Translator: AnubisTL
Beneath a sky ablaze with stars, the deep pit in the valley reeked of gunpowder. The slightly scorched air and pungent smell of blood served as a constant reminder that just minutes ago, countless monsters had lurked here.
"..."
Biaozi led the way, his face tense and alert as he swept the surroundings with his flashlight, every muscle coiled and ready to react to any threat.
Suddenly, he spotted fragments of a flesh train scattered nearby, tinged with blood and gore. His brow furrowed slightly. Hadn't President Ai assured him that Lord Mang had absorbed all the monsters' flesh into the train?
But he quickly realized what it must be: the flesh train Lord Mang had warned them about before their departure.
Twenty minutes later, the three guard squads converged at the bottom of the valley. They exchanged glances and shook their heads. Nothing out of the ordinary—just a valley devastated by missile strikes. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
Biaozi stubbornly scanned the area again, desperately searching for some overlooked detail. How could there be nothing wrong?
Just then—
Sha Sha.
A sound like gears grinding suddenly rose from beneath their feet. The ground beneath them vanished, replaced by a bottomless abyss, and a violent sensation of weightlessness seized them.
An unknown terror gripped everyone's hearts.
But having survived so long in the apocalypse, and after days of combat training in virtual space, their mental fortitude was strong. They wouldn't panic in the face of this sudden crisis.
Almost simultaneously, everyone tore the Train Tickets from their sleeves and ripped them to shreds!
With flashes of white light, the guards vanished from the abyss, transported back inside the train by the power of their tickets.
Wait.
One person hadn't torn their ticket.
Biaozi clutched his Train Ticket tightly, his face flickering through a rapid succession of conflicting emotions. Finally, a ruthless glint sparked in his eyes. Gritting his teeth, he shoved the ticket back into his coat pocket and allowed himself to plunge into the unknown abyss.
He had to take the plunge.
The instant he lost his balance, Biaozi spotted a faint glimmer of moonlight at the bottom of the Abyss Valley. Though barely visible, he caught sight of it—proof that there was water below. As long as the drop wasn't too high, he could survive.
He needed to gather more information down there before crushing his Train Ticket and returning to the train.
Now was his chance to prove himself!
The train was overflowing with talented freaks. Without earning some merit, he couldn't rely on his seniority to secure his position indefinitely. As for what would happen if he died... So be it. In this godforsaken apocalypse, who could claim to be immortal?
Splash!
His thoughts raced through his mind in a flash. Two seconds later, Biaozi, curled into a ball with his arms wrapped around his head, crashed heavily into the water. A sharp pain and tightness in his chest hit him instantly. Before he could even think, he shot to the surface, pulled out his flashlight, and swept it around. Only then did he swim toward the nearest shore.
As Biaozi scrambled onto the shore, his first instinct was to clutch his Soaring Dragon Assault Rifle to his chest. He bit down on his flashlight, scanned his surroundings, and then focused on the scene before him. His body stiffened slightly, his eyes widening with overwhelming shock and disbelief, and he even felt a tremor creeping through him.
What the hell is this?!
"Train Conductor," a voice reported. "All guard members except Biaozi have returned safely. The bottom of the valley suddenly collapsed, and we heard the sound of gears grinding. We don't know what's down there."
"Understood," Chen Mang nodded, narrowing his eyes at the green dot that had vanished from the train control panel's screen. When Biaozi had plunged into the Abyss Valley Bottom and the valley floor had sealed shut again, the target acquisition radar had lost track of him completely.
It was as if his signal had been instantly severed.
Yet on the control panel's "Train Crew" display, Chen Mang could clearly see the status of all crew members. Biaozi was still alive—merely undetectable, just as the radar had initially failed to detect the monsters lurking in the valley.
He paused briefly.
Chen Mang spoke, "He's just out of range, not transported to another dimension. He's still within the Train Ticket's teleportation range. Even if he's at the bottom of the valley, tearing the ticket should still bring him back to the train, right?"
