Chapter 49: Information Center

At that moment, everyone’s eyes fell on Lin Xian.

Lin Xian took a deep breath. After thinking about it all night, he had decided to use his multiple abilities to explain his powers. “It’s true, I have more than one ability. Besides making the train run, I can also repair and manufacture machinery. That’s why I had the confidence to start this Infinity Train project.”

Lin Xian knew he couldn’t keep devouring and creating machinery in secret forever. Since they were teammates, it was better to be honest.

“If I have the materials and blueprints, I can directly manufacture weapons, equipment, and armor. As long as it’s related to machinery, I can handle it.”

The Lou siblings exchanged a look of surprise. Lou Shasha gasped, “Wow, Brother Lin, you’re that amazing? I knew I didn’t save the wrong person!”

Lin Xian now looked at KIKI with great interest.

“Missy, the manufacturing I just mentioned includes the radar system, sentry system, weapon system, defense system, drones, railcars, medical and life support systems, powered armor, and so on that you envisioned… Now, do you still think my Infinity Train project is a fantasy?”

KIKI looked slightly stunned. She opened her mouth, then met Lin Xian’s smiling gaze, refusing to back down. She said stubbornly, “So… so what? Can you design and control all these systems by yourself?”

“I can’t.”

Lin Xian smiled, his eyes narrowing as he looked at KIKI. “That’s why I need a genius girl like you to join. Without your information center, wouldn’t all these things just be empty shells?”

Hearing this, a flicker of delight crossed KIKI’s eyes. She shot Lin Xian a sly glance and smiled, clearly pleased.

“Aiya… that’s nice to hear today. Alright, if you can get the heating working, then this young lady will consider it.”

“Deal.”

Lin Xian let out a long breath and looked at Chen Sixuan, then at the others.

“At first, I just wanted to build a mobile safe fortress to survive this damn darkness and apocalypse. But ever since this train started moving, we’ve been living in all sorts of terror and danger every day. I’m sure everyone feels the same as me, living day to day, scrambling from place to place just to catch a breath and have a sip of water. Many people died in the polar night, and those who are still alive are on the verge of going crazy…”

“So I realized that in this dark, cold, apocalyptic winter, this train needs a lot of friends. Only by sticking together can we live longer and go farther.”

“The Circumstellar Railway is 320,000 kilometers long. We might not be able to finish the whole journey, and we might not escape the polar night. There will probably be countless troubles along the way. But as long as there’s a chance to live one more day, I don’t want to give up. As long as I have a shred of strength left, I won’t let this train stop. So I hope that everyone who boards this train will be like family, facing life and death together from now on.”

He spoke casually, his tone plain and simple, as if making small talk.

But the expressions of the others were quietly changing.

KIKI’s slyness faded, her eyes fixed on Lin Xian, her thoughts unreadable.

Lou Shasha bit her lip, the timid nervousness in her eyes lessening, replaced by a glimmer of hope.

Dalou looked at his sister, then at Lin Xian, and nodded. Though he said nothing, his gaze became much firmer.

Chen Sixuan’s eyes reddened. At first, she had relied on Lin Xian just to save herself. Now, hearing him reintroduce his plan and ideas, she was deeply moved. For a moment, she even felt that although they might be starting a life of escape and disaster, one day, the sun would rise as usual!

“Alright, let’s do a simple division of labor first.”

Lin Xian breathed a sigh of relief after speaking. As the team grew, he felt more secure.

“Okay!” Shasha was the first to raise her hand, her face full of eagerness. “Brother Lin, I can stand watch too. Don’t treat me like a kid!”

Lin Xian gave a wry smile. “The way you handle that grenade launcher, you’re nothing like a kid.”

“Hee hee.” Shasha looked very proud.

“I’m in!” Teacher Chen beamed and also raised her hand. It had been a long time since the polar night began that she had felt so cheerful.

“Brother Xian, just tell us what to do,” Dalou said.

“Me too.” KIKI smiled at him, her expression serious for once.

“Alright then!” Lin Xian nodded. Besides taking stock of their spoils, he began to assign simple roles to everyone.

From now on, Lin Xian and Chen Sixuan would take turns driving the train. When the train was stopped, Dalou would be in charge of guard duty. Since Dalou also knew some mechanical repairs, Lin Xian asked him to help with inspections and maintenance.

After all, the train was getting bigger, and it wasn’t realistic for him to use his ability to fix everything, especially the minor issues.

As for KIKI, Lin Xian planned to work with her to redesign the entire train’s future layout. Once the radar and sentry systems were online, they would have an extra layer of early warning security.

This great haul gave Lin Xian immense confidence in his Infinity Train project, not just because of his expectations for his own future abilities, but also because of the addition of the Lou siblings, two powerful allies.

Lou Ye had an honest and straightforward personality, hardworking and uncomplaining. Coupled with his enhancement-type ability and his tower-like physique, he gave off a strong sense of security.

