Leo and the others repacked their belongings on the ground, and Jason picked up the last remaining backpack and walked along the path between the wheat fields towards the place where the smoke was coming from in the distance.

The trails are a bit muddy, but compared to the slippery ground in the Black Forest, it's good enough to walk on them.

While walking, Leo and Jason are also surprised by the wheat fields that cannot be seen on the side of the road.

Because compared to the primeval forest scene of barren grass and woods outside the eastern side of the Black Forest, which they had seen before, the sight on the western side was completely unexpected for them.

If the wheat field was planted less than 50 meters outside the Black Forest, is this still the Black Forest? This is the idea that came to the minds of the two at the same time.

Jason, who couldn't hide his words, couldn't help but express his question, and Nelson, who happened to have read the history of the French Empire, was able to answer this doubt.

As they can see, unlike the eastern side of the Black Forest, which is still in a relatively pristine state of forest, all the land on the western side of the Black Forest has been exploited to the extreme.

The main reason for this is because of the topography, the eastern side of the Black Forest is mostly hilly and mountainous, and the land is not suitable for development into farmland, while the western side is a complete large plain terrain, from the southernmost part of the Black Forest to the northern border of the French Empire, the Veronte River, the whole land is dominated by plains.

Although the French Empire has always regarded itself as an ancient empire with a heritage of more than 2,000 years, in fact, the French Empire has experienced thirteen royal family changes, which is now recognized by Veron historians as the Thirteenth Dynasty of France.

Of these thirteen dynasties, seven have been stationed in the four great plains on the western side of the Black Forest, and their capitals are also based in León, located in the heart of the great plains, which historians call the Seven Dynasties of León, also known as the Western French Dynasty.

At the end of the Seventh Dynasty, a large-scale slave revolt broke out, a gladiator-turned-slave not only led slaves, serfs, and freedmen to overthrow the Frankish dynasty at that time, but also almost killed the Farland royal family, and the last of the descendants of the Farran royal family was taken by loyal knights to the tribe of the Beirut people in the snowy winter region north of the continent of Vilon.

More than a decade later, the adult descendants of the Francois led the Beirut people across the Vinovian Mountains to the eastern side of the Black Forest, where it took several years to subdue the hill tribes. After that, he commanded an army of more than 100,000 people, risked crossing the Black Forest from the Vilente River, which runs through the Black Forest, bypassing the dangerous fortress at the southern end of the Vilun Continent, and directly broke into the center of the slave dynasty, completely disintegrating this slave dynasty that had been entrenched on the west side of the Vilun continent for more than ten years in less than a month.

The new Emperor of the French Empire felt that the previous dynasty would be overthrown by slaves so easily, because they had lived in such a privileged environment as the Virensi continent for a long time, and their fighting spirit had been corroded by their long-term comfortable life, so after he ascended the throne, the first thing he did was to move the capital from Leon to Winter Rin City under the Vinovi Mountains in the northern part of the Eastern Continent.

As the capital of the French Empire moved to the city of Dongrin on the eastern continent, historians also habitually referred to the subsequent dynasties as the Six Winters Dynasties, or the Eastern Franconian Dynasty.

However, unlike historians, the anthropological school that has emerged in the last hundred years or so prefers to call the French dynasty an agrarian dynasty, while the eastern French dynasty is called a knightly dynasty.

Because throughout the period of the seven dynasties in the west, the main national policy of the French Empire was to reclaim land and cut down mountains to create fields.

Most of the six dynasties in the east were related to war, and the history of the French Empire once had 300 knights, this period is called the heyday of the Velen Knights, and this period is in the period of the Eastern French Dynasty.

It is precisely because of the difference in national policies that the use and development of land during the two dynasties were also different.

The Eastern Dynasty preferred to keep the terrain as it was, building forts and castles in dangerous places to defend against possible enemies, while the plains were used by them to domesticate horses rather than to be cultivated for farmland.