"Theoretically, yes," Xiao Ai nodded from beside him. "The Cluster Mind connection is severed, and I can't reach him through his Iris Chip either. Biaozi is completely cut off from the Stellaris."
"Hmm," Chen Mang murmured, falling silent for a moment before nodding. "Let's wait and see."
Gasp... Gasp...
Biaozi stood on the shore, the beam of his flashlight cutting through the pitch darkness to reveal the scene before him. A flicker of terror flashed in his eyes as he struggled to catch his breath. Winter had already arrived, and the lake water had been bone-chillingly cold. Climbing out onto the shore only intensified the biting chill.
Even his combat suit, a product of the Stellaris with its temperature lock function, couldn't dispel the bone-deep cold that seemed to have seeped into his very marrow.
Before him—
A colossal worm, easily over ten meters long, lay motionless on the ground, as if deep in slumber.
Surrounding the colossal worm were hundreds of half-meter-tall, mantis-like monsters, meticulously embedding chunks of flesh into its body like building blocks. They tirelessly cut, pieced together, and stitched the flesh, ceaselessly working under the cover of darkness.
Even though Biaozi stood safely on the shore, the mantis-like creatures didn't spare him a glance. They remained engrossed in their gruesome task, their clicking and whirring echoing through the cavern.
Biaozi's body trembled slightly, his breath catching in his throat. Forcing himself to calm down, he gripped his Train Ticket, ready to flee at any moment. The image of the massive worm was etched into his mind: a grotesque creature covered in viscous, foul-smelling fluid, its head devoid of eyes or a nose, dominated by a gaping maw lined with hundreds of jagged teeth. The interior of its mouth was disturbingly similar to a birth canal, filled with fleshy folds.
It was the same worm monster he had encountered in the mechanical city!
It appeared to be dormant.
Huff.
Biaozi glanced at the hundreds of mantis-like monsters before reaching out to President Ai through the Cluster Mind. Receiving no response, he cautiously began to move sideways toward another part of the cavern. Below him stretched a vast sinkhole, dozens of meters deep—a colossal, hidden space.
The mantis-like monsters continued to methodically slice the flesh on the ground into neat blocks. Then, as if constructing armor, they pieced the segments together onto the worm's body, seamlessly fusing them into its grotesque form.
The terrifying worm wasn't a natural creature—it had been constructed!
On the other side of the cavern, Biaozi spotted another worm-like monster surrounded by hundreds of mantis-like creatures. This one appeared to be newly built, with the mantis-like creatures still busily stuffing flesh onto its train-like skeletal frame.
Wait... a train?
Biaozi suddenly realized—it was a flesh train! When he shone his flashlight into the locomotive cabin, he discovered a single human head bolted to one of the seats.
The next moment, a deafening roar erupted from outside the flesh train, as loud as if it were amplified through an external speaker, but without the static. Instead, it was a monstrous wail, like the tormented cries of a dying beast.
"Run... run... fast..."
The words were slurred, but unmistakably human.
"Damn it," Biaozi muttered, his expression darkening. Of course I know it's dangerous! Why shout and alert all the monsters?
But then he noticed the mantis-like creatures paid him no attention whatsoever, not even glancing in his direction.
He scanned his surroundings again.
Having gathered almost all the necessary information, Chen Mang decided it was time to return. The remaining decisions now rested with Lord Mang.
Without hesitation, Chen Mang crushed the train ticket in his hand. In the next instant, his body dissolved into white light and vanished from the spot.
"So, that worm-like monster was constructed using a flesh train as its skeletal framework?"
Inside the locomotive cabin, Chen Mang leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed in thought after receiving Biaozi's report.
When the train reached Tier 3, two class change options became available: the mechanical train and the flesh train.
Now, it seemed the flesh train, while offering simpler and more brutal development and generally easier job advancement quests compared to the mechanical train, might be a trap.
"Time to investigate," Chen Mang decided.
Without hesitation, he manipulated the Stellaris, extending its high-speed drill. With a sudden lunge, the train plunged into the mountainside, hurtling downward toward the depths. Given his subterranean speed, even if danger arose, he could easily escape.
Buzz... Buzz...
