In this underground city of eternal night, there was no natural light, nor was there an artificial starry sky like the one at the station.
Aside from the city's electric lights, everything was pitch-black.
The three of them finished checking their gear. It was time to set out.
They climbed into the black Volga, the same timeworn yet immaculate car.
On the outskirts of this vast, desolate underground city, the wilderness on either side of the road disappeared into the darkness. It was the kind of blackness that seemed to suck in the gaze.
Xue Ming felt as if he'd boarded a cramped submarine. Outside the window was nothing but pure darkness, as though they'd descended to the bottom of the sea, ten thousand meters below the surface.
Perhaps to save electricity, a streetlight appeared only every few hundred meters. Their lamps looked like the glowing lures of anglerfish, making him uneasy.
Far in the distance, where the city's buildings appeared close enough to run to but were actually impossibly far away, the clusters of structures resembled vast colonies of ugly sea monsters. Their unevenly spaced, orderly blue lights made the scene feel unreal—the wilderness and the city differed greatly in temperature, and the currents formed where hot and cold air collided made the lights seem dreamlike, as if they were slowly writhing along with the dark seawater.
That feeling was back.
Even in his spirit garment, even hidden inside this "submarine," Jiang Xueming could feel that same inexplicable spiritual pressure he'd felt on the sandy shore beside Fang Feng, when he'd faced those ancient golden eggs from the mansion.
It was as if his body could sense that he was approaching some great, unknown existence. His flesh trembled and quaked with fear against his will; this wasn't something human