A scientific accident has led us to discover the remains of a deity deep underground.
We created a drill head made of a high-temperature-resistant alloy, dressed in a protective suit as heavy as a spacesuit, and drilled in a designated uninhabited area.
After drilling two thousand meters deep, the exploration team leader found magma.
Inside the magma was enveloped a segment of stark white bone.
1
It was this that had destroyed the cutting machine.
This place originally was China’s Jinping Underground Laboratory, located two thousand four hundred meters underground, it’s the deepest laboratory in the world that is used for dark matter research.
Sean sat inside the isolation room, wordless.
Through the one-way glass, I could observe him focusing his gaze on the door.
“What are you looking at?”
Sean, like a wind-up machine, his eyes wide open, rigidly turned his neck: “I’m looking at the cross.”
“The cross?”
I lowered my head to look at the surveillance footage, light was shining through the gap in the isolation room door, forming a long cross shadow on the ground.
“Does it hold any special meaning?” I asked again.
“I don’t know… I advise you to run away as quickly as you can. Escape from here, from this abyss back to the surface… It’s not too late yet.”
“Sean,” I sighed and said, “I just parachuted in, everything is all dark in front of me, I need to know what happened here.”
Sean wanted to smoke, but I rejected him.
A formerly cheerful and optimistic colleague who had suddenly turned into a living corpse, anyone would find unsettling. Sean lowered his head, hoarsely and slowly telling me his account of events…
2
In an accidental collision experiment in 2011, we found a single photon existing, entangled with another photon.
The strange thing is, that we could not find the other photon.
At the same time, the long-range action of the other photon reacted with the photon we were observing - it changed from a particle to a wave right under our eyelids.
To make an inappropriate analogy: Wave-particle duality is like two blind boxes, inside which could be different or identical things. As long as we open one of them, the thing in the other blind box must invariably become the same as the former.
This is the long-range action of quantum physics.
But the situation we encountered at that time was more like we only saw one blind box, the other one was gone - the ball inside the blind box we saw suddenly changed into a square right under our eyelids, and without any external force influencing it.
That is to say, another observer emerged from the other blind box, and the physics of this world took it as the norm.
In its perspective, the thing inside the blind box is a square, so the other blind box - the photon we observed - also became a square.
This is no longer just a matter of modern physics being unstable, more importantly, unknown intelligent lives exist on Earth, but we do not know where they are.
3
“At the time, that project was under my responsibility,” Sean said, “At the request of the state, I classified this discovery as a top secret. Since then, the state began to devote a lot of manpower and resources to seek the other ‘photon’.”
“Did you find it?”
“No, but we found the direction.”
“Where?”
“Underground.”
4
In 2012, Sean led the research group to find the rough direction of the other photon.
It was right underneath the Jinping Underground Laboratory.
So a project far larger than the Kola Superdeep Borehole was launched stealthily. They hollowed out the entire mountain above the Jinping Underground Laboratory, leaving only a thin layer of ground. Then, they dismantled the Jinping Underground Laboratory and started digging downward.
For each one thousand meters down, they had to expand the passage, build elevators, build buildings laterally, and build new laboratories; after confirming in the lab that the “photon” was still below, they would continue to dig down. This project was a bottomless pit, constantly guzzling massive amounts of funding.
By 2031, that is this year, this inverted triangle building had extended to thirty-five kilometers underground, nearing the bottom of the Earth’s crust.
It was just when they were about to puncture through the crust and enter the mantle that an accident happened.
5
“In previous experiments, there was always a strange ‘single photon’ in an observation group. We may be maintaining a synchronic tacit agreement with another observer,” Sean paused and took a deep breath before continuing, “This means that, just like us, they have been always observing the photon - while we’re looking for them, they are also approaching us.”
“Do you mean there are intelligent lifeforms underground?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Sean shook his head, “I’m not sure if the word ’lifeform’ applies to them - even tardigrades can only tolerate temperatures up to 150 degrees, but where we are, the temperature is as high as 967 degrees Celsius. Just stepping out of this building, we would be instantly roasted into a mummy - I can’t imagine what kind of life could survive in such severe conditions.”
