Chapter 512 The Living Yama
The red earth of the Arizona wilderness, after being obscured by the crimson sky, looks like an alien battlefield.
As night fell, the crimson turned into a thick, dark black, and the minus fifty-degree wind whipped up a layer of bloody frost on the ground. The United Train Line stretched out across the plains, accompanied by convoys of vehicles stationed on both sides and troops from the Iron Guard Brigade along the line, extending into the distance.
More than two million people migrated like a vast wasteland. The mighty steel dragon remained ready for battle at all times. In the darkness, apart from drones and manned mechs equipped with dark energy potential devices patrolling, everyone else hid inside their vehicles.
Not only is it crimson, but it is also bone-chillingly cold. Anyone exposed to this hellish environment will clearly feel death approaching. In this situation, the same frequency device driven by blood essence is more important than food and water. It is the key to the sanctuary on which everyone depends for survival.
From north to south, thousands of train carriages of all shapes and sizes are lined up end to end. These trains are not interconnected, but are the lifeline connecting more than two hundred train teams to form the same front.
In some carriages, cold lights illuminated the ammunition preparation platform, where piles of newly die-cast brass cartridge cases formed small mountains. Many people were preparing ammunition overnight in preparation for any major battle that might break out at any time. In other carriages, screams echoed as medical staff tore open blood-stained bandages and shouted, "Hold him down!" before immediately beginning to inject painkillers.
Inside the living quarters of the Flying Ship, the women were distributing food. The middle-aged woman leading the group was tapping a metal bucket with a long ladle: "Those who are fighting eat first, the rest of you wait!"
On an armored truck of the 9th Battalion, 3rd Regiment, 22nd Brigade, soldiers of the Iron Guard Brigade lifted their powered armor masks, and steam billowed out from the self-heating ration boxes. New recruit Wang Lei stared at the mushy potato and beef in the can and suddenly gagged. His squad leader slapped him on the back of the head: "You kid, we don't even know if you'll get anything hot to eat tomorrow. Hurry up and eat!"
As the line of sight stretched out, every carriage was packed with passengers. Some trains were urgently repairing damaged carriages, with sparks flying from welding torches. In the wilderness, some survivors wearing full-body power armor were trying to find blood essence from the monster horde in the dark, but were stopped by the patrolling Iron Guard Brigade mech troops and chased away.
In the direction of Redstone Rift Valley, amidst the dark fog, the construction team of drones controlled by Viola was laying tracks at a rapid pace. Tonight, the team responsible for protecting the construction drones was led by Ryunosuke and Lu Chang, who was piloting a Vulcan.
Inside the main bridge of the Sky Train, the communication devices were almost constantly busy. At the operational meeting, most people approved the suggestion from the Utopia, forming a team for the construction of the steel mill consisting of Utopia, the Iron Guard Brigade Information Corps, the Silver Star, the Infinite Alliance, and the Common Alliance. However, at the same time, the laying of drone tracks did not stop.
As soon as the meeting ended, Marcus and Sean of the Utopia immediately began to advance the site selection and construction, deploying nearly 30,000 people from various main teams and mobilizing almost all the resources of the fleet to begin assembly.
At this moment, all the vehicles, large and small, were mobilized. The rail vehicle convoy was brightly lit, and various mechanical materials and drone swarms began to converge towards the rift valley.
On the Sky Bridge of the Sky Train, Chen Sixuan looked down at the dense mechanical lights with a solemn expression. She was discussing something with Monica and Qian Dele when a voice rang out.
“Building a steel mill in 48 hours, I must say, I originally thought only that person could come up with such a plan.” Jian Xuwei walked over in silver armor, with Jiang Yun beside her.
Chen Sixuan turned to look at Jian Xuwei. Over the past few months, Jian Xuwei had used the Silver Star as a base to unite almost all of Dawn City's rail resources and car fleets, forming a powerful force. In Chen Sixuan's view, this woman possessed an extraordinary leadership charisma, making her a force to be reckoned with even amidst the crimson.
Calm, rational, she assembled and deployed engineers, conducted terrain surveys, and proposed route selection and breakthroughs. Almost the entire plan for the trajectory was proposed by this woman, which shows how capable she is.
"You mean Lin Xian?" Chen Sixuan's eyes dimmed slightly, then she said, "He doesn't really need a steel mill."
Jiang Yun smiled and said, "That's true. It's a factory... no, it should be said that it's an entire industrial cluster. An ordinary factory can't manufacture a train without a parts supply chain."
The group exchanged glances and smiled faintly.
"Is this steel plant really feasible?" Qian Dele leaned against the railing, arms crossed, and looked at Jian Xuwei. "I don't know much about these technical issues, but I imagine metal smelting and preparation are not simple problems."
"Theoretically speaking, it is impossible. What appears to be a simple railway track actually involves a complex industrial chain and level of industrial expertise."
Jian Xuwei said calmly: "High-strength steel rails require special steel plants, the iron and steel metallurgical industry, civil engineering construction, roadbeds and bridges, and the integration of four electrical systems: communication, signaling, traction power supply, and power supply system..."
