The city was far behind them now. Before them was only a deep tunnel spreading ahead. Looking back at the direction from where they had come from, there was only a faint light dot in the far distant, which only people with supervision could see.
The air was turbid almost to the point of being poisonous. Clearly, Hao Ren had chosen an exit that had never been opened: the air behind the hatch had never been scavenged.
The tunnel was very wide, mostly structurally sound, and not as narrow and dilapidated as thought. It was only rather old and dirty, and thick dust everywhere. Traces of years of erosion were apparent. Clearly, compared to the enclosed city, this place lacked the necessary clean ups.
There were steel rails running parallel to the tunnel, though different from the railway on Earth, it was obviously a track for some kind of large transportation vehicles. If accident had never happened to this planet, this tunnel must be a busy subway line—it connected the city with a major transportation hub. It was an important thoroughfare but now just a cave that had been abandoned for 10,000 years. Aside from inches of dust accumulating, there were old machinery that might or might not operational anymore inside.
The tunnel ceiling was inlaid with a dim array of lights. Eighty-nine percent of them were working properly. These lights were the only thing that could prove that the tunnel was not completely abandoned. In the dim surroundings, Hao Ren saw piles of unused machinery on both sides, including rusty cars and dusty robots. Lily went up and checked, then scurried back, reporting. “The model is different from the ones in the city. A little more primitive.”
“That is to say, those machines in the city are evolutionary versions,” Hao Ren nodded slightly. “It seems that some kind of ‘research and development’ is really going on. They’re updating the machines… which requires innovation.”
“These machines should be abandoned before the flight… or perhaps even earlier, such as ten thousand years ago,” said Y’zaks, looking at the rusting metal on the way. “It seems that these things were abandoned in a sudden. There must have been a situation.”
A red light suddenly flashed across Vivian’s eyes in the dimly lit environment. She saw things she was interested in from a pile of debris. Several small bats flew over, raked through the debris, and found a little metal plate. Hao Ren took the metal plate from the small bat. There were a figure engraved on it, which was of a middle-aged man with a serious expression and meticulous clothes. At one glance, he felt that this face was rather familiar and then it crossed his mind: the middle-aged man whom he saw on the wall before he entered the sanctuary!
It was the first stranger he saw on this planet.
Nangong Wudi came up and took a gander of it. He looked slightly surprised. “This man could be the commander.”
“Commander?” Waving the metal plate in his hand, Hao Ren asked, “You know him?”
“He would appear on the screen, that’s the TV you were talking about,” said Nangong Wudi, nodding. “Besides from major events, he would only appear once a year. He is the highest official here, so I have a deep impression of him.”
“The highest official on this planet?” Hao Ren swept the dust off the metal plate. “He appeared on the big screen, but on the bottom of the plate is his year of birth and death, and the caption says ‘In Deep Sorrow.’ Supposedly only a person who has died would only be described as such?”
“The commander is dead?” Vivian looked at the commemorative plate in surprise. “…Looks like there is more to the person we saw on the screen than meets the eye.”
Hao Ren nodded and led everyone move deeper into the tunnel.
After do-not-know-how-long, they arrived the end of the tunnel to a large, cave-like cavern that looked like a subway interchange.
The large cavern was generally oval. Round tunnel entrances and exits were on all sides of the cave. Each entrance and exit was the same with rails extending out. At the intersection of these railroad tracks, there was a huge dish-shaped building, which undoubtedly the hub of the subway of this planet. Supposedly, the round tunnels were leading to other cities.
The group cautiously stepped into the dish-shaped building. This ancient facility was still structurally sound. It was not known whether that the power supply was offline or lighting fixture were broken, it was pitch-dark inside. Lily raised her Flamejoy lighting up the interior. Under the illumination of the flickering flame, they saw the criss-crossing railroad tracks, scheduling platform full of debris, and the severely damaged control hut.
Several small bats flew into the darkness. They hit something unknown before the ‘subway station’ suddenly reverberated with a sound of machines. To the shock of everyone, the lights on the ceiling suddenly turned on.
Confirming that only the lighting system was activated, only Hao Ren began to breathe a sigh of relief and began to look around curiously. Suddenly, a group of complicated sculptures standing in front of the railroad intersection caught his attention.
The sculptures presented a group of strange humans. They huddled in a circle, holding their hands up towards the sky, and floating above their heads a grotesque object, a bunch of radial metal rods, seemingly to mimic the appearance of a glow, a lightning or something. Vivian looked at the sculptures and said, “Looks like it’s a representation of a third contact.”
Hao Ren did not say anything, just bent down and gently brushed off the thick dust on the base of the sculptures. Unexpectedly, he found some embossed writings on it; the texts remained on the special alloy after 10,000 years had passed. It read, “The warning from The Denizens of the Stars is forever remembered and appreciated.”
“The Denizens of the Stars?” Lily said curiously. “The alien?”
Nangong Wuyue frowned in thought, “Is it that the so-called The Denizens of the Stars came and warned the humans on this planet before they built the ark?”
Hao Ren still did not say anything, just staring blankly at the word ‘The Denizens of the Stars’. He felt a sense of déjàvu; he had seen similar things in other places. “Allies from the stars! Do you still remember that this race was mentioned on Holletta planet?”
The others started to recall. Nangong Wuyue’s eyes blinking in disbelief. “Do you mean The Denizens of the Stars mentioned here are the same as Holletta’s Allies from the stars?”
“Just guessing,” Hao Ren got to his feet and looked at the abstract lines above the sculptures. “A lot of the things on The Plane of Dreams are interconnected. So far, on any planet, events don’t happened in isolation.”
Lily looked back at the sculptures for a long time before something suddenly came to mind. “The Denizens of the Stars are like sea urchins.”
Nangong Wuyue solemnly corrected her. “Sea urchin looks not like this—let me show you if you don’t believe me…”
“Shut up you two,” scoffed Vivian, shooting the dog and the fish a glare. “Let’s move. There may be more clues up ahead.”
They searched around the building and finally found a space beneath the floor. The underground space was unusually huge, almost equal to the size of the dish above it. In the centre was a large facility that was composed of a number of arc-shaped structures, like a lift shaft. Lily ran over and poked her head out looking down before she squatted on the floor and crawled back up. “That thing is so deep!”
The ‘lift shaft’ was more than ten metres in diameter, dropping straight down into the endless darkness below. There were still alloy rails on four sides of the shaft but the lift was gone.
Of course, even if the lift was still here, it might not be operational given lack of maintenance of this place.
Vivian summoned a tiny bat and dropped it down into the shaft, waiting for a good long while before she shrugged. “It haven’t gotten to the bottom.”
Lily raised her hand and shouted. “I’m not going to jump! No way! Don’t force me into it, I will bite you!”
“You’re not needed,” Hao Ren rolled his eyes. “Vivian, you go down with me. The other just stay put.”