Sean’s words were too far-fetched, which made me start to consider other possibilities: “Could there be some special physical phenomena that haven’t been discovered yet?”
“There could have been, originally,” Sean’s face gradually distorted, he said with a laugh that was also like crying, “But not anymore.”
6
In theory, the mantle is solid, but just to be safe, the geologists of the research group were well-prepared.
They produced super high-temperature-resistant alloy drill heads, wore protective suits as heavy as spacesuits, and performed drilling in designated uninhabited areas. This was to collect samples to learn about the condition of the mantle.
After drilling two thousand meters deep, the exploration team leader David noticed something odd.
The data stopped changing, and the temperature of the drill head no longer rose.
In theory, the drill head should’ve punctured the lithosphere and entered the mantle, where the temperature would keep rising. Because the mantle is likely a fluid, the drill head being burned was within expectation.
But the strange thing was, the drill head was working normally, and the detected temperature remained constant at one thousand degrees Celsius.
Even though it kept going down, the data didn’t change at all.
David suspected the detector was damaged and decided to retrieve the drill head immediately. After an inspection, there was nothing wrong with the data, and the drill head had collected samples of the mantle.
Fluid magma had burned the inner tank of the drill head, so David had no choice but to forcibly dismantle it. They used a cutter to separate the inner tank and the solidified magma, then started to cut the magma.
During this process, the cutter was broken by a hard object.
A piece of stark white bone was encased in the magma, and it was that which broke the cutter.
7
“We tried all means but couldn’t even separate a single molecule from that bone,” said Sean, with trembling hands,
“That thing, merely by existing, has completely overturned the existing biology and physics.”
“Just a bone?”
“No, more than one. During the subsequent collection process, we gradually completed the skeletal artifact. Then we increased the intensity of mining. You should know that mining at nearly a thousand degrees under the ground is as difficult as establishing a colony on Mars - but we succeeded and officially entered the mantle.”
“Then what?”
Sean’s mood became very low, “According to the staff’s statements, the reconstructed biological skeleton is inexplicably strange. I saw the pictures, but it’s very hard for me to describe what it looks like. It’s like… like a monkey with wings… a snake with osteophytes full of spikes… an octopus with three heads… it’s simply God’s leftover work, the source of all chaos and distortion.”
I thought for a while and asked: “Is this the intelligent life we are looking for?”
“No, it’s not, they are still within the scope of human observation. What we are looking for might be ‘God’.”
“God?”
“After completing the phase three predictions and unmanned construction, we created a ‘Mantle Submarine’, named
‘Deeper’. You can think of it as a manned big drill with its nuclear power. David drove it personally, deep into the mantle. When he came back, he said he saw God.”
I leaned forward: “What kind of God?”
“The Jade Emperor.”
“How is it certain to be it?” I asked in confusion, “No one has ever seen what a God looks like, how could David be sure that what he saw was the so-called Jade Emperor?”
“I don’t know. In the subsequent, eight people took turns driving the Deeper into the mantle, each claimed to have seen a deity… there were well-known ones like God, Buddha, Jesus, and Odin, and there were also newly created evil gods like Cthulhu and Azathoth. Three days later, the base at the lowest level lost contact. Severe electromagnetic interference caused all probe machines to malfunction. I was not on the bottom floor at the time, I could only command remotely. But all I got from the radio were spooky and indistinct murmurings, plus sharp and piercing screams.” Sean ceased the narration: “As you see, we confirmed that there are unknown and incomprehensible things inside the Earth, and then unknown factors caused the destruction of the research base at the lowest level.”
“Did they all die?”
“I don’t know.”
8
I decided to go to the lowest level to see what exactly happened there.
Sean argued against it. There was a horizontal structure for every thousand meters in this building, and each structure had a person in charge. If he didn’t cooperate, no one would have the authority to enter the lowest level. He called for me to isolate the second-to-last level immediately. Anyone who escaped from the bottom level needed to be quarantined.
“You don’t know anything yet,” Sean said leaning into the one-way glass, his face ferocious, “You can escape now. Once you go in, it is an irretrievable abyss. Even to the farthest corner of the earth, they can catch up with you!”
I raised my eyebrows and asked in return: “Are you hiding something from me?”
“I cannot say! You cannot know! It’s a meme contagion, you will be affected by them as soon as you hear or even know them, understand?”
I didn’t speak for a while, then I decided: “If gods are living in the dark underground, then they are not some beings with supreme power and glory; if they are part of the world’s rules, then science will tame them.”
Sean fell into silence.
I reported the situation upwards, the upper management approved my request, revoked Sean’s authority, and temporarily granted me a top-level authority ID card.
A ten-person special squad was temporarily conscripted. They escorted Sean and entered the elevator with me.
After I inserted the ID card and entered the password, a thirty-second countdown started.
The elevator has dozens of seats, everyone sat down and buckled their seat belts. After the countdown ended, a strong sense of weightlessness came, making people feel dizzy.
“We are plummeting into hell,” Sean said.
9
The person in charge has the right to seal off a certain area in case of emergency, all staff had already signed a confidentiality agreement before they came down, and they would be awarded the medal of heroism posthumously by the State.
Therefore, if there is some force majeure happening at the bottom level, the stationed personnel there are probably all sacrificed.
Because Sean immediately sealed off the bottom level, he didn’t even leave time for evacuation. Probably over two hundred people were locked inside, only a handful managed to escape.
Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the bottom level and changed into protective suits in the isolation room.
The big door slowly opened, and the emergency backup light in the corridor was extremely dim.
They were almost out of power, and this place would fall into darkness soon.
“Did you shut off the life support system?” I asked.
Sean shook his head: “No, the first system to fail was the lighting system. All we could see on the monitor was lights going off one by one. In the dark, all communication equipment malfunctioned.”
“What about wired telephones, are they also not usable?”
“You probably don’t quite understand, let me demonstrate.”
Sean took a tactical flashlight from a soldier, he walked to a dark corner that the backup light couldn’t reach with the flashlight on - it was a triangle corner, Sean leaned against the wall and turned off the flashlight.
He was swallowed by darkness.
We stood waiting for a few minutes, not seeing Sean take the next step.
So I asked with confusion: “Sean? Weren’t you going to demonstrate?”
Silence.
No one answered.
I turned on my flashlight and shone it towards that corner.
There was no one there.
10
The walls are sturdy, made of a special alloy, without any cracks.
Emergency lighting illuminates both walls, leaving only a dead zone in the middle untouched by the light beam, just big enough for an adult to stand in. As long as you step out from the corner of the room, you will be caught by the emergency light.
Under these circumstances, Sean simply vanished.
Fear, like a slippery snake, coils around my heart. I realize that Sean probably lied to me. He must have been one of the observers, present at the time of the incident. He understood the severity of the situation, escaped, and chose to seal this place as a priority.
To figure out what was going on, I had two soldiers holding a nylon rope, one of them shut off the flashlight and walked into the dark corner just like Sean.
The rope was suspended in mid-air. When we started calling out to the soldiers, there was no response. Another soldier tried to pull him out of the darkness, but even with the help of four or five people, we couldn’t pull the rope.
We had no other choice but to turn on the flashlight and shine it towards that dark corner.
Only to see the other end of the rope embedded in the alloy wall.
I swallowed a lump in my throat, the absurd scene before me temporarily halted my thought process. The place we were in seemed unreal - a place where all known logic from the earth’s surface became void.
The next moment, the emergency lighting battery ran out and shut off simultaneously.
The flashlight began to malfunction and flickered for a moment.
Darkness fell.
After the light came back on, our path back had disappeared. All around were strange machinery and equipment, likely inside some laboratory at the bottom level.
Then, we found that in the short blink of darkness, three veteran special forces soldiers had disappeared.
Quietly, unexpectedly.
11
Soon, I roughly figured out the pattern of “human evaporation”.
As long as you are in the dark, you will be randomly transported to any place untouched by light.
