The hum of the gears turning was like the eternal breath of this desert. The hot metal shards were mixed in the gravel, and were bleached by the double sun of the alien world. They creaked when you stepped on them, as if countless tiny gears were shattering under your feet. Cheng Yi squatted on the remains of a bronze gear half buried in the sand, rubbing the spiral lines on it with his fingertips - the lines were more precise than any steam device he had ever seen before, and there was a faint light flowing around the edges, as if it was alive and running under the skin. Behind him, Xiao Yu was wiping the barrel of a portable steam rifle with a frayed canvas. The soft sound of metal parts colliding was particularly clear in the empty desert, while Arya was leaning on a slanted steam pipe, playing with a freely deformable liquid gear with her fingertips, and her eyes warily scanned the distorted horizon in the distance.
