Chapter 109: Chapter 113: Searching for a Great Fire
Walking along the road, Sherry seemed a little frustrated, “Why won’t that old man answer my question! It’s like he didn’t hear me when I was talking to him… Is it because I’m short that I get so little attention?!”
“I think the main reason isn’t your height, it’s that you kept asking him about the factory,” Duncan glanced at the girl with a slight turn of his head, “and instead of wasting time on a local who doesn’t want to cooperate, wouldn’t it be better to take a look at the factory yourself?”
Sherry pursed her lips and didn’t say much more. Ahead of her and Duncan, at the end of this street, the factory that had been abandoned eleven years earlier was faintly visible.
In the Lower City District, many factories were located near residential areas, some separated from living quarters by a mere wall—limited land in the City-State and the blockade of the Endless Sea meant that city planners couldn’t allocate enough plots for industrial facilities. Steady ground was almost everywhere crammed with people, naturally negating concepts such as “industrial relocation” or “suburban resettlement.”
Most people in this world were too preoccupied to consider the health risks of industrial pollution. For the general public, the security enhancements brought about by modern technology development were obviously more important than the risks posed by factories—gas lamps, heavy firepower, steam networks, pharmaceuticals, and mechanical ships. These innovations had nearly tripled the population of the new City-State era compared to older times, and anyone familiar with the mechanisms of modern city-states could clearly recognize a fact: factories were the skeleton and flesh of modern civilization, already inseparable from the City-State.
In fact, according to Nina’s textbook, these factory facilities were not just clustered in the Lower City District. Even though city planners tried hard to transition particularly hazardous facilities to the edges of the City-State, some things had to be situated right in the heart of the city, even next to grand cathedrals—like the sacred great bell tower and the “Central Steam Core” that delivered “Holiness gas” throughout the city.
These were essentially huge machines containing terrifying energy and great risks, yet they were still placed beside the heart of the city.
In Nina’s engineering and mechanics textbooks, the authors explained this specially: people had to “endow the sacred steam with Holiness,” and rely on the power of the cathedrals to ensure the punctual operation of the bell towers—machines were not just machines, they were sacred and pure hearts, supporting the operation of modern civilization. It was necessary to place these pristine steels under the watchful eyes of deities, to prevent the shadows of Subspace from contaminating their oil and bolts.
Duncan recalled the content he had read on Nina’s textbooks, then looked up at the still-deserted factory standing in the district, feeling a strange sense of wonder.
This bizarre world… really challenged his values at every turn.
He and Sherry arrived in front of the factory, where a thin and partially collapsed fence was the only boundary between the factory and the surrounding residential area. Between the plant and the nearby living areas, they could see a narrow ring of wasteland—a desolate tract of land where nothing grew, strewn with scattered bricks and stones, and rusted pieces of scrap metal.
No matter how important factories were to the city, no matter how accustomed people were to living with them day and night, factories were still factories. When these behemoths lost control, they still left huge scars in the city.
But in the precious land of the City-State, for such a scar to be left unattended for eleven years still seemed odd to Duncan.
“The land in the City-State should be very valuable,” he said, standing at the edge of the wasteland and looking thoughtfully at the abandoned buildings in front of him, “leaving it like this… doesn’t really make sense.”
“Didn’t that old man just say it? The pollution hasn’t been cleaned up properly…” Sherry seemed less concerned about it, “Some pollution can only fade away with time.”
“Perhaps…” Duncan shook his head, his gaze moving between the series of pipes and tanks at the edge of the factory area, trying to reconstruct the original scene of the accident that had occurred there. He saw several segments of broken pipes, and noticed a tank whose base had collapsed, the whole tank lying down, pressing into the nearby building debris, looking like the carcass of a massive beast.
Judging from these scenes alone, it did seem like a leakage accident had occurred here.
But Duncan’s brow was still slightly furrowed.
The sunbathing old man had said that the area around the factory was still contaminated, and the pollution had even resulted in the lack of newborns in the entire Sixth Street district for the past eleven years. Yet around this factory, there were no warning signs, nor any patrolling or guarding personnel.