Ever since I entered this place, the flashlight had been flickering unstably, I didn’t have a stable light source to ensure I wouldn’t be randomly transported. Therefore, I experienced eight rounds of darkness, each time the flashlight came back on, I saw a strange environment, and I was separated from the soldiers.
During this process, I saw half a corpse.
Half of it was embedded in the wall, and half was exposed.
This proves that the transport does not avoid obstacles, and it’s possible that the next time I fall into darkness, I could be transported into a load-bearing pillar.
I don’t understand the principle behind these phenomena, nor do I understand how these bizarre things are possible. It is this unknown that makes me more fearful.
Sean was right. If this situation spreads to the upper buildings, the best action would be to escape as soon as possible.
However, I’ve lost my way.
12
The building complex has turned into a giant maze.
Every time I was about to find an exit, the darkness would come as expected, taking me to a place even more strange.
I saw a skeleton tens of meters high, covered with bone spikes, grotesque and terrifying, it’s unimaginable how shocking it was when it was alive;
I saw bodies “embedded” in the walls, the scariest being a ceiling with dozens of arms sticking out. It was probably a large-scale transport that sent several people into the wall at once;
I saw security doors twisted out of shape from impact, a hallway filled with dried blood and battle scars… Until the thirty-second move, I came to a familiar place.
Behind the door, at the glow of the crucifix.
Single-sided glass.
Isolation room.
This was the second last floor, my being able to be transported here meant the seal had failed, and that the special situation was spreading upwards.
At this moment, Sean’s warning echoed in my mind:
“Even to the ends of the earth, they can catch up with you.”
The light abruptly went out, and endless screams and howls came from all around. My eardrums were about to burst, my thoughts scattered, and my senses of the world became abstract and meshed.
I frantically scrambled in the dark, slapping the flashlight hard.
In the end, I tripped over something, banging my head hard on something solid.
I lost consciousness.
13
It hurts.
It feels as if a steel needle has been jabbed into my head, causing unbearable pain.
My face also hurts, a burning kind of pain.
Vaguely, I heard a blurred shout:
“Are you still conscious?”
Someone was slapping my face hard. My consciousness gradually returned, but my brain was somewhat groggy.
“It hurts…stop hitting…” I muttered.
“It works!”
The person exclaimed delightedly, then continued to slap my face like a storm. I almost passed out from his slaps, so I had to use all my strength to raise my hand and cover my head.
“Hang in there! Don’t be fooled by the evil god!” the person shouted.
“I’m fine! Stop fu*king hitting me!”
I sobered up and opened my eyes. The light around was dim, and a kerosene lamp was placed on the ground. My body armor had been taken off.
The man who was beating me was a man dressed like an Arab, wrapped tightly in a white bedsheet.
“What’s this?” The man held up his middle finger.
“This is an internationally recognized gesture. Stop taking advantage of me, " I sat up, somewhat dazed, “Who are you?
Where am I?”
The man lifted the sheet covering his head to reveal a bearded face: “It’s me, David!”
I recognized him. He was David, the head of the exploration project, a well-known geologist.
According to Sean’s statement, I remembered that he was the first one to pilot the submersible into the mantle. I had subconsciously thought he was the first to die, I didn’t expect him to still be alive.
Judging by the furnishings around us, we were in a small storage room. A simple hammock hung on the shelves, and the corner was filled with domestic garbage.
David had been living here for a long time.
“What’s going on upstairs?” David grasped my collar, “Why is the elevator sealed? Last week, I finally managed to enter the elevator, but it wouldn’t start after entering the password.”
I was somewhat surprised: “Last week? I received the news yesterday and entered this afternoon, it’s only been two days… What’s this about last week?”
Under the dim side light, I noticed David’s expression was extremely pained.
He counter-asked: “How many times have you experienced darkness?”
“You mean being in a lightless environment? Seems like… thirty-three times.”
David exclaimed, “You can still be alive, you can still maintain your sanity!”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time you’re in darkness, and if you don’t die on the spot or lose your mind, it means there’s a ‘positive god’ protecting you… but this protection is limited, it can only transport you to a safe ’time-space point’ in the darkness, letting those lurking ’evil gods’ temporarily lose sight of you. But once you’re in darkness for too long, you’ll be caught by the ’evil gods.’”
