Ji Xinghuo opened his eyes on the bed. He had gone to bed early at 10 p.m. Although he had only slept for three hours, he was still full of energy.
He didn’t turn on the light and ate a midnight snack in the dark to fill his stomach.
Then he changed into a casual training outfit, slung a bow pack on his back, and quietly left the apartment without using the elevator but taking the stairs down to the parking lot.
All the way, Ji Xinghuo avoided the cameras as much as possible.
In the past few days, through magnetic field induction, he had mastered the positions of several Swordsmen from the Sword Bureau inside and outside the building and figured out their shift changes.
These Swordsmen were not here to monitor him; they were here to protect him and wait for the extremely unlikely appearance of suspicious people.
Such tailing work was exceedingly boring.
Even though the Swordsmen of the Sword Bureau possessed high discipline and concentration, after three to four days of intense monitoring, they inevitably relaxed.
The deeper into the night it got, the lower the Swordsmen’s concentration levels fell.
Ji Xinghuo got into a magnetic levitation car in the parking lot. The owner of the car also lived in the building, and Ji knew him. He had borrowed it for the day at a price well above the norm. It was parked here at Ji’s request from last night, and he was given the unlocking code.
After entering the destination into the navigation, the magnetic levitation car quickly drove out of the parking lot.
Ji Xinghuo sat in the back seat, his figure obscured by opaque windows, but through his magnetic field induction, he locked onto a room on the third floor.
There were two Swordsmen inside, tasked with monitoring the vehicles entering and exiting the building.
The car left smoothly, and the two inside did not react.
A slight smile formed on Ji Xinghuo’s face as he looked out the window, witnessing the magnetic levitation car speeding south on the superconductive highway.
Ji Xinghuo arrived at "Chang’an West Station" and let the magnetic levitation car return automatically after he got out.
The infrastructure of the Asia-Pacific Community was highly developed, offering convenient means of transportation. Citizens generally had three choices for travel: for commuting within the city and intercity travel within 1,000 kilometers, they would take magnetic levitation cars on the superconductive highways.
For distances over a thousand kilometers, one might use the "Vacuum Pipeline Maglev Train," commonly referred to as the vacuum train.
For international travel or distances over five thousand kilometers, traveling by supersonic plane was the fastest.
"Chang’an West Station" was a vacuum station.
Since the 1980s, the Asia-Pacific Community had been investing immense capital and resources to build a vacuum pipeline transportation system spanning over 1 million kilometers domestically.
Accompanying vacuum stations were scattered across the country from Hokkaido in the east, to the Caspian Sea in the west, the Arctic Ocean in the north, and as far south as the equator on Java Island. Every city with a population of over five hundred thousand had at least one vacuum station, and larger cities had even more.
Ji Xinghuo entered Chang’an West Station and purchased a ticket on his phone.
Destination: Chaka Star Gate!
A few minutes later, he successfully boarded the train.
Even though it was early morning, the occupancy rate in the carriage was over half, with most passengers heading to the same destination as Ji Xinghuo.
The seat next to Ji Xinghuo was empty. He quietly watched out the window.
As the train had not yet started, he could see the station’s interior. He scanned each passenger entering through the ticket gate, trying to identify any Swordsmen among them.
However, there were none.
Finally, the carriage doors closed and an announcement sounded.
Ji Xinghuo breathed a sigh of relief and soon felt a slight shake beneath him as the train began moving.
The scenery outside the window raced backward, and the train’s speed increased rapidly. Suddenly, the train entered the enclosed vacuum tunnel underground, and the windows switched to screens, making it impossible to see outside.
The screen displayed the train’s current speed.
The numbers flicked upward rapidly, climbing from double digits to triple, and soon broke into four digits!
Eventually, the speed stabilized around 1,800 kilometers per hour!
Although the display still occasionally fluctuated, the variations were very slight, no more than 30 kilometers.
The entire acceleration process was very quiet and also very smooth. The passengers felt the push from the acceleration, but it did not hinder their movements.
Ji Xinghuo was familiar with the vacuum train, having ridden it many times.
But this time, he had a whole new experience.
In his magnetic field induction, the track system beneath the train was a vast magnetic field; its "magnetic field strength" was second only to that of the Earth’s, differing by about a factor of ten. Even so, the strength of the maglev system was five orders of magnitude stronger than that of a human’s magnetic field!
Projected in his mind, the maglev track system shone like the sun, even causing a sensation of being "blinding."
"If Mutants could harness such power..."
Ji Xinghuo couldn’t help but speculate.
Twenty minutes later, an announcement in the carriage resonated: "Chaka Star Gate Station, we have arrived."
Ji Xinghuo’s spirits lifted, and as soon as the train stopped, he got up and exited the station to see a brightly lit metropolis.
Situated over 800 kilometers west of Chang’an in the Chaka Basin, it had been a desolate Gobi desert with a moderately famous salt lake scenic area two centuries ago.
To the north of Chaka City lay Qinghai Lake, and to the south, the northern branches of the Kunlun Mountains.
In 2033, thirteen Star Gates suddenly opened on Earth. One of them was located in the wilderness of the Chaka Basin, locally known as the "Wolf Cave Pit." Over the next century and more, the area had experienced countless wars and eventually turned into wasteland in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.