Chapter 516 — A More Powerful Tool

After all, the magic-guided vehicle had not been created purely to solve the Southern Marches' transport problem—it was only a supplement in that regard. Its true significance was to open the way for the great transformation of transport that would follow: to replace the traditional horse carriage, to build agricultural machinery, to build engineering machinery, and even to lay the groundwork for military war vehicles.

Gao Yang knew that on Earth, trains had come into being far earlier than the practical automobile powered mainly by the internal combustion engine (not counting the early experimental locomotives driven by steam engines). That was because the "dumb, big, black, and clumsy" steam engine used by Earth's trains had a far lower technological starting point than the precision, compactness, and efficiency of the internal combustion engine; and the various prerequisite technologies the automobile relied on (tires, storage batteries, spark plugs, and so on) had also gone through a relatively long period of development. All of this was determined by objective historical fact. But in this world, the laws of development for many things were bound to differ from Earth's, and so the order in which many things appeared was naturally different as well.

Steam engines could not be realized, yet the rotor-type magic-energy engine had emerged full-blown. This world had leapt ahead to produce a highly efficient power source resembling the "internal combustion engine" or "electric motor." At the same time, thanks to this world's own accumulated technology and Gao Yang's deliberate guidance, the precision and complexity of the "magic-guided vehicle" had appeared in this world earlier than the train—but that did not mean this world had no need of trains.

In fact, the Southern Marches needed them right now, and already possessed the technological foundation to develop them.

Having lived here so long, Gao Yang had long since learned to discard certain old assumptions, and had come to recognize the truth hidden beneath this special era's surface of darkness and ignorance—this world's technological reserves were far richer than he had imagined, and its technological starting point far higher than what he could see. It was only that such technology was concentrated in the hands of a few, or scattered in fragmentary form among a sparse handful of intellectuals (this "excessive concentration of technology" and "fragmentation of technology" were the result of the collapse of the ancient Gondor Empire). That was what made this society appear far more backward than its true technological height.

Once he had grasped this, the pace of Cecil's technological development was no longer hard to understand: often, those technologies were not being developed from scratch at all, but merely brought to mass production from existing "upper-tier" technology, or reconstructed and transformed from a fragmented state. To be honest, copy Gao Song's "scientific thought" and toss it into a country with deep foundations and a flood of talent like Typhon, and their pace of development would only be faster than Cecil's.

Even so, Gao Yang would still acknowledge and respect the talent and effort of those researchers, and he maintained the highest degree of trust in the research departments under his command. He knew that science was an incremental thing—as the shattered fragments of technology were continually reconstructed, as the theories in the field of magical technology grew ever more refined, sooner or later this land would shake off the shadow of the ancient Gondor Empire and step into domains not even the grand mages of the Spark Era had ever trod.

"Zuyanren? Zuyanren?"

Rebecca's voice came suddenly from beside him, startling Gao Yang out of his thoughts.

"What are you thinking about?"

Rebecca leaned in close before Gao Yang, her face wearing an expression of concern and curiosity.

Gao Yang realized he had let his thoughts run too far and too wide just now, and had grown a little distracted. He quickly cleared his throat twice and adjusted his expression, then said, clearing his throat as he went: "Rebecca, you know, the magic-guided vehicle actually isn't the most powerful means of land transport..."

Rebecca blinked. "You mean... a bigger magic-guided vehicle?! With multiple engines in tandem hauling an even more enormous bed?"

"...Not quite the same. It is indeed a larger vehicle, but its operating principle is completely different from the magic-guided vehicle's," Gao Yang said, marshaling plain and easy-to-grasp words to describe a thing that had never appeared in this world. "Imagine a vehicle like this: it has a 'magic-energy engine' more than ten times, dozens of times, maybe even a hundred times more powerful than a magic-guided vehicle's. That magic-energy engine pulls a dozen or so carriages running across the land..."

Rebecca's eyes went wide. "How could that be! The ground would cave in! And what about turning? What about when it hits a bump?"

"That's why it has to run on rails—rails being steel-made grooves or guideways laid on the ground. They spread out the pressure from the heavy carriages, reduce wear on the metal wheels, and improve the train's stability..."