Chapter 92: Work (6th Update, Asking for Monthly Tickets!)

In the dark, warm train car, insulated from the freezing cold outside the thick armor, Lin Xian lay on the bed, looking at Chen Sixuan who was already fast asleep beside him, a hint of relief in his eyes.

In the apocalypse, a short period of time had taught him a lot.

Food and water were incredibly scarce, and zombies and anomalies were certainly deadly, but the pressure of loneliness and fear under this survival stress was no less than the former.

Without Chen Sixuan’s support, without Kiki’s ability, without the help of Dalou and Shasha, even mustering the courage to live on would have been incredibly difficult.

The snowstorm intensified. Lin Xian got up, dressed, and quietly went to the Whale cockpit. He began to operate his Mechanical Heart, conducting a full inspection and repair of the train.

The giant anomaly in the sky weighed on his mind like a dark cloud. Lin Xian couldn’t sleep, so he decided to spend some time making minor repairs to the train’s armor.

Now that the entire train’s armor had been upgraded, the weight had increased. In addition, the heating inside the cars consumed the reserve power of the electric locomotive, which directly led to a greater consumption for Lin Xian to drive the train.

“If I don’t upgrade the Mechanical Heart to level 3, it might be a struggle to even run 300 kilometers a day.”

“I hope there will be useful energy devices in that underground city, so I can catch a break…”

After simply repairing some of the severely deformed armor, Lin Xian returned to bed, set an alarm, and went to sleep.

Because he had used the Aether Value Detector, Lin Xian only had Dalou stand guard at the rear car tonight. The front car had a radar warning system, which was slightly more reassuring. He also needed to recover his stamina, otherwise, it would be difficult to deal with tomorrow’s troubles.

…

Beep beep, beep beep

At 8:00, deep in the night, Lin Xian woke up to the alarm on his watch, feeling that most of his energy had been restored.

Teacher Chen was still sound asleep. As one of the only two ordinary people on the train, Chen Sixuan’s physical fitness couldn’t compare to the other three. Even compared to Shasha, she was considered weak. After several days of high tension, she was finally getting a good night’s sleep.

Lin Xian didn’t wake her. He got up, opened the gate to Car 2, and found that Kiki was already sitting in front of the computer, working.

“Hello, boss~”

Kiki hadn’t turned on the lights. She was crouched in front of the computer, the fluorescent light illuminating her face, which suddenly gave Lin Xian a descriptor.

Internet-addicted girl…

“So early?”

“I slept for a long time, okay?” Kiki stretched, looking at Lin Xian with bright eyes. “I’m the most energetic person on this train right now.”

“Not bad, energetic chick. Are you working on the water-oxygen circulation system?”

“Here~”

Kiki pointed to the screen and clicked her tongue.

“It’s not that simple. First is the water storage tank. We have to separate the domestic water from the train’s running water tank. Then there’s the water purification system. This depends on the blueprint of the water purifier you plan to create. If you want to set up a heating system, you have to connect the running water tank and the domestic water tank in a circulating series. That way, you can add the distillation stage in, which can both purify water and provide heating. Domestic water can be added to the circulation. Although it’s been used, it’s definitely cleaner than the black rain. Then there’s the water-oxygen system, which is even more troublesome. If you want to set up a planting car, you not only have to do soilless cultivation, spray irrigation, and so on, which have to be separated, but also solve the air problem. Then you have to seal the entire train to be able to manage oxygen circulation…”

Lin Xian became interested and pulled up a chair to sit down.

“Right. My initial idea was just to modify the original car’s water system. But now we have to consider water purification, recycling, heating, and planting, which has become a bit more complicated. But we can take care of the water purification and recycling first. As for heating, the current heating system is barely enough.”

“I’m thinking that a super-large project like Underground City No. 9 must have a complete system inside. Although we can’t just copy it directly, we can learn from it. And maybe there are ready-made ones…”

Kiki’s eyes lit up. “Oh right, this kind of underground city project must have a green plant cultivation area, and it must also have a medical system…”

Smack~

As she spoke, she clapped her hands, her eyes shining with eager anticipation as she looked at Lin Xian.

“There’s another very crucial thing.”

“What?”

“AI system module!” Kiki’s eyes widened. “If we can obtain extremely high computing power, we can directly use an AI system to generate usable plans for our train cars to choose from. Isn’t that better than us just brainstorming?”

Lin Xian nodded. “That makes sense.”

“And, and…” Kiki became more and more excited. She spun around in her swivel chair. Because she was only wearing shorts, her pair of jade-like legs were spread wide open toward Lin Xian.

“Maybe the underground city itself has an Eternal-class rail train, used for external material transport or emergency escape. This kind of super train is equipped with a small, train-grade nuclear power unit. If we can get our hands on one…”

Lin Xian watched her speak with animated excitement, a slight smile playing on his lips.

He certainly hoped that all of this could be realized. He also knew that this kind of giant underground city would have all sorts of high-tech equipment, which would be a dream-like land of mechanical deus ex machina for his mechanical ability.

However, he also knew not to be overly optimistic about anything.

First of all, the underground city was an asset of the former federal government, belonging to the former officials. It was still unknown whether the underground city was still being maintained and operated by the New Apocalypse Federation after the collapse. Even if everything was fine, for such a large-scale apocalyptic underground city, the security and protection must be extremely tight. Just because Kiki could get in didn’t mean he could. And the most crucial problem was…

There wasn’t much time…

The Yubei City No. 1 high-altitude channel would close in only 3 days. Excluding travel time, he had at most less than two days to visit that underground city…

But seeing Kiki’s extremely excited look, Lin Xian didn’t directly pour cold water on her, but just nodded and said, “If things go smoothly, our train might get a huge upgrade. Then, after we pass the No. 1 high-altitude corridor, we can get from Jiazhou City to Jinhai in less than a week.”

Who knew that as soon as he said this, Kiki seemed to sense something. The smile on her face suddenly faded, and she looked at him with a sharp gaze.

“What did you say?!”

“What’s wrong?” Lin Xian frowned slightly. Did he get the route wrong?

Thump thump thump~

But before he could react, Kiki suddenly jumped off the swivel chair, ran over barefoot in a few steps, and leaped onto his lap, straddling him like a cat. Then she grabbed Lin Xian’s collar, pulled him in front of her, and stared into Lin Xian’s eyes with a hint of anger.

“Jinhai? What, you want to kick me off the train again?”

Lin Xian looked at the pair of beautiful big eyes in front of him, his gaze flickered, and he instantly understood something. He gave an embarrassed smile.

“How could I? You’re our information expert. I was just talking about our travel route.”

“Re… ally?” Kiki’s big eyes stared intently at Lin Xian. Lin Xian could almost feel the chick’s breath on his face.

Tingly and numb.

“Really.” Lin Xian nodded solemnly.

After he spoke, the air fell silent. Kiki just sat on Lin Xian’s lap like that, their gazes intertwined.

“That’s more like it…”

After Kiki finished speaking, she stared into Lin Xian’s eyes for a while in a daze. Suddenly, she stretched her neck, opened her mouth, and quickly bit the tip of Lin Xian’s nose. Then she pushed him away. “Go, go, don’t disturb this young lady’s work…”

Lin Xian was a little slow to react. He reached up and touched his nose, looking at Kiki with surprise. He found that she was completely ignoring him, had put on her headphones, and was humming a song as she started working.

Holy crap…

What kind of move was that?