Apocalypse Forecast-Chapter 624 - 519: The Time of Gluttony (Thanks to yangersun for the repeated grand reward)_1
"So... if we’re truly going to do something, why bring along students?"
"It’s social practice."
Andrea said, "There’s still quite a bit of maintenance work to be done locally. When the time comes, they can give us a hand, help out a bit around the outskirts; it counts as gaining experience. The teaching and research office has rated this venture as an extracurricular practice level—so long as we pay attention to safety and follow the teachers’ instructions, no accidents should occur."
"Practice?"
Huai Shi couldn’t help but laugh.
The internships at Ivory Tower seemed to be a little too hardcore.
Andrea shrugged indifferently. "In Ivory Tower, this is called an internship. A little further down, it’s called the field trip level; you only need a few teaching assistants for that, and full-time teachers don’t even need to get involved. Don’t worry, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Ivory Tower hasn’t declined to the point where it needs a rookie teacher to save the day. At most, this is just an inspection to allow you to accumulate more experience."
Perhaps.
Huai Shi sighed.
Anyway, he had no expectations for Luo Su’s integrity.
As someone with a wealth of experience in vehicle explosions, even if someone told him that an Element of Destruction had sneaked into the train, he wouldn’t react—let alone if someone were to attack them.
His only hope for the train was that it could bring him all the way to the destination intact—even not wholly intact would do.
Just before departing the compartment, Huai Shi couldn’t curb his curiosity and finally asked, "Speaking of which... what was the level for Group Star last time at the teaching and research office?"
"The part I was involved in?"
"Yes," Huai Shi nodded.
"Doctoral dissertation defense. A small affair."
Andrea calmly put on her eye mask, not mentioning whether she was the one defending her dissertation or one of the reviewers. Lying on the bed, she fell into a deep sleep.
She confidently entrusted the safety of the entire train carriage to Huai Shi.
This, in turn, gave Huai Shi a headache.
In the time that followed, Huai Shi first went to greet Raymond at the front of the train, then made his way back, patrolling the carriage.
Most of the students were also leaning against their seats, fast asleep. Those who were awake were silently reading or playing cards without making a sound.
Lin Nineteen, however, didn’t mingle with his new friends. Instead, he lay next to Yuan Yuan in a corner, sleeping soundly in his sleeping bag, snot bubbles even forming at his nose.
As someone with both paranoid delusions and persecution delusions, he knew the safest place on the train.
Hearing someone approach, Yuan Yuan, who had been resting with her eyes closed, looked up. Huai Shi waved, signaling them to continue resting. After confirming they kept the Dream Cage nearby, he left.
The latter half of the night was very quiet.
Nothing happened.
When passing Fire City, he got off the train to get some fresh air on the platform.
The slightly hot air bore an enduring sulfur smell, very much fitting the traditional narrative of Hell. In the Borderlands of the Middle-East Region, periodic eruptions from the Abyss deposited flames that covered the land. Cities were constructed on molten lava and mountain peaks using steel frameworks, creating an ongoing stuffy heat.
As one of the largest Borders closest to Hell, the place indeed had a rather eerie atmosphere.
Inside the station, the platform was empty.
Only a well-dressed, middle-aged man approached to strike up a conversation. "Excuse me, friend, could I borrow a light?"
Huai Shi pulled a lighter from his pocket and handed it over.
The middle-aged man seemed very grateful. After using it, he promptly returned it.
After a casual chat, Huai Shi saw Raymond finish negotiating with the station authorities. He then politely took his leave and returned to the train.
The middle-aged man with slightly graying hair stood in place, silently smoking.
However, on the face turned away from Huai Shi, an eyebrow raised slightly.
Sensing the beacon he’d left on the lighter disappear, he chuckled softly to himself, surprised that the people from Ivory Tower were so cautious.
Or were they wary of him from the start?
He did seem approachable enough...
Once he descended the platform stairs, a young man approached. "Mr. Quin, I double-checked while unloading. It’s definitely an Ivory Tower train; no mistake."
Quin nodded. After thinking for a moment, he instructed, "Pass a message to the Doctor and the Colonel for me. I want to go and test the waters directly."
The young man hesitated, looking puzzled.
"What’s the matter?" Quin inquired.
"Well, about that... The Doctor also asked me to relay a message to you."
The young man paused for a moment before saying seriously, "No harm in trying."
Quin was momentarily stunned but then burst into laughter.
Since leaving Fire City, Huai Shi had felt a sense of unease.
After returning to the carriage, he sat in the central compartment, meditating. He tapped the spine of the Sword of Virtue sporadically with his hand, feeling something unsettling.
He began to reminisce.
When he recalled the middle-aged man he’d encountered on the platform, he couldn’t help but frown.
Looking back, although he hadn’t sensed malice or murderous intent, the man gave Huai Shi an extraordinarily strange feeling. His demeanor seemed serious and earnest, but there was something inexplicably insincere about it.
Some unique trait was squirming beneath his smile, almost spilling out.
Meeting such a person before entering Hell, Huai Shi didn’t believe it to be a coincidence.
But Sublimators are often peculiar.
