It was as if he had truly arrived in The Wandering Earth. Planetary engines more than ten thousand meters tall were starting up.
Because he was right beside one of them, standing at the foot of a metallic mountain, he could not see the frontal spray of this planet-engine-like structure.
But this world was an inner world. The planetary engines inside it were inverted, firing toward the planet's core.
It was as if the engines were not built outside a house, but inside it, with them covering the walls, the ceiling, every direction, all around.
He could not see the engine on the same side as himself, but he could clearly see the engines above and below him from other angles.
Pillars of immense light, like laser blades magnified countless times over, activated one after another and stabbed toward the center of the planet.
The sight was utterly shocking and magnificent.
Of course, these gigantic beam emitters that looked like planetary engines were definitely not the same thing as the "321" planetary engines from The Wandering Earth.
If they really were, then with this kind of internal activation, the horrifying thrust they produced would have blasted the planet's crust apart and torn the whole world into pieces.
To Kain, these engine-like devices looked more like energy emitters.
It was as though they were gathering acquired energy and channeling it into the planet's core.
And even now, not all of these energy engines were active. Of the ones visible to the eye, only about one-twentieth had actually started.
The rest of the engines did not look broken. It looked more like they simply no longer had the fuel needed to activate.
Though some engines really were damaged. But they had not broken down from running too long without maintenance. It was obvious they had been wrecked by attacks.
In the blink of an eye, after spending more than half a day traveling, he discovered a circular pillar that looked like crystal, and the scenery around it instantly became uniform.
If it had been on the surface, it would have looked like a sky ladder leading into outer space.
But when he arrived, it really was an elevator leading deeper underground.
The instant he entered, he suddenly felt his thoughts becoming sluggish.
At the same time, the scene in his vision also began to distort.
The sensation lasted around five seconds before the discomfort eased.
And by then, the elevator was no longer where it had originally been.
It now looked as though it was already about to reach the bottom.
In just a few short seconds, it seemed to have crossed thousands of kilometers in depth and was already about to arrive at the final floor: the core.
That sluggishness of thought, combined with the acceleration needed to get here in seconds, implied inertia so terrifying that an ordinary person would probably have exploded into bloody paste on the spot.
The reason he had not felt that overwhelming inertial force lay in that field.
Inside the elevator was a stasis field generator. Within its area of effect, it disrupted the normal flow of time, slowing it down until it approached near-total stillness, almost freezing time and the matter within its range. That was why the people inside the elevator car were not shredded apart by the dreadful acceleration.
The time-stop function on his own ship, the one that let it smash through everything in its path, was probably an upgraded version of this technology.
Because the support surface under his feet was also semi-transparent, he could feel the core drawing ever closer.
And those energy engines really were transmitting power into this core.
As for the core itself, what he saw now was a sphere haloed with light, like an enormous, soft eyeball.
And that seemingly transparent crystal pillar, the elevator, looked like the needle of a syringe piercing into it.
And he was going to keep descending, further into its depths.
So the moment contact came, Kain tensed up. The point of contact did not seem to open any entrance at all. If this continued, he would be crushed.
But in reality, it felt as if he had passed through a layer of water and simply entered inside.
Ding.
That sound really did ring out, signaling that the elevator had reached the final floor.
The instant he stepped out, a ray of light suddenly swept over him and began an identification scan.
Then, off to the side, a holographic projection appeared. It looked like a three-dimensional X-ray scan of his body.
The result of the analysis was:
"Confirmed target: Human. Human genetic integrity: 99.99%."
That was the conclusion, and then it vanished.
At the same time, a figure appeared without any warning. It was the chief researcher of the Sancai-class, or at least someone who clearly fit the image of a scientist.
Slightly hunched over, he stood on the floor leaning on a cane.
The moment the cane tapped the ground twice in quick succession, the environment around Kain changed.
Had they just moved through space directly?
Now, the place he stood in looked like a control room.
After glancing around, Kain was immediately drawn to the giant window in front of him. Outside it floated a bronze aircraft roughly two hundred meters in size. It looked like a weapon about to be activated.
"Since you were able to enter this place, that proves you are human. I hope this weapon can give us an advantage in our war against A."
The instant those words fell, the craft suddenly fired a beam like infrared light. It pierced straight into the room and, before he could react at all, struck him...
It lasted for more than ten seconds before stopping.
This was the same situation as when he had first obtained his ship. It was performing authentication, registering him as its user.
Naturally, information about the craft also surfaced in his mind, and he came to understand that this thing was not actually a ship at all, but a kingdom weapon.
And interestingly enough, it was actually paired with the one he had flown here in.
If the ship he had arrived in were compared to a person, then this craft hidden within the core would be the exoskeleton weapon mounted onto that person.
And its power truly did resemble the two-dimensional foil from The Three-Body Problem.
Those "stickers" he had seen on the way down were the effects produced by this weapon.
Its activation was based on creating a localized zero-dimensional space and compressing the surrounding area.
So this weapon was more like a combination of the two-dimensional foil from The Three-Body Problem and that camera-like gadget from Doraemon.
With this weapon, the threat posed by the battle moon outside dropped off a cliff.
It was also at that moment that an alarm suddenly went off.
Looking toward the main control display, the status report showed this:
The time remaining for this planet to stay in its quantum ghost state was running out.
Without further energy replenishment, it would revert to its original state within three seconds.
And when Kain saw the explanation for energy replenishment, he froze.
Because the energy source that had sustained this planet for so long was the planet itself, used as fuel.
Just like the planetary engines in The Wandering Earth generated energy by burning rock.
The inside of this planet had been almost completely hollowed out because it had been burned away into energy.
And what about the stasis field covering the whole planet? That was still operating.
So that was it. The reason everything still looked so new from the Dark Age of Technology until now was because the stasis field had covered the entire planet.
Whenever the energy was almost exhausted, after it fell below a certain threshold, the stasis field would stop, allowing the energy engines to continue mining the planet and recharge the system.
Now, the world had nearly been mined dry. The remaining matter was enough to burn for a hundred hours at most.
Then, by chance, his gaze drifted across several monitoring screens. One of them made Kain go still.
It was a surface surveillance feed.
Something unusual had appeared in one location, and the image vaguely showed a figure.
He had not noticed it before. That was because the place in question was the Morchitz Forest, and he had not had nearly enough time to survey the entire planet, so missing it was normal.
Now, however, those mushrooms had spread beyond the forest.
(End of Chapter)
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