Chapter 182 The Burning World

Hearing Nolan’s words, Hao Ren didn’t react for a moment: “The world is burning up?!”

Nolan was silent for a short time, seemingly organizing her words. In the background of the communication channel, faint noises and explosions could be heard in the distance. A few seconds later, Nolan spoke again: “I don’t know how to describe it… Everything is spontaneously combusting, including water and stone. I just watched a building suddenly burn like cotton. Now the streets outside are full of refugees… Humans are currently the only things that don’t spontaneously combust.”

“Spontaneous combustion?! Water and stone?” Hao Ren’s heart tightened. At the same time, the rock layer around him began to shake again. Streams of hot underground steam rushed through the tunnel. Despite the shield’s protection, he could still feel the heat, which was enough to melt metal. He immediately connected the situation in the virtual world with the situation before him. The answer was obvious: “The disaster in the real world may have affected the virtual space…”

Another loud crash of rock falling came from nearby. Lily immediately grabbed Hao Ren’s arm and dragged him forward: “Landlord, let’s go! It’s not safe here!”

While being dragged forward by Lily, Hao Ren quickly asked Nolan about her situation: “How is it over there? Is the fire spreading to your area?”

“The spontaneous combustion seems to have stopped temporarily. I’m some distance away from the fire, so I shouldn’t have any problems for the time being,” Nolan’s tone was urgent. “But I saw that the fires that started earlier can’t be extinguished… Are you in the real world? Now I believe you, I really believe you – what on earth is happening outside?!”

To be honest, Nolan still didn’t know how to confirm that Hao Ren really came from the real world, but the current situation made these details seem irrelevant. The world before her was experiencing earth-shattering anomalies, something that had never happened in countless previous cycles: No matter how crazy the previous world scripts were, they at least maintained a semblance of “reasonableness”, while the omnipresent spontaneous combustion of the fire sea was like a nightmare that ignored the laws of nature. Thinking of Hao Ren’s sudden disappearance and the words he said before leaving, Nolan could only treat the “real world” as her last straw.

“The outside world is also burning… In fact, the entire planet is slowly falling into the sun. This situation is probably affecting the virtual world,” Hao Ren described the situation in the real world as briefly as possible. Then, he suddenly remembered that the communicator had a projection function. “Open the cover on the bottom of the communicator. There’s a blue button. Press it, and I’ll send you some pictures.”

A moment later, Hao Ren sent Nolan images of Zhuom gradually falling into the sun and the underground shelter in front of him.

“As you can see, the real world outside is like this… It was probably destroyed thousands of years ago, or even longer. And the planet’s warming should have happened two or three thousand years ago. We haven’t found any traces of human civilization on the planet’s surface, but there’s a huge underground shelter. We were lucky enough to find the entrance to the shelter, and now we’re trying to find a way to enter the shelter’s core.”

Nolan looked at the terrifying image of the blazing sun and the sea of fire, and for a moment, she seemed to forget how to speak. The knowledge and experience she had accumulated through countless cycles had become a joke. Those things were completely useless in the face of the truth of this world.

The reality of the world shocked Nolan for a long time. Under normal circumstances, it would take a lot of effort for anyone to accept this shocking fact. However, time was running out, and she had to force herself to accept reality immediately and try to do something. Fortunately, the composure she had developed through long experience could still be of some use. She patted her cheeks to calm herself down: “What can I do here?”

“Report the situation in the virtual world at any time, keep the connection open. Maybe my PDA… Patty can analyze the location of the server based on these signals. Also, protect yourself. This cycle is probably the last one. If you die this time… then you really won’t come back to life.”

Nolan hummed and was silent for a moment, then couldn’t help but ask: “What exactly are you going to do?”

“Find the server that generates the virtual world. All of humanity should be stored in it. I have a spaceship that can move the server,” Hao Ren said his plan in as relaxed a tone as possible, as if everything was ready and things would really go so smoothly. “Don’t worry, I’ve done relocation work on a larger scale than this – moving you guys won’t be much more difficult than moving a large computer room.”

Nolan seemed relieved. She took a few breaths: “Okay, I believe you… There’s nothing else to believe anyway. Good luck.”

