Chapter 91: The Jovian System, Tumu Fortress

Stone Ironheart gazed out at the scenery beyond the window, his thoughts wandering over the accounts he had read in the natural history books.

In Mist Era 23, or Old Calendar 1941, the Human Federation was founded, setting aside old grievances and pressing ahead into a new age of expansion. Exchange and integration among the various races, regions, and states reached an unprecedented height, and the pace of humanity’s advance accelerated in kind.

In Old Calendar 1946, humanity began to travel freely to and from geosynchronous orbit around Earth. In Mist Era 30, that is, 1949, humanity formally left the Home Star, established permanent colonies on the Moon, and began the total conquest of the Earth-Moon system. From that point on, humanity’s exploration and subjugation of outer space entered its most fevered age.

In Mist Era 41, humanity’s first fleet of deep-space exploration warships was completed, and the great Martian expedition began. In Mist Era 44, humanity began designing and building city-type space habitats, aiming to create larger, more comfortable, and more mobile bases for life in space.

Timberhold Space City had been begun in Mist Era 48 and completed in Mist Era 52, taking a total of four and a half years. Four and a half years to build a vast space city was not the least bit fanciful. Just look at how, only moments ago, even a nurse could rip the enemy apart with her bare hands; in the Mist Era, the space industry’s speed and precision of manufacture had already surpassed the imagination of Old Calendar humanity.

And if that still was not enough, there were always force arts and mind arts to rely on. Whatever the problem, you could simply smash your way through with battle energy and mental force.

Four years was already a fairly long time. It was said that the newly built space cities were now enormous in scale and astonishingly fast to construct. This Timberhold Space City had weathered the first, second, and third great solar-system development campaigns, and now formed part of Saturn’s habitation system. It was still in service, solid and dependable.

This old space city was already burdened with many outdated design concepts.

There were no highly integrated residential districts, no complex three-dimensional transportation networks, and even the street widths were somewhat inadequate. Timberhold had originally been designed as an agricultural and residential city, meant to provide farm products and livestock products, so its shape was unusual. It was like a flower blooming in space, its petals turned toward the sun, spread out in a broad, flat form.

Its flattened area was roughly twelve thousand square kilometers, yet its population had reached more than eight million. According to the latest census, it had already surpassed eight million six hundred thousand and was approaching the red line of population capacity. It was said that the staff in the municipal population office were already considering whether to implement policies to curb population growth.

Stone Ironheart looked down at the street below. People came and went, most of them on foot.

Private vehicles were not exactly rare here, but finding a parking berth in the Upper District was no easy matter, so many of those who had mastered force arts chose to walk instead. In any case, walking was not slow. The Upper District was only palm-sized in scope, and for those skilled in force arts, a bit of running made everywhere easy to reach.

The sky rail train rumbled onward with the clang of an older age, following the curve of the track. The buildings in Timberhold were generally not very tall; the highest were only about forty-six or forty-seven stories, nothing compared with those skyscraper forests that could rise three or five hundred stories. When Timberhold was built, the designers’ longing for their homeland flared up, and the city was given quite a strong flavor of the old era. One could even still see many low brick-and-stone buildings.

Perhaps only when they truly set out for the deep void, only when they truly had to bid eternal farewell to their mother world, did those first generations of space conquerors understand the ache of being unable to part from home.

Clang, clang, the train pressed onward, and light filtered through the gaps between the high-rises, flashing bright and dim before Stone Ironheart’s eyes.

Of course, it was not sunlight.

Timberhold did have insulating layers and protective fields that could turn transparent, and when it was in the inner solar system, its shielding panels could indeed be deployed to receive sunlight. The flowerlike shape had been designed precisely to take in as much light as possible.

But this was the Saturn system.

At Saturn’s orbit, even at its closest point to the sun, the distance was still more than one billion three hundred fifty million kilometers, nearly ten times the Earth-sun distance. Here, sunlight had long since faded into weakness. Looking back toward the center of the solar system, one could see only a brilliantly shining point of light, far brighter than a star seen from Earth, but utterly incapable of providing enough illumination.

What bathed Timberhold in light was an artificial source.

That source looked very much like the sun. With Stone Ironheart’s sharp eyesight, he could hardly tell the difference. It seemed likely that this, too, had been specially designed by those first spacefarers who had left their homeland behind, so that they might keep some memory of home alive.

Artificial gravity was set at 1.0, a perfect simulation of the Home Star’s average gravity, with no difference at all.

Because Timberhold had been designed to preserve as much of Earth’s character as possible, even to the point of simulating Earth’s weather, rain, and seasonal cycles, Stone Ironheart had not been shocked when he crossed the boundary between worlds. It was only several days later that he realized he was on Earth.

The sky rail did not move particularly fast.

After all, this was a miniature artificial ecosystem, and an old one at that; in terms of balance, it was still somewhat fragile. Even after later upgrades and renovations, there were still many things one had to be careful of. The train’s speed was limited to eighty kilometers an hour, so that moving too quickly would not lead to situations difficult to control.

But even so, since there was no traffic jam to worry about, the sky rail soon left the Upper District and headed for the Pasture Plains District.

It was as clear as day.

As if a dividing line had been drawn between two worlds, once the sky rail train emerged from the last cluster of high-rises, the view suddenly opened onto great stretches of lush green plains.

As far as the eye could see there were rolling planted fields and artificial forests. Stirred by man-made wind, the crops in the fields swayed gently with a rustling sound, a scene of pastoral beauty as natural as any in the world.

Timberhold comprised nine districts. The most central was the Upper District, while the others each had their own character. The Pasture Plains District was one of them, a place with a somewhat stronger rural flavor.

Even to this day, Timberhold Space City was still a standard agricultural space city. Farm products and livestock products were its main output. The Pasture Plains District was the place where crop farming and animal husbandry were comparatively developed.

A little more than twelve thousand square kilometers did not sound like much, but once you actually moved through it, it was in no way small. Even by sky rail, with all its stops and starts, it took a full hour and more to reach the urban center of the Pasture Plains District. The buildings here were lower still, and looked even older. In fact, the Pasture Plains District was also one of the poorer districts among the nine.

Clang, the sky rail pulled into the station, and with a hiss the doors opened.

Stone Ironheart rubbed his forehead. The swelling in his head finally quieted down.

Ever since he had awakened, the total amount and intensity of the mental force in his mind had continued to rise without pause, never once stopping. Only after getting off the train did that mental force gradually stabilize, returning to the level it had been when he left Phoenix Song First High School.

That meant his cultivation in mind arts had been brought back intact, without any loss whatsoever.

Stone Ironheart stepped down from the train and stood on the platform, looking at the familiar scene before him. Suddenly, his heart swelled with heroic fervor.

Timberhold, the Pasture Plains District, the Starlight Workers’ School, and the Orphanage. I, Stone Ironheart, am back!