Chapter 1 The Amazing Appearance

The probe's altitude continued to increase. It had already crossed the cloud tops of the Purgatory Planet and passed through an extremely thin atmosphere, now essentially entering a vacuum. The entire appearance of the Purgatory Planet could almost be completely displayed in the transmitted images, and its form was astonishing.

It was an almost perfectly smooth, snowball-like sphere. No lines or wrinkles could be seen on its surface. The entire planet appeared seamless due to the cloud tops, and the planet shone brightly in the dark space, like a pearl, due to the luminescence of the clouds themselves.

Who could have imagined, just by looking at this scene, what an ugly world lay beneath those heavy clouds?

The probe captured a panoramic image of the Purgatory Planet and then continued to fly towards outer space, beginning to search for signs of a star. But after crossing a certain spatial boundary, the signal it transmitted suddenly cut off.

"We've lost the probe," the data terminal said, turning off the tracking screen, which had become static. "It's likely that it came into contact with a spatial boundary. If the device is still alive, it should return from the void later."

"As expected, there's no star," Hao Ren muttered to himself. "This planet is the only celestial body in the spatial fragment."

Hesperide couldn't understand how a witch hunt had suddenly developed into something so incomprehensible. She scratched her head and looked at Hao Ren in confusion. "What are you guys researching... What does it matter if there's no star?"

"On Earth, all the energy in the ecosystem comes from the sun—including the planet's temperature. The source of everything is sunlight," Hao Ren pointed to the base of the faintly glowing cloud tops directly above. "Without the sun's rays, a planet would be cold and desolate, more barren than you can imagine. Although this world is also desolate, it clearly has an ecosystem, has a high temperature, and that temperature isn't maintained by those small hot springs. I have reliable data that confirms that this planet has been running in this sunless space for ten thousand years. So, what is sustaining the environment on the planet?"

"I don't care about sunlight," Hesperide said with a pout. "I don't like that stuff."

"That's why I don't like discussing high-end topics with you," Hao Ren sighed. "You're much more petty than Vivian. Whether you like it or not, sunlight is the energy source for a planet, so this Purgatory Planet is using another way to generate energy... or rather, is depleting its reserves."

"Isn't light and heat provided by the clouds?" Lily looked up at the sky. "And the structure of the clouds seems to be able to insulate heat."

"Not nearly enough," the data terminal said from the side. "The light and heat generated by the clouds and their thick structure can only slow down energy loss; it's not something that produces energy itself. It's just converting energy. This unit has calculated the efficiency of the entire cloud top, and it's completely insufficient to maintain Purgatory's current activity, or rather, temperature. So, there must be something else on this planet—something that maintains the ecological cycle without sunlight, and most importantly, maintains heat."

Lily opened her mouth. As the most educated person present, she grasped the key point: "So, where is this energy coming from?"

Many guesses suddenly popped into Hao Ren's mind, but he cautiously put them all aside. "I don't know. Maybe we'll have to explore the entire planet before we can draw a conclusion. Anyway, this place is quite intriguing... a planet running in the cracks of the Wall of Reality for ten thousand years, with no sunlight the entire time, and yet it still has an ecosystem. Tsk, the universe is truly vast."

At this moment, Vivian suddenly interrupted Hao Ren's sigh. "Hey, planet expert, shift your attention away from the research for a moment. My little bats have discovered an entrance: it may lead to the second layer of Purgatory."

Hao Ren immediately put away the data terminal. "Where?"

Vivian raised her finger and pointed in a certain direction. "Over there, two thousand kilometers away—you should have the data terminal fly over there first to pinpoint the location, and then we can teleport to travel more quickly. I've already had the bat swarm form a huge navigation icon there. It'll be easy to see."

Hao Ren nodded, grabbed the data terminal, aimed it in the direction Vivian was pointing, and swung his arm in a circle, throwing it. The terminal only had time to let out a scream: "Wait, pay attention to operating instr..." "Go!"

The terminal turned into a streak of blue light and disappeared from everyone's sight. Hesperide stared blankly at this scene, and after a long while, looked at Hao Ren as if he were a monster. "If I had such a high-end tablet, I definitely wouldn't be willing to use it like you do!"

Hao Ren curled his lip. "You'll be willing once your tablet learns to argue with you."

