Apocalypse: I Built the Infinite Train
Chapter 352: Xingyuan Crossing

Reason and fear battled within him.

Lin Xian forced himself to stay conscious, to keep his wits intact.

In the darkness, the eerie sounds felt both distant and right beside his ears.

Thunder. Screeches. Chaos. It was like the end of the world.

And yet—inside his helmet, all Lin Xian could hear was his own heartbeat... and the shallow, rhythmic breathing echoing like that of an astronaut inside a suit.

Huff... huff...

On the holographic panel, life signals blinked wildly.

The situational awareness system blared with alarms.

The radar screen was a sea of crimson.

The Black Hawk Power Armor had only its palm cannon and pulse beam left. He had brought none of the other weapons or drones.

He was completely alone, hidden in the rooftop shadows, with only a sparking electromagnetic rifle in his hands.

But to the Eerie Entities, Lin Xian—now marked—was like a blazing heat signature in the night, drawing them in from all directions.

There was nowhere left to hide.

“Five kilometers to the target point!”

“Heal Fire Bro, quickly!”

“Lin Xian, do you read me?”

“Captain Lin!”

“Brother Lin, we’ve been waiting on you!”

“The bunker convoy is almost there!”

“Look behind Silent City—what the hell is that?!”

“It’s gotta be an S-Class Eerie Entity. Are all of Abyss Zone No. 5’s S-Class freaks here now?!”

Voices came through the comms—familiar ones.

Lin Xian didn’t respond. He just stared at the convergence progress on his HUD, counting the rotation interval of the Fish-Lion Colossus.

Clang-clang-clang!

The rooftop door was ripped open by clawed limbs.

Something massive crawled up the outer wall, its grotesque silhouette surfacing from the night.

Final minute.

All three squads entered the designated flatlands.

The convoy was slowing.

The Unified Train began braking.

Silent City, vast as a floating fortress, raised waves of dust as it slammed to a stop.

It was time.

For a moment, it felt like time around Lin Xian had slowed to a crawl.

He held his breath.

The Fish-Lion Colossus turned to face him on the screen.

He raised his glowing EM rifle, rolled out from the shadows, and leapt.

Every thruster on the Black Hawk Armor roared to life.

In the nick of time, he launched himself skyward, dodging the snapping jaws and claws of the Eerie swarm.

In midair, Lin Xian aimed.

BOOM!

Blue arcs rippled across the barrel—

A silver projectile launched with a deafening sonic boom, ripping eastward with devastating kinetic force.

As he flew, Lin Xian turned his gaze toward the Colossus—

He met its face head-on, without hesitation.

It had no eyes.

Where its eyes should’ve been were only two swirling black vortices, endlessly deep.

They looked like gateways to another world.

In those dark holes... something was staring back at him.

[System reboot successful.]

[Abnormal heart rate detected.]

[Heart rate: 160 bpm.]

The screen flickered—system rebooting.

Progress bar.

Modules activating: mobility, defense, radar, perception, life support...

And Senju Shun—he saw everything.

His pupils bled red.

His vision began to collapse.

The Fish-Lion Colossus warped before him.

Its stone skin peeled like rotting flesh, revealing white, pulsing veins underneath.

Its jaws opened, unleashing a scream beyond human comprehension.

No sound hit his eardrums—but it detonated inside his brain, like ten thousand rusted needles drilling into his mind.

In that moment, KIKI flew in, caught Lin Xian with telekinesis, and yanked him away from the Colossus’s frontal radius.

Senju Shun, under Takahashi Ryunosuke’s command, took Lin’s place to observe the Colossus directly.

“Senju Shun! Hold for three minutes!” Lin Xian shouted as he was pulled away.

“Piece of cake,” Shun replied, unfazed.

He stared into that monstrous face without fear—

Instead, he looked... exhilarated.

“Yoruichi... show me the pain you once endured!”

WHAM!

His pupils contracted.

Both eyes blood-red.

Ryunosuke stood behind him, his power armor monitoring Shun’s vitals.

