Under the blinding sunlight, yellow sands swirled across the vast desert. A steam-belching locomotive barreled down the tracks, dragging a long line of cars behind it toward the horizon at the far end of the railway.
Near the front of the train, inside one of the luxurious passenger compartments, Vania sat quietly in her white nun’s habit. Eyes closed, she was deep in prayer, praying silently for a future shrouded in uncertainty.
Suddenly, her body tensed slightly. She slowly opened her eyes, having just received a familiar voice from the heart. She murmured softly to herself.
“Miss Dorothea… wants me to look out the window?”
Muttering, Vania turned her head to look out the window to her right. In the distance, on a small rocky hill, she noticed a tiny flash of light. Activating her ability to focus her vision, she was able to make out the details of the glint.
“That person over there… just looks like a regular local. He’s holding a telescope and watching the train, but doesn’t appear to be doing anything suspicious. His clothes are a bit shabby too… no different from the North Ufigan commoners living outside the foreign quarters in Kankdal…”
After identifying the source of the flash, Vania kept watching the local man observing the train until the train moved out of view. The man never made a move.
“No suspicious behavior… looks like he really is just a curious local,” she thought, closing her eyes again.
She conveyed this information to Dorothy—who was on the same train—by offering a prayer to Aka, relaying what she had observed.
… “Just a local with a telescope watching the train?”
Dorothy mused after receiving Vania’s message. She had initially thought it was a sniper taking aim with a scope—the glint coming from a sniper lens. But it turned out to be a plain old telescope.
“So he was just watching the train from afar without making a move… doesn’t seem hostile. Maybe I overthought it. But a telescope? Those are pretty expensive these days. North Ufiga’s economy isn’t anywhere near the level of the mainland. Could someone dressed like a local really afford one?”
Having spent several days in Kankdal, Dorothy was familiar with the general economic conditions of the local people.
Outside of the foreign district, most of Kankdal was essentially a slum, packed with destitute North Ufigan residents doing the hardest, dirtiest jobs. They served as cheap labor for the massive port that connected the mainland to North Ufiga. Their greatest aspiration was to land a job in the foreigner district waiting hand and foot on colonial masters.
“Someone from that group using a telescope?”
Dorothy considered. Though the world had reached the industrial age, it hadn’t yet seen a second industrial revolution. Many goods were still handcrafted. Telescopes, for instance, were typically made in artisanal workshops—luxuries for the average person. They weren’t strictly unaffordable, but for people barely scraping by, a telescope was a completely unnecessary purchase. They were mainly used for things like exploration, sailing, or war.
So seeing a seemingly ordinary local with such an expensive item did raise some suspicion. But Dorothy reasoned it could’ve just been obtained by chance and used on a whim when he spotted a passing train.
“Normally, I might ignore a small detail like this… but given our current diplomatic situation, I’d better err on the side of caution…”
With that thought, Dorothy relayed a message back to Vania, asking her to inform her guards to increase their vigilance on both sides of the train. If anything suspicious occurred, she was to report it immediately via the Literary Sea Logbook. In emergencies, she was to pray to Aka.
After sending the message, Dorothy recalled the bird corpse marionette flying overhead, then lay down on her bunk to take a nap.
Some time later, gently rocked by the train’s motion, she slowly opened her eyes. Rubbing her head and sitting up, she looked outside—nothing had changed. The same bleak and lifeless landscape rolled past.
After confirming from her pocket watch that she had napped for over two hours, she stretched, rubbed her eyes, and returned to the seat by the window. She opened the Literary Sea Logbook to check Vania’s page for updates—and sure enough, found a message written there.
“Miss Dorothea, I’ve done as you asked and told the guards assigned to me to be more attentive to the surroundings. At the time I’m writing this, it’s about 3 PM. So far, none of us have discovered anything out of the ordinary.
“That said, while there’s nothing major, there are a few small points of concern. For example, the local man watching us before wasn’t the only one. Since then, two or three others have appeared. Just like before, they’re observing us from a distance with telescopes—some alone, some in pairs. All are dressed like locals. One even had a pocket watch and kept checking it while observing the train, which does seem a little suspicious.
“My guards are keeping a close eye on them, ready in case of any sudden movement. But so far, like before, none of them have made a move. They just stand and watch us from afar, and make no attempt to follow once the train has passed. So we haven’t taken any further action.”
The words from Vania appeared on the pages of the Literary Sea Logbook , and Dorothy studied them carefully, momentarily falling into deep thought.
“So there really is something going on. These people secretly observing the train aren’t just a one-off—every so often, one or two more pop up. This clearly isn’t just idle curiosity after running into the train by chance. This is deliberate surveillance. And not just by one person—this is a coordinated group…”
Resting her chin on her hand, Dorothy mused silently. What she most wanted to know now was what exactly this group was trying to achieve.
“Whatever they’re up to, it’s definitely not ‘watching trains for fun.’ They’re not children. But if they mean harm, they’ve shown no signs of taking action—just quietly watching, without any hostile behavior.”
Despite how suspicious the group seemed, Dorothy couldn’t justify making a move against them just for that. The train was in constant motion, and she had no time or means to track them down and figure out what they were planning. But ignoring them entirely made her uneasy.
