A month passed quickly, and this time, Xiaozhuang Station was far livelier after service had been suspended than it had been the previous month.
The entire station was packed with surveillance equipment, countless cameras and firearms aimed at the direction from which the Ghost Train would arrive. More than a hundred researchers and field agents stood ready, some staring intently at the deep tunnel entrance through their weapon sights, others watching the flickering electronic screens before them. Not a single person spoke.
Sun Hang sat on a waiting bench on the platform, with seventeen elite agents selected for the advance team beside him. Among them were hunters and researchers from Tianshu Tower, as well as ace soldiers and technical specialists from the military. Over the previous month, they had even been sent to the Tengger Desert for twenty days of "simulated training."
During those twenty days, they had not only used the materials they carried to build a temporary research station, but had also successfully eliminated more than a dozen anomalies released into the area as "hostile targets."
To simulate the movements of the Sand-Sinking Giant Worm, Tianshu Tower had even brought in six nuclear-powered tunnel-boring machines to travel back and forth beneath the desert. By monitoring underground tremors, the advance team had successfully avoided the machines' paths several times.
By every measure, their performance in the simulated training could be considered outstanding.
"Twenty-three twenty-two." Sun Hang glanced at his wristband. "It's coming."
He turned to look at the advance team members standing nearby. More or less, a trace of nervousness showed on every face.
Nervousness was normal—using the power of a Type A Anomaly to travel to a fallen land that had gone unexplored for nearly a century and lay half a world away from the territory of human