If Shun fell, Ryunosuke would step in immediately.

They were Silent City’s two strongest minds.

They had to lead from the front.

Meanwhile, KIKI brought Lin Xian aboard the transport ship.

Shiori used her purification power to flush out the fear still lingering in him.

BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!

The dimensional bubble collapsed.

As Senju Shun re-locked eyes with the Colossus, the Wangshan Pass Plains convulsed.

A thunderclap erupted—no one knew if it came from the sky or the earth.

The horizon buckled—

The light vanished.

From that edge, the Dark Tide rolled in—

Like a sea of molten pitch, a thousand meters high, surging in from beyond space-time, devouring everything in its path.

Breaths held.

Three minutes left before the tide returned.

They had to let themselves be swallowed by this contraction to complete spatial transfer.

No running.

No fighting.

Trains, convoys, even Silent City—all halted at the rendezvous point, awaiting the wave of annihilation.

Some closed their eyes.

Some gripped weapons.

Some clenched their jaws.

Two minutes.

As the dark wall approached, all sound dropped off.

Shadows disappeared.

Thermometers plummeted.

Forks in the dining car frosted over.

Temperature crash.

Radio chatter broke into corrupted static.

Every device—from train panels to power armor—was hit by chaotic surges and electromagnetic interference.

Space contracted.

Time stretched.

Reality twisted and tore.

Inside the Infinite Train, Duoduo stared in wide-eyed terror at the collapse of the world outside.

One minute.

Ding Junyi stared quietly at the vanishing Silver Dragon Tenfold Thorn blossom, awaiting the tide.

WHAM!

The ground quaked.

It was as if the Abyssal Overlord had cried out in rage—

And in response, millions of Eerie Entities roared in unison.

Everyone was now marked with a Level-5 tag—

But as the tide swallowed all... they vanished.

At the final instant of the Inner Tide, the Unified Train, the bunker convoys, and the entire Silent City disappeared from Wangshan Plains.

In Baicheng, the Hive erupted—

A flood of Eerie Entities poured in like rush-hour traffic.

Newly synthesized monsters clashed in chaos.

And towering among them, a massive crimson dragonfly screamed.

Suddenly—an explosion.

A spiked "mountain" dropped from the sky.

Multiple limbs like mountain ridges smashed downward—entire streets gone in a heartbeat.

Above, the sky roiled—

The Heaven-Devouring Serpent slithered ominously across the clouds.

Quakes shook nearby mountains.

Landslides.

Flooding.

Abyss Zone No. 5 was collapsing into violent spatial turbulence.

Above Luling Forest, three Crimson World transport ships were still mid-‘guidance’ mission.

“Seventh Traction Plan. No. 1689. Prepare for drop.”

A drone hummed to life.

But—

ALARM!

The ships’ sirens wailed.

Below, in the Dark Forest, Eerie Entities went berserk.

“What’s happening?!”

“We’ve been hit with a Dark Mark!”

“Impossible! Radar—”

BOOM!

No warning.

No energy buildup.

A 15-kilometer-wide aerial city materialized out of nowhere, blanketing the forest skies.

The ships crashed into Silent City’s hull before anyone could scream.

Their titanium alloy hulls shattered.

Decks compressed, detonated, vaporized—

Falling like shattered glass.

They were like dragonflies smashed against a 200-ton truck windshield.

“What the f*** just bumped us?!”

Inside Silent City’s bridge, the helmsman blinked.

“Where are we?”

“Did we hit something?”

“Was that a speed bump?”

“Speed bump? Are you dumb? It looked like an aircraft!”

“How would I know?! It just popped outta nowhere!”

“Run a full ship systems check! Deploy drones to inspect the hull!”

“Drones found debris!”

“Where? Get a repair team out there!”

“Can’t. It’s stuck in our treads...”

“D*mn. We... we crushed someone...”

“Looks like... Crimson World people.”

“Engine room! Full power!”

In the Polar Night Forest, Silent City’s cannons lit up the sky.

