"Mentor, our food reserves are nearly gone. We can last at most another week."
Durm wore a troubled expression. The Corpse-Grinders' stockpile had never been ample to begin with, and even with the Ravagers' generous contribution, under the strain of feeding several hundred mouths, the granaries had quickly run dry.
Winston volunteered immediately, "Mentor, let me take a team out to scavenge!"
Caelan shook his head gently. "No need for you to take risks just yet. Your primary task right now is to learn."
"Durm, do you know the way to the surface?"
Durm nodded.
Caelan continued, "Winston, organize the other children and protect the camp. Durm, take me to the surface."
Though the Corpse-Grinders had been destroyed, the surrounding gangs still eyed the camp hungrily.
With the Ravagers' fate as a lesson, they dared not act rashly while Caelan was present. But once Caelan left, even if most gangs would not gamble on an attack, there was always the danger of some reckless fool invading the camp regardless.
To that prevent that, Caelan had sealed every entrance leading into the camp. Massive slabs of stone, each weighing thousands of pounds, descended like fortress gates, blocking every major passage. Only one hidden tunnel remained as an emergency escape route.
This narrow path was also blocked by a boulder, but it could be pushed open from the inside.
Durm nimbly slipped into the darkness. Years of survival underground had made him intimately familiar with every tunnel in the area.
"That path goes through Portland Gang territory, a band of scavengers who live in the shallow caves just beneath the surface. They often venture into the ancient ruins on the surface."
The underground tunnels were vast and labyrinthine, crisscrossing like a spiderweb.
Legend said that in ages past, colossal mechanical drills had pierced through the bedrock, carving out unfathomably deep passages, some even reaching toward the planet's core.
In ancient tales passed down through Cthonia's generations, a mysterious and habitable world was said to exist deep within the earth, drawing countless Cthonians to explore ever deeper in search of it. But every single one of them died, either incinerated by searing rivers of magma or crushed between shifting rock walls by sudden tectonic movements.
The depths were filled with lethal pressure and scorching heat, the air so thin it was suffocating.
No one had ever reached that far down.
"We have to climb up from here."
Durm pointed to a dark, narrow tunnel, barely large enough for an adult to crawl through on all fours, limbs tucked in tight.
If anyone attacked while they were crawling, they would be utterly defenseless.
If both ends were blocked at the same time, they would be trapped alive in that cramped prison.
Durm also recognized the risk. "Mentor, there might be danger inside, let me go first."
Caelan did not answer, merely waving his hand slightly.
The gesture was not a refusal, it meant there was no need for words.
Durm wisely fell silent. The next moment, he saw a ripple of invisible force shimmer in the air, pressing against the rock wall and tracing a perfect circle.
Any rock within the circle's boundary turned to powder the instant it touched the ripple.
Like a tunnel-boring machine, the ripple widened the passage from less than half a meter in diameter to over two meters in the blink of an eye.
Durm had long grown accustomed to Caelan's extraordinary powers, yet he was still awestruck.
Caelan looked down and pinched the infant's cheek. "When you encounter a predicament, you should find a way to solve it, not recklessly plunge into it."
Through long practice and study, Caelan had mastered the skill of educating a Primarch at any time and place.
The infant blinked with half-understanding, his small face taking on a serious expression.
Durm crawled into the tunnel. The newly carved walls were freezing cold, a biting chill seeped through them, making him shiver.
They had barely emerged from the tunnel when they came face-to-face with several scavengers armed with weapons.
Both sides froze, the air congealing in an instant.
Durm gripped his bone blade tightly and issued a low warning: "We're just passing through. We don't bother you, you don't bother us. No need to take risks, what do you say we part ways?"
The scavengers exchanged glances. There were five of them, only three of the opposition.
They were all able-bodied adults, while the other side had an infant among them, and of the remaining two, only the boy had a bone blade.
This wasn't just a significant advantage, it was a guaranteed win!
