There's a big problem with dreams in this world.

"How long has the train been running?" Putting away her mask, Lu Qing turned to look at Ling Dao.

"About two and a half hours," Ling said, floating beside Lu Qing and flashing.

“That means we still have a long way to go to reach our destination,” Lu Qing couldn’t help but say after hearing Ling’s words.

The train would have to wait until noon tomorrow to reach the Steel City, a full ten hours or so, while she had only been in Queen Minasha's memory world for two hours.

“Then let’s test the effect of the Thorn Mask.” Lu Qing said, standing up from the ground and putting on the Thorn Mask.

A pale gray mist enveloped her body, and after a short while, her body disappeared into the train carriage.

"Lu, Lu Qing?" Ling was startled by Lu Qing's sudden disappearance, but fortunately, she could still sense Lu Qing's current location.

"I'm here." Lu Qing waved to Ling. She looked at her palm and saw that it was shrouded in a light gray mist. It seemed that only she could see it, and no one else could see her from her current position.

If it's just about invisibility, the mental energy consumed by the Thorn Mask is almost negligible, but Lu Qing can sense that the mask's abilities are not limited to invisibility.

for example.......

With a thought, Lu Qing's body gradually turned into a light gray mist, floating lightly towards the engine room below the train.

Lu Qing had always had a question: when a person jumps into a vehicle while it is traveling at high speed and their legs leave the vehicle, will they detach from the vehicle and collide with the wall behind it?

Later, during a physics class, the physics teacher answered the question for her, but at the same time, new questions arose.

If a person were to fly in place inside a train, would they collide with the train due to its high speed? If someone smokes inside a high-speed train, would the emitted gas be pushed back by the train's movement?

These bizarre questions are hard to answer online, but regardless of the final answer, when Lu Qing turned into a mist-like gas inside the train, she found that she was not pushed backward by the train's high speed.

Perhaps she didn't turn into gas at all, but into another special kind of object. She spread her whole body into the rapidly moving engine room, and could clearly sense the mechanical activity inside the engine room. Gently passing over the gears, Lu Qing floated back into the carriage at the front of the train.

As her body gradually transitioned from nothingness to reality, Lu Qing removed the Thornman mask, refilled the furnace in the train's engine room with fuel, and then lay down on a chair in one of the train's carriages to rest.

Anyway, there was no one else on the train besides her and Ling, so no one would criticize her even if she occupied several seats by herself. The mental energy consumed by her body turning into mist was much more than she had imagined, and she needed to rest.

There's nothing else to do during this time, so let's just patiently wait until we reach our destination.

........

"Rumble..."

Inside the pitch-black tunnel, the roar of machinery gradually came from afar, and a pale yellow halo lit up from the depths of the tunnel, then gradually moved forward.

The light spots in their field of vision grew larger, and the sound of the engine grew closer, causing some animals living in the darkness to become somewhat impatient.

"squeak......."

A piercing screech of brakes sounded, and the train, which had been roaring continuously, slowly came to a stop. Lu Qing opened the train's metal door, her right leg, clad in a leather boot, gently stepping onto the hard stone surface.

"Is the Steel City just ahead?" Lu Qing said, looking at the environment inside the dark tunnel.

“It’s not far from the city. Although no animal in the Elf Forest knows what the interior of the Steel City looks like, we do know its location,” said the spirit, radiating a pale blue light, following behind Lu Qing.

"A mysterious steel city." Hearing Ling's words, Lu Qing couldn't help but feel a little curious about the steel city.

Will the city, built entirely of steel and powered by the element of fire, be what she imagined?

Filled with curiosity, Lu Qing and Ling walked towards the tunnel. After a while, they saw a light ahead and quickened their pace. In their sight, they saw some residents dressed in shabby clothes.

They looked malnourished, thin and frail, as if a gust of wind could blow them to the ground. The light that Lu Qing saw was the campfire that these people had lit around the entrance of the tunnel.

It was called a campfire, but it was actually a grill made by collecting garbage in metal buckets and lighting it. They were probably poor people or homeless people from the steel city, otherwise they wouldn't be resting in this tunnel.

Lu Qing stopped in her tracks. She secretly observed the appearance of these people, but after thinking for a moment, she decided not to communicate with them. Instead, she quietly hid in the shadows and walked past them.

After leaving the tunnel, they were greeted by a haphazard network of steel streets, seemingly unmanaged, with all sorts of messy private buildings occupying both the sky and the ground.

One after another, steel streetlights stood on the ground, their crimson flames illuminating the dark underground city. In those flames, Lu Qing seemed to sense a special power.

"The concentration of void energy here is so low," Ling exclaimed in amazement after sensing the concentration of void energy in the air.

"Those humans really did isolate the power of the void from the outside; the flame in that streetlight is the power of the fire element!"

"You mean all these streetlights are like that?" Lu Qing looked at Ling Dao with some surprise. In the scene she could see at the moment, there were more than a dozen of these streetlights that were releasing flames, not to mention the places she couldn't see.

Have the humans in the Steel City truly mastered the power of fire, enabling them to use it for illumination?

Lu Qing and Ling walked into the interior of the steel city. The chaotic and disorderly layout came into view. It seemed that in order to make better use of the space, there was a complex road system both above and below. However, they had to stop after walking for less than five minutes.

"It's too chaotic," Lu Qing said, frowning.

------------

Chapter 598: An Unexpected Encounter with an Acquaintance

The interior of the Steel City was completely different from what Lu Qing had imagined before she came. It was narrow, crowded, dimly lit, and had a rusty smell that was always in the air.

This place is like an iron cage that humans built for survival; they lock themselves in here and never take another step out into the outside world.

"Boom boom boom."

A loud metallic scraping sound rang out, as if it were time to start work, and the machinery in various factories throughout the steel city began to operate.