The darkness shattered under artillery fire.

All weapons systems were fully online.

CIWS tracers stitched red arcs through the night sky.

The entire city rumbled forward, cutting a path through the chaos.

Massive treads flattened the forest floor.

Temporary rails pulled in the Unified Train and bunker vehicles, integrating them into the fortress.

In under 20 minutes, Silent City broke through the Polar Night into the northern canyons of Luling—

The world behind them, shrouded in grey-white forest and dying light, was being slowly consumed by a creeping tide.

“We ran into the Crimson World’s guidance team for Colossus No. 2. Lucky us. Looks like they only needed a few more runs to trigger a full Abyssal Riot.”

Inside the command center, Moonlight Shinji turned to Lin Xian.

“Your Dimensional Bubble Blood Flora was stronger than expected. It even blocked tracking from the Fish-Lion Colossus and the Level-5 Mark.”

“There’s a saying—every force has its counter,” Lin Xian said with a strange glint in his eyes.

At that moment, he suddenly recalled the words Grace’s system had said to him that night—when he’d first activated her hidden protocol:

[In... in interdimensional space... do not interpret it through your own dimension...

Dark World energy resonates in frequency. It may be... communicable through similar matter.]

Lin Xian’s thoughts swirled.

The final second of the Inner Tide had been used to execute the most flawless escape in history.

“Pity. We smashed those ships too thoroughly. Can’t salvage anything.”

Shinji sighed.

Lin Xian shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. That was just a squad. I’ve got all the time in the world to play with Crimson World now.

They’re developing biomech implants and mech enhancements, right?

Perfect. That’s my specialty. I’ll help them ‘refine’ their tech.”

Aksai Dead Zone swallowed. Baicheng purged. Human experimentation.

Sure, according to Zhou Lei, Crimson World wasn’t specifically targeting him.

But Lin Xian didn’t care—there was always someone responsible.

He also needed mechanical upgrades, including the Jinhai train overhaul project.

Crimson World was a treasure trove of tech.

To Lin Xian, flesh-based mech grafts were fascinating.

And now—he and Silent City were on the same page.

Naturally, it was time to make Crimson World pay.

After all—why devour junkyard scrap...

when you could devour high-grade Crimson tech?

“We grabbed the Baicheng Institute’s backup core, and the Umbra-Cell.

With the research I’ve done in the Abyss, we might be on the verge of a massive breakthrough in understanding Dark Invasion phenomena.”

Shinji Mochizuki turned his head and looked at Lin Xian calmly. He could hear the anger in Lin’s tone, but his voice remained light and even.

“Lin, you’ve done me a huge favor. How should I thank you?”

Lin Xian glanced through the transport ship’s side window at the enormous aerial city glowing under the sunset and raised an eyebrow. “Well then, you’ve got a lot to thank me for.”

Onboard the Unified Train, thousands of survivors were shouting with excitement. After enduring endless despair and brushing past death, everything now felt like a dream. The mood was one of euphoric joy and overwhelming emotion.

Some fell to their knees and kissed the metal floor. Others sobbed uncontrollably in the arms of strangers. Cries and cheers echoed through the cars.

“We… really made it out alive?”

It began with cautious whispers, then grew into full-blown, hysterical shouting. The agony of nights spent inside the Abyss had turned into pure adrenaline and elation. Even the emergency lights flickered with the vibration of the crowd’s roars.

“Oh my god, I see the sun!”

“Hell yeah!”

“We’re f***ing awesome!”

“Haha, credit goes to Captain Lin and Silent City!”

But Silent City wasn’t just “a city.” It was a vertical-layered, colossal mobile fortress, its modular structure inspired by interstellar battleships—yet its scale far exceeded almost any industrial creation in human history.

Even without City No. 2 (Silent Metropolis) returning yet, the sheer size of Silent City was staggering. The main city was split into four structural regions across 86 levels. The Upper Deck—Cloud Sector was the command center, housing a dome-shaped holographic bridge with a live 3D projection of the entire city. Hundreds of tactical officers, navigators, and energy managers worked there. Still, the entire core operation was controlled solely by Shinji Mochizuki.