“Stay safe and avoid the fire.”

After the communication was cut off, the data terminal’s voice suddenly interjected: “You didn’t tell her that this planet can only last for forty more hours.”

“Let’s try to keep things optimistic – we still have a full forty hours to clean up this mess,” Hao Ren sighed. “As long as we find the server before it burns up…”

“Assuming you really have a way to move the server out. Considering the size of the shelter and the complex underground situation, you may need a lot of engineering machinery to handle this, and you’ll need more time…”

“Okay, let’s talk about that after we find the server,” Hao Ren interrupted the data terminal’s analysis. “Now give me a more precise guide, the general location of the server – you’ve been scanning for so long, there should be some progress, right?”

The data terminal paused for a few seconds, seemingly summarizing data. Then it reported: “Maintain the current direction. You are heading to the depths of the shelter. This unit has scanned a large number of electrical signals underground, distributed in a network around the shelter and its surroundings. That should be the server’s power supply system. A main node is a few kilometers ahead of you. You should be able to touch the edge of the system when you get there.”

Hao Ren and the others had to find a virtual world server underground on this collapsing planet – such a critical search, of course, couldn’t rely solely on luck and impulse. The crew’s route was indicated by the spaceship’s radar, and the data terminal was constantly analyzing the energy reactions deep in the strata that were suspected to be server signals. Although these guides weren’t very precise, they could guarantee the general direction. So, although the group seemed to be drilling around in the caves like headless flies, they were actually heading towards the depths of the shelter.

This could be seen from the increasingly wide tunnels and the increasingly common equipment rooms: they were very close to the core of this artificial bunker.

The current section of the road was subjected to a certain degree of ground pressure. The super-alloy walls on both sides were cracked in many places, and some dark red rocks were squeezed into the corridor from the cracks, looking like solidified resin seeping in from the gaps. Lily casually clawed off a small stone from it, put it in her pocket, and turned to ask: “How long have we been drilling here?”

Vivian took out her phone and checked the time: “Not counting the time we spent on the surface before, we’ve been underground for three hours. According to this planet’s rotation cycle, most of the night has passed.”

Hao Ren contacted the spaceship: “Terminal, what’s the situation up there?”

“The good news is that we are entering the quietest time of the dark side. For the next two or three hours, ground activity will be reduced to the lowest level. The bad news is that the sun will rise in three hours, and the sunlight will heat the rocks above your heads. Everything will become active. Staying below will be very exciting. You’d better find the server before that, otherwise you’ll have to return early,” the terminal reported, and suddenly raised its voice. “There’s also some bad news – the probe that this unit released took pictures a few seconds ago of a large-scale magma pocket explosion on the sunlit side. About a piece of crust the size of South America was blown into space. There will probably be an earthquake where you are in about ten minutes.”

“Earthquake… Earthquakes here are as common as drinking water,” Hao Ren looked at the clods of earth and stones falling from above his head and sighed with a wry smile. “The real bad news is that the planet is about to reach its critical point, right? The crust is starting to be peeled off by the sun. Once a point is broken, the next step will probably be a chain collapse like dominoes.”

“This unit’s calculations will not be wrong. This planet can last until the fourth sunrise. Of course, it’s hard to say whether the shelter below can last that long.”

“…That’s really a compliment.” Hao Ren said, and hung up the communication.

They continued to travel through the seemingly endless, downward-sloping tunnels and shafts, and increased their speed. Several times, they almost fell into cracks that suddenly appeared on the road. Fortunately, the route was accurate, and the road in front of them was getting wider and wider. Large-scale caves and structures that looked like abandoned settlements appeared. The latter may have been where the last group of Zhuom people who stayed in the real world lived, but unfortunately, the settlements were severely abandoned, and no lines or equipment connected to the virtual world could be found.

As they entered another large cave, Lily, who was running around as a scout, suddenly exclaimed: “Everyone, come and see this!”

The group came to Lily’s side. A huge, cylindrical object that looked like a tree root passed through the rock layer and lay in front of everyone.

“If I’m not mistaken…” Hao Ren swallowed. “This is a tendril of the First Born…”