On the other hand, the Western Dynasty turned all the land that could be cultivated into farmland, and they developed the land to the extreme, even daring to cut down all the trees near the Black Forest and plant wheat and other crops on the land, simply because the land there was so fertile that it could grow well with anything.

In addition, although the French Empire has never recognized it, some historians have found that during the Western Dynasty, the then French Emperor sacrificed a large number of slaves' lives to the ancient creatures in the Black Forest every year in order to be able to reclaim the land outside the Black Forest, which was the main reason for the slave revolt later.

By the time Nelson explained why the land on the western side of the Black Forest had been so thoroughly cultivated, the group had already reached the town where smoke rose in the distance.

After entering this slate town, the three of them found a hotel to freshen up, change their clothes, and then found a small restaurant in the town and had a bite to eat.

While eating in the tavern, they heard some of the people in the surrounding town talking about a young man named Albon, who mentioned that Albon seemed to have run into the Black Forest not long ago, and that he thought that Albon must be dead because of the thick fog of the Black Forest.

When people here talk about Albon's death, they have two diametrically opposed attitudes.

One is the attitude of the elderly, who show regret and regret on the surface, but the tone of the words is not difficult to hear that they seem to be happy. On the other hand, there are young people who are really sad about Albon's death, and they don't want to believe that Albon is dead, and they all think that Albon should leave the town and go to a big city such as León.

The young man of Albon reminded the three of them of the poor man they had met in the Black Forest, who had been poisoned, and although they knew the end of the young man, they had no intention of saying it.

"What is the best way to get to Lanxi?" asked the restaurateur as he checked out.

"If you are not in a hurry and have no money, you can go to the intersection to take a carriage, every day at eight o'clock in the morning in the town, there are six carriages to send the people from the town to Lanxi, about in the afternoon. The restaurateur said while looking for change: "If you are in a hurry and have some money on you, you can make a steam train from the quarry, and from six o'clock in the morning, every two hours there will be another steam train from the quarry to Lan Xi to transport stones, and the train will have a carriage dedicated to passenger transport, but it will cost much more than taking a horse-drawn carriage." ”

"Thank you. Nelson thanked him, took the change, and left the restaurant with Leo, heading for the train platform that the quarry had built in town.

After arriving at the platform, I was lucky, just sat on the chair for a short while, and the train came from the direction of the quarry.

Compared to Nelson and Jason, who had already seen and ridden the steam train, it was the first time Leo had seen this kind of mechanical artifact that could only be seen in Old Earth books or movies. Perhaps Leo's body had ridden a steam train before, but this memory did not seem to have been inherited by Leo.

In Leo's opinion, the steam train that was slowly driving into the platform was definitely a big monster, although the size could not be compared with those spaceships of the Earth Alliance, but the sense of heaviness caused by the volume, the sense of coercion that slowly approached in the steam, was stronger than those spaceships. Even when the locomotive is close to his position, he has the illusion that the train will rush out of the tracks and hit him, and because of this illusion, he also has a strong desire to attack.

Compared with the steam locomotive recorded in the movies of the old earth that Leo watched, this steam locomotive is huge at the moment, Leo estimated a little, the height of the steam locomotive is about ten meters, the width is also ten meters, and the length is more than thirty meters. Next to each cylinder there are two separate outlets, which are constantly emitting steam, and soon the small platform is completely submerged.

Perhaps in order to be able to withstand such a heavy train crush, the rails of this world are also different from the train tracks of the old earth, each of which is at least fifty centimeters wide and forty centimeters thick, and there are not only two, but four.

As a doctor, Nelson is very knowledgeable and knows a lot of things, but when it comes to steam trains, he unexpectedly loses to Jason.

Although Jason's brain is a bit stupid, he has an extraordinary memory for the things he likes, so as a fan of steam trains, he can easily say that the models, specifications, and other data of every type of train in the world today seem extremely boring to others.

