Steel City, Bisbalu.
As an industrial city in the northern Empire, Bisbalu was famous throughout the continent.
The reason was simple: this was the birthplace of the steam engine and the Difference Engine.
For that very reason, Bisbalu was the most technologically advanced and industrialized city in the entire Empire. It was a sacred destination for countless inventors, all hoping to create the next invention that would change the world.
The city itself was also quite impressive.
Stepping off the platform, the first things they saw were several enormous towers. Although they resembled the mage towers in fantasy novels, they were nothing of the sort. Those towers were actually gigantic Difference Engines. They stored data on every district of Steel City, exchanged that information, then consolidated it in the immense steel tower at the center, which stood as tall as a skyscraper.
That tower stored all the data for the entire Bisbaru District, covering everything from the economy to military affairs. In a sense, it was Bisbalu's brain.
Ovelia had told Li Wei all of this.
"I'd like to introduce this system in the Delicat District, too. That would give us a better understanding of the district's harvests, tax revenues, and so on. Besides, I've had enough of rummaging through records in the cellar that have been chewed up by insects and rats."
"Yes, that makes sense."
Li Wei also recalled the painful experience of searching through records at the Baskerville House. For someone who had lived through the information age, it had been quite an ordeal.
By contrast, he still remembered looking up household records at the Fog City Police Station. All he had to do was enter the information, and a little later, the machine would clatter away and spit out a slip of paper bearing the identification