"This is called... a car? Driven by an Internal Combustion Engine?"
Reina sank into the leather seat; the vibrations coming from the chassis were slight and rhythmic.
She turned her head to look out the window, where the roadside trees blurred into a green haze, and the grey-white paved road stretched to the horizon. Wind rushed in through the half-open window, tossing her hair.
In her thirty years of life, this was the first time she realized that a pile of iron lumps could reach such speeds without the need for domesticated animals to pull them.
Opposite her, Akomann was looking down and wiping a speck of dust from her sleeve. Hearing the question, she didn't even look up, only letting out a short, muffled grunt from her nose.
In the eyes of this Black Rock Army commander, this iron vehicle—which would be enough to make the great nobles of the south go bankrupt competing for it—was no different from the stones found everywhere by the roadside.
Reina swallowed hard, trying to shift her gaze away from Akomann.
She stared at the driver ahead holding the circular wheel, then at the metallic glint of the instrument gauges and the glass windshield, which was so transparent it didn't have a single impurity.
There were no elaborate carvings or gold and silver inlays; every line existed solely for the sake of utility.
Recalling how Wu Liang had said before they left that he wasn't short of money, she had thought at the time it was just the arrogance of a ruler.
Thinking about it now, when a person held something that could rewrite the very logic of how the continent operated, crates of shining gold coins were, at most, just ordinary blocks of metal piled in a warehouse.
The front of the car turned, leaving the silhouette of the main city behind. The scenery on both sides of the road changed as high, grayish-black walls rose from the ground, their tops entwined with coils of barbed wire.
Watchtowers were densely distributed in visual blind spots, and the soldiers on guard held dark gun barrels, their eyes reflecting the ruthlessness of a predator sizing up prey.
The smell of rust in the air grew heavier, making it hard to breathe. The security specifications of this place were even more stringent than those of the Royal Guard's station in the south.
The car came to a steady stop.
Before them was an exaggeratedly large red-brick building, with rows of glass windows embedded in the walls.
Even before getting out of the car, the tremors in the ground had already traveled through the soles of her shoes to her calves.
A continuous, dull pounding sound echoed from inside, causing even the surrounding air to vibrate in resonance.
Akomann pushed open the car door and led her to the iron gates, which were so wide they would require several people to span their width, and pulled them open with force.
A roar shattered her eardrums and poured directly into her mind.
A heatwave mixed with the smell of machine oil and high-temperature steam rushed toward her, so hot that Reina instinctively squinted and took half a step back.
When she opened her eyes again, her legs felt too heavy to lift.
Above her was a steel-framed dome dozens of meters high, with thick iron pillars supporting the entire space.
The ground beneath her feet was sliced by two parallel iron rails, and from time to time, trailers emitting white steam rolled past, their beds filled with metal blocks that still radiated residual heat.
Everywhere there were rotating gears and rising and falling mechanical arms.
Stamping presses as tall as several stories fell heavily, forcing glowing red steel plates to bend and sending out a ring of sparks. Rows of Lathes made ear-piercing cutting sounds, and iron shavings fell to the ground, piling into small hills.
In the distance, several workers wearing heavy masks held tubes that spat out ghostly blue tongues of flame, scorching the seams between two massive steel plates. The brilliant white spots of light made her eyes ache.
Is this what the Master meant by the place where the fleet is built?
Reina opened her mouth, only to find her throat painfully dry.
She had always felt that the Martinez Family's hundred merchant ships were the overlords of the sea, but standing in this forest of steel, the family fortune she took pride in was not even worth mentioning.
A fence was set up around the center of the workshop.
There, she saw Wu Liang.
He wasn't wearing the elaborate uniform of a lord, but a coarse cloth work outfit whose original color was unrecognizable, with several obvious black oil stains printed on his chest.
His sleeves were rolled up haphazardly to his elbows, and he was holding a wrench, gesturing something to a red-haired woman beside him.
The two of them were surrounding a half-person-high iron box, their argument even drowning out the noise of the nearby machinery.