As a burst of steam came out of the exhaust pipe, covering the entire small station, the train stopped.

At this time, Jason was like a child who saw a toy, turning around the huge locomotive several times, and reaching out to touch it here and there, knocking there, if it wasn't for the platform staff saying that the train was going to leave, maybe he would have climbed under the car and touched the chassis of the train with his own hands.

After the attendant on the car guided the three of them to the assigned seats in the rear bus, Jason changed his previous taciturnity, as if he had changed as a different person, and couldn't wait to introduce the train to Leo and Nelson.

Under Jason's introduction, Leo learned that the model of the giant locomotive in front of him was the Maris Titan VII locomotive, and the locomotive was made by the Maris Kingdom Academy of Sciences in the eastern Minsk continent for freight transportation.

Because the Maris Kingdom has a large number of mineral deposits, but in the past, due to the problem of transportation, these deposits were difficult to develop, and later the Maris Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Mechanical Engineering created a giant locomotive specifically for the transportation of minerals, that is, the Titan series locomotive.

The Titan VII locomotive they have built now is the best locomotive of this kind, and its power allows it to tow at least 50 and up to 90 carriages full of various goods, so the vast majority of freight locomotives in various countries are now using Titan locomotives.

However, this kind of locomotive is not without shortcomings, the biggest disadvantage is that there must be special rails, and the rails need to be laid four, which greatly increases the operating cost.

In addition, the speed of this type of train is also an issue, according to the test, even if it is an empty train, the speed of the Titan locomotive is a little slower than other common locomotives, and if it is hung on the carriage, the speed will be reduced to only half or even less than that of ordinary trains.

But even so, the speed of this type of train is still much faster than that of horse-drawn carriages, and some people in Slate Town who are in a hurry to go to Lanxi to run errands will also choose to take the train, but the price of the ticket is prohibitive for many people.

For example, the carriage in which Leo and his wife were in was originally intended for the managers of the various floors of the quarry, with sofas, a bar and a restaurant, and a few small rooms dedicated to resting, which could be considered a high-class carriage in other places. Therefore, the ticket here is also very expensive, costing fifty odds, which is about the cost of ten days of meals for a family of four, which is definitely not a price that the residents of Slate Town can accept.

However, the person in charge of managing the train was a very business-minded man, and he specialized in hanging a wagon car at the end of the train to convert it into a passenger car.

He managed to separate the carriage with a layer of planks and converted it into two levels, and there were no seats, and the ticket was counted on a per capita basis, and each person needed only one bia to get on the train until it was full. And this carriage will not be counted in the freight expenditure, that is, how many people can be transported in this carriage in one trip, how much additional income he can get.

So, there was this scene that Leo saw through the window now, only to see more than 200 people being stuffed into the back carriage by the station staff, he didn't even need to enter the carriage, he could feel the suffocation of the crowd there, which made him can't help but recall the painful memories when tens of thousands of people were forced into a small troop carrier when he retreated from the Great War.

Just when Leo was touched by the situation of the carriage behind him, a whistle sounded in front of him, the carriage vibrated slightly, and made a burst of creaking sound, slowly drove away from the platform, and gradually increased the speed until it entered a relatively stable and uniform speed state.

The train leaving Slate Town did not immediately go west, the trailer full of stone was extremely heavy, and even the Titan locomotive wanted to drag the more than seventy carriages up the undulating hills, it was very difficult, so it could only stick to the wheat fields, detour along the gentle strip at the edge of the hilly terrain, and move westward little by little.

One of the detours runs almost parallel to the Black Forest, less than twenty meters between the two, and Leo, sitting by the window, watches the fog-shrouded Black Forest move rapidly in front of him.

I don't know if it's an illusion, but he vaguely felt that the unknown being who had been looking at him before appeared in the thick fog again, and seemed to be watching him too, and moving with the train. The feeling didn't disappear until the train passed through the section, turned a corner, and disappeared into an arched hill.