Chapter 1: The Infinity Train Project

Jiang City. The afternoon sun was warm, the breeze gentle.

On the balcony of a high-rise apartment, a faint glimmer of light flashed. A man looked up toward the sun, then glanced at the time on his watch before closing the lens cap on his astronomical telescope.

In the distance, the city beneath the clouds was dead silent. High above, a massive cluster of clouds hung motionless, like a mountain range.

Beep, beep. His watch chimed.

5:00 PM. There was still an hour and a half until nightfall.

The man pulled on an iron chain, and a custom-made alloy gate rose to cover the floor-to-ceiling window, gradually swallowing the light in the room.

Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the alloy slats, casting linear bars of light that illuminated a living room piled high with supplies.

Bzzzzzz~

A strange sound buzzed, and the man paused, tilting his head to listen.

Instantly, his expression changed.

He grabbed the short knife he used for self-defense, tucked it into his waistband, and carefully went outside, climbing the stairs to the rooftop.

A helicopter flew in at a low altitude from the distance, the roar of its massive rotors growing deafening.

Whoosh!

The man produced a long water pipe from somewhere, a tattered orange cloth tied to its end, and began waving it rapidly at the helicopter.

On the helicopter, a girl wearing headphones saw the flash of orange. She silently traced its shape on the window with her finger.

“Mr. Wen?”

The pilot in the front seat had also spotted the orange on the rooftop and turned back to ask tentatively.

The man called Mr. Wen was a middle-aged man in a sharp suit. He glanced out the window, then closed his eyes with an indifferent expression. “Wishful thinking. Who cares if these paupers live or die!”

The pilot fell silent.

The middle-aged man noticed the girl’s gaze and said loudly, “What, is your sympathy overflowing?”

“Remember this, they are not like us. If tomorrow is the end of the world, we will be the last ones to die. Understand?!”

“Tch~”

The girl’s expression was cold as she looked out the window, her disdain for the man’s words clear.

Whoosh~

The helicopter roared past in the sky.

On the rooftop far below, the man watched it go, then lowered the long pole, his gaze calm.

“Damn it. What a nice helicopter. Such a waste…”

…

Wooo! Wooo! Wooo!

A few minutes later, an urgent alarm suddenly blared inside the helicopter.

“Stall danger—Stall danger.”

“What’s happening?!”

“We’ve suddenly lost lift! We might have run into an unknown air vortex!” The young co-pilot’s face paled as he frantically tried to maintain their flight attitude.

The sudden crisis threw everyone into a panic.

“We’re in the air! It’s broad daylight, did we run into some kind of ghost?” the previously composed middle-aged man in the back seat was the first to shout.

The pilot looked at the onboard radar but saw nothing unusual. Just then, the light in the cockpit abruptly changed as if covered by a shadow. Realizing something was wrong, he quickly stuck his head out to look up at the sky.

The sight made his pupils shrink, and his face turned deathly pale.

Within the massive cloud layer above, a bizarre, indistinct black shadow loomed, blotting out the sun!

The clouds roiled, and a violent wind suddenly erupted!

The helicopter was caught by a tremendous suction force, its altitude increasing uncontrollably.

“Warning! Warning!”

“This is bad! Captain! What do we do?!”

The co-pilot, still confused, looked frantically at the captain, only to see that his attention was completely captivated by something. He followed the captain’s gaze.

The thin clouds continued to disperse. As their altitude climbed, the two men in the cockpit finally saw the black shadow in the clouds clearly.

The black shadow in the clouds was… a gigantic, mummified humanoid corpse!

The mummified corpse floated face-down in the clouds, obscuring the sky. The portion of its torso visible through the clouds was, by visual estimation, at least ten kilometers long!

The Sky-Floating Giant Corpse was motionless, at first glance resembling a floating continent. Its entire body was a grayish-black, and one could even clearly see the dried, wrinkled skin that looked like deep valleys and ravines. Its hollow, black eyes were devoid of life, exuding a bizarre sense of pressure as it floated high above the city.

“Ahhhh~!”

At that moment, terrified screams erupted from the out-of-control helicopter!

The girl in the back seat was pale, her pupils gradually being consumed by darkness.

A hurricane tore at the helicopter’s fuselage. The multi-ton industrial machine was now like a speck of dust in the air.

The invisible suction instantly devoured it, pulling it upward until it vanished into the clouds.

On the distant rooftop, Lin Xian watched this scene, his expression turning grim.

Bzz~

Just then, a flash of mystic light appeared on the horizon. Lin Xian snapped back to reality, cursed, “Shit,” and immediately rushed back to his apartment.

He pulled the window gate shut, sprayed deodorizer in the hallway, and locked the iron door.

He quietly waited for night to fall.

Beep, beep.

At 6:45 PM sharp, a second mystic light flashed outside the window gate. The sun set, and the entire city was swallowed by darkness.