I remained silent for a while, then went on to ask, “How do you know all this?”
David suddenly tore off the cloth hanging on the shelf, revealing a wall full of scratch marks.
Using one horizontal and three vertical lines as a unit of measurement, there were over a hundred marks, almost covering the majority of the wall.
“Each scratch represents one day. Measure it by a week,” David said morosely, “I have been trapped underground for two years. What I know is all the experience other survivors paid with their lives to figure out.”
14
According to David, there might exist a four-dimensional space with energy-momentum inside the mantle… It could also be a five-dimensional or even higher-dimensional space, but with his cognitive ability, he was only able to understand a portion of the fourth dimension through the instruments.
In this multi-dimensional space, there is life.
They can observe the quantum changes in the micro world, thereby sensing the existence of humans. This is the original reason behind the bizarre photon changes - they are intentionally luring humans down.
“We dug into the mantle and overlapped with the fourth-dimensional space. It’s not a stable space, and it will continue to expand, just like the singularity of the universe.”
David drew a line on a piece of paper, explaining, “We’re the three-dimensional beings intruding into the four-dimensional space, like a worm crawling on top of a piece of paper, it won’t undergo any changes. But if you draw a line in front of it, it will perceive it as an obstacle - in terms of time and space perception, higher-dimensional beings have an absolute advantage.”
David crumpled the paper and handed it to me, “In our perception, time is linear. This line represents the journey of a three-dimensional being, on a crumpled plane, the line will distort, overlap, and even merge. I can crumple it randomly, or I can deliberately overlap it, just like drawing a circle for the worm.”
“In other words, every time darkness falls, what I face is not only the space changes but also the changes in the timeline?” I quickly realized.
“That’s right, they manipulate our position in time and space as if drawing a line in front of a worm is effortless.”
I asked again: “What about these ’evil gods’ and ‘positive gods’? What exactly did you see in the mantle - in this fourth-dimensional space?”
“Don’t ask, the less you know the better,” David held up three fingers: “There are three things we can never do in here.”
“First, never pray to any god.”
“Second, never stay in the dark.”
“Third, never stare at any living creatures that are out of cognitive range.”
15
The most reliable source of light is fire.
“As long as there’s sufficient oxygen and fuel, it will keep burning,” David handed me a kerosene lamp, “For safety reasons, we should each have one.”
The ID card was still in my hand, even if the underground building was completely closed, we could take the elevator to any floor.
David suggested that I wrap myself in a white bedsheet, saying it was beneficial for concealment. I followed his advice.
Like the phantoms of ghost stories, we each held a kerosene lamp, groping our way in the dark, narrow corridor.
“They can sense our existence,” David said, “But because of the light, the evil gods can’t see us.”
“It sounds safe,” I nodded, “As long as we maintain this status, we can find the elevator.”
“No, this exactly means that the real horror is coming.”
“Why?”
“If a sugar cube is mixed with grit, how would you get it out?” David paused, then continued, “Simple, just scatter a bunch of ants.”
“Ants?”
“Have you seen those bone spurs that were dug out of the mantle?”
Remembering those ghastly skeletons, I nodded.
“They’re alive, they’re the ants that prey on us - there are many, many such creatures in here.”
16
David spread out a hand-drawn map, detailing every room and every passage in the lowest level, marking dangerous places with a red cross.
Every time we passed a corner or bypassed a branch road, David would explain to me in a low voice the reason for doing so.
“Elevators with separate isolation rooms have been completely blocked, so our destination for this trip is the backup elevator, which is still operational.
“There are huge red tumors here, sticking to the ceiling, extending tentacles to prey on all creatures passing under it… This is where Xia Ning died.
“There’s a stitched-up creature haunting this place, it sprays a kind of fungus that devours human brains, then attaches human limbs to its body… Old Li, Ah Cheng, and Zhang Mo, three people died here at once.
