"If there's no one else here, I suppose so."
Ye Qiyan's words made the middle-aged man even happier. He rubbed his filthy hands, took a cloth pouch from his white coat pocket, and opened it in front of Ye Qiyan.
"Hello, Lord Train Conductor. My name is Liwai. I'm a scientist from Ten Warehouse Rice City. Th-these are for you, right?"
Ye Qiyan took the pouch, poured out the Train Coins inside, and counted them carefully. There were only thirteen.
So few. Compared to the forty that brainwashing princess handed over all at once, this was rather pitiful.
Ye Qiyan put the Train Coins away without turning up his nose at them. Having some was better than having none, after all.
"Tell me, what happened here?"
This scientist named Kewai knew about Train Conductors, which meant he also knew something about the survival world.
That made him somewhat more unusual than the natives of ordinary Platform Worlds.
"M-my lord, I want you to stop our city lord. He's gone mad. If this keeps up, Ten Warehouse Rice City will be finished!"
Kewai began his story.
From his account, Ye Qiyan finally understood why the platform level he had arrived at differed from the one Zhao Lin and the others had reached.
He also learned what a so-called ascending platform meant.
Ten Warehouse Rice City had once been nothing more than an ordinary, low-level Platform World. Neither its city lord nor its inhabitants had known anything about the survival world.
Then, one day thirty years ago, a gravely wounded, dying Train Conductor arrived in this world and died here shortly afterward.
His arrival changed Ten Warehouse Rice City completely.
His corpse was brought back, and his train was studied.
As luck would have it, that fellow's train had a single-use device