The situation was not reasonable. Although it was not any major anomaly, these slight inconsistencies still bred doubt.
“Do we… really have to go in?” Sherry’s voice rose from beside him, her expression seeming a bit tense, “There might actually be pollution here…”
“Can’t your Abyssal Hound give you some advice?” Duncan glanced at Sherry, “It’s deserted here, you could let the Abyssal Hound out for some air, and besides, I don’t believe you’re truly afraid of the so-called ‘pollution’ here—your nervousness seems a bit too fake.”
Sherry evaded Duncan’s gaze, raising her hand while replying, “Alright, alright… It’s just that Abyssal Hound isn’t feeling very well…”
No sooner had the girl finished speaking than the crackling of leaping flames suddenly appeared out of nowhere next to her. Following that, a pitch-black blaze spread across her arm and half her body—flames congealing into chains, and within the dense smoke and dark flames at the end of the chains, the figure of the Abyssal Hound emerged.
Duncan watched the process with curiosity, and only after the Abyssal Hound appeared did he smile and nod at it, “Long time no see, Abyssal Hound—You all ran off pretty fast last time.”
“Left in a rush, left in a rush, please don’t take it amiss,” as soon as Abyssal Hound made an appearance, it clenched its tail tightly. Hearing Duncan’s voice made it visibly shrink by half an inch. While trying hard to draw in its limbs, it carefully lowered its head, “Do you have any orders? I’m skilled at many things, carrying dishes, sweeping, amusing children, anything really…”
The Abyssal Hound hadn’t finished speaking when Sherry covered half her face, assuming an “as if I haven’t been cowardly enough on this journey, and yet you can stoop even lower” expression. Duncan couldn’t help but laugh, pointing at the factory ahead, “I don’t have any orders, just need to borrow your eyes—you can see some things that ordinary people can’t, right? Take a look at that factory, tell me, what’s not right.”
“Who would have thought, you’d value my ability to see,” Abyssal Hound immediately started flattering modestly but still turned its head toward the factory while muttering, “I was observing this factory just now and didn’t notice anything… Looking at it now is the same, just an abandoned…”
Abyssal Hound’s voice suddenly came to a halt, then it abruptly lowered its body, letting out a threatening growl from deep in its throat—but the next second, it shook its head in confusion, voicing its doubt, “Huh?”
Seeing this, Sherry immediately grew tense: “Abyssal Hound, what did you see?!”
“I… I don’t know, just for a moment, I thought I saw… fire? It seemed like a huge fire, like a giant wave surging out of the factory, but… it disappeared in the blink of an eye…”
Abyssal Hound’s voice was filled with skepticism, but Sherry became excited: “Are you sure you saw fire?! A real large fire?!”
Abyssal Hound shook its gigantic skeletal head: “It was just a fleeting image, could have been an illusion. After all, I’m a Profound Demon, occasionally having illusions or being a bit mentally unsound is perfectly normal…”
“But a large fire is different!” Sherry’s voice was urgent, “We’ve been looking for so long, and finally found traces of a ‘large fire’, it must be here, Abyssal Hound, it has to be…”
Sherry was halfway through her excited speech when she suddenly felt a large hand on her shoulder. Her words stopped short, and a belated sense of tension set in. Her neck stiffened as she turned, only to see the formidable “Mr. Duncan” serenely watching her.
“Why do you have such a big reaction to ‘large fires’?” Duncan looked into Sherry’s eyes and slowly asked.
“I…” Sherry opened her mouth, “Nothing…”
“You, too, are looking for a ‘large fire’ from eleven years ago, aren’t you?” Duncan paid no attention to the girl’s attempt to change the subject. He had suddenly made a connection from Sherry’s abnormal reaction, “A fire not recorded in any official record, yet one you experienced firsthand, right?”
Sherry was a bit stiff, she slowly swallowed, “How… how did you…”
“I’m also looking for it,” Duncan smiled, “Looks like I’ve come to the right place.”