Next was the Research and Academy Zone, an “Ivory Tower” that Shinji had created for the apocalypse. With its independent eco-dome, it grew genetically modified crops and housed elite institutions, labs, and programs across every field of human science. It was also where studies into Eerie Entities, dark energy, forbidden items, and Blood Scourge Flora were conducted. Here, Shinji had officially launched his Digital Life Project. Many senior scientists and survivors had begun periodically uploading their consciousness backups—not just a scientific breakthrough, but a last-ditch hope. Even if their physical bodies perished, they hoped to survive as digital life, like Shinji.

At least that way, there was no fear of pain or darkness.

The Mid-Deck was the docking port for City No. 2 (Silent Metropolis)—built like a high-civilization model steel city. Originally, it wasn’t designed for the apocalypse. The Mochizuki family had long-term plans when they built both City No. 1 and No. 2. The main city was an aerial warship, and its design ensured that City No. 2 could avoid direct conflict. The current Abyss crisis proved how smart that design had been.

The Lower Deck housed Silent City’s power core, a Titan-class fusion reactor fueling the entire city. Together with four floating city units and two backup cores, Silent City had six total energy cores—a power unmatched.

Beneath that was the Automated Industrial Sector, containing nearly 70% of all production lines: weapons factories, military manufacturing lines, and assembly lines endlessly building ammunition and combat robots.

The bottommost level, the Base Resource Zone, stored all foundational materials and survival supplies. It was also the main hub for waste recycling and reprocessing. Trash, wastewater, damaged machines—all got dismantled and melted down here to be remade into usable resources.

The Unified Train had docked at a berth on the Lower Deck. This area could hold hundreds of aircraft and over ten thousand vehicles.

Shinji Mochizuki had landed Silent City in a wide plain, preparing for City No. 2 to rejoin the main city so everyone could enter and rest. He also invited the core members of the Unified Train to come to the upper levels.

But Lin Xian was exhausted. Now that they had escaped the Abyss, all he wanted was a proper sleep. If he happened to run into Chu Yan, he’d exchange some intel—otherwise, he was off duty.

With Silent City sheltering them, Lin felt like a thousand-ton burden had finally lifted.

He returned to Car No. 1 of the Infinite Train, took a hot shower, and gazed at the dozens of trains and hundreds of survivor vehicles parked on this mechanical city’s deck. Then he collapsed into bed and let out a long, deep breath.

No rail crises.

No Abyss Overlords.

No S-class Eerie Entities.

No Dark Invasion.

No Crimson Skeletal Horrors.

No mutations.

No ammo concerns.

No rushing for time.

He didn’t even care about the time anymore. Ever since Jiang City, Lin hadn’t felt this relaxed.

Everyone—including Chen Sixuan, KIKI, and the others—knew how exhausted Lin was. No one disturbed him. The teams were in high spirits, and Lin gave them free time to move around with Senju Shun and the rest.

As soon as he lay down, exhaustion dragged him under.

A cold drop of rain hit his forehead. Lin opened his eyes.

A graceful figure stood above him, arms crossed, looking down. Rainwater dripped off her mechanical arm, sliding past the high-frequency blade and jet module at her elbow, then fell onto his face.

Chu Yan.

She stared at him with a strange expression.

Her voice started off a little blurry—but from her mouth shape, he could already guess the three words:

“You again.”

Lin Xian stood up, scanning his surroundings. He quickly realized he was in some kind of city.

Rain drizzled from the sky. Neon wreckage flickered under the endless night. A holographic billboard blinked once or twice, projecting ghostly ads for products long gone. From the rooftop, he could see a vast, decaying industrial metropolis. A few core zones still had lights—likely survivor strongholds or Federation outposts. The rest was swallowed in darkness, with zombies roaming the streets.