"Of course, you can pass through." The man with a scar across his face licked his chapped lips, flashing what he thought was a friendly grin.
He inched forward inconspicuously, but his hand never left the rusted dagger at his belt.
Their greedy eyes locked onto Caelan. He clearly wasn't from underground.
Probably some noble lord from the upper levels.
Aside from scavengers, almost no underground gangs ventured into the shallow layers.
The noble was likely stranded here, and the boy was escorting him back to the surface.
But unfortunately, they had taken the wrong path at the wrong time.
Even if he made it back to the surface, he'd die anyway, might as well fill their bellies.
These pampered nobles looked so tender-skinned, they were in for a feast.
And the baby in his arms, infant flesh was the most tender; even the bones could be chewed and swallowed.
Crack!
'What was that sound?'
The man blinked in confusion. 'It sounded like bones breaking. Whose bones?'
His thoughts ended forever, and he never heard the dull thud of bodies hitting the ground.
Durm muttered under his breath, "I warned you."
The rightward-necked scavengers vanished into the darkness, like drawings on a blackboard being erased by an invisible hand.
Durm stepped over the spot where the bodies had been with practiced ease and continued groping forward through the gloom.
Soon he found a path to the surface: a twisted staircase spiraling around a vertical pillar, piled with iron debris and collapsed scaffolding.
With every step Durm climbed, rusty flakes crumbled away.
The higher he went, the hotter it became, his skin prickling with searing pain.
Heat waves swept over them, carrying the acrid stench of oxidized metal mixed with the must of ancient dust.
When he reached the top, a crudely fitted steel door blocked the way.
Durm braced his shoulder against the steel door and pushed upward with all his might.
The metal groaned in protest, cracking open a narrow gap.
A sliver of blue light seeped through, countless dust particles floating in the beam like fragments of starlight.
But Durm quickly closed the gap again, as if facing a mortal threat. "Mentor, we have to wait until nightfall. It's too dangerous to go out now."
Cthonia had a blazing blue sun.
Its temperature was higher than Terra's sun, and its radiation was far more lethal.
Even those who had spent their entire lives scraping by underground knew that their sun was deadly.
"Don't worry, there's no danger. Open it."
Durm had witnessed so many miracles from Caelan that he chose to trust him unconditionally.
He first shifted the steel door open a crack, letting his eyes adjust to the beam of light that filtered through, then shoved the door fully open and climbed onto Cthonia's surface.
Before him stretched a massive shed of hardened cement and steel plates, once a factory complex, surrounded on three sides by crumbling walls now showing a terrible vitrified, crystalline appearance.
Abandoned mining carts stood in neat rows, all empty, long rusted.
The tires, the smallest two meters in diameter, the largest over ten, were all dry-rotted and deflated.
This was a long-abandoned industrial ruin.
But in the eyes of those from the underworld, it was an "ancient ruin" brimming with treasures.
Cthonia's frigid blue sun pierced the oil-smeared sky, pouring its scorching rays across the land.
Durm shielded his eyes with his palm, trying to block the blinding light.
But he noticed that between himself and the blue sun, there seemed to be a faint blue shimmering membrane.
He cautiously shifted his gaze and found that the film moved with them, enveloping all three.
Cthonia's surface radiation would burn exposed skin, yet now he only found the light somewhat glaring.
When heat waves carrying dust swept through the open gap, they struck an invisible wall and were entirely blocked by the blue film.
He instinctively looked back at Caelan, immense gratitude filling his heart.
He was certain this, too, was one of Caelan's miracles.
Meeting Caelan had turned his life around.
This was the first time Durm had ever set foot on the surface, but the ruins before him were deeply disappointing.
It was as dilapidated as the underworld, except the underworld at least lacked that venomous sun.
Skyscrapers of black stone and steel had long collapsed, scattered across the barren land. Huge mining machines lay overturned, their rusted tracks broken and twisted. Windblown ash piled up on the windward sides, forming dunes.