“There’s a human-faced spider on the left turn, its body is like liquid metal, it can stretch and squeeze at will, it almost has no hearing, it preys by spider web… Jennick sacrificed himself here to defend our retreat…
“Wang Zi was alive just last month… You should have seen him, the skinny one who always bragged about his daughter. He swallowed zinc hydride while I was asleep and committed suicide.” David’s voice choked up a bit.
I remembered Jennick was his brother.
When disaster struck, the survivors clung together for survival, struggling. Now, only David remained alive. There was no way forward, no way back; no sunlight up above, and it was hard to descend to the underworld.
What a terrible loneliness and desperation.
Just being alive took a lot of courage and determination.
17
“I think I hear someone calling my name.”
“Is it a hallucination?”
I listen carefully and frown, “No, it’s real. You didn’t hear it? It’s Shaun’s voice.”
“Shaun?”
“Yes.”
“But hasn’t he been dead for a long time?” David wondered.
Just as I was about to ask in detail, I saw David’s face suddenly change drastically. He raised his index finger to his mouth, signaling me to be quiet. Then he put his ear against the wall and listened carefully.
Four or five seconds later.
“Run!!”
David suddenly shouted and started running.
The next moment, the entire passage began to vibrate, dust fell from the ceiling, and the walls made a sharp metallic sound.
The kerosene lamp swung with our movement, its light flickering. “What’s happening?!” I yelled as I ran.
“The ‘flood’ is coming!” David called back, “Don’t look back no matter what!”
Don’t look back?!
Soon I heard the sound of water coming from behind, like some sticky liquid rushing through the pipes. Amidst numerous noises, I heard many people calling my name from behind. Some of the voices are young, some are old, and all of them are people I know, and even included my long-deceased mother.
“There’s an elevator on the left! Hold on, don’t look back!”
High-intensity running made my chest rise and fall violently. I hadn’t experienced a 1500-meter run since college - lack of exercise made my lung capacity struggle to keep up.
The gap between David and me widened, and a sense of despair washed over me.
After the left turn, I saw David had run to the elevator door first, pressing the open button anxiously waiting. Since he couldn’t turn back, he had to shout at me back: “Run! This is the only way!”
Once I got into the elevator, David closed the metal door. I collapsed to my knees in front of the chair, gasping heavily, feeling as if my heart would jump out of my throat.
The sound of the door closing continued, and I couldn’t help but turn around.
- - In that instant, I understood why David warned me not to look back.
In the dark corridor, countless black serpents with a single gigantic eye were coiling together, their pupils refracting a crimson light. Just a glance froze me, making it difficult for me to move.
It was as if I had eaten a poisonous mushroom and was seeing distorted images.
Not until the elevator door closed and blocked my view did this strange state end. An intense vertigo made me feel sick, and I was vomiting constantly on the floor.
Boom-Boom-
The elevator door was hit by a group of snakes, and the metal door was distorted.
“This door won’t hold!” David said urgently. “Where’s the ID card? Hurry, start the elevator!”
Struggling with vertigo, I reached into my pocket.
Having heard Shaun’s voice outside the door, I froze: “Don’t give it to him! He’s a ‘believer’ too, he wants to escape from here!”
David yelled angrily: “Don’t listen to those ghost things! All I do is to save you and myself!”
From his gaze, I could feel the resolve and courage, but I became silent.
“What are you hesitating about?!” David urged.
I said, “As long as you can answer one question, I’ll give you the ID card.”
“Ask it quickly!”
“Although the design of the underground building was supposed to be a semi-permanent facility, that could last for more than fifty years. But last year we updated the oxygen system, the lowest level hasn’t caught up… so the oxygen here can only last a year and a half,” I looked at him and said in a low voice, “How did you survive for two years.”
David was stunned.
Then, the kerosene lamp in his hand went out without a breeze.
18
The answer is simple, if David had experienced darkness within a year and a half, then he could have been transported to a year earlier - because the space-time here was chaotic, theoretically, he could survive for two years.
However, when the kerosene lamp in his hand extinguished, his body shriveled up, and became skeletal, and his face was frighteningly ferocious.
