Deep underground, this place was cut off from the surface's deadly sunlight. However, since the entire planet had been continuously heated for thousands of years, it was still abnormally scorching here. Without shields and life-support systems, everyone except Izax and Elizabeth probably wouldn't last long. Hao Ren led the small exploration team through a broad, slanted passage. The road ahead continued downward, seemingly reaching all the way into the depths, and so far, they still hadn't seen its end.
Exploring this real planet that had been transformed into a purgatory, Hao Ren couldn't help thinking of Nolan, who had remained in the virtual world, and the hundreds or thousands of cycles Nolan had experienced. He could be certain that the humans in the virtual world were the inhabitants who had once lived on this planet, and they had undoubtedly entered the virtual world to escape something. Hao Ren had once wondered whether, when the planet fell into the sun, the people on it had been helpless and thus had no choice but to create a virtual world to hide in and numb themselves. But he soon realized that the timeline didn't match. The earliest world cycle in Nolan's memories had occurred nearly ten thousand years ago, while the Data Terminal calculated that the planet's orbit had become unstable only two or three thousand years ago. The gap between the two was enormous. Even if Nolan's memories of the world weren't entirely accurate, they shouldn't have been off by that much.
So the Zhuom people hadn't entered the virtual world to escape the stellar conflagration. What had they been trying to escape? The Firstborn?
The journey through the underground passage was boring, so Hao Ren casually shared his speculation with everyone around him. After hearing it, Lily offered her own opinion: