The journey to Purgatory had turned out very differently from what everyone had initially expected.
An unremarkable small-displacement private car glided noiselessly across the lush green plains. The gusts kicked up behind it left a faint ripple across the grass. The sky and land stretched endlessly in every direction, and the tiny car looked as insignificant as a bug speeding across the grassland. If they had not occasionally spotted black rock formations through the clouds, no one would have imagined that another layer of crust was suspended above the sky.
The car slowly came to a stop before a black "mountain." This was another Pillar Giant Tree supporting the dome. Its enormous trunk rose straight from the ground like an entire cliff, with a nearly thousand-meter-tall mountain forming its lower half, while its upper half vanished deep into the clouds. Hao Ren pushed open the door and climbed out, then took several pieces of equipment resembling surveying stands from his personal storage space and assembled them on the spot.
The Data Terminal connected itself to the equipment. A rough planetary cross-section was then projected above it, while several tiny machines resembling silver cicadas flew out of the cylindrical container beneath the equipment. They flew toward the Pillar Giant Tree and nimbly burrowed into its rock-hard black outer layer. A moment later, the data came back, and the holographic image representing the Pillar Giant Tree before them turned a cold blue on the Data Terminal's scan.
"Third tree, also a dead specimen. All life reactions have ceased," the Data Terminal reported calmly as it displayed the data. "Wood fibers can still be found in the deeper layers, but the outer bark has essentially petrified. It's a mixed mineral, possibly a hardened reinforcing shell formed from secretions released by the trunk over