"So with our current resources, it's absolutely impossible to build a factory in this crimson place. However, Marcus and his team are certainly aware that their plan is to scale up the metal-printed drones and then combine the available metal resources to solve the efficiency problem of the current drones. This is actually quite easy to achieve; to put it bluntly, it doesn't require much technical expertise."
"It's like changing the current 'build-as-you-go' approach to building a distribution center for mass production, and then laying the equipment directly once it's built, thus improving efficiency?" Monica raised her eyes slightly and hit the nail on the head with her words.
Jian Xuwei nodded: "Although it's not quite that simple, it's close. I've thought about this plan, and it's definitely worth a try."
"The premise that it's worth a try is based on the attack patterns of these tides on us." Chen Sixuan took a deep breath: "Stopping means we're stuck in place. If these monsters are really trying to delay us and wait for a world-class disaster, then our actions are nothing short of a gamble."
“Yes, we can’t be sure if the Tower people know our strategic intentions. The presence of the Foundation’s Adventists is also a potential threat. Even if everything goes smoothly, we still can’t confirm where that monster came from.” Jiang Yun looked at the crimson black mist on the horizon: “Or perhaps…”
When are you coming?
...
On the massive, dark red planet, the tides of matter are captured by powerful traction, forming a torrent several kilometers in diameter. This torrent is swallowed by the black mechanical celestial body, and dust floats around the gravitational field, resembling a gray halo slicing through the planet's orbit.
Lin Xian sat on a deck above the celestial body's swallowing port, like a tiny speck of dust, gazing in a daze at the magnificent scene that could destroy stars and the earth at any moment.
"What conclusion did you reach, Grace?"
Based on the principles of astrophysics and theories of civilization development, this civilization may have reached the mid-stage of Kardashev Type II. Capturing celestial bodies would require theoretically or hypothetically existing technologies such as gravitational traction beams, warp field anchoring, and mass-driven arrays. Science fiction has featured numerous similar cases of celestial body mining, such as the "Forge Star" in *Hyperion*, which uses gravitational siphon technology to extract metallic flows from the Earth's core.
"How much more advanced is this civilization than ours?"
The development of human industrial civilization does not follow a regular or gradual upward trend. This is related to the productivity progress resulting from the combination of social education and energy development. If we estimate based on the development speed of human civilization on Earth, it will take at least 2000 years or more.
"2000..."
Lin Xian pondered for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. After a while, he said, "Has the result of Chief Engineer Yang's discussion been sent back? Is there any way to locate this celestial body?"
[Unable to do]
Grace responded quickly: "Your proposed solutions—processing starscape photos into array codes for my transmission or creating a high-powered transmitter—are currently impossible with the technology available in our space lab. There are many uncertainties, but the most significant are several fundamental conditions that cannot be met. First, the celestial canopy is a major barrier, preventing the reception of external signals. My translation efficiency would be too low, effectively suppressing all means of external astronomical exploration. This is the primary reason. Second, even if a high-powered transmitter could transmit a signal, with current human information technology, it would be highly likely to be blocked by other celestial bodies. Assuming no interference, electromagnetic waves would take 22.4 minutes to reach Mars. Without mastering quantum communication technology, rapid intergalactic communication is impossible."
"Alright..." Lin Xian sighed. Although his knowledge in this area was very weak, he could still roughly understand what Chief Engineer Yang meant. It seemed that it was impossible to pinpoint the location of the Black Star mechanical celestial body.
Lin Xian's original idea was that his mechanical heart could resonate with celestial bodies, which meant that his mechanical heart could scan and control the Black Star celestial body. He could also use the mechanical gate to teleport objects between the two places. So, theoretically, could he open the mechanical gate and let his physical body travel over, or... more people?
He had actually thought about this idea when he first awakened the Black Star Forge in Jin Hai's train factory. If a train could be put inside, then many other things could also be put inside. Moreover, when he was in Dawn City, he even moved Chu Yan's hibernation pod, which proved that organic life could also be put inside.
The only problem is that Lin Xian doesn't know where the Black Star Forge is located. It's not just the location of a simple planet. What worries him is that this place isn't even in the three-dimensional space where Blue Star is located, and he is just a consciousness. If the nature of this space could be determined and life could survive, then the world would suddenly become clear.
Imagine moving a living person into the Black Star celestial body. Wouldn't that be like directly escaping the Crimson Suffering, skipping the obstacle of the celestial curtain, and arriving in a new coordinate system? It's practically a space teleporter. With this, wouldn't escaping the tower be a piece of cake?
Lin Xian hasn't told anyone about this idea yet. Ever since he woke up and discovered the existence of the Black Star celestial body, he has been pondering this matter.
Perhaps he really can use this dark star to find hope for saving human civilization!
Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck~!
As his consciousness returned, the heating system in the carriage made Lin Xian's face flush. His ears were filled with the piercing sounds of zombies attacking the carriage's armor, scratching and gnawing. He got up and opened the sunshade of the cockpit window. The eerie green light of the signal lights illuminated a group of bizarre zombies baring their fangs and claws in front of the vehicle.
