Chapter 141
Chapter 141
The Transit Pod kept plummeting. After a while, the feeling of weightlessness gradually faded. Although they could not see what was happening outside, they could still sense that they were continuing to descend, as if they had fallen into a bottomless pit.
“Is this elevator shaft really that deep?” Xu You asked, puzzled.
Everyone turned to look at CC. Everything happening now had gone far beyond what ordinary people like them could understand.
Lin Xiaoxue pinched herself. “We’re not dreaming, are we? I only ever get this endless falling feeling when I’m dreaming.”
Chen Lin’s face was deathly pale. “We shouldn’t be in the Instance World anymore… So what exactly is going on?”
CC pressed a button, and her seat instantly rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to face them.
“This is the Real World, but not the world as you understand it.”
Wei Sen leaned back in her chair and said calmly, “It’s Taoyuan.”
CC nodded. “Yes. Beneath the Surface World, within the mantle, lies the place where The Organization is based. It is called Taoyuan.”
That one short sentence left everyone too shocked to speak.
“Then the people in The Organization are…?!” Xu You suddenly seemed to realize something.
Everyone looked at her.
She said in shock, “Lizard people!”
The air fell deathly silent.
CC nearly rolled her eyes into the back of her head.
“The people in The Organization…” CC began, then stopped. She turned back around. “You’ll know when we arrive.”
Wei Sen could barely suppress the violent pounding of her heart. It felt as though the truth she wanted to know was right in front of her.
From the moment she killed Li Chang, she had known this world was hiding an enormous secret.
And now, that secret had to be connected to the Taoyuan CC spoke of.
Taoyuan… What kind of world would it be?
Wei Sen’s pupils trembled, and her fingers shook faintly against her will.
She… was truly excited.
Twenty minutes later, everyone could clearly feel the Transit Pod slowing down. Its direction changed, and it began moving straight ahead.
“We’re already at the mantle?” Lin Xiaoxue asked in disbelief.
“I-I’ve only ever seen something like this in sci-fi movies…” Chen Lin swallowed, still feeling as if she were dreaming.
CC unfastened her seat belt and said, “The technology in this world is far more advanced than what you have seen.”
Wei Sen asked, “Are you referring to the Surface World, or Taoyuan?”
CC curled her lips and looked at her. “The technology of the Surface World is more advanced than Taoyuan’s.”
Once again, everyone was plunged into immense shock.
“How do you figure? The Transit Pod is a product of Taoyuan, while in the Surface World, if they had technology like this, interstellar migration wouldn’t just be a dream.” As Wei Sen spoke, her gaze darkened slightly. “Unless… ‘they’ are deliberately concealing their technology?”
CC gave a slight nod, still impressed by Wei Sen’s powers of deduction.
“Yes. It is indeed being deliberately concealed. But not by them. By… ‘her’…”
“Him, her, or it?” Xu You asked back.
CC wrote a big “female” in the air.
Lin Xiaoxue scratched her head. “Who is she? I remember our current leader is…”
“Ahem.” Chen Lin spoke up to warn her. Some things could not be said. Saying them could get you into trouble.
Wei Sen’s expression grew even graver.
She suspected that the “her” CC spoke of was someone like Li Chang, someone who also had a mysterious sphere inside her heart.
But if “she” could truly conceal Earth’s real level of technology, then just how terrifying was her power? Li Chang and her were probably not on the same level at all.
But why would “she” lock down Earth’s technology?
Could she be an undercover agent sent by the Trisolarans?
“I know!” Xu You suddenly slapped the armrest. “This time, I can’t be wrong!”
Everyone looked at her again.
Xu You said solemnly, “She’s a Sophon!”
Wei Sen held her forehead.
Sure enough, classics never died. Even a novel from over a hundred years ago had somehow reached this Daoist’s eyes.
Wait!
A chill ran down Wei Sen’s spine.
A novel from more than a hundred years ago… How did she know about it?
When had she ever read that novel?
These memories, just like all the others, had appeared naturally in her mind-so naturally that she hadn’t noticed anything strange at first.
“What’s a proton?” Lin Xiaoxue and Chen Lin both looked at Xu You in confusion.
CC was just as puzzled. “A proton?”
Xu You launched into an enthusiastic retelling of the Trisolarans’ story, and Lin Xiaoxue and Chen Lin listened with rapt attention, applauding her by the end.
Xu You waved it off with a smile. “Ah, this humble Daoist has merely skimmed a few novels.” Then she looked at CC. “So that’s how it is? Turns out that wasn’t fiction-it was documentary!”
“No,” CC denied Xu You’s guess without expression.
Wei Sen’s face grew grave. “Then who exactly is she? What kind of existence is she?”
CC tapped at the screen, then slowly uttered two words: “Nüwa.”
The Transit Pod fell silent once more.
The truth of this world kept ricocheting between science and mysticism.
“You mean Nüwa as in… the Nüwa who created humanity?” Xu You asked tentatively.
A trace of confusion entered CC’s eyes. “Maybe… so.”
“Maybe?” Wei Sen echoed.
CC took a deep breath and pressed a button on the screen. “My current identity is only that of a Guide. I can’t know anything beyond that. All I can say is that this world holds far too many secrets-so many that you and I might not learn even one ten-thousandth of them before we die.”
As she finished speaking, the walls of the Transit Pod gradually turned transparent under her control, and the scenery outside came into view.
“My… God.” Chen Lin, usually the quietest of them all, was the first to gasp.
Wei Sen, Xu You, and Lin Xiaoxue were equally stunned speechless.
Before their eyes lay an enormous underground city.
They were traveling along a rail line. Around them stood buildings made of metal, yet from the outside, their upturned eaves and carved beams gave them a distinctly ancient-style elegance.
All of the houses were built upon steep rock faces, arranged in an orderly cascade.
But they were not purely antique in style. Their decorations were filled with a futuristic sensibility, especially the glowing stones embedded all around them, which served the same purpose as streetlamps.
Every walkable road was paved with metal. The paths were flat but not particularly wide, spreading in every direction like the crisscrossing paths between country fields.
The Transit Pod’s rail line wove along above the metal streets like a tramway.
There were Taoyuan residents around them as well, and every person they could see was male.
Their clothing was not much different from that of the Surface World, but strangely, everyone’s left and right eyes were different.
The pupil of the left eye had expanded to fill the entire socket, turning the whole eye abyssal black, with almost no white visible. The right eye, however, looked perfectly normal.
And the pedestrians showed no surprise at their arrival, because on those metal streets, there were many Transit Pods just like the one they were riding in.
Only then did the group realize that the Transit Pod was suspended above the rail by some kind of technology. There seemed to be a dispatch System in place, because even with pedestrians coming and going, the Transit Pods traveled back and forth through the streets without the slightest mishap.
The entire underground city felt like a fusion of cyberpunk and wasteland aesthetics.
“Why are all the residents here men? And why are they all missing their right eye?” Wei Sen asked.
She hadn’t remembered wrong. Every time she had received an Invitation and gone to the appointment, the man in the gray suit she encountered had been like this too-his right eye was artificial.
The people outside the Transit Pod had pitch-black left eyes because they had lived underground for years in dim light. Over time, their pupils had dilated to take in more light.
Their right eyes differed from their left because those eyes had all been installed later as artificial eyes, and would not change with the environment.
CC’s tone was exceptionally grave. “Because they are all refugees. If they don’t dig out their right eye, Nüwa will detect their traces!”