The sculptures that stand quietly in the darkness were left behind by the earliest builders of the Twilight City, and when they finally stabilized the urban structure inside the barrier and were able to control the opening and closing of the barrier, the group of people who had been divided into the city left these things outside the gate. Now, 2,000 years later, the sculptures have been rebuilt and replaced countless times, but they are still 100 percent the way they were, standing in the darkness, reminding the survivors of the Twilight City of everything that had passed them - the world beyond the barrier.

There are many versions of these sculptures in circulation, but even if he doesn't know them, Hao Ren can see a lot from the different faces of the sculptures. Each of these statues is said to be a real person, the last of the ancestors to fall outside the gate when the twilight barrier was raised, and Wendell knows the story of these sculptures well.

So in Wendell's description of the sculptures, the group stepped through the door of the halo.

Hao Ren felt as if he had passed through a wall of wind, and the shield of light that sheltered the entire city was actually only a thin layer, and he could barely feel the thickness of the thing when he walked over. The moment he passed through the barrier, he felt the scorching breath and harmful radiation that filled the air completely shut out, and a not-so-smelling smell of smoke and dust came to his face.

He looked up and saw that the entrance to the city was even more desolate and dilapidated than he had imagined, and it was an important gate to the shelter, but there was not even a decent sentry in sight, and it was rarely inhabited. Everywhere you look, there are dilapidated and tall gray-black buildings. Two crooked towers stand symmetrically on either side, and the towers' facades are mottled and peeling. The jagged metal structure inside was revealed, and a wide ramp sloping upwards stretched out in front of the eyes. On both sides of the ramp are discarded facilities and sparsely lit buildings, and metal pipes and steel cables crisscross the buildings like spider webs, and smoke and dust swirl between these "cobwebs", making it look foggy.

As the eye follows the slope upward, you can see that the Twilight City is piled up like a spiraling mound, and the layers of buildings are piled up indefinitely, as if the buildings were so crowded that the entire city's terrain is swollen. Between the stacked buildings, clouds of white smoke could be seen rising from time to time. Looming white smoke, there was a huge mechanism in operation, and the rumbling sound echoed throughout the city, monotonous and irritating.

"That's the big boiler," Wendell couldn't help but smile on his face after returning to his hometown, although he embarked on a journey to find light with a heart that there was no return, but human feelings are unavoidable after all, and his heart was full of joy to be back here again, "There is the largest steam boiler there, and half of the power of the whole city depends on a few large boilers." ”

"Steam boilers?" Hao Ren suddenly reacted at this time. "You're steam-powered?"

"Yes, great steam technology," Wendell exclaimed, "it is said that it was originally created by the giants of ancient times. Syrtel, the Lord of Flames, is the master of all the power of steam, but when the gods fall and the heavens and earth collapse. The power of steam was scattered throughout the world, and gradually it became something that could be controlled by humans. I used to have a workshop as well. I'm good at making gear traps - but the workshop closed a long time ago. ”

Hao Ren sighed and looked around. He noticed that even though the entrance was desolate and dilapidated. But it was not without people, and many figures came out of the dilapidated buildings that looked like they were a hundred years old. The men, dressed in tattered clothes, scruffy and strange-looking, watched in amazement as someone came in from outside the city, wandering far away, and finally someone recognized Wendell as a "seeker of light", and the man let out an exclamation, turned and ran away.

There were a few other people who ran away with him.

"Leave these people alone," Wendell said as he walked forward on his own, "they're the 'miners' on the edge of the city, and they're a little neurotic in their constant exposure to the radiation outside. They deserve respect, but they still can't fit into the society of the inner district, so they all gather here. ”

A "miner", as the name suggests, is a person who is responsible for gathering resources. But in the twilight capital, the work of the miners means paying an even heavier price.

They're in charge of going outside the city to gather resources -- outside the twilight barrier.