These crimson-mutated zombies have grown bizarre limbs and tentacles, much like the 'homogeneous bodies of life' in the Tower civilization, which have no evolutionary rules. They grow unrestrainedly, but the aliens still have some human physical characteristics. You can still see some distorted faces, hanging breasts, or limbs and other organs. These creatures seem to have survived entirely through the metabolism of dark energy, possessing extremely strong aggression and vitality. Ordinary tactical rifles are difficult to kill them in a short time, and they even have a certain bio-force field defense against the shock wave of explosive grenades.
The armor of the Infinite emitted a series of metallic clanging sounds. However, the Infinite was not an ordinary doomsday train. The composite armor, which was recast with super-carbon ytylene alloy in Yongcheng Port Forest, was enough to allow the Infinite to withstand tens of thousands of tons of deep-sea pressure. Except for encountering those weird beings that could use strong dark energy acid and laser beams, small weird beings would hardly pose a threat to the train's defense.
"Aren't you going to kill it?"
KIKI's voice came through the communicator: "I've been watching the monitor for a while now. What are you trying to do by turning off the plasma defense array on the front of the car?"
Lin Xian smiled slightly: "There are only four or five of them, they are not a big threat. They can't even bite through the armor plate, so there's no need to worry."
In carriage number 2, KIKI lay comfortably on her swivel chair with her feet on the table, rocking back and forth as she said, "You think you can sleep better with zombies outside, right..."
"You guessed that?"
"Tch~" KIKI looked at the strange corpses on the monitor screen: "You know what, this reminds me of when we left Beiwan. That Tang Hai created a horde of zombies that surrounded our train. That scene was really spectacular. If it weren't for the fact that we were trying to escape the polar night, it doesn't seem like there was anything to be afraid of. It's a steel fortress, isn't that what it's all about?"
"Can a few zombies be the same as a zombie horde?" In the cockpit, Lin Xian looked at the hideous faces of the zombies just a few feet away from him through the porthole and replied nonchalantly, "Besides, didn't you notice that with zombies around, the fluctuations in the Spirit Dispersion Value within the area are actually much more stable?"
Upon hearing this, KIKI frowned slightly, then raised her hand and used her telekinesis to manipulate the keyboard to retrieve the data from the Spirit Dispersion Value Detector. She squinted at it, then her eyes suddenly lit up.
"Oh dear, Lin Xian, I'm starting to suspect that your brain has been mechanically modified. Has your observation and analysis reached such a meticulous level?"
Lin Xian smiled and asked in return, "What did you see?"
“That’s easy…” KIKI immediately said in a light and airy tone, “If we consider the crimson mist as a dimensional grid, then we are actually in a high-dimensional ‘deep water’ where those strange entities can move around. Similarly, any dark energy fluctuations will be transmitted through ‘ripples’. I guess you think that the predators in the crimson mist locate us by sensing the ‘ripples’ in different areas, so you simply ignore these crimson zombies. Otherwise, the more you kill, the more attention this dark energy vacuum zone will attract?”
Lin Xian was taken aback, frowned, and said in an incredulous tone, "Damn, I really didn't think that much about it, but... that's roughly the idea."
"Hehe~ I'm the smartest person in this car, how could this be difficult for me?" KIKI's tone was quite smug.
Lin Xian then said seriously, "However, I feel that your analysis of the Crimson is very close to the answer. Perhaps the Dark Mark is also related to this. We'll have to look at the research in the Polar Kunlun City to find out the specifics."
At this point, he remembered something: "By the way, did Director Ding take any disaster-causing plants with him when he went to the polar regions?"
“I only took her Blood Vine, Hell Black Chrysanthemum and Ten Thousand Mistakes with me to leave for Sister Chen and the others to protect them from danger. Speaking of this…” KIKI said, “Before we split up on the Cheng Ying, Director Ding used her special ability to help us cultivate a bud of Silver Dragon Ten Thousand Mistakes. Perhaps Sister Chen and the others used it.”
Lin Xian nodded upon hearing this, a glimmer of hope rising in his heart: "Having this thing certainly provides an extra layer of protection. The Heterogeneous Cube is also here, which might have a suppressive effect on Crimson."
"Lin Xian~"
KIKI used her telekinesis to control a pen, which flew through the air. Her eyes sparkled, and during their casual conversation, she suddenly said, "I was wondering if the attack on the Southern Heavenly Gate might break through the Heavenly Curtain. Even if it didn't, could we use that method to transmit information?"
Upon hearing this, Lin Xian's eyes lit up, and he became interested. He wondered if there was some kind of high-tech communication method that could be achieved using the high-energy particle beam from Nantianmen. So he quickly said, "Hmm... that's a good idea. Tell me about it."
"for example……"
KIKI, true to form, said something shocking: "Use that laser to write words on the ground or something."
"The Living Yama."
Lin Xian said.
...
(End of this chapter)
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