The drill, which had always operated flawlessly, suddenly met resistance as the Stellaris reached the bottom of the valley. A wall of flesh blocked its path. Sparks flew, and the surface of the fleshy barrier emitted a burnt, acrid odor.
Despite drilling for a full minute, Chen Mang couldn't even make a dent in the fleshy wall.
He glanced at the train control panel screen, but it displayed no information, as if the wall of flesh before him simply didn't exist.
"Upgrade!"
He immediately spent 125,000 units of iron ore to upgrade the drill to Tier 50.
While the incremental improvements from upgrading white-grade accessories weren't as dramatic as those of higher-grade ones—for example, the difference in power between a Tier 1 and Tier 6 red-grade Groundburst Missile was significant, whereas the Tier 6 rapid-fire ballista (a white-grade accessory) showed only a modest increase compared to its Tier 1 version—the sheer number of upgrades made a difference.
When the drill, an ordinary white-grade accessory, reached Tier 50, its entire body turned crimson. The spirals multiplied, its rotation speed increased, and its hardness skyrocketed.
The effect was remarkable.
The seemingly impenetrable wall of flesh gradually yielded to the drill, creating a large hole. The Stellaris slowly began to push forward again, revealing the wall to be thicker than Chen Mang had anticipated—a full two meters deep.
Boom!
Finally, after three minutes, the Stellaris burst through the fleshy barrier and entered the cavernous space at the bottom of Abyss Valley.
As the locomotive's headlights flickered on, the entire cavern was instantly illuminated. Chen Mang spotted the two "worm monsters" Biaozi had mentioned, still under construction.
He glanced at his target acquisition radar, but it showed no red dots. Instead, a message appeared on the screen:
"Flesh Train-Exclusive Encounter Map: the Armory."
Chen Mang stared at the two worm monsters being assembled nearby. His train's arrival had been far from subtle, yet the mantis-like creatures surrounding the Flesh Train didn't even glance in his direction.
A thought struck him. He cautiously raised his rapid-fire ballista and unleashed a volley at the monsters.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
The piercing sound of bolts tearing through the air echoed through the cavern.
As expected, the bolts passed right through the mantis-like creatures without leaving a mark. This wasn't reality, but something akin to the "True Animation" found in the mechanical city.
Just then—
Sha Sha...
The sound of gears grinding filled the air again. A mechanism above the cavern opened and quickly snapped shut, as if malfunctioning.
"Run... run! Run faster!"
The grating voice erupted once more from the worm monster built upon the Flesh Train's skeletal frame.
Chen Mang's lip twitched as he observed the scene. On the nearly completed worm monster, he spotted a line of crimson text:
Stellaris III Worm
In the mechanical city, the full name of the mecha had been [ Stellaris III ].
This meant...
Could [ Stellaris ] be a Tier designation?
He finally understood what was happening. This was a special fortuitous encounter map called the "Armory," a companion piece to the "Sky Piercing Tower." One was exclusively for mechanical trains, while the other catered to flesh trains.
This particular encounter map was hidden deep within the Abyss Valley Bottom.
The original entrance had been struck dead center by his missile, causing damage to the internal gears. As a result, the entrance would intermittently open and rapidly close again.
Biaozi had fallen in under just such circumstances.
This encounter map was exceptionally well-concealed. Even with a drill capable of penetrating deep underground, the path would be blocked by the formidable Flesh Wall. Normally, a drill could only reach Tier 3, making it impossible to breach this fleshy barrier in a lifetime.
But... there's always someone stubborn enough to try.
Initially, he hadn't been particularly interested in what might lie beneath the Abyss Valley Bottom. But upon witnessing the sheer resilience of the Flesh Wall, he couldn't resist exploring it, forcibly breaking through to investigate.
Just as I suspected, he thought.
He had already discovered fragments of a flesh train—likely from the Purple Cloud No.—atop the Abyss Valley Bottom. How could another flesh train, supposedly the same Purple Cloud No., be found within the valley? That second train was clearly an illusion, not the real thing.
(End of the Chapter)
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