In the city shrouded by the dark curtain, strange whispers echoed in the back alleys, and piercing shrieks resounded in the blackness. Terror was coming. The bizarre was descending!

Inside the apartment.

A record player played soft jazz. Lin Xian, wearing an apron, unhurriedly opened a can of beans in the kitchen. On the electric stove, a pot of tomato and beef brisket soup bubbled with an enticing aroma.

On the cutting board lay a sprig of vibrant green cilantro, a gift from his rooftop garden today. In times like these, the color green always lifted one’s spirits.

He sprinkled the chopped cilantro into the pot, not even letting the tiny piece stuck to his knife go to waste.

Outside the window was a hopeless, empty night. The sound of something pacing came from the floor below, and in the depths of the dark corridor, something strange seemed to be breathing…

As if accustomed to it all, Lin Xian calmly arranged his dinner and ate quietly by candlelight.

“Daylight has extended to twelve hours. There should be less than five days until the next polar night.”

At the table, Lin Xian ate while jotting something down in a journal.

The main function of the storage batteries and generator in the storeroom was to keep the refrigerator and the alarm system running.

Lighting, however, was a nuisance. After all, a light shining in a pitch-black city would undoubtedly turn his shelter into a beacon.

After finishing dinner, Lin Xian began to sort through his haul for the day.

“Two cans of food, two bottles of water, oh, and a bag of expired potato chips…”

Strangely, the food and water didn’t take up much space in his large backpack. The rest was an assortment of odd junk.

A few broken mobile phones, a stereo, a busted shaver, and a hairdryer.

In Lin Xian’s eyes, this junk was absolute treasure.

A corner of his mouth lifted. He placed his hand on the stereo. Instantly, a faint fluorescent light appeared on his hand and in his pupils. His hair stirred without any wind, as if some strange power had emerged. A moment later, the fluorescent light vanished, and the stereo he had touched suddenly corroded into a small pile of brown ash, falling to the floor.

[Devour successful. Mechanical Source +1. Mechanical Devour skill proficiency +1. Bonus reward: Your Strength has increased by 1.]

[Current Mechanical Heart Level: LV.1 176/500]

[Tip: Upgrading the Mechanical Heart can grant special skill rewards. Reaching LV3, LV6, and LV9 will grant a mysterious awakening.]

[Base Attributes]

[Strength: LV1 22/50]

[Speed: LV0 28/30]

[Defense: LV0 15/30]

[Current Base Skills]

[Mechanical Devour LV.1 265/300]

[Mechanical Crafting LV.1 112/300]

[Mechanical Scan (Passive)]

[Mechanical Repair (Passive)]

[Mechanical Operation (Passive)]

A familiar screen of light appeared before him. A flicker of joy showed in Lin Xian’s eyes. He hadn’t expected a broken stereo to grant him a point of Strength.

He didn’t underestimate this single point of Strength.

Ever since his Strength had leveled up from LV.0 to LV.1, his entire body had undergone a world-shaking change.

He used to be a scrawny university nerd who struggled to even carry a bucket of water. But now, he could do a hundred single-arm push-ups in one go. The change was staggering.

At first, Lin Xian thought his ability was useless, but now he increasingly felt that it had great potential. If his Strength and Speed could continue to level up, his own combat power might not be inferior to those ability users with physical mutations.

[Devour successful. Mechanical Source +1.]

[Devour successful. Mechanical Source +1.]

The next few broken phones did not yield any more attribute points.

“Looks like I need bigger, more powerful stuff for better results…”

He sighed. He had tried to devour a car engine before but had only succeeded once. That one time had directly given him 20 Mechanical Source points and a 5-point attribute bonus.

But the reason he now chose to start with these small items, and insisted on bringing them back to his apartment, was simple.

The larger the mechanical structure, the longer it took him to devour, and it was extremely draining.

That time he devoured the car engine, it was like being trapped in a terrifying ghostly illusion. Not only did it take over an hour, but it also left him completely exhausted. Lin Xian was truly thankful that he hadn’t been bitten to death by zombies or ghouls in that state. It was as if his ancestors’ graves had started smoking with good fortune.

Ever since then, Lin Xian had deeply understood the principle that haste makes waste, and he adhered to the belief of safety first and survival through caution.

However, to his surprise, after he devoured the hairdryer, the light screen before him suddenly flashed with a golden light.

[Devour successful. Mechanical Source +1. Mechanical Devour skill proficiency +1. Bonus reward: You have obtained the Air Cannon skill!]

[Air Cannon LV.1: Condense air at your fingertip and release it instantly, causing a certain amount of damage.]

“A skill?!”

Lin Xian’s pupils shrank. This was the first time he had obtained a skill from Mechanical Devour.

