Struggle in the Steam Age

"My house is quite close to here, and it only takes a little time to take a carriage." At the entrance of the public carriage station, Zhu Yan directly hired a rented carriage and drove to the edge of the city. It was completely dark at this time, but the street lamps on the side of the street illuminated the road brightly.

"I think we're almost there." After the carriage left the city for about five minutes, Zhu Yan looked at a street sign on the side of the road through the window of the carriage and said, "In another three or four minutes, I think we will be able to reach my door. gone."

At this time the moon had already risen, and after hearing Zhu Yan say that he was coming soon, Lawrence also looked out of the car window curiously, only to see that the carriage passed under a stone archway across the street, and then appeared outside the car window. There are neat rows of small two-story buildings, with some relatively tall three- to four-story buildings interspersed in the middle. Lawrence recognized hospitals and sports venues from the logos on these large buildings.

"This piece of land was opened up by my family bit by bit, and now the whole community is one of the most affluent satellite towns on the edge of New Kuaiji." After discovering that his guests were curious about everything around them, Zhu Yan used A slightly proud tone introduced, "Before this place was still some distance from the city. It's just that the speed of urban development has been greatly accelerated in the past few decades, so that now it is almost connected to the city—"

Just as Zhu Yan was introducing, the carriage stopped at the door of a small two-story building. After getting off the car, Lawrence first looked at Zhu Yan's house in front of him.

This house is in the same style as the houses on the whole street. It is a small two-story building with black tiles, powder walls, and horse-head walls. It looks like a traditional building in the south of Sinian. But after getting closer, Lawrence discovered that the windows of the room were not traditional window paper but glass. At the same time, the pillars that he thought were made of wood were only found to be reinforced concrete when he got closer.

"Maybe this house is a bit strange in your eyes." Zhu Yan said while opening the door. "However, these houses were built uniformly more than 20 years ago, because the traditional brick and wood structure rooms are too easy to catch fire and are not so safe. But in order to maintain certain traditions, we use the latest reinforced concrete to build in the traditional style house."

"We think it's pretty good." Lawrence said with a smile. After all, compared with the most material-saving cement matchbox built in many places after the birth of reinforced concrete, this kind of house with cultural characteristics is more in line with Lawrence's aesthetics.

After entering the room, there is a corridor separated by a screen, and the side of the screen on the left hand side of the corridor is a small living room. In the living room, there is a beige fabric sofa that looks a bit old, but it gives people a sense of comfort, and a wooden coffee table surrounded by the sofa that also looks old.

"These furniture are a bit old. In fact, my parents bought a new set of furniture and gave them to me directly." Zhu Yan, who guided Lawrence and the others to sit on the sofa, shrugged. shrug. "However, I personally feel that this is better than new furniture. Although it may not look so upscale, it can make people feel more at home."

"You're right, these furniture will naturally give people a very warm feeling after being used for a long time." Lawrence's words are not polite, for example, after he moved into a new house, he still used his university Four years of bedding and some daily necessities were brought into the new house for use.

After drinking some clear teas with the same brewing method and taste from the old continent to the new continent, and from the east coast of the new continent to the west coast, and eating some local specialties. They hurriedly cleared the coffee table and put the stone tablet that Safiel put on the wall as soon as they entered the door on the coffee table.

"What is written on it?" Zhu Yan frowned looking at the words on the stone tablet. "I've seen the writings of the Mauryan Empire, but they don't look like this."

"This is an ancient language of the Mauryan Empire called the Kaludi script, which disappeared more than 2,000 years ago." Lawrence found it from the knowledge bestowed on him by the God of Knowledge in his mind. Something related to the text in front of you. "However, it is different from the standard Kalludi script. When the group of extraordinary people used this ancient script, they further compiled it, making it hide the information to be expressed in the text like a password."

"Ah, it's troublesome now." Zhu Yan leaned back on the sofa and said. "It is true that some people in my family can obtain the secrets on this stele through certain magic props, but the price we pay will greatly reduce our gains this time."

Before getting the wealth, Zhu Yan thought that he could earn as much as he could, so he used the power of the family to help salvage the wealth. But spending a large amount after the spoils of this adventure is in your hands is extremely painful. After all, the reduction in expected income and taking money out of your own pocket are two concepts.

"I don't want to use your power for the time being." Lawrence looked at the text in front of him and said, "I know the Kalludi text, and it is easy to restore the situation before these texts were compiled through some simple means. "

After acquiring Champollion's talent in language and writing from Jianmu Space, Lawrence can be said to have reached a very high level in deciphering ancient texts. After observing these texts, he found that he might only need a few days. I can translate these things.

Lawrence thinks that this may be because the Kalludi language and the Maurya Empire itself belong to a dead language, and very few people know it. Add to that the horribly high illiteracy rate of the Mauryan Empire to this day. So those extraordinary people back then simply compiled it as insurance, and didn't use too complicated encryption methods.

"It would be great if this is the case." Zhu Yan said happily, because he knew that such things often had preparations to prevent prophecy magic from working, and it would be very expensive to forcibly crack them.

For the next three days, Lawrence devoted all his energy to deciphering the writing on the stele in Zhu Yan's study. And Safir was on the sidelines with the little puppet Nora to accompany him.

When Lawrence and the others got together to decipher the stele, Zhu Yan was also extremely busy. On the one hand, it was because he wanted to count and appraise the large amount of wealth that had been fished up from the sea before, in order to calculate the value of this batch of wealth as soon as possible.

On the other hand, Okita Sakura's previous training in that astral plane and the battle with the Skeleton Naga made her previous accumulation reach a limit. Let her have a good understanding of swordsmanship. After summarizing these reasons, Okita Sakura came back to rest for a night and then began to retreat and try to break through to become a full-scale swordsman.

So these two days Zhu Yan can be said to be physically and mentally exhausted. On the one hand, he was worried about his lover's breakthrough, on the other hand he had to check the salvaged wealth, and finally he was concerned about the progress of deciphering the content on the stone tablet.

To his surprise, on the afternoon of the third day after everyone returned to the city, when Zhu Yan dragged his tired body into the house after delivering the meal to Okita Sakura, he found Lawrence and his female companion coming from the study room. Ri came out and sat in the living room playing some sort of board game.

"I have good news for you." After seeing Zhu Yan walk into the door, Lawrence took out a notebook from his side and stood up. "I have translated the contents of this stele, which is really a big achievement."

"What? Is it true?" Zhu Yan, whose face was exhausted due to the tossing and tossing of the past few days, immediately revived. "Quick! Tell me what are the contents recorded on it?"