Among the ruins, many leaning giant towers still stood, soaring high yet tottering, thick cables tangled messily around their bases.
"Mentor, what was Cthonia like before?"
Durm gazed at the desolate ruins, unable to piece these fragments together into a coherent picture.
Just as the blind cannot imagine color, children born underground had never seen a true city.
They had only heard that Cthonia once had a glorious history.
Caelan said, "Cthonia is only a few light-years from Terra, one of humanity's earliest colony worlds."
"Even before the Golden Age, the first colonists reached here using sublight conventional travel."
Durm understood none of it, these concepts were utterly foreign to him. He did not know what a light-year was, nor what the Golden Age meant.
But he listened intently, believing it was meaningful.
"This means Cthonia, like Terra, had the advantage of being among humanity's forerunners."
"It was precisely on the resources of Terra and Cthonia that human civilization entered its period of rapid development."
"Their resources were used to colonize other worlds, that was humanity's first-mover advantage."
"But it was precisely because of humanity's exploitation of Terra and Cthonia that they ended up in the state they are today."
"Development requires resources. When their resources were not yet exhausted, they were the crown jewels of the interstellar empire."
"However, as humanity's colonial expansion grew ever larger, and to sustain exploration deeper into the stars, humanity demanded ever more from Terra and Cthonia's resources, until they were completely drained."
"When their resources ran out, they had no further developmental value."
"At that point, they had fallen from being the crown jewels of the interstellar empire to become barren, polluted rocks."
In ancient Terra, there were legends about cultivators seeking immortality. Cultivators would refine their path in the cultivation world and eventually ascend to the celestial realm.
It was the lifelong aspiration of countless cultivators.
But every ascension consumed enormous resources from the cultivation world, resources that would follow the ascender into the celestial realm.
As more and more ascended to the higher realm, the spiritual energy of the cultivation world grew ever thinner, making ascension increasingly difficult.
Until the spiritual energy could no longer sustain ascension, and the cultivation world would gradually enter an age of Dharma Decline, where even cultivation became impossible.
Terra and Cthonia, with their depleted resources, had entered the planetary equivalent of Dharma Decline.
Within the vast human Imperium, they were almost worthless.
Terra was the cradle of human civilization, and the Imperium's foundations were built upon it.
Even though Terra's resources were exhausted, it could still stand firm.
But Cthonia had no such privilege. Its resources were spent; its valuable factories and machinery had been dismantled, leaving only the Cthonians to struggle in this living hell.
Durm's voice was heavy with dejection: "Then is our world beyond saving?"
Caelan replied, "Cthonia became this way because its resources were exhausted, but you can seize resources back from other worlds. Though the lost minerals cannot be replenished, making it habitable again is not difficult."
Durm asked, "Then why didn't anyone save it before?"
Caelan said, "Because they didn't care. They always saw Cthonia only as a colony, extracting resources for profit."
"Even after Cthonia was depleted, there were still billions of worlds in the galaxy waiting to be colonized. They could simply dismantle the factories and replicate Cthonia's model on other worlds."
"They only cared about sufficient profit, not what Cthonia became."
To Cthonians, Cthonia was their homeworld.
But to those original colonists, they had no national boundaries.
Though their assets were on Cthonia, they could live on other, more habitable worlds.
Work was work; life was life.
As early as ancient Terra, the greed of colonists had been laid bare.
Colonists did not build colonies for the sake of the colonized, nor did they treat the colonized as people.
Even if a few basic facilities existed, they were not acts of charity, merely means to better extract resources.
When even the rulers of Cthonia did not care, people from other worlds cared even less.
What the galaxy lacked least were planets.
Colonists could simply find a resource-rich new world to colonize, rather than return to govern a devastated wasteland.
Those who cared about Cthonia could not save it; those who could save it did not care.
Capital does not believe in tears.