Chapter 723 — New Things, New Trade Routes
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
In the bleak, chilly depths of autumn, cold wind swept across the open fields, and in the clear autumn sky not a single bird flew past.
The farmer Kahn bent at the waist, lifted the heavy basket, and tipped it toward the wooden trough beside him. The golden beans poured out with a deeply satisfying clatter, like a stream of gold flowing into the channel and rolling down into the granary buried beneath the ground. The steadily swelling sound of it made the wrinkled man smile, his eyes crinkling shut, the corners of his mouth lifting before he could stop them.
The "maple-horn bean" was one of the last crops that could be harvested in the southern regions each autumn. With this batch of thoroughly dried beans stored away, all the year's labor had finally borne its fruit.
It would be another winter with no one starving to death—and if fortune favored them, if the nearby factories took on extra hands, then not only would no one starve this winter, but the family might even have meat a few times a week.
Kahn straightened his back and wiped the fine sweat from his forehead. On the newly built road not far off, a magitech cart hauling timber rolled past; the young driver leaned out and called cheerfully to someone in the distance. Out on the square at the end of the road, light and shadow flickered—the holographic projection cast by a Weave Terminal.
Magitech carts and Weave Terminals were both wondrous new things, said not yet to have spread to the more remote places. But this was, after all, a town close to Xuanyao City, and advanced "magitech" always tended to be a little more plentiful here.
Kahn did not understand what secrets lay behind this magitech, but at least he no longer cried out in fright whenever he saw a magitech cart. He knew these inconceivable things had all been brought by the lord—who ought now to be called His Majesty—and that such things would only grow more numerous in the future, and most of them would prove greatly useful.
As useful as the water pumps by the river and the mechanical mill at the farm machinery station.
In the words of the scholar gentleman who often came to town to teach, "these are all good things."
Kahn shook his head, swung his somewhat aching arms, and set off toward his front door. He could already smell the wheat porridge, boiled just right, and the aroma of freshly baked bread. Those smells set his belly, shrunken by labor, to rumbling.
But his steps were halted by a strange sound that suddenly came down from the sky.
It was some kind of low humming, threaded through with a whistling rush of air or some other uncanny noise.
He had heard every kind of birdsong, the sound of wind and rain, but never anything like this.
The wrinkled farmer could not help but lift his head and look toward where the sound came from.
In the clear autumn sky there were no birds—but there was a machine forged of steel, cutting across the heavens with a low, droning hum.
"The Three Gods of Abundance..." The farmer's eyes went wide with shock, his face caught somewhere between terror and awe, or perhaps both, as he watched that "iron beast" cross the sky. His lips worked soundlessly, his knees trembling before he could stop them—but in the end he did not kneel before the strange thing. He guessed it must be another "new toy" made by the clever folk of the city. In days past, commoners had been required to kneel at the sight of "a mage lord's creation," for one could never tell whether it might be a dreadful golem or a synthesized monster. But the common folk of Cecil today need not kneel to such things.
"What in the world is that thing?!"
Kahn muttered to himself, watching the unimaginable machine gradually vanish beyond the horizon. He heard cries of alarm from the neighboring houses, and from the direction of his own kitchen came the sound of something falling to the floor. Those sounds reminded him that what he had just seen was no illusion.