The Apocalypse Abyss was roughly six thousand ters deep, a depth where sunlight struggled to reach the bottom. In the darkness, under the deafening beat of DJ music, slaves hamred away at the iron ore.
Chen Mang walked alone to the edge of the abyss, running a hand along its wall as he fell into thought.
The cliff was perfectly vertical.
In fact, it was unnaturally precise—a sheer, ninety-degree drop. The cross-section was impossibly smooth, whether rock or soil, as if cleaved by a single, colossal blade descending from the heavens.
"I don't rember this abyss being here before the apocalypse. Do you?"
"No."
Lao Zhu, who had accompanied him, shook his head. "It wasn't. No one knows when it appeared. It's strange, but after the world ended, so many strange things have happened that this hardly seems worth ntioning."
The Apocalypse Abyss stretched for several thousand ters, nearly forty ters wide.
He'd seen chasms before, but never one with such a clean-cut cross-section. This wasn't a natural formation; it had to be the result of so external force.
Perhaps…
He looked up at the sliver of daylight far above. Could this abyss be an entrance to hell?
Was he really going to be mining in hell to build a hell-train? Eighteen carriages, one for each level of hell?
Soon, the day was over, and it was ti to tally their labor.
Today's haul: 1,280 units of Level 2 Iron Ore.
Everyone had worked with ferocious intensity.
One unit of Level 2 iron ore was equivalent to ten units of Level 1, aning they'd harvested a total of 12,800 units of Level 1 ore. A single day's work here was equal to nearly half a month of mining out on the wasteland.
That was the allure of a high-level resource point. The sa labor, the sa ti, but a far greater yield.
As night fell again, the bottom of the abyss was swallowed by endless darkness. Only the dim lights from the train provided a faint glow. Without the search radar, the guards would be almost useless as lookouts in these conditions.
The radar had been silent all day. Almost no living creature could reach this depth.
Of course, that ant if the radar did sound an alarm, it would be for sothing big.
If that happened, without a second thought, they would simply flee.
Just as Chen Mang was about to start spending the day's resources, he glanced up and saw the ribbon of stars overhead. He froze, a look of utter shock flashing in his eyes as he stared, transfixed.
Out on the wasteland, the night sky was always blanketed with stars. It had been that way every night since he'd arrived.
He'd never given it much thought, assuming it was because the apocalypse had halted industrialization, leaving the air clean. Or perhaps this planet had never suffered from severe atmospheric pollution, and the fall of the cities had simply eliminated light pollution.
But now—
He suddenly realized that from the bottom of the Apocalypse Abyss, the stars were no longer a random scatter. Looking up at that narrow strip of sky, he could see a pattern.
So stars shone alone.
Others were clustered together, forming horizontal lines: "—".
There were long lines and short lines.
The sheer density of stars in the wasteland sky was like sand on a beach. Out on the open plains, no one would have noticed this faint anomaly amidst the countless grains of light. But from the bottom of the abyss, with his vision focused on that narrow sliver, he could easily spot the subtle irregularity.
Hidden within the familiar, overlooked tapestry of stars was a ssage in Morse code.
"Escape the Nai-Iota System."
"Five years remaining."
Chen Mang stepped out of the train car, staring up at the seemingly innocent, twinkling stars. The world felt unreal. He'd integrated into this world fairly well since his arrival; they had Chinese, and they had English.
He didn't know if they had Morse code.
But in his past life, he happened to have learned it.
He had taught himself many useless things.
The Nai-Iota System was the star system this planet belonged to.
Seeing the ssage written in the stars, he suddenly had a revelation about the purpose of the Apocalypse Abyss. It wasn't a gate to hell; it was an information receiver, an observation window.
So higher civilization was trying desperately to transmit a ssage to the beings on this planet.
The abyss existed for this reason. The occasional tremors were likely ant to draw attention to this place, and the high-level resources at the bottom were bait to lure people here.
But…
Perhaps that higher civilization had never considered how difficult it would be for people to reach the bottom. They'd tried their best to use a thod the planet's inhabitants could understand, but they still couldn't truly comprehend this civilization, just as humans couldn't understand why an ant would walk endlessly in a circle drawn on a piece of paper.
"Hah…"
After a long ti, Chen Mang lit a cigarette in the night wind, leaning against the train. He closed his eyes, feeling the unsettling silence of the darkness that surrounded him.
The apocalypse had been raging for over a year.
He didn't know if the ssage in the stars had changed, which ant he didn't know how much of the five years were left. Was it five years from now, or was tomorrow the last day?
But all that information was too distant.
A person shouldn't dwell on things so far beyond their reach; it was an easy way to fall into a prison of insignificance.
But he was certain of one thing.
If the goal was truly to escape the Nai-Iota System, then this train was his—and this entire civilization's—only hope. It was their only ans. After the apocalypse, all of the world's technological developnt had been forcibly halted.
To escape this planet, the train was all they could rely on.
Leaning against the locomotive, Chen Mang looked down at the crimson glow of his cigarette, a feeling growing that he'd guessed sothing important, but when he tried to grasp it, the pieces wouldn't form a coherent line.
Perhaps…
This apocalypse wasn't just for this planet.
It was for the entire star system, and maybe even the entire universe.
In this apocalypse, the train was the only ans for civilization to continue.
And everything—the trains, the vehicle accessories, the resource mines—were all products of a higher civilization, like a Noah's Ark from the hand of God. They were the only ticket to escape the end, presented in a gamified format to make it all seem more comprehensible.
Just like the Morse code in the stars above the Apocalypse Abyss.
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