These men set off every day in heavy protective gear and rode a steam locomotive out of the city through another exit to the quarries in the darkness. The quarry has low-power guards, but they are no match for the powerful twilight barriers: the miners are exposed to deadly magical radiation and toxic gases for a long time. These terrible and harmful environments continued to erode their bodies and spirits, eventually causing them to be described as withered and sane, which became what Hao Ren saw. The Steam Council provided the families of these miners with the best rations and housing in the city, but the miners themselves ......

Their blood is poisonous, their hair and nails are poisonous, and even their breath is poisonous - they can only live in the outer rim zone.

However, in order to allow their families and descendants to enjoy a privileged living environment, there are still many people who volunteer to come to the outer edge of the city to become miners. Of course, there are also people who are involuntary, and that is the criminals who have been exiled here, but they usually can't come out and show their faces.

Wendell left the avenue with Hao Ren and his party, and walked into an alley hidden in the shadow of the building. Hao Ren thought that the other party was deliberately avoiding something: "Are you hiding from the people of the Steam Council?" Actually, we're just not interested in that council, and we don't plan to hide from them......"

"I didn't hide from them," Wendell shook his head helplessly, "but to get through this gate to the inner city level, you have to take this way." The wide road was in disrepair, and since the Lightseeker team had been reduced, it had been almost abandoned, and the other roads were more difficult to follow. I'm going to take you to an old friend, the keeper of the mine locomotives, who can take us to the inner layers of the city, where I can get in touch with the Lightseeker's headquarters. ”

Hao Ren nodded and said no more, just silently followed Wendell, walking towards the dark and dreary squalid buildings like dormant steel monsters, while curiously observing this strange closed city along the way.

Clearly, the survivors of this world did not bring civilization to a standstill after Ragnarok, and despite the bizarre path of development and the deformed and twisted cities within the barriers, their society continued to thrive. Two thousand years ago, the humans of Midgard were the test subjects and playthings of the Norse gods, and they lived a primitive and brutal life like other humans of the same period, but now, two thousand years later, they have built a mechanical and steam-powered steel city within the twilight barrier - Galadrow is amazed.

In this case, their tech tree is still developing!

Wendell led the group along the trail as they zigzagged their way through many old buildings that looked like they were abandoned, but there were still occasional noises inside, and judging by the slope of the road beneath his feet, Hao Ren thought he was heading towards higher ground.

Eventually, they arrived at an open place.

It is a massive steel platform, supported by staggering pillars, built entirely in the air above several tall buildings, with several parallel steel rails extending from the edge of the platform. One end of the rails stretched straight to the distant twilight barrier, passing through the halo gate on the barrier, and disappearing into the darkness: they were clearly leading to the mines, and the other end of the rails followed the city's topography upwards to the top of the cone-shaped city.

It's a large artery.

When Hao Ren and his party arrived at the platform, they saw what Wendell called a "steam locomotive".

They were two bulky but rugged mechanical monsters, larger than any train Hao Ren could remember (including the old steam locomotives he had seen in the movies), the cylindrical locomotive towing sections covered with thick pipes and rivets, the dark steel machines looking extra thick and heavy, and behind the powerful traction noses, several dirty carriages were dragged.

Many men in greasy overalls were busy around the two locomotives, grease them, align the gears, tighten the valves, and write the sacred runi script on the front of the locomotive in white paint to bless the steel body to return safely in the darkness outside the twilight barrier. A large number of miners were waiting for their ride in the back carriages, wearing heavy protective suits, their dirty clothes with some kind of metal soft wire inlaid with runi characters, and each miner had an ugly spherical helmet around his waist, made of leather and metal, connected by two tubes and clothes.

These heavy hazmat suits are slightly similar to those worn by Wendell, but are noticeably more coarse and clumsy, and despite their heavy appearance, their effect is rather limited. While the Lightseeker's equipment and amulets allow the wearer to cross the ruins of the Nine Kingdoms, the miner's protective suit and helmet will only allow them to survive the radiation for ten hours—beyond which time they will have to come back to replace certain key components and recharge the rune.

Therefore, the most important lesson that every miner should learn before his first job is that he must catch the steam locomotive returning in time. (To be continued.) )