At this moment, he didn't have the slightest air of a ruler of the Western Territory; he looked exactly like a blacksmith who had spent days and nights in a workshop.
Akomann strode over and bowed in greeting.
Wu Liang heard the commotion and turned around, casually tossing the wrench onto the table.
He took a rag and wiped the black grime from his hands.
"You're here, Reina. Come over, I'll show you a new gadget."
Reina suppressed the unease in her heart, smoothed her skirt, and stepped forward.
The half-person-high machine looked very crude on the outside, wrapped in several copper pipes the thickness of fingers.
Compared to a bulky steam engine, its volume had shrunk by more than half, but the gear engagement inside was much denser.
Wu Liang tilted his head and signaled, "Suina, try igniting it."
The red-haired woman grinned, revealing a row of white teeth. She grabbed the metal crank on the side of the machine, turned it forcefully a few times, and then flipped a black toggle next to it.
After a burst of ear-piercing metal friction, a dull explosion came from inside the machine.
The entire iron casing began to vibrate violently, and a puff of pungent black smoke spat out from the exhaust pipe.
Immediately after, a rhythmic roar merged into a single sound, making her eardrums ache.
Reina pulled her shoulders back, her palms breaking out in a layer of cold sweat. The commotion that thing made when it started running was terrifying; the internal kinetic energy looked as if it were about to tear the iron casing apart.
"A Diesel Engine, a prototype just finished last night."
Wu Liang reached out and patted the heating casing, his voice unconsciously rising several decibels.
"No need to burn coal, and no need to wait for water to boil. Just pour in refined fuel, and the horsepower this thing outputs can leave a steam engine of the same size dozens of streets behind."
He stopped, his gaze passing over the machine and landing straight on Reina. "With this, the power for the fleet is finally settled. In the future, the Armored Vehicles on land will also rely entirely on this to drive."
Running on land... Armored Vehicles?
Reina couldn't help but sketch a picture in her mind.
An iron tower welded entirely from the kind of steel plates she had just seen, requiring no horse traction, crushing its way across the battlefield and turning every living thing in its path into mincemeat.
She shuddered, her fingertips feeling slightly numb.
"To be honest, the Wooden Sailing Ships you brought this time aren't enough for war; they're too easy to sink."
Wu Liang pulled the towel from around his neck and wiped his face.
"From now on, those ships will only be used for training. Akomann will take over the sailors you have. What I want isn't a group of mercenaries who work for money; they must learn to obey military discipline. On a ship, the officer's command is the only rule."
"As for you." Wu Liang's expression tightened, and his tone grew serious. "There's a new piece of business I need you to handle."
Reina didn't hesitate for a moment; she held her skirt and knelt on one knee on the oil-stained cement floor. At this moment, her identity as the head of the Southern Chamber of Commerce had long been cast to the back of her mind. Listening to the rumbling mechanical sounds in her ears, she knew very well which big tree she should cling to.
A parchment sea chart rolled into a tube was tossed in front of her.
"All the existing southern sea charts are here. Use your black market connections—spend as much money as you need—to find out the truth about a set of coordinates."
Reina picked up the sea chart and unrolled it.
In the middle of the large area of black ink representing reefs and whirlpools at the very bottom edge of the paper, a circle was drawn heavily in red ink.
Next to it, a few words were scribbled in a messy hand: Storm Dragon Island.
"Find out if there are actually living dragons on that island."
Wu Liang's voice rose above the machine noise. "How many there are, how big they are, whether their scales are bulletproof, and even what temperature the fire they breathe can reach. I want the most detailed data."
Reina's fingers tightened, the edge of the paper leaving a mark in her palm. That sea area was a forbidden zone for the living in southern legends, but now, the man before her clearly intended to reach his hand into it.
She stood up and tucked the sea chart into her sleeve. "Understood. I'll get to it immediately."
Only after Reina walked out of the workshop's main gate did Wu Liang turn back to the control console, curling his finger to tap on the table. "Did you record the data from the run just now?"},{