For some reason, seeing their rotting faces and clawed hands made Lin Xian feel oddly nostalgic.

Chu Yan gave him a strange look. “You guys made it out of the Abyss?”

“You already know?”

“You only sleep after the crisis ends.”

“This isn’t sleeping,” Lin muttered, annoyed. “I’m still doing missions in my dreams.”

Chu Yan gave him a look. “It’s your consciousness linked to mine. I didn’t ask for this. Your presence could compromise the confidentiality of my mission.”

Lin opened his mouth… then shut it.

Honestly, he still didn’t know Chu Yan’s affiliation or identity. He didn’t trust her. But their bizarre mental connection forced them to constantly probe each other’s background.

Chu Yan broke the silence.

“Don’t interrupt me.”

Lin leaned back, trying to rest his mind. “Didn’t plan to.”

She didn’t reply—just leapt off the rooftop, her boosters flaring as she flew off into the night.

Signals from her teammates crackled through the air as she moved.

But the moment she landed, Lin’s figure appeared again nearby like a persistent shadow. Chu Yan’s brow twitched. She was clearly conflicted.

As a psychic ability user, Chu Yan could control all thought processes—including her own. But this link with Lin Xian was maddening. Given the classified nature of her mission, she had to figure out a solution fast.

She switched her communicator to silent, then turned to Lin.

“Aren’t you curious about why we’re connected like this?”

Lin kept his eyes shut. “Sure. Then what?”

He’d long suspected this link began after he awakened the Gravitational Lens ability. During the Abyss mission—when he triggered dimensional collapse—he’d glimpsed Chu Yan’s face. That had confirmed it.

But why it happened, or why her specifically? He had no idea.

Chu Yan checked the time. “Five minutes. Let’s exchange info. Maybe we can figure this out.”

Lin opened his eyes. “Alright. You first. Why were you in my home?”

“I was tracking World-Class Biological Entity No. 02—the Floating Colossal Corpse. You were holed up in Jiang City for ages. You must’ve noticed something.” Chu Yan added, “Also, your shelter had high-density Soul Wave fluctuations. That’s part of my investigation.”

Lin frowned. High Soul Wave values—was she talking about KIKI?

“My turn,” Chu Yan said. “What ability did you use that caused this mental link?”

“It’s something… uh…” Lin struggled to explain. “I call it… Gravitational Lens.”

Chu Yan’s expression changed instantly.

“What did you say?!”

Seeing her reaction, Lin’s brow furrowed. “I said, my ability is called Gravitational Lens.”

“Impossible!” Chu Yan stared at him. “How are you using that weapon?”

“Weapon?” Lin repeated, startled by her tone.

Chu Yan paused, eyes complicated. “Mechanical-type psychic abilities... Looks like your powers are truly unusual.”

“Thanks.” Lin tried to make light of it, but her reaction left him reeling.

She knew Gravitational Lens. And it didn’t sound like an innate power—it sounded like a weapon.

Could it be that everything granted by his Mechanical Heart—all these skills—were actually weaponized systems?

If so, then the R& D Center, Manufacturing Plant, Disassembly Unit... it all fit.

Which made Lin even more curious—what kind of organization was Chu Yan part of if they had this kind of gear?

But thinking back to everything that had just happened in the Abyss—spatial shifts, temporal dilation, Flicker Bullets, dimensional vacuums—it all started to make sense. The Crimson World had already acquired civilization-level breakthroughs from the Abyss. If that was possible, then Chu Yan’s organization—perhaps even the Phoenix Society—must have made similar discoveries.

Chu Yan took a deep breath. She didn’t press further but kept a wary eye on Lin, then said:

“Technically, we should probably take you in for a full investigation. But… I don’t really feel like doing that right now.”

“You afraid your organization will dissect me for research?” Lin said half-jokingly.

Chu Yan shook her head. “Maybe. But I’m also curious. You made it all the way out of the Abyss. And given your past record, the Phoenix Society should’ve tracked you down already. But…”

She glanced down slightly. “Fine. Let’s keep this channel open. I just hope you’re trustworthy.”

