As they divided their spoils, the flesh-and-blood speedboat charged through the crimson waves of the Red Tide.
The oppressive, leaden mushroom cloud from the nuclear blast overhead finally began to recede slowly behind them.
Suddenly, a golden rift tore through the gloomy horizon ahead without warning.
A long-awaited beam of bright, clear light pierced through the layers of haze, casting a slanted glow upon the shimmering, blood-colored water.
Dawn had broken.
Ren Yi slightly narrowed his threads of thought and peered through the concealing white mist, looking up at the light source hanging high in the void.
It was a sun.
In the Alliance's archives, the existence at the very top of the altar had always been a mystery.
Ren Yi had wondered more than once: since S-002 was the "Moon," would S-001—whose serial number was even earlier—be the very "Sun" currently radiating light and heat above their heads?
However, reality was somewhat disappointing.
The sun that fell into his gaze at this moment looked ordinary, no different from any star in a normal universe.
If he had to say there was anything special about it...
It would probably be the fault of this unlucky planet's massive debris ring, composed of countless meteorites and ruins.
At this moment, a portion of that sky-spanning ring happened to be slowly cutting into the sun's direct path.
The giant shadows cast downward made the originally round, blazing sphere look as if it had been crudely punctured with countless holes.
From a distance, it looked like a face covered in a dense cluster of pockmarks.
Ren Yi watched this scene coldly and initiated a conversation through their mental link.
"Wu Erhun, tell us in detail about that path to the Abyss you mentioned."
Just saying "north" was still far too vague.
At the same time, Ren Yi took out the mushroom from the "Honest Gift" and placed it nearby.
Fearing that Wu Erhun might be too slow-witted to connect his previous experience of being locked in a dark room for lying with the mushroom's reaction, Ren Yi thoughtfully explained the mushroom's function first.
"Er, cough..." Wu Erhun's words caught in his throat just as he was about to speak.
"To answer your question, Sir, we are currently heading upstream!"
The facial features on Wu Erhun's cross turned toward them with a fawning expression.
"Back when I was the chief of the Black Tooth Tribe, I occasionally did some smuggling business with some People of the Abyss who snuck out."
"The place where I met them was usually near the Red Tide source."
"I've always suspected that the People of the Abyss hid a secret passage in that area."
Evans chimed in with some curiosity, "A secret passage? Have you seen it?"
"Not exactly," Wu Erhun smacked the mouth on his cross.
"But in the past, there were a few small tribes with bad intentions who felt the People of the Abyss were lowballing them too hard in every trade."
"They thought about secretly tailing their merchant caravans to find the secret passage, planning to go into the Abyss and get the goods themselves in the future."
"The result? Heh, after those tribes left, I never saw them again."
Evans glanced at him and let out a mocking sneer. "Oh? You seem to know a lot. Why didn't you have those 'bad intentions' back then?"
Wu Erhun laughed awkwardly, his face of cobbled-together flesh looking quite comical. "Look at what you're saying, Sir."
"I, Wu Erhun, have been able to survive to this day by relying on one principle—play it safe and strike only when the outcome is certain!"
Oh. Ren Yi swayed slightly, signaling his understanding.
He could compress that entire principle into one word: survivalist.
As for why Wu Erhun knew all this so clearly...
It was highly likely that he was the one who had egged those small tribes on in the first place.
His plan was probably to see how the first ones to try fared.
If they succeeded, he would rob the successful ones. If they all died, he would just happen to be outside to collect their corpses and swallow their tribal territories while he was at it.
Well, when it came to the survival laws of the Wilderness, Wu Erhun certainly had a few tricks up his sleeve.
Ren Yi paused for a moment and then turned his attention to Evans.
Although the mushroom didn't react, he still wanted to cross-reference the information with Evans's side.
【Evans, when you were brought out of the Abyss to the Wilderness back then, what was the process like?】
【Even if you don't remember the specific path, you should remember some details.】
Evans leaned back on the bone bench and rubbed his temples, reminiscing.
"At the time, I was blindfolded by those People of the Abyss, and they likely used some kind of Anomaly that could confuse the senses, so my memories are a bit muddled."
"However, I vaguely remember walking along a very long, very straight, diagonal upward path."
"That place was extremely vast and cold. The ground seemed to be covered in some strange plant vines that kept tripping me along the way."
"Hearing Wu Erhun say this, it seems a secret passage really does exist. But..."
The youth paused and added with some frustration.
"I approached that area later and tried to find that passage myself."
"But every time I went, I could only see an endless plain."
"I could feel back then that the secret passage was very wide."
"Logically speaking, if such a passage really existed, it should be very obvious..."
Ren Yi's thoughts turned slowly.
It seemed the existence of a hidden secret passage at the Red Tide source leading directly to the Abyss was a settled conclusion.
However, finding it would likely be difficult.
He pondered for a moment and proposed another plan.
"Since that secret passage is hidden and hard to find, what if we give up on looking for it and just head north across the surface of the Wilderness? Wouldn't we reach the Abyss eventually?"
After all, the world's surface was always connected; it would just be a matter of traveling a bit further.
However, as soon as this suggestion was made, it was met with intense rejection from both Evans and Wu Erhun.
"You mustn't, Sir!" Wu Erhun was so frightened the flesh on his cross began to tremble. "Heading north from the surface... that's not a road at all!"
Evans also put away his cynical attitude, explaining with a serious expression.
"That path... we shouldn't be able to take it."
"The reason the Wilderness is completely separated from the City of the Sky Lake and the Abyss isn't because of the distance."
"It's because on the northern border of the Wilderness, there lies an absolutely impassable geographical chasm."
"That place is called the 'Rotten Mountains.'"
"Rotten Mountains?" Ren Yi repeated the term in his mind.
After listening for a while, Ren Yi gradually came to understand.
It was an area of extremely unstable, super-massive volcanoes.
However, this explanation brought a look of confusion to Evans's face.
"Volcanoes? No, no, no. There is no fire there."
【You mean the mountains there don't erupt fire or magma?】
"What is magma?" Evans's confusion deepened, and he began to explain in more detail.
"The volcanoes there don't erupt magma; they erupt corrosive acid."
"Even the air there is corrosive, and the ground can collapse and erupt at any moment."
"Unless we have a vehicle with top-tier protection like the 'land ships' of the City of the Sky Lake."
"Otherwise, if we try to cross the Rotten Mountains with just our bodies or ordinary transport, half of our bodies would be dissolved within three seconds of entering."
Well, large amounts of corrosive liquid were indeed a threat to flesh-and-blood lifeforms like Evans.
Wu Erhun frantically nodded his cross on the deck. "Yes, exactly, Sir! My flesh-and-blood speedboat might be sturdy, but it's impossible for it to take a bath in the liquid erupted by the Rotten Mountains!"
"So, our only path is that secret passage hidden somewhere at the Red Tide source!"
After hearing their explanation, Ren Yi felt somewhat stunned within the white mist.
Corrosive volcanoes, geological toxins, and a hidden vertical passage...
The geological structure of this world was truly peculiar enough.
Rate on N.U.
