President Cruz turned a puzzled gaze toward Xu Yi, but Xu Yi acted as though he had not seen the strange-looking Magic Locomotive at all. He gestured toward the exit and said calmly, "Let's go."
Seeing that Xu Yi had no intention of explaining, President Cruz's thoughts raced. The surprise on his face softened into a smile, and he too pretended not to have seen the thing, walking cheerfully out of the Xinfei Merchant Guild's industrial district with Xu Yi.
After watching President Cruz get into his Mana Sedan and disappear down the road, Xu Yi's smile faded. He turned toward the Magic Locomotive factory and frowned.
A moment later, Xu Yi strode toward the Xinfei Merchant Guild's Magic Locomotive Experimental Base, northwest of the factory.
As soon as he entered the base, he saw several Magic Locomotives identical to the one President Cruz had just seen driving in circles around the testing grounds.
Looking at the somewhat clumsy Magic Locomotives, Xu Yi could not help smiling wryly and shaking his head.
If possible, he would have liked to call these strange-looking Magic Locomotives Mana Tanks.
But apart from cast steel plates far thicker than those used in ordinary Magic Locomotives and specially made tires, these things merely had an extra Mana Cannon mounted on them. Calling them Mana Cannon Locomotives was reasonable enough, but calling them Mana Tanks was nothing short of a pipe dream.
Xu Yi approached the researchers from the Magic Machine Tool Research Center who were observing the Mana Cannon Locomotives and recording data in the middle of the grounds. In a low voice, he asked Toldo, the human engineer leading the Mana Cannon Locomotive development team, "Why did I just see a Mana Cannon Locomotive outside?"
Toldo and the other researchers had already noticed Xu