David has been dead for a long time.
“He’s a believer of the Positive God. As long as the kerosene lamp is lit, he can maintain his sanity and physical body,” Shaun’s voice from outside the door was hoarse, “Do you see it now? The Positive God and the Evil God are essentially the same.”
Like lightning piercing through the clouds, Shaun’s words made those minor details line up. I glimpsed part of the truth.
- - The high-dimensional intelligent entity broadens its dimension through observing and using light.
Assuming there are two kinds of intelligent entities in this dimension, the Positive God and the Evil God. The former can control the “three-dimensional space of the lighted area”, and the latter can “do whatever they want in the dark”.
The Earth was originally a place where day and night alternated, and the powers of the two should be balanced. But this place is underground, a place where the sun can’t reach. Therefore, the power of the Evil God expanded infinitely, overpowering the Positive God.
They both have an urgent common goal, which is to reach the surface.
To do this, they are willing to cooperate: The Positive God uses its ability to control light to maintain observation of photons, which makes the scientists in the Jinping Underground Laboratory discover anomalies and attract humans to explore.
Then the Evil God broadens the dimension, turns the bottom layer into a place without light, and starts to slaughter and contaminate humans. Just like the fungus that controls ants, it often controls the ant body to return to the ant nest, and then slowly breeds in the entire ant nest.
Shaun is an ant controlled by the Evil God, carrying some kind of “pathogen” that I can’t understand, and the second-to-last layer collapsed because of it.
As long as humans pray, they can take them as believers. Becoming a believer will inevitably contaminate the spirit - this is also the reason why David warned me not to pray to the gods in his sane state.
They maintain a competitive relationship in their cooperation, and obviously, neither of them has made it out so far. Both the Positive God and the Evil God wanted to be the first to reach the surface, for which they were willing to trip each other up.
Once the kerosene lamp in David’s hand went out, his body began to shrink, becoming skeletal and distorted, just like a monster.
At this moment, David howled and rushed at me, but I kicked him away.
I stepped up to the elevator control panel and pressed the emergency stop button, and the elevator door slowly closed.
I took the kerosene lamp and went to the top of the elevator, opened the maintenance hole above.
David tried to climb up, but in the next second, the metal door was knocked open, and countless crazed black snakes flooded into the elevator. I closed the maintenance hole and locked it from the outside.
I climbed out of the elevator shaft and arrived at the second-to-last floor, shaking off those monsters.
The kerosene lamp fuel was limited, I had three hours of safety period left. The time was not enough for me to climb up along the elevator shaft - just the one-kilometer distance between the bottom layer and the second-to-last layer almost exhausted me.
Finding some supplies and waiting for rescue was the safest option. But after what happened to David, I changed my mind.
I decided to take a risk.
19
To facilitate the transportation of heavy objects like “Deep Diver”, a universal track has been set up in the spare elevator. Fortunately, the main maintenance is done on the second-to-last floor, allowing me to implement my plan.
I operate the control panel, change the slide track for the Deep Diver, and install it in the elevator shaft.
After preparation, I put on the protective suit and continued to climb up along the elevator shaft, ready to enter the Deep Diver.
Suddenly, the sound of Sean echoes in the hollow elevator shaft.
“I don’t think the Deep Diver can break through the 33-story alloy blockade,” he stands in the emergency passage of the elevator shaft, his body is immersed in darkness, and I can only vaguely see a humanoid outline, “Relax, I also wish you can escape - I said this before you came down.”
I remained silent for a while and replied, “Is it because I have also been mentally contaminated?”
“…… Yes.”
“From the moment I saw that cross made of light, right?” I hesitated, sitting on the edge of the Deep Diver cabin, “The moment you escaped, they radiated their power to the second to last floor.”
“Right, you were supposed to return to the surface with the favor of the true God. But you did not report back, instead, you came down to investigate, disrupting our plans.”
“You’re a believer in the True God too?”
“No, I am in darkness, a follower of the Evil God.”