Lu Qing had no intention of exploring these factories. She and Ling continued walking into the interior of the steel city. As they went further, the buildings on both sides of the street became more lively.

Lu Qing took off her rather out-of-place festival attire and draped her nimble cloak over herself to cover her long, silvery-white hair. At the same time, she had Ling hide under her cloak.

Some residents of the steel city awoke from their sleep, emerged from their cramped rooms, and looked with curiosity at Lu Qing, who was dressed neatly and carried a large number of weapons.

Of course, they only looked at her; no one dared to approach Lu Qing and speak to her. In the steel city, people's hearts were as closed as steel.

They have their own jobs, but these jobs are very cheap. They work from dawn till dusk every day, and they can barely make ends meet. But at least, this is much better than those homeless people who have nowhere to go.

Without wasting too much time on Lu Qing, the men lowered their heads and hurried toward the factory.

Lu Qing glanced at the departing figures, shook her head, and dismissed the idea of ​​asking about their situation.

She now needs to gather some information, at least to gain a basic understanding of this city built of steel.

As for how to obtain information, there are many ways. Lu Qing looked around and then came to a boy who was squatting on the ground playing with pebbles.

“If you put them like that, all the stones will collapse,” Lu Qing said after seeing the boy holding a pebble and trying to place it on top of the pile of stones.

The boy glanced at Lu Qing, stood up abruptly, and ran off into the distance without looking back.

"Uh, it failed." Lu Qing looked at the little boy who had left and scratched her cheek with her finger, feeling rather embarrassed.

She picked up the pebbles the boy had dropped and carefully placed them on top of the stone tower he had left behind.

With a sound of pebbles colliding, the stone tower the boy had built collapsed, as expected. There was nothing that could be done about it, since the boy had made a mistake from the very beginning. Without a proper foundation, how tall could it possibly be?

Speaking of which, it was only at this moment that Lu Qing remembered something. If she wasn't mistaken, she was currently experiencing the backlash from the lucky coin, and her luck was going to decline.

Perhaps that's why the boy ran away as soon as he saw her?

But if luck really has run out, why didn't anything unfortunate happen during the train's journey before, like the engine suddenly malfunctioning?

There are two possibilities: one is that the luck coin doesn't reduce luck by much, and the other is that the luck coin's effect of reducing luck may be instantaneous.

When she encounters a potentially crucial event, her luck is suddenly reduced, resulting in a backlash.

Lu Qing hoped it was the first scenario; if it were the second, she'd be in big trouble. She believed everyone had experienced something like that, and with a bit of luck, the outcome could be completely different.

Suddenly, a series of chaotic footsteps sounded. Lu Qing looked in the direction of the sound and saw a group of soldiers wearing steel armor and carrying brass steam rifles coming onto the street.

After observing carefully for a while, Lu Qing realized that their target did not seem to be her, but a building next to the street.

One of them kicked open the door of the building, and the rest of them rushed into the house with him, each holding a steam rifle.

"Hands up! Someone reported you for having contraband here!" Lu Qing, with her excellent hearing, heard what the other person was saying in the room.

"What are the contraband items?" Lu Qing wondered curiously. With the [Scent Concealment] skill provided by the Florentine Eagle Ezio card, she quietly crept up to the side of the building without attracting anyone's attention.

"I...I don't have any contraband here, it's all a frame-up!" a man's voice came from the room.

"Whether there are contraband items or not is not up to you to decide. Search them!" the man, who seemed to be the captain, said in a cold tone.

As soon as he finished speaking, the remaining soldiers began searching the room. After a short while, the captain's voice rang out again: "Heh, no contraband? Then what's this?"

"I...I..." The man was speechless. Just as Lu Qing was wondering what the contraband was, she suddenly sensed an aura of void power spreading through the room.

"I was forced into this! Why did you force me?!" The man's distorted voice echoed in the room, along with the captain's roar.

"Quick, he's gone mad! Fire!!"

"Bang bang bang!!"

The loud sound of a steam rifle reached my ears, and less than two minutes later, the noise in the room ceased.

"Those weapons also contain the power of fire elements!" Ling, who was hiding under Lu Qing's cloak, seemed to sense something and quickly said.

"Clean up his body and throw it into the crematorium," the captain ordered his soldiers.

"Yes!"

Hearing the sound of something being dragged, like a huge object, coming from inside the room, Lu Qing roughly deduced what was happening inside.

The man who possessed the contraband must have used the power of the void to transform into some kind of powerful monster, and the soldiers killed the transformed man with steam rifles imbued with fire elemental power.

Otherwise, it would be difficult to harm creatures contaminated by the void with ordinary steam rifles.

However, Lu Qing was still curious about what the contraband was. She waited patiently for a while, and soon saw one of the soldiers come out of the room carrying an iron box.

To Lu Qing's surprise, the items in the iron box emitted a deep blue light, typical of props!

This further solidified Lu Qing's determination to take that thing. With that thought, she suddenly sprang up from the shadows and grabbed the iron box before anyone could react.

"Who goes there!?" The squad leader reacted quickly, but by the time he raised his steam rifle, Lu Qing had already disappeared from their sight.

A short while later, Lu Qing appeared in a dark alley, her hood slowly slipping down to reveal her long, silvery-white hair.

Before Lu Qing could open the box to check the item's attributes, a somewhat familiar female voice rang out from behind her.

"May I ask who you are, Princess?"

(End of this chapter)

------------

Chapter 599: The Red Light District

"You are... Eileen?" Lu Qing turned around, looking at the familiar figure in front of her with some confusion.

"Is it really you?" Eileen looked at Lu Qing with surprise, never expecting that the princess who had been missing for fifty years would suddenly appear in the Steel City.