Hesperide: "?"

Soon, the group arrived at the so-called entrance to the second layer of Purgatory through the data terminal's guidance. A huge impact crater appeared before them.

They climbed the steep mountain walls and looked at the scene in front of them in stunned silence.

This was an almost perfectly circular impact crater. The regularity of its shape made it hard to believe that it was the result of natural geological formation. The radius of the entire ring-like structure reached tens of kilometers. Inside the crater, the slope gradually descended, and the ground was covered with neat, radial, strange lines, as if someone had carefully sculpted the landscape. And at the end of their line of sight, Hao Ren saw the so-called Purgatory entrance: it was the very center of the entire impact crater, a terrifying circular hole, from which a constant flow of air was being released, carrying sand and dust and stirring up a large number of small whirlwinds visible to the naked eye.

The group came to the hole, and its scale was frightening. The dark, vertical hole seemed to lead straight to hell, and just standing on the edge and looking down made one's hands and feet go weak.

Lily was the first to go weak. She grabbed Hao Ren's trouser leg and squatted down. "Are we... are we really going to jump down?"

"Who told you to jump?" Hao Ren glanced at her. "We're flying down."

Lily perked up when she heard the first half of the sentence, but the second half almost made her cry. "Doesn't that still mean we have to go down?"

The data terminal reported the situation in a businesslike manner. "A huge scale of feedback waves has been detected below, a super-macro underground space. This unit recommends taking safety precautions before going down."

Hesperide looked solemnly at the bottomless cave. Even as a winged race, she felt that going down rashly would not be a good thing.

"It's a pity that Nolan is on vacation at the Kuiper Station; otherwise, we could have taken a spaceship," Hao Ren shook his head regretfully, then suddenly remembered something. "Oh, right, I have another means of transportation!"

Under everyone's curious gaze, Hao Ren released his Beidou Star.

Hesperide's expression immediately changed. "I may not have gone to school much—but you can't fool people like that! You're saying safety precautions mean driving the Beidou Star and stepping on the gas to rush into a sinkhole?!"

"Whether you believe it or not, this thing flies no slower than you, and it's definitely more stable than you. Also, don't underestimate its size. The interior space of this thing is special. We can all squeeze in," Hao Ren shrugged, took out the data terminal, and pressed it against the Beidou Star. Two beeps, the sound of unlocking, came from the car. "Of course, if you trust your wings, you can fly yourself. That would save me trouble."

Vivian patted Hesperide on the shoulder. "Trust him. Look at him, he's like a Doraemon. Even if the things he pulls out of his pocket are strange, is there anything that doesn't work?"

As she spoke, she was the first to get into the car, followed by the Nangong siblings and Lily, leaving Hesperide and her two followers outside the car, tangled up like something awful: the reason being that although the things Hao Ren had pulled out of his pocket in the past were strange, they at least looked high-tech, the art style alone inspired trust, but the art style of this Beidou Star in front of them...

Let me put it this way, it's like suddenly meeting an old man with a white beard on the street who floats down from the sky, gives you a sword wrapped in purple energy, and says, "You are gifted and can take on great responsibilities. I bestow upon you this treasure; follow me to ascend to the Immortal Realm," then your first reaction would definitely be to prostrate yourself. But if a middle-aged man fell from the sky, landing face first, pulled out a Magical DoReMi wand, and asked you to save the world, you'd be showing great kindness just by refraining from calling the police.

Duncan looked at Hesperide with a dead expression. "Mistress, are we really going to jump into the pit in this thing? Even if it can fly... I still don't think it's very reliable."

Hesperide kept a straight face, and was just about to say a few polite words before getting into the car, but her ears suddenly twitched: she heard a sound rapidly approaching.

At this moment, Cassandra and Duncan also heard it. They looked up in unison in the direction of the sound: only to see groups of black shadows suddenly appearing on the edge of the impact crater: countless hideous and twisted mutant creatures!

The natives of Purgatory, the "irrational twisted monsters" in Vivian's words. Hao Ren had thought he was lucky today and wouldn't encounter any monsters, but he didn't expect these guys to show up at this time.

(Last day, if you have any monthly tickets left, vote for them. There is no double this month; the double starts on the first of next month =.=)