Sean walked into where the kerosene lamp could shine, and leisurely said, “The explosives originally used to blast open the rock formations and the nuclear batteries in the experimental stage have all been concentrated here by you. You simply want to gamble a little bit. The great kinetic energy and the narrow pipe effect will drive the Deep Diver to move at high speed upward and break through the blockade forcibly, just like a bullet being shot out of the gun barrel, and you can escape from the underground through this.”
I neither agreed nor disagreed.
“There’s no need to take risks, join us. Look at me now. I’m healthy. I have powers that I couldn’t even imagine in the past, and I can even live forever - "
“What’s the cost?” I interrupted.
“There is no cost.”
“No, there must be one. You’ve given up the dignity of being a human being, a group of humans, you’ve betrayed your country and your faith. We’ve spent thousands of years getting rid of feudalism and ignorance, and through the efforts of countless generations, we’ve built a beautiful country - I won’t allow anything to destroy it, even if it’s a deity, it has to submit to the glory of science and reason.”
“What’s the use of saying all this?” Sean said mockingly, “You’re just a man afraid of death, as long as you escape, they’ll come to the surface, I don’t even need to stop you.”
I smiled, picked up the kerosene lamp, and sat in the Deep Diver cabin.
The AI started a countdown:
“Detonation countdown has begun: 10, 9, 8, 7……”
" Wish me luck.” I fastened myself with the seat belt.
Through the porthole, I gave Sean the thumbs up. His face suddenly turned very bad, as if he realized what I was about to do. He started to scream.
Black snakes like a flood surged into the elevator and smacked at the Deep Diver, but it was already too late.
“……2, 1, 0……Detonation.”
The countdown had ended.
The fission of atoms unleashed terrifying light and heat that illuminated several underground buildings. The radiation and energy destroyed countless creatures hidden in the dark. The black snakes were burned to white bones. The Deep Diver did not shoot upwards, instead like a bullet, it drilled into the mantle.
Yes, this is my plan.
I want to go down to see the real faces of these “Gods”, and then invite them to eat a nuclear bomb.
20
After a second nuclear explosion in the mantle layer, the Deep Diver was also near its limit.
The nearly 10G acceleration caused me unbearable pain. The enormous potential energy pressed me hard against the backrest, I couldn’t even breathe, it felt like my body was about to be torn apart.
My eyes began to fill with blood and the world turned red.
I don’t know how long it took, but the Deep Diver’s speed slowed down to a level that I could bear. During this process, I didn’t see any so-called gods, nor did I see any demons or evil spirits.
Outside the porthole, the red magma gradually turned into a hard rock formation. The Deep Diver automatically activated built-in kinetic energy and drilled straight ahead.
The instrument showed that the external temperature was decreasing, and I had a hunch in my heart.
If the area beneath the mantle layer is a spherical high-dimensional space, according to relativity, it should not be a conventional sphere or singularity - which means that the interior of the high-dimensional space might be hollow, like the sandwich layer between two universes.
We have thought that the universe is vast and infinite, constantly expanding outward. But actually, we might be inside the universe, and beneath the Earth is the outside of the universe.
High-dimensional space is the “connecting point” that makes “two” universes curved.
Crossing through high-dimensional space, you can reach another planet similar to Earth, another crust layer, which can be verified from David’s drilling anomaly, he found that the heating no longer increased if you drill down, which indicates that it might be another crust rather than the highly heated core below the mantle.
What awaits me could be another parallel world or an unheard extraterrestrial civilization.
The Deep Diver, having withstood two nuclear explosions and conducted nearly 20 kilometers of drilling, ended its magnificent and tough life the moment it drilled out of the ground.
The kerosene lamp had long gone out, I left the cabin of the Deep Diver, but it was pitch black all around.
Since I didn’t end up drilling into the Earth’s core and being burned to ashes due to high temperatures, that proves that my guess is not wrong. What awaits me now is the unknown. This is a new world that humans know nothing about.
The first light of dawn pierced the darkness. I stood on the wreckage of the machinery in my protective suit, gazing into the distance.
The night breeze was blowing.
- I saw stars, the ocean, and a cross reaching heaven and earth.