It included a handful of loose coins and several banknotes of different denominations, blue and green. This was the legal currency commonly used in most city-states, jointly certified and issued by the Consuls of the various city-states and the Boundless Sea Merchant Guild. The main currency unit was called "Sola," with "Peso" as a subsidiary currency worth one-tenth of the main unit. The total cash Duncan found was just over two hundred Sola. According to the intelligence from his memories, this amount was enough for a family of three to survive in the lower city for about a month.

It seemed that even though the shop's business was sluggish and most of his assets had been donated to the Church, the original owner of this body still maintained a basic standard of living. This indicated that this "antique shop" still had its own stable customer base.

The entire shop on the first floor consisted of only two areas. Two-thirds of the space was the storefront in front of the stairs, and the remaining one-third was the "warehouse" behind the small door of the stairs. There was another door behind the warehouse, which was the back door of the entire building and also the entrance for receiving goods.

The structure of the second floor of the shop was a bit more complex. Besides a bathroom, 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 both sides of the stairs on the second floor, and they were kept relatively clean.

In addition, there was a small kitchen on the second floor, but it looked like it hadn't been used for at least half a month, with everything 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 a little smaller than his own studio apartment, and his gaze fell on the small cabinet next to the bed.

There was a photo frame on it, and inside... was a black and white photograph.

The photo showed a family of three: a young man and woman dressed simply, with a little girl who looked about four or five years old. They were standing in front of a garden backdrop with obvious artificial traces, smiling faintly as they looked at the camera.

Duncan walked up to the photo frame, picked it up, and examined it closely, constantly cross-referencing it with the vague and messy clues in his memory.

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

The people in this photo seemed to be the body's relatives... very close relatives.

As he looked at the young couple, Duncan felt a faint sense of longing emerge 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 and pondered what level of expense a black and white photo like this would be for commoners in the lower city, and what stage the photography technology in this world had reached, and on what principles the equipment used was based.

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 God's faith have a lot of time to keep his room so clean?

The storefront on the first floor was clearly neglected, so how could the bed in the bedroom be so meticulously made?

He walked out the door again, into the smaller room opposite the stairs, and looked 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 meeting at a secret gathering place for Sun God followers. That was the last time he left. The details of his memory were blurred, but he didn't seem to have any impression of cleaning up the room before leaving.

Meaning... there was someone else?

Was someone else living with this "cultist"? A relative?

Duncan frowned slightly, searching for corresponding clues in his mind as he approached the desk in the small room. His gaze swept over the neatly stored stationery and writing tools, finally landing on a book.

The book was placed in the most conspicuous position on the desk. It had a dark blue cover with patterns of gears and linkages. Beautiful calligraphy spelled out the title:

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

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

On the Lost Homeland, there were no books to read. He hadn't found a single piece of writing in the master bedroom or anywhere else in the shop. This book might help him understand things about this world.

After opening the cover, the illustrated inner pages came into view. This was indeed a "textbook" on engineering craftsmanship and steam mechanical principles. The book's owner had also left many annotations between the paragraphs.

The delicate and beautiful handwriting seemed to be from a young woman.

Duncan rubbed his forehead. The original owner of this body seemed to have no relatives or friends. Most of the scenes or "impressions" in his memory carried a cold and lonely color. But after sorting through his memories several times, he finally vaguely "remembered" someone... a girl with dark brown hair.

That seemed to be the only figure that the cultist named Roen vaguely cared about in his mind as he breathed his last.

Duncan's gaze fell on the pages of the book. He didn't bother to read the technical details and diagrams, but specifically looked for parts like the editor's preface and conceptual discussions.

A line of text suddenly caught his eye:

"...Fire, or more precisely, the specific flame released by burning deep-sea oil and near-sea mineral crystals, is the cornerstone supporting the operation of modern society and protecting our civilization...

"The prosperity and order of modern civilization are based on fire and steam... Clean and convenient electricity cannot replace the exorcising effect of fire, nor can it keep large machines running stably for a long time... Experiments have proven that steam is the most stable form of power when influenced by deep-space phenomena...

"In this chapter, we will discuss three typical architectures of steam cores and elaborate on their mechanical principles and design ideas..."

Duncan's eyes slightly froze.

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

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

Even at the risk of certain danger, they still used open flame lamps in the sewers, and even used gas lamps for lighting on outdoor streets when electricity had already developed to a certain extent. The reason was that "fire" could, to some extent, resist the spread of certain "dangerous and bizarre" things?

An indescribable emotion welled up in Duncan's heart. He continued to read downwards, seeing complex diagrams, dense annotations, and the careful notes left by the book's owner.

These were machines he couldn't understand at all.

And they were definitely not the "steam engines" he knew from his previous life.

The intricate gears, the extremely complex cylinders, and the connecting pipes and valves between the components far exceeded the concept of a steam engine. They were more like equipment that had jumped out of a fantasy illustration book, exuding a contradictory and bizarre aesthetic everywhere.

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

Lost in thought, Duncan slowly put the book back in its original place.

Because he couldn't understand it at all.

As an Earthling, even though he had been a teacher, he had no idea what those steam-powered engines, developed to their ultimate state, were all about.

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

The civilization of this world seemed to be following a completely different path from his own understanding.

In order to survive in a world fraught with crises, mortal kingdoms also presented bizarre and varied forms, but no matter how strange a world might be, as long as it could still be called "civilization," it would surely have its own reasons and logic for developing to this point.

Those gas lamps burning in the sewers, the electric lights illuminating shops, and the steam engines depicted in books, embodying the wisdom of countless people, all faintly revealed a kind of... resilience.