Lin Xian smiled faintly. “Don’t worry. I’m on the side of humanity.”

Chu Yan gave him a long, meaningful look before opening her communicator. “Operation start.”

Her boosters kicked in. She shot forward across the city, a streak in the shadows.

Minutes later, she arrived at the edge of town—an armed military base, surrounded by high walls and pulse-grid fences, bathed in blinding searchlights.

Following her consciousness, Lin’s figure reappeared on top of a guard tower. As he looked down into the compound, his eyes widened in shock.

The entire central plaza was lit up like an operating theater. Dozens of cranes and military transports were methodically placing huge remains piece by piece into the courtyard.

And at the center lay a colossal corpse—a body easily over 500 meters long. It sprawled across the base, most of its form shredded, with its head, chest, and abdomen ravaged by human heavy weapons. Its legs ended in charred black talons. Shrapnel and missile debris jutted from its broken flesh.

One look was all it took to understand—the price to kill this thing must have been unimaginable.

This Eerie Entity clearly had S-Class strength. Its body was semi-humanoid, with bone spines and jagged armor plates down its back like a mountain range. It had no eyes—just a gaping maw. The chest had gaping, hollow craters, as if something had been ripped out from the inside.

All around, soldiers in hazmat suits were working frantically under the glare of floodlights. The air reeked of blood and rot.

Seeing it, Lin Xian's face paled.

Next to him, Chu Yan whispered, “This is Subject No. 14, the Gray Mist Colossus, the S-Class entity that attacked Dawn City last night. Over 30,000 were killed or injured. It’s the second S-Class humanity has ever taken down, after the battle at Xilan City.”

“Dawn City has that much firepower and still lost thirty thousand people?!” Lin gasped.

“Dawn City isn’t like Xilan,” Chu Yan replied gravely. “Xilan’s a small industrial city in the western frontier—population under 80,000. Nowhere near as fortified.”

She continued, “First, Dawn City’s outer sectors—beyond Wall No. 1—are packed with over a million people. The old districts alone house three million. And that’s not even counting the inner city and underground levels. Second, you’re underestimating the power of an S-Class. According to battle reports, this one was protected by a Crimson Dimensional Defense Field. Energy weapons were useless. Even superheated plasma cannons couldn’t penetrate it.”

“Then how was it defeated?” Lin asked.

“Attrition,” she said. “We haven’t found a way to neutralize the crimson field yet. Thankfully, it’s not infinite—and it’s not bound to the outer tissue layer. But even without it, this thing’s body is so tough that low-grade kinetic weapons can’t penetrate. You’d need tungsten-titanium penetrators just to scratch it.”

Lin’s expression darkened. He was about to ask another question when a massive transport ship flew overhead, lifting a giant bone claw with a cable.

He squinted—on the aircraft’s hull was a triangular crimson insignia.

“The Crimson World?!” Lin frowned. “What the h*ll are they doing here?”

Chu Yan shook her head, eyes narrowing at the base. “We’d like to know too. So would the Phoenix Society.”

Before Lin could reply, a plume of black mist erupted from the plaza. The corpse—the mountain-sized S-Class creature—lurched upright with a sudden jerk.

Its skull-like maw loomed over Lin’s head, growing larger and larger. A wave of sheer terror crashed over him. His hair stood on end. In his dilated pupils, the monster’s jagged bone-fangs were reflected—

HISSSS!!

Back in Car No. 1 of the Infinite Train, Lin Xian bolted upright, breathing hard. His surroundings slowly came back into focus.

It had been… a vision.

Outside, a deep mechanical roar echoed across Silent City. The sound was deafening.

Lin jumped to his feet and threw open the blackout curtain. What he saw made his eyes widen:

Above the city, the Upper Deck’s docking arms were unfolding at high speed.

And in the starlit sky above, a breathtaking, illuminated floating city hovered in midair, preparing to link with the main fortress.

Silent Metropolis — City No. 2.