Yuan Tong
Chapter 647 Subway Station
The group had already left the city far behind, with only a deep tunnel stretching out before them. Looking back towards the city, only a faint glimmer of light could be seen—and that required vision exceeding human limits.
The air around them was filled with foul, almost toxic gases. Clearly, Hao Ren and the others had chosen a gate that had never been opened: the air behind this door had never been changed.
The tunnel was very wide, and for the most part, the structure was intact, lacking the expected cramped and dilapidated feel. It simply appeared quite old and dirty, covered in thick dust, with everything showing severe signs of age. Obviously, compared to the fully enclosed and continuously operating city, this place lacked necessary cleaning.
In the center of the tunnel, many parallel steel rails could be seen. Although different from the railway structures on Earth, it was clear that they were intended for some kind of large transport vehicle. If this planet hadn't experienced an accident, this tunnel should have been a busy subway line—connecting the city to a major transportation hub, it was an important main artery. But now it was just a derelict cave, abandoned for ten thousand years, filled with nothing but dust and old machines that might not even start anymore.
A row of dim lights was embedded in the tunnel ceiling, with eighty or ninety percent of them still working. These lights were the only thing that proved the tunnel hadn't been completely abandoned. In the dim light, they could see the surroundings. Hao Ren saw various kinds of discarded machinery piled up on both sides, including rusty carriages and dust-covered robots. Lily went forward to check and hopped back to report: "The models aren't quite the same as in the city, they look more primitive."
"So the machines in the city are evolved versions," Hao Ren nodded slightly. "It seems that some kind of 'research and development' work was indeed being carried out, with machines being updated... that requires something creative."
"These machines should have been abandoned before the planet set sail... or perhaps even earlier, like ten thousand years ago," Izhaks said, looking at the scrap metal passing by. "It looks like they were suddenly abandoned. There must have been an emergency at the time."
Vivian's eyes flickered with a faint red light in the dim environment. She suddenly spotted something of interest among a pile of debris. Several small bats fluttered over, rummaging through the pile and unearthing a small metal plaque. Hao Ren took the plaque from the bat's claws and found some drawings engraved on it. The picture showed a serious-looking middle-aged man, impeccably dressed. Hao Ren immediately felt that the face was familiar. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly realized: it was the middle-aged man he had seen on the curtain wall of the hall before entering the shelter!
It was the first unfamiliar face he had seen on this planet.
Nangong Wudi came over for a look, a hint of surprise on his face. "This person seems to be called the Grand Commander."
"Grand Commander?" Hao Ren waved the metal plaque in his hand. "Do you recognize him?"
"He would appear on the shadow screen, what you call the television," Nangong Wudi nodded. "Except for major events, he only appeared once a year. He was the highest official here, so I have a deep impression of him."
"The highest officer of this planet..." Hao Ren flicked the dust off the metal plaque. "He appears on the big screen, but this plaque below has his birth and death dates, and the remarks say 'deepest condolences'. Shouldn't only dead people have a year-to-year marked after their names?"
"The Grand Commander is dead?" Vivian looked at the commemorative plaque in surprise. "...Then it seems that the person we saw on the screen is even more meaningful."
Hao Ren nodded, leading the group further into the tunnel.
After advancing for an unknown amount of time, the tunnel came to an end, and the group arrived at a large cave, like a subway interchange center.
The large cave was roughly oval in shape, with circular tunnel entrances visible on all sides of the cave walls. Each entrance was identical in style, with long rails extending from it. And at the intersection of these rails, sat a huge disc-shaped building. This was undoubtedly an important hub of the planet's subway center, and the surrounding circular tunnels should lead to other cities.
The group carefully entered the disc-shaped building in the center of the cave. This ancient facility was still structurally intact, but completely shrouded in darkness. It was unclear whether the energy system was offline or the lights were all broken. Lily raised her Fire of Very Happy, using it as a torch to illuminate everyone. In the flickering light, they saw crisscrossing rail lines, debris-filled dispatch platforms, and a badly damaged control booth.
Several small bats fluttered into the surrounding darkness. They didn't know what the little guys had encountered, but a mechanical friction sound suddenly echoed in the "subway station," and then the lights on the ceiling suddenly turned on, startling everyone.
After confirming that it was just the lighting system being activated, Hao Ren breathed a sigh of relief and began to curiously look around. He suddenly saw a complex sculpture standing in front of the intersection of several rails and was immediately attracted to it.
The sculpture depicted a group of oddly behaving humans, clustered in a circle, raising their hands to the sky. Above them floated a strange-shaped thing, a mass of radiating metal lines, seemingly representing an amorphous light or lightning. Vivian looked at the sculpture and muttered, "It's a bit like recording a close encounter of the third kind."
Hao Ren didn't say anything, but bent down and gently brushed away the thick dust from the base of the sculpture. As expected, there were still uneven relief inscriptions there, the passage of ten thousand years not completely erasing the words on this special alloy. It briefly said, "Forever remember and thank the Starry Sky People for their warning."
"Starry Sky People?" Lily muttered strangely. "Aliens?"
Nangong Wuyue frowned and thought, "Could it be that these aliens called the Starry Sky People came to warn them, and the humans on this planet then built the ark?"
Hao Ren didn't say anything, just stared blankly at the words "Starry Sky People." He felt a strange sense of déjà vu and suddenly realized after thinking for a while that he had seen similar wording elsewhere: "'Allies from the Stars'—do you remember that this race was mentioned on the planet of Holletta?"
His reminder made everyone remember the matter. Nangong Wuyue stared in disbelief. "You're saying that the Starry Sky People mentioned here and the 'Allies from the Stars' of Holletta are the same group?"
"Just a guess," Hao Ren stood up, looking at the abstract lines above the sculpture. "Many things in the Dream Realm are connected. So far, nothing that happens on any planet is isolated."
Lily looked up at the sculpture for a long time and suddenly said with emotion, "The Starry Sky People look like sea urchins."
Nangong Wuyue corrected her very seriously, "Sea urchins don't look like that—if you don't believe me, I'll transform one for you..."
"You two be quiet," Vivian glared at the dog and the fish. "Let's go, maybe there are more clues ahead."
The group searched everywhere in the building, and finally found an underground space below the building. This underground space was exceptionally open, almost the same size as the disc-shaped building above, and in the center of this giant basement, they could see a large facility composed of several curved structures, like an elevator support. Lily ran to the facility, looked down at it, and immediately squatted on the ground, quickly backing away. "It's so deep down there!"
The center of the "elevator support" was a hole with a radius of more than ten meters, and a straight downward tunnel extended into the endless darkness. Alloy rails could be seen remaining on the walls of the tunnel, but the elevator that should have been at the top of the tunnel was gone.
Of course, even if the elevator was still here, it was hard to say whether it could still be used—this place was different from the city shelter, with almost no signs of maintenance.
Vivian casually conjured a small bat and threw it down, then shrugged after waiting for a while. "It hasn't hit the bottom yet."
Lily raised her hand and shouted, "Anyway, I'm not jumping! I'll bite anyone who forces me!"
"I don't need you," Hao Ren rolled his eyes. "Vivian, let's go down—the others can wait up here."