Chapter 1369: Chapter 530: Not Worth Saving
Beep, beep.
The alarm on his watch kept ringing. Lin Xian slowly opened his eyes, the smell of alcohol still lingering at the tip of his nose.
Last night he’d been drinking around the fire with friends from the Infinity and the other convoys, talking about the apocalypse until the sky spun. He didn’t know if the alcohol and the Dark Energy aura had mutated into something, but even though he wasn’t that drunk, his head was splitting.
He rolled over in bed and glanced at his watch.
10:20.
The alarm for nightfall was something he’d set months ago back on Hawaii Island, and he hadn’t adjusted it in a long time.
Because adjusting it didn’t mean anything anymore. Outside the windows everything was pitch-black, buried under gray snow and thick fog. The entire train was half sunk in the snow as it moved forward, like a giant serpent lying across the earth.
He turned over and got up, then opened the blackout panel...
In fact the blackout panel was pointless; outside was completely dark.
He got up, drank a glass of water, and synced information over the comm band with Command and the Sky Dome Train of Silent City up in the sky. The reports were the same.
No attacks, no changes, nothing but endless fog and gray snow.
It was like they were migrating across some alien planet, and all aerial units had already lost terrain calibration and radar positioning.
Everyone was moving forward in the fog.
The only fixed direction was the track line of the Joint Train.
Yet aside from the leaders on the command channel, the other survivors didn’t feel any real tension.
Days of continuous calm had made many people lower their guard. Even those on the Infinity were the same; although the weapons systems were online 24/7, they hadn’t fired a shot in a long time.
Viola was continuously probing ahead, but no anomalies were being fed back.
Ever since Apocalypse Day, from the moment the Infinity rolled out of Jiang City until now, they had never gone this long without incident. Even back in Dawn City, it had never been this quiet.
"Have we passed Panama yet?" Lin Xian asked over the comm band.
"According to the mileage logged, we have. An hour ago a drone dug through the snow layer and found the section ID on the tracks. We’ve already left Yaviza and entered Colombian territory," Chen Sixuan said.
"Damn it, if we couldn’t still feel the ground under us and dig some markers out of the snow, I’d think we’d driven onto Mars," Shi Deyuan swore. "It’s dark as hell every day. Under the scarlet sky before, at least there was a bit of light. Now there’s nothing."
"The oxygen concentration is dropping too," Jian Xuwei said. "At our current altitude, oxygen content is already below 5%. On the ground it’s only 9%. That’s extremely low."
Jiang Yun said helplessly, "With snow this heavy and fog this thick, the fact that we can still breathe any oxygen at all is already something."
"The external temperature is already minus 86 degrees. The train’s armor shell is encased in thick ice," on Dragon Mountain No.1, Ning Jing said. "The snow layer is over two meters; a lot of terrain is already buried. But snowfall does seem to have eased a bit. Otherwise, judging by the last few days, we’d all be buried in under two days."
"Everyone."
In the command center, General Luo, draped in a military coat, spoke with a grave expression: "Such extreme weather likely means the environment is undergoing large-scale changes. Our original plan was to cross South America within five days. With the current situation, that’s likely to be delayed by more than 72 hours. There’s another issue: aside from the main starship, our Air Fleet may need to dock at Silent City’s Airport for maintenance. That will further increase the latency of our information exchange with the aerial units."
"There’s another problem."
Sean from Utopia spoke up as well: "Power supply for each train is fine, but many cars are leaking badly. Radiation levels in the gray snow are very high, and this kind of infiltration will have some impact no matter what. The Tongshi Device can’t completely isolate it. We’re already seeing poisoning and physical discomfort in our cars. The major convoys need to be warned."
"Lin."
From Silent City, Mochizuki Masashi’s voice came through: "How deep has the Phoenix Society’s support team penetrated?"
"No idea." Lin Xian sighed. "Our main force has never been able to fight their way in, so I’ve got no clue what it’s like over there. My guess is this weather shift is caused by the High Tower Civilization in North America carrying out Angel Fusion, or something else along those lines. Whatever it is, we can’t push out easily, and without track units it’ll be even harder for them to get in."
"And..." Lin Xian brought up another headache: "We’re already moving very slowly. Once we’re deeper into South America, we’ll probably be even slower. After Hakko, all the tracks here are unknown. So far we haven’t found any signs of repair. I figure problems are going to pop up soon."
"All right then."
Mochizuki Masashi said, "At least we can be grateful there hasn’t been a large-scale Abnormal Body assault or an S-Class showing up. Track issues shouldn’t be too hard to fix by comparison."
"Yeah, sure." Lin Xian said helplessly, "I’d love to speed up, but this train is too long and too heavy, and with the low temperatures the strain on the tracks is no joke. The fact that we can keep running this steadily already counts as a blessing."
Everyone fell silent at that.
The Doomsday Train’s load was nothing like the pre-Apocalypse Day passenger trains. Weapons, supplies, personnel, plus all kinds of brutal armor modifications—every single car was the weight class of a tank. On top of that, the South American branch lines were built decades ago and didn’t meet the construction standards of the Star Orbital. The fact that this hundred-kilometer-long train hadn’t yet suffered a large-scale derailment or subsidence accident really did count as a stroke of luck.