With him on night watch, Lin Xian felt much more at ease.

Furthermore, he knew a lot about weapons and mechanics, making him an excellent teammate in terms of both combat power and skills.

Although Lou Shasha was still young, she was quite mature and loyal. Lin Xian had her help Chen Sixuan and KIKI. Now that she had her own little bed and the protection of the train fortress, she had lost her previous anxious demeanor and was happily helping to arrange the interior of the train.

According to their route, after leaving the mountains, they would soon enter Yubei. As a first-tier city far from the Star Abyss disaster zone, it was one of the last major cities to enter the polar night. Both Lin Xian and Chen Sixuan felt the situation there would be incredibly complex.

But the train had to pass through the main hub there to enter the true Circumstellar Railway. Before that, the Infinity still had many preparations and systems that weren’t ready, so the situation remained grim.

The gas turbine locomotive had a steam heating system, and the passenger cars were also equipped with a warm air system. Logically, either could be used. The quickest way was to connect the electrical circuits and use the passenger cars’ warm air system directly.

However, cars 1 and 2 were different models from cars 3, 4, and 5, and there was a large age gap. Also, considering his future plans to create a train-wide water and air circulation system, Lin Xian decided to design an electric-driven steam circulation and filtration system with KIKI that would connect to car 1. This would not only provide heat but also use a distillation system to recycle clean water, ensuring they always had clean water to drink and could even luxuriously take a shower…

As for the photoelectric aiming system and the small phased-array radar, KIKI and Lin Xian planned to install them on the front of the locomotive for emergency early warnings. The train-wide surveillance and sentry system, however, would be much more troublesome.

For one, it required a large number of infrared motion detectors, and they also had to consider external armor.

The weapon and defense systems were even more problematic. To mount a close-in weapon system on the train, besides power and maintenance, it would require an ammunition supply level of a small arsenal.

But these were just Lin Xian’s ideas for now. He couldn’t get everything done at once. Things like a medical system, plant cultivation, and oxygen circulation couldn’t be achieved overnight.

So for now, Lin Xian’s priority was to help KIKI install the information system they had moved from the air-raid shelter’s command center into car 2. At the same time, he would get the photoelectric aiming system, the small phased-array radar, and… the heating, up and running.

There was another, potentially biggest problem: if they encountered damaged tracks, how to carry out repairs would be a major challenge.

This issue had always been Lin Xian’s biggest headache.

No matter how powerful the train became, if there was no road… wouldn’t it become a joke?

So for Lin Xian, there was still too much to do, and there were far too many troubles on the road.

In car 2, a simple information center with multiple screens had already been set up for KIKI. After connecting the photoelectric aiming system and the radar system, a 3-kilometer fan-shaped area in front of the train would be detected in advance. However, they still needed to design a response module to allow the system to identify which situations were critical while in motion, issue warnings, and stop the train in time.

In this area, Lin Xian was completely clueless and could only leave it to KIKI.

“Zzz…”

“Zzz…”

“Strange. Logically, we should be far from the ionization interference of the Star Abyss zone, and it’s daytime now. Why can’t I pick up any long-wave signals at all?” KIKI fiddled with Lin Xian’s radio for a long time, sighed, and gave up in frustration.

“What about the network?”

“Don’t even think about it.” KIKI, wearing headphones, her fingers flying across the system, said flatly, “I know the Federation government has some communication satellites still in orbit, but I can’t find them anymore. They’re either damaged or have been subjected to special shielding and interference.”

Lin Xian was secretly amazed. He thought back to how he could still receive Teacher Chen’s call in Jiang City. It hadn’t been long, but the communication function was already completely dead.

Moreover, the long-wave radio he had high hopes for was also unusable, which was what gave Lin Xian the biggest headache.

On the radio, the train, traveling through the mountains, could only pick up short-wave radio frequencies from a hundred or two hundred kilometers around. But being in the mountains, besides some villages and towns, they basically couldn’t receive any messages from other survivors.

Just like that, Lin Xian’s group spent the most peaceful and busiest day since leaving Jiang City. The train, using the reserved energy of the electric locomotive, ran from dawn until dusk. Lin Xian was feeling quite fatigued, so for safety’s sake, he stopped the train to rest on a relatively flat plain.

After nightfall, all the blackout curtains inside the train were lowered, but from the outside, one could still see a giant, faintly glowing train parked quietly on the tracks. Even cars 3 and 4 were now covered in thick armor.

However, unlike the original cars, the armor here was made of ordinary steel, with a small amount of the high-strength steel he had left over, used as a temporary measure.

After Lin Xian assigned the roles, Chen Sixuan, like a warm matriarch, distributed the allocated food and water along the cars to everyone. When Chen Sixuan came to car 5, she found that Lin Xian was not inside but was on the last flatbed car at the back, tinkering with that machine-armor-like thing.