“Tch… thinking it through carefully—why are these people observing the train every few kilometers? What exactly do they want? If they’re trying to gather intelligence on the envoy’s group, they’re too far away. At that distance, all they can see is a train in motion, not anything inside the carriages. No way they’re collecting intel.
“Unless they’ve got some mystical ability or artifact I don’t know about, something that lets them spy on the inside from afar. But if they really had that kind of power or item… then it’s a bit too convenient that so many of them have it. Why would every observer spaced along the line have access to such tools?
“Or maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe they don’t have any mystical power. Maybe the information they want is simple—something they can determine just by watching from afar. Maybe it doesn’t require mystical means at all. Just a glance, but repeated several times at intervals.”
Leaning against the seat and watching the landscape blur past the window, Dorothy considered this more seriously. The more she thought about it, the more the latter hypothesis seemed likely. Whatever these suspicious individuals were trying to learn, it probably wasn’t complex—it was likely something they could determine at a glance… provided they saw the train multiple times along the route.
So then… what kind of information could be gleaned just by looking? What kind of knowledge can one gain just by watching a train from a distance?
As her thoughts fell into place, a new possibility began to form in Dorothy’s mind.
She shifted her gaze to the table, where a thin booklet lay. On its cover was a stylized illustration of a locomotive, and the title was written in Falanoan.
“Desert Arrow Observation Guide”
Dorothy picked it up and flipped through it casually. It was a promotional booklet introducing the luxury express Desert Arrow—the very train she was currently riding.
Desert Arrow was a premium train line funded by the Kankdal Railway Company, designed for upper-class mainland tourists. It was one of the company’s most prestigious projects. As a gesture of goodwill toward the Church, the company had offered the train to the envoy delegation, allowing the ecclesiastical party to travel to Addus in optimal comfort.
The booklet covered all sorts of detailed information about Desert Arrow: engine models, production years, average speed… even onboard amenities and scenic highlights along the route, estimated times between stops—everything was laid out clearly. It was public information, and every private compartment came with a copy.
Since the brochure was promotional, it meant that everything inside was completely public and easy to access. If those suspicious locals really just wanted general info on the Desert Arrow, it would’ve been easy to find. There’d be no need to stake out the train every few kilometers.
That they resorted to live observation instead suggested that the public information was no longer useful—because the Desert Arrow had been reconfigured.
At Vania’s request, the original high-speed luxury train had been restructured: most entertainment carriages were removed, and heavy cargo cars were added to transport large volumes of relief supplies for the people of Addus. In other words… the modified Desert Arrow now had entirely different specifications from what the public brochure stated. You couldn’t rely on the old numbers anymore—and the most critical change among them was likely the train’s speed.
“Those suspicious individuals, stationed at regular intervals along the tracks, must be taking measurements—calculating the current speed of the Desert Arrow. By assigning observers at different points and recording the time it passes, they can compute the train’s speed. The more points they have, the more precise their data will be.
“Normally, a train’s speed is public info—even for something like Desert Arrow. But this is different. It’s no longer a streamlined luxury express. It’s now a hybrid freight train hauling a ton of relief supplies. That added weight has undoubtedly caused a dramatic drop in speed. The original plan was to reach Addus in two days, but with all this added cargo, it might take an extra day or even two.
“And no one knows exactly how long it’ll take. This train has never run with this much weight before. All these supplies were hastily gathered from across Kankdal and loaded without even being weighed. No one has a clear estimate of how long it’ll take to get to Addus. And with war disrupting normal operations, Desert Arrow is the only train currently running this route. It can take however long it needs.
“So, if someone really wants to know the train’s arrival time, their only option is to time it manually along the way.
“And because this is the Church’s envoy train, and no other trains are running this route, every station along the line—regardless of who controls it—has been locked down and reserved exclusively for this train. Which means these people can only station themselves far away from the tracks and observe from a distance.”
Staring out at the landscape flying past, Dorothy pieced the logic together. She now had a complete theory for what these observers were doing.
“Because of Vania’s suggestion, Desert Arrow was reconfigured and burdened with freight. The drop in speed extended the expected travel time to Addus by at least a day or two. But some parties couldn’t tolerate such a large timing discrepancy—so they’ve resorted to real-time measurement to determine the new average speed and predict when the train will reach a specific location.
“And once they know that arrival time… what will they do with it?”
Dorothy continued pondering, her gaze slowly shifting to the train brochure’s simple map of North Ufiga, eyes settling on the border of the Kingdom of Addus.
In that moment, from the depths of her past-life memories, a Chinese place name surfaced in her mind—Huanggutun.
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Huanggutun (皇姑屯) is most historically known as the site of a political assassination that had far-reaching consequences in early 20th-century China. It is located in the outskirts of Shenyang (then called Mukden) in northeastern China, also known as Manchuria.
On June 4, 1928, a powerful Chinese warlord named Zhang Zuolin (张作霖)—then the leader of the Fengtian clique and de facto ruler of Manchuria—was assassinated via a bomb planted on a railway at Huanggutun.