“P129T1081815W4298 has been reached.”
Huang Xuan walked out of the passage with excitement, timidity, and pride. When his feet touched the ground, he felt as if he had just got off the Mayflower with the desire to conquer and a heart looking forward to peace. He was wearing a common cloth garment. The lining was made of an alloy by Rolin with two million kWh of energy. A gun case was fastened on his back, in which there was a 30-shot small gun. Huang Xuan thought that only if he carried enough bullets could he stay safe. So despite Rolin’s objection, he had asked him to make a small-bore pistol with great force, which was much more advanced than the light-duty weapons of the 21st century. It had cost at least four million kWh of electricity.
Huang Xuan was wearing a leather hat, the lining of which was also made of alloy. Because people had different haircuts in different times, Huang Xuan had decided to put on a hat. Among the diverse hats, the leather ones were the most common, and there were few differences between styles. In addition, more kinds of metal could be stuffed in the lining of a leather hat. It could cover the whole face if needed. Hence, it was the ideal product for both trips and time travels.
Along with Huang Xuan were over ten tons of wheat, hundreds of kilos of sugar and spice, some handicrafts and meat, and a little canned food without packaging in case he entered somewhere remote and had nothing to eat. However, Huang Xuan had told Rolin that he had brought the canned food because such food would sell well. The most important wooden chest was filled with munitions. Each piece cost at least three million kWh of electricity. The transport had cost a fortune too. To obtain the techniques of making arms in a nearby plane, Rolin had consumed five million kWh of electricity.
This time Huang Xuan had spent a lot of his riches on the materials, but he was still worried that he had spent too little and the materials wouldn’t be enough to protect himself against danger. If it hadn’t been for his grandfather, he would have never agreed to go.
It was warm, and the air was pretty moist. Huang Xuan took a deep breath and looked around at the wilderness.
“Rolin, where are we?”
“The similarity is 97%. We are in a plane similar to P112. The location is a suburb of Lyon, France. The city is 10 km away in the south. We are in the time period of 108. We can stay here for 8 days.”
The increase of energy had made Rolin more accurate. The more precise the time period was, the more time the traveler got. It was a basic, yet the most difficult issue.
Once again, Huang Xuan had to walk. He started taking steps reluctantly, although he had been used to walking a long distance. “Couldn’t the travelers in the big plane times pick a place near the city?” Luckily, he had put on a pair of Nike which had been revised and fit just like the customized ones. It could absorb shock and make the road flat as he stepped on it. It had been worth 300 dollars, but Rolin had spent 100,000 dollars on it. Such a waste!
However, France and Lyon had intrigued Huang Xuan. His mom had collected a few works of the romantic artist, Théodore Chassériau, which were valuable. Ever since the Renaissance, Paris had become the cultural center. For modern collectors, the mature Paris had more creativity than Florence, meaning the price of the works in Paris would be higher.
Rolin was excited too. Although he sounded calm, he couldn’t stop talking about their surroundings. Huang Xuan listened spiritlessly. “I would rather go to school in Shicheng than listen to Rolin.”
“A similarity of 97% means this plane is almost identical to P112. This is a space desert. If it were in big plane times, with a similarity of 80%, we would be able to earn enough money for us to spend forever. If it were 100,000 years ago, this place would be colonized by the standard plane out of protection,” Rolin kept babbling.
“What is ‘colonized out of protection’?” Huang Xuan wasn’t interested in similarity at all. The planes he had experienced all had a similarity of above 90%. He couldn’t understand the madness of the people living 100,000 years ago.
“To let it develop well, not to exploit it. Just like your conservation areas.”
Huang Xuan shrugged and moved on. “Lyon is built at the confluence of the Saône River and the Rhône River. It’s spring now when the landscape is picturesque. A good timing for an outing.” Huang Xuan was comforting himself.
Lyon was a famous historical city. In around the year 1998, it had been listed among the World Heritage Cities. But as a famous historical city, its culture was deep enough.
In the 19th century, i.e. the time being, the industry had just started booming in Lyon. Before that, Rome Empire had prospered here. As a strategic point leading from the Mediterranean to the North Europe, Lyon had experienced so much. In 20 years, the workers’ movement under the leadership of the Marxist would be conducted vigorously, in which Lyon would play an important part.
Besides a famous historical city, for Chinese, Lyon was also known as a Ligue 1 football team and the third biggest city of France.
Huang Xuan knew this age from his last experience.
“We went back to the year 1866 last time. It is the 19th century again this time. Can you control the time now?”
“It’s just a coincidence. The 19th century was a significant period of the development of technology. It was also preferred a lot by the travelers from the big plane times. In this period we can find both cheap materials and expensive commodities.”
In the evening, Huang Xuan came to Pélussin, a town tens of kilometers away from Lyon, and sold 10 tons of wheat.
France and Britain were a little strange with farm products. France’s agriculture had been suffering from the harvests since ancient dynasties because harvests had led to the constant drop in the price. To sell the grains, the king Louis XVI had been forced to sign the Eden Treaty with Britain, which had harmed the emerging national industry of France. On the other hand, Napoleon had lifted the blockade on the continent at the key point so as to stabilize the grains price, which had greatly relieved the British.
Britain was France’s biggest importer of grains. As a long-time enemy of France, it had always been able to overcome hunger just because of France. It was not because the French were kind, more possibly, but because the French hadn’t been able to withhold the impact of the low price of grains.
It was like the go game. France was usually proactive but always failed, during which “the empire on which the sun never sets” came into being.
Four years before Huang Xuan had entered P129, the British had just suffered from an unprecedented economic crisis while France had just had a harvest. Pélussin was a small town, where only two shops were willing to buy Huang Xuan’s grains. The price was 18 francs per hectolitre, almost twice as high as four years ago. Huang Xuan didn’t care much about the price as long as the buyer stopped staring at him.
10 hectolitres equaled one cubic meter. A cubic meter of wheat was about 38 bushels, which was almost exactly one ton since one bushel was about 26.3 kg. 10 tons of wheat would be worth 1,800 francs, enough to buy a boat.
With that money, Huang Xuan instantly became confident. He put on two linen garments the local farmers usually wore, then hired a carriage and went to Lyon.
“I told you to bring more grains, and you kept saying that it was unnecessary. Are you happy now? Such big cities as Lyon and Paris are so close, but I can’t earn enough money to buy hundreds of paintings,” Huang Xuan complained.
“Our aim is to make spatial and temporal oscillations, not money. I don’t want you to waste time on treasures. Have a good rest tonight. We set off tomorrow.”
Huang Xuan was afraid that the oscillations might cause trouble. He mumbled something and asked, “Where are we going tomorrow?”
“La Mure Village.”