The winter was extremely cold. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

In the middle of winter in the Manoma region, the cold-season air currents from the Right Continent pass through the central current belt and are brought here by even greater forces of nature, eroding the vegetation and ground throughout the region.

The cold wind blew for a whole month, but there was still no sign of wanting to stop. The boiler factory on the west side of the city worked overtime, billowing black smoke rose and obscured the sky, making the world seem to have no dawn in the cold winter. Grey-skinned ironclad trains carrying black coal came more often than usual.

Old Rohm sat in the duty room, holding the hot water bottle in his arms tightly in his arms, and the heating supply was turned on to the maximum. He stared blankly at the white-gray mottled glass windows embedded in the copper walls, covered with ice, and he couldn't see the outside of the room at all.

Next to the window, there is a cryometer that shows the temperature inside 10 degrees Celsius and the outdoor temperature at -54 degrees Celsius.

"It's really not a human life, may the Holy Emperor hear our prayers and let this damn weather go to hell as soon as possible!" Old Rom cursed, and his hands shrank unconsciously.

Then the bright red light came on without warning, and it was not until there was a knock on the tin door that the elder Rohm knew that a train had entered the station.

The cold wind outside rattled the dilapidated sheds of the railway station. The bitter wind carried the ice slag as if it was about to cut people's cheeks.

Old Röhm's face was full of reluctance and 10,000 points of horror. If it weren't for being held up by a man as hard as a rock, he wouldn't want to come out of the duty room. But who would have thought that it would be almost nighttime, and an army would brave the minus 54 degrees Celsius weather to come to this dilapidated railway station. And without saying a word, he was dragged out by two people.

Surrounded by a group of giant-like soldiers, he shuddered and opened the iron door with three locks.

On the tracks was a huge, black train with no markings on it. Old Röhm had worked here for decades, but it was the first time he had seen such a huge train, four meters high, welded with hard iron sheets, like a black-scaled python moving forward on the surface, and the rails also let out an overwhelmed moan under it. Not far ahead, the front of the car was still spewing thick scorching steam, and the light of three giant headlights broke through the wind and snow and shot into the distance.

The first and last cars were full of soldiers, and the goods were kept tightly guarded in the middle of the trains. The soldiers were standing by the window looking at old Rohm. On the side of the unloading platform, the goods seemed to be some huge machinery, several layers of dark green rainproof cloth wrapped tightly in a haphazard manner, tightly fixed on the iron frame of the train through steel cables and nails, bulging high, as if to break several layers of rainproof cloth at any time, a total of three piles.

Walking into the platform, old Rohm lit up the gas lamps one by one. By the light, all the soldiers behind him were wearing thick military cotton clothes, except for the leader and the captain, the rest were also wearing masks like crows' pointed beaks, and the raised spectacle lenses on them were also covered with a layer of white frost, but it did not prevent the beast-like sharp gaze exposed inside. They carried muskets with swords of sparkling swords at their waists, and black rubber leather boots on the soles of their feet, covering their ankles and lower calves. The lead captain wore gold-rimmed glasses, and in addition to the sword at his waist, Old Rohm also saw a short fire system.

They are all the elites of the elite in the army, old Rohm muttered to himself in his heart, while taking out the password card and inserting it into the difference machine, according to their requirements, to eliminate the record of this train entering the station.

It's not a matter of once or twice encountering the army to receive equipment, but in old Rom's intuition, this time the level is definitely much higher than the previous times.

There was no sound on the entire platform except for the wind, and everyone was waiting for Old Rohm to leave after erasing the record, and then start unloading the goods.

Old Rohm, of course, knew about this, and he wanted to finish his work as soon as possible, and go back to the duty room to drink a few cheap sips of wine to warm up. But being stared at by hundreds of pairs of wolf-like eyes, in this cold winter and the temperature of minus 54 degrees, a layer of fine sweat oozed from his back.

It's really life-threatening. Old Rohm's heart trembled.

Finally, when he saw the differential machine spit out the password card, Old Rohm pulled it out, nodded to the leading officer, and immediately raised his feet to leave.

I don't know if it's because of the temperature, the iron nails that nailed the rainproof cloth to death suddenly broke at this moment, and the crisp sound of gold and iron percussion spread rapidly in the wind, and the rainproof cloth was immediately blown away by the fierce cold wind.

And almost at the same moment, the soldiers closest to Old Rohm immediately rioted all over their bodies, from the white matter of the brain to the information converted into electrical signals, transmitted through the nerves to the muscles and joints of various parts of the body, and moved behind him, as if synchronized with the sound of percussion. It was as if the soldier stood behind him when the windswept away the corner of the tarpaulin, and the scene below caught Old Rohm's eyes, and a knife had struck him in the back of the neck.

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Old Rohm woke up in the duty room. He was lying in a chair, the water bag in his hand had long since become cold, and the only sound in the duty room was the whirring of heating pipes and the mechanical brass bell ticking on the walls. The bronze bell shows that it is already 11 o'clock at night. There was no wind outside the window, and the cold winter wind finally subsided.

"Why am I here?" Old Rohm rubbed the back of his neck, which was still aching, and then picked up the wine bottle beside him and poured it hard, then picked up the gas lamp, turned off the heating valve, and hurried out of the duty room, but it was already pitch black on the other side of the platform, and the huge train parked there was long gone, and the iron door was locked, and the key was hanging from his waist.

The army had left.

"Hey, what the hell. ”

Old Rohm only felt a headache when he thought about it, but he only had a vague impression of what happened in the first few hours, he opened the door for the soldiers, and then erased the records on the difference machine according to the rules, and then 、、、 himself came back to the duty room and fell asleep?

He always felt as if something was missing, but he couldn't think of anything, and when he thought about it, his head was confused, as if it was about to explode, and the pain of his tarsal bones. But the alcohol did its job at the right time, and when he got home, he fell asleep, and when he got up the next morning, he had forgotten about it.

Until one day half a year later, it was already early summer.

It's still the same duty room, where the heating supply has become cold air, and outside the window are travelers coming and going.

Old Rohm was still sitting in that chair. The postman walked past and handed a newspaper through the window, he picked it up, unfolded it with one hand, and several important events were in large bold font:

"The current Holy Emperor Nico Freel has died, and the new Holy Emperor is Erro Astus. ”

"The Kingdom of Mano was officially renamed the Empire of St. Dorag. ”

"The king of the Empire of St. Dorag, Yatu Astus, has announced the abandonment of the Yuan calendar and the use of the holy calendar. This year, 1879 is the year 0 of the holy calendar. ”

、、、、、、

The Empire of St. Dorag?

Dorag?

Old Röhm looked at the mimeographed black letters on the newspaper and whispered these three words that seemed to have some strange magic.

Suddenly, old Rohm felt that the scenery in front of him had changed, and he seemed to have returned to the night half a year ago, when he took the password card, and when he turned around, he heard the sound of gold and iron, and then the rain cloth was blown away by the cold wind, and the soldier next to him was so fast that his body turned into an afterimage.

Under the rainproof cloth, old Rohm saw a huge claw covered with fine scales like black iron, which reflected the glimmer under the gas lamp, like a fine work of art, lying quietly on the iron frame of the train、、、、、、