So he couldn’t be sure.
After some thought, he stood up to wake Andrea.
If it were merely his misperception, she would only lose a few hours of sleep. If he was right, however, they would have an extra layer of security in case of danger.
After listening to Huai Shi’s analysis, although Andrea felt it might not be necessary, she was already awake and decided not to go back to sleep.
After washing her face, she accompanied Huai Shi from four in the morning until nine o’clock.
Still, nothing happened.
Andrea didn’t seem angry or dissatisfied, but Huai Shi grew increasingly embarrassed.
Just as he was about to persuade Andrea to go back to sleep, the Professor paused in her page-turning and looked up.
"You’re right."
She shook her head and sighed softly. "Something’s coming."
No sooner had she finished speaking than a dense, broken sound arose from the roof of the train car.
It was like droplets striking the iron roof.
Rain?
Huai Shi and Andrea, however, both frowned simultaneously.
They had not yet left the Middle-East Region for a Hell dive. In the Middle East’s eternal Sea of Fire, never mind rainwater, even sewage was a resource scarce enough to serve as currency.
How could it possibly be so abundant as to fall as rain from the sky?
Quickly, those faint tapping sounds became clearer and more deliberate, as if countless limbs were drumming on the top of the carriage, a flood of them rapidly spreading across the body of the train.
Then, dangling by thin threads, creatures suddenly crashed against the windows, casting hand-sized shadows in the fiery light from outside.
They were spiders.
Panicked students shrieked, their faces quickly paling.
The palm-sized spiders scuttled nimbly across the windows, dragging huge egg sacs. Their vibrant colors did nothing to endear them; they only appeared grotesque and nauseating.
Now, as the number of spiders rapidly increased, so too did the fear.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands... The entire train was rapidly covered by the colorful spiders, which relentlessly tried to seep in.
Numerous crimson compound eyes opened. Separated by the windows, they gazed at the wary faces inside.
And then they spat venom.
SIZZLE!!!!!
That wasn’t the sound of glass corroding from the venom, but rather the sizzle of pork belly tossed onto a scorching hotplate!
Flame is tangible.
But when the temperature instantly surged to several hundred degrees, heating the air into a Burning Wind potent enough to scorch flesh and bone, it remained shapeless and invisible.
Andrea swiftly wrote an equation in the air, and the light at her fingertip flickered out.
Once that invisible law escaped her control, it began to propagate and expand on its own, spreading in all directions.
Incorporating volume and space, defining vectors and scale, then inputting the source... ultimately, the result was derived.
Combining thermodynamics and aerodynamics, using the Blood of the Red Dragon to draw heat from the molten lava beneath the tracks, a terrifying thermal current instantly enveloped the entire train.
Yet, despite the inferno outside, the temperature inside the train, separated by the windows, did not change at all. The air conditioning still functioned normally, creating the illusion that everything beyond the glass was merely a phantom.
Twisted currents of superheated air enveloped the train. In the blink of an eye, the high-temperature gale incinerated the writhing, crawling spiders, reducing them to ashes.
They collapsed rapidly.
Before being completely incinerated, they shattered into fragile, paper-like fragments that swiftly browned, crumbled, and turned into pitch-black ashes.
At this moment, it was as if an invisible cloak of fire enveloped the entire train, forming an unseen barrier. Anything daring to venture within three meters of the carriage would be instantly and viciously burnt to ash.
Even steel and stone were no exception.
"...Andrea?"
Atop the train, a crouching figure muttered softly, "The Heretic from the Thermodynamics Classroom, the Red Dragon, huh? Heh, is Ivory Tower in such a hurry?"
Quin was clad in an exceptionally eye-catching raincoat studded with numerous small mirrors, making him gleam. Beneath the raincoat, however, the extreme temperatures struggled to penetrate.
Not a single hair on his head was lost.
The Screen of the Sandbar.
A relic discovered in some Hell of eternal high temperatures. Incapable of resisting any rainfall, but exceptionally good against heat.
Right now, his hands were ceaselessly folding colorful paper pieces. They fell from his fingertips like rainwater into his embrace, quickly wriggling to life as thumb-sized spiders that crawled rapidly under his raincoat.
In the fiery light, his figure suddenly turned illusory and vanished.
At the same time, an alarm sounded inside the carriage.
"Intruder inside."
Raymond’s voice came over the radio, "The cargo hold is securely locked down, no need to worry—I’ll leave the rest to you."
Meanwhile, rustling sounds already arose from the air conditioning ducts, spreading like a flood from behind the carriage’s interior panels.
Hidden beneath the invisible raincoat, Quin smiled pleasantly, waving his hand in the darkness.
Millions of spiders let out shrill hisses. Their sharp, chitinous limbs emerged from the air vents as they dragged their swollen abdomens, eagerly lunging towards the ’food’ below.
The time for Gluttony had arrived!
Then, they saw pairs of eyes as crimson as their own.
They had been waiting for a long while.
"CAW—"
In the brief silence, from the luggage racks of the carriage, countless mist-like Ravens flapped their wings, unable to hide their excited cawing.
Indeed, the time for Gluttony... had arrived.
