The Doomsday Abyss is about six kilometers deep. At this depth, sunlight can hardly reach the bottom. In the darkness, under the deafening DJ music, the Slaves are continuously hammering at the Iron Ore.
Chen Mang, on the other hand, walked alone to the edge of the abyss, reaching out to touch its walls, lost in thought.
The cliff was vertical.
Or rather, it was so perfectly vertical, exactly ninety degrees without any deviation.
The cross-section was extremely smooth, whether it was rock or soil, as if it had been cleaved with a single, precise strike, and that too, vertically.
"I don't remember this abyss existing before the apocalypse, right?"
Lao Zhu, who was accompanying him, nodded: "There was indeed no such abyss before the apocalypse. No one knows when it appeared. Although it's a bit bizarre, after the apocalypse, bizarre things have become so common that this isn't even surprising anymore."
The Doomsday Abyss extended for several kilometers, nearly forty meters wide.
He had seen abysses before, but he had never seen one with such a perfectly smooth cross-section. This wasn't something that could be formed naturally; it seemed more like the result of some external intervention.
He looked up at the thin sliver of sunlight above. Could this abyss really be the entrance to hell?
Would they really have to go to hell to mine and build the Hell Train?
Eighteen carriages, each representing a layer of hell?
A day passed, and it was finally time to inspect the fruits of their labor.
Today's harvest was 1280 units of Level 2 Iron Ore.
Everyone had worked extremely hard.
One unit of Level 2 Iron Ore was equivalent to 10 units of Level 1 Iron Ore, meaning they had harvested 12,800 units of Level 1 Iron Ore today. The amount mined in just one day surpassed what he had managed to gather in half a month out in the wastelands.
This was the allure of Level 2 Iron Ore, a high-grade resource.
The same labor, the same time, but with a much greater yield.
As night fell again, the bottom of the abyss was instantly engulfed in endless darkness, with only the dim lights inside the Train providing a faint source of illumination. Without the Targeting Radar, the enforcers would have been almost useless in such conditions for any kind of vigilance.
The entire day, the Targeting Radar had been silent, with almost no living creatures able to reach his location.
Under these conditions, if the radar ever did sound an alarm, it would mean something big was coming.
Without hesitation, they would just have to run.
Just as Chen Mang was about to squander the resources he had acquired today, he turned his head and inadvertently glanced up at the sliver of sky above, filled with countless stars. He suddenly froze, a flicker of shock passing through his eyes as he stared intently at the starry expanse.
Once night fell, the sky was always filled with stars. In the days since he had arrived here, it had been every night.
He had never given it much thought, assuming it was either the result of industrialization halting after the apocalypse, leading to cleaner air, or perhaps this planet had never been severely polluted, and with the cities now in ruins, there was no light pollution to obscure the stars.
He suddenly realized that if one were at the bottom of the Doomsday Abyss, the stars above were no longer random. Looking up, the sliver of sky filled with stars seemed to follow a pattern.
Some stars shone alone.
Others were clustered together, forming "—" lines.
There were long lines, and short lines.
The stars in the wasteland sky weren't just densely packed; they were like grains of sand on a beach. In the open wasteland, no one would have noticed this subtle anomaly amidst the sea of stars. But at the bottom of the Doomsday Abyss, with the view focused on the narrow sliver of sky above, it became easier to spot the slight irregularity in the starry expanse.
Among the stars that people had long grown accustomed to and ignored, a string of them formed Morse code.
Translated into Latin letters, and then into Chinese.
The message was simple, just two sentences.
"Escape the Nai-1 Star System."
"Five years remaining."
Chen Mang stepped out of the Train and looked up at the seemingly harmless stars twinkling above. For a moment, it all felt unreal. Since he had arrived in this world, he had integrated relatively well. This world had Chinese, and it also had English.
He wasn't sure if Morse code existed here.
But in his previous life, he had happened to learn Morse code.
He had self-taught many useless things.
The Nai-1 Star System was the star system in which this planet was located.
After seeing the Morse code formed by the stars above, he suddenly seemed to understand the purpose of the Doomsday Abyss. This abyss wasn't some gateway to hell; it was just a receiving point for information, or perhaps an observation window?
Some higher civilization was trying its best to send a message to the inhabitants of this planet.
The Doomsday Abyss existed for this reason. The occasional tremors might have been intended to draw people's attention to this place. Even the presence of high-grade resource ores at the bottom of the abyss might have been meant to attract people here.
Perhaps this higher civilization had never imagined how difficult it would be for people to reach the bottom of the abyss. Just as this higher civilization had tried to communicate in a way that this planet's inhabitants could understand, it was still hard for them to truly grasp the intentions of this civilization, just as humans didn't understand why ants would keep circling around a line drawn on a piece of paper.
Chen Mang lit a cigarette in the night breeze, leaning against the Train, withdrawing his gaze and feeling the unease and silence that enveloped him in the darkness.
It had been over a year since the apocalypse began.
He didn't know if the message in the stars had changed. In other words, he didn't know how much of the five years remained. Was it five years from now, or was tomorrow the last day?
But these thoughts were too distant.
People couldn't afford to think about things that were too far away; it would only trap them in a sense of insignificance.
But at least he had clarified one thing.
If escaping the Nai-1 Star System was truly the goal, then this Train was the only hope for him and the entire civilization. It was the only means of escape. There was no other way. After the apocalypse, all technological development in the civilization had been forcibly halted.
If they wanted to escape this planet, the only thing they could rely on was the Train.
Chen Mang leaned against the Train, looking down at the flickering crimson light at his fingertips. He felt as if he had grasped something, but when he tried to put it into words, it was hard to form a coherent line.
This apocalypse wasn't just the end of this planet.
It was the end of the entire star system, and perhaps even the entire universe.
The Train was the only means for the civilization to survive.
And whether it was the Train, the Vehicle Components, or the resource ores, they were all products of a higher civilization, like Noah's Ark in the hands of God, the only tic
ket for them to escape the apocalypse. Only, it was presented to them in a game-like manner, making it easier for them to understand.
Just like the Morse code in the sky above the Doomsday Abyss.