“I can’t believe devouring ordinary things can actually produce skills.”

A hairdryer… an Air Cannon?

What kind of logic was that?

Lin Xian suppressed his excitement, focused his thoughts, and raised his finger, aiming at the sofa in the distance. He pointed lightly!

Fzzt!

A very faint sound of something cutting through the air was heard. The throw pillow on the sofa seemed to have been hit by something transparent and suddenly exploded, the cotton stuffing inside scattering like snowflakes!

“Holy shit!”

Lin Xian’s heart raced. He had deliberately not used much force or air just now, worried about making too much noise. After this simple test, he thought that if he used his full power, it would definitely have some lethal force.

…

In the year 2069, Apocalypse Day arrived. Thirteen ‘Devouring Zones’, each several hundred kilometers in diameter, successively appeared around the globe. They were officially named “Star Abysses”.

From that day on, the Star Abysses, like some kind of unknown life form, began to radiate a black curtain outwards, which the world vividly called the “Dark Tide”. Every other day, the area engulfed by the Dark Tide would expand by several hundred kilometers. The daytime began to shorten, and after reaching a certain cycle, the covered areas would enter a polar night!

Under the polar night, the climate and weather mutated disastrously, organisms became infected, zombie tides erupted, and unknown horrors descended from the abyss!

Humanity was forced to begin a great migration to escape the Dark Tide!

After the apocalypse began, a small portion of the population was affected by the radiation from the Star Abyss annihilation zones and mutated to develop all kinds of abilities. This gave these people a huge advantage in the test of survival. Lin Xian was one of them.

Soon, survival groups led by ability users began to spring up like wildfire.

“Jiang City announcement: The six monitoring teams in the northwest and southwest directions have all gone missing. All survivors are advised to flee to the east!”

“The [Oasis] convoy, founded by the ability user Big Brother Liu Wei, will depart tomorrow at 4 PM from the Walmart in Bai Cheng District. We are only accepting able-bodied individuals between 16 and 50. The old, young, and women need not apply. However, those with firearms, weapons, or a large amount of supplies may bring one additional family member…”

“[Jiang City Bunker] welcomes all ability users and beautiful women. We are based in the Jiang City military nuclear facility bunker, with over three hundred people and clear divisions of labor. We can withstand the polar night…”

“I’m in Prestige Community, Building A, apartment 1304. I have plenty of supplies and a specially modified house. I’m only taking in beautiful women between 16 and 30. No ugly ones…”

“Ananda is the messenger sent by the Creator God to cleanse the evil thoughts from people’s hearts. As long as you have a repentant heart, you can join our Paradise on Earth Church and be spared from disaster. Sincerely offer water, food, and pure maidens, and the Lord Savior will not harm the innocent. To seek salvation from suffering, please contact 139…”

“I am Professor Wang from the Jiang City Research Institute. According to my calculations, Jiang City will be swallowed by the polar night again in five days. This time, there will be no sunrise… Hahahahaha, it’s over, physics… so laughable, there’s no escape, no one can escape… Hahahahahaha!”

In the darkness, Lin Xian slowly tuned the radio. The content was becoming more and more extreme. It seemed that after the first polar night, the vast majority of survivors in Jiang City had already fled.

A polar night that lasted a full twenty-one days had already turned Jiang City, a city with a population of over a million, into a living hell. And who knew how long the next polar night would last, or if his own supplies would hold out until dawn?

“Infinity Train Recruitment Project—to build a fully armed heavy train and race along the 320,000-kilometer circum-star railway!”

Lin Xian opened his phone and looked at a post he had made on a local forum before the last polar night. The few replies were mostly sarcastic.

“You’ve been watching too much Snowpiercer…”

“Bro, the global power grid is basically paralyzed. How’s it going to run without electricity?”

“Even a gas turbine train uses at least 50 liters of fuel an hour. With that much fuel, wouldn’t I be better off driving an SUV?”

“Apocalypse joker. You’ll get real quiet once you hit a broken track…”

“The ideal is grand, a moving iron fortress that isn’t afraid of zombie tides. But a fantasy is just a fantasy. There are too many impractical things.”

“Dumbass.”

The post stated that he was assembling a fortress train with carriages for living, supplies, medical care, cultivation, energy, and production. He was recruiting members, and the requirements were extremely high. They either had to have an ability or possess the professional skills to match these carriages.

A fully armed, unstoppable heavy train, racing eastward along the 320,000-kilometer circum-star railway to escape the polar night. Even if it stopped midway, with its fortress-like armored body, it could withstand the attacks of zombie tides and strange creatures in the dark!

It was romantic enough, and crazy enough!

However, after the polar night, most of the network and power facilities were paralyzed. This post had not received any new responses for a long time.

Aside from the radio, where he could still hear some survivors holding out in their shelters, the entire Jiang City was desolate and silent.