"After ten days of arduous travel, I finally arrived in Backlund, the largest city in the Loen Kingdom and the most populous city on the Northern Continent.
"To be honest, my first impression of this city was rather poor. I had thought that, in a world without trains or modern roads, where most buildings were only three or four stories tall, a city capable of gathering a million people would be more prosperous than anywhere else in Loen, closer to the modern cities in my memories.
"But after I hurriedly boarded a ship in Conston, traveled south along the southeastern coast of the Sonia Sea, and then spent several days jolting around in a carriage, the driver finally told me we had entered Backlund. Yet all I saw through the window were meadows, farmland, and the occasional manor or ranch scattered among them.
"For a while, this made me wonder whether I had entered some small town that shared its name with Loen's capital..."
At this point, Klein Abraham stopped writing and sank into recollection.
In the memories belonging to Zhou Mingrui, who came from another world, cities often had clear boundaries separating them from the surrounding areas. Ring roads, overpasses, and increasingly tall buildings all reminded travelers that they had left the outskirts and entered the city proper.
But this city had no such boundary. A full hour after that noisy driver announced their entry into Backlund, he finally saw the spire of the Holy Wind Church, the Church of Storms' largest cathedral in the Loen Kingdom. Squeezed among wagons loaded with barrels and coal, public carriages packed with passengers, and farmers leading cattle and sheep into the city, he finally felt that he had entered a major city amid the neighing of horses and the smell of excrement