My Doomsday Train

The Abyssal Chasm was about six thousand meters deep. At this depth, sunlight struggled to reach the bottom. In the darkness, slaves tirelessly hammered at the iron ore to the deafening sound of DJ music.

...

Chen Mang walked alone to the edge of the chasm, reaching out to touch the wall, lost in thought.

The cliff face was perfectly vertical.

Or rather, its verticality was almost too perfect, forming a precise ninety-degree angle.

The cross-section was incredibly smooth. Whether it was rock or soil, it looked as if it had been cleaved with a single, perfectly vertical strike.

“I don’t remember this chasm existing before the apocalypse, do I?”

“No.”

Old Zhu, who was accompanying him, nodded. “This chasm definitely wasn't here before the apocalypse. No one knows when it appeared. It’s a bit bizarre, but after the apocalypse, so many strange things have happened that this isn’t particularly surprising.”

The Abyssal Chasm stretched for thousands of meters and was nearly forty meters wide.

He had seen chasms before, but never one with such a clean, even cross-section. This wasn't something that could be formed naturally; it seemed more like the result of external intervention.

Perhaps...

He looked up at the sliver of sunlight overhead. Could this chasm really be an entrance to hell?

Were they really going to mine in hell, building a hell train?

With eighteen carriages, each carriage representing a layer of hell?

Soon—

As night fell once more, the entire bottom of the chasm was instantly enveloped in endless darkness. Only the dim light inside the train provided a faint source of illumination. Without the target-acquisition radar, the thugs would be virtually useless as guards in this situation.

Throughout the entire day, the target-acquisition radar had remained silent. Hardly any creatures could reach their location.

Of course.

Under these conditions, if the radar issued a warning, it meant something big was coming.

Without a word, they would simply flee.

Just as Chen Mang was about to squander all the resources he had acquired today, he inadvertently glanced up at the starry sky visible through the sliver of opening above and suddenly froze. A look of horror flashed in his eyes as he stared intently at the stars.

In the wasteland,

the night sky was always filled with stars. Since his transmigration, it had been like this almost every night.

He had never given it much thought, simply assuming it was a result of the halt in industrialization after the apocalypse, leading to unpolluted air, or perhaps the planet's atmospheric pollution was not very severe to begin with, and the lack of light pollution after the cities fell into ruin.

But now—

He suddenly realized that if one was located at the bottom of the Abyssal Chasm, the starry sky was no longer random. Looking up, within that sliver of sky, there seemed to be a pattern.

Some stars shone alone.

Others were clustered together, forming “——” horizontal lines.

There were long horizontal lines and short horizontal lines.

The starry sky in the wasteland was incredibly dense, like grains of sand on a beach. If one were in the wasteland, no one would notice this subtle anomaly in the sand, but if one was located at the bottom of the Abyssal Chasm, focusing one's vision on the narrow space of the sliver of sky, one could more easily see that inconspicuous abnormality in the starry sky.

Among the starry sky above, which people had long grown accustomed to and ignored, a string of stars formed Morse code.

Translated into Latin letters, and then into Chinese.

The meaning was simple, just two sentences.

-

“Escape from the Nai-One Star System.”

“Five years remaining.”

-

...

Chen Mang walked out of the train's interior, looking up at the seemingly harmless stars that were constantly twinkling in the sky. For a moment, it felt unreal. Since he had transmigrated to this world, he had adapted relatively well. This world had both Chinese and 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-studied many useless things.

The Nai-One Star System was the star system where this planet was located.

After seeing the Morse code formed by the stars overhead, he suddenly seemed to understand the meaning of the Abyssal Chasm. This Abyssal Chasm wasn't some gate to hell; it was just an information receiving point, or perhaps an observation window?

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Some higher civilization was trying to find ways to transmit information to the creatures of this planet.

This Abyssal Chasm existed for that reason. The occasional tremors were perhaps meant to remind people to pay attention to it. Furthermore, the presence of high-level resource mines at the bottom of the Abyssal Chasm might have been to attract people to come here.

Only...

Perhaps this higher civilization had never imagined that it would be so difficult for people to reach the bottom of this chasm, just as this higher civilization had tried as much as possible to use methods that the inhabitants of this planet could understand to transmit information, but it was still difficult to truly understand their civilization, just as humans don't understand why ants keep circling on a circular line on a piece of paper.

“Huff.”

After a long while.

Chen Mang lit a cigarette in the night breeze, leaning against the train, retracting his gaze and feeling the unease and silence enveloped by the surrounding darkness.

It had been more than a year since the apocalypse.

He didn't know if the information in this string of stars had ever changed. In other words, he didn't know how much time was left in these five years, whether it was five years from now, or whether tomorrow would be the last day.

But this information was all too distant.

People shouldn't think about things too far away from themselves, as it can easily trap them in a sense of insignificance.

But at least he was clear on one point.

That was—

If the goal was really to escape the Nai-One Star System, then this train was the only hope, even the only means, for him and even the entire civilization. There was no other way. After the apocalypse, all technological development of the entire civilization had been forcibly suspended.

To escape this planet, the only thing to rely on was the train.

Chen Mang leaned against the train, looking down at the flickering scarlet light at his fingertips. He always felt like he had guessed something, but when he tried to grasp it, it was difficult to form a coherent line of thought.

Perhaps...

This apocalypse was not just the apocalypse of this planet.

It was the apocalypse of the entire star system, even the entire universe.

In the apocalypse.

The train was the only means for civilization to continue.

And whether it was the train, the vehicle components, or the resource mines, they were all products of a higher civilization, like Noah's Ark in God's hand, the only ticket for them to escape the apocalypse, only presented to them in an almost game-like form, making it look more accessible and understandable.

Just like the string of Morse code above the Abyssal Chasm.