No one spoke for the rest of the journey. At the end of the hidden passage was another elevator, one that did not exist in Gen Chisei's memory.
The four of them silently entered the spacious freight elevator. There were no numbers on the floor display, but they could feel it descending. Beneath Genji Heavy Industries, there was a level even deeper than the Iron Dome Temple!
The elevator slowly stopped. The floor display read "Hell" in dark red.
"Naraka" was a loanword derived from the "Naraka" of Buddhist scriptures: the deepest part of hell, a void of endless falling. The evil spirits in Naraka could never return to the human world, only live forever in their ceaseless descent.
The elevator doors opened. Gen Chisei and Lu Mingfei pushed the cart into pitch darkness. Behind them, the two researchers had already "fallen asleep." An open space lay in the darkness, but apart from the faint whir of ventilation fans, there was only deathly silence.
Both possessed powerful night vision, and both immediately turned their eyes toward the enormous glass wall on one side.
Perhaps they had triggered some sensor, for the wall suddenly lit up. Seven or eight meters tall, it gave off a dim blue glow. A closer look revealed that it was actually an enormous water tank, and the wall was the glass on one side of it. Over a hundred panes, each about a square meter in area, were fitted together with narrow metal frames between them.
Water turbines and filters several meters in diameter were installed above the tank. Its capacity rivaled the giant tanks in an aquarium, and ordinary water pipes could not possibly supply enough water. Instead, it drew from the sewers. The sewage was filtered and fed into the tank, then pumped out