The private jet we were on flew all the way to Tibet without stopping once.
Until we left the United States, the private jet had been escorted by U.S. military aircraft, and from the moment we entered Chinese airspace, it came under escort by Chinese fighter jets.
That escort continued until the private jet landed at an airport in Tibet.
The airport where the private jet landed was Gannan Xiahe Airport in Gansu Province, Tibet.
Xiahe Airport was a small airport in the Tibet Autonomous Region, but it was a civilian airport with a fair amount of traffic.
However, this airport had been closed to civilian access long before the private jet arrived.
All aircraft that had been landed at the airport had been moved to other airports, and while the private jet was there, the approach of any other aircraft was also prohibited.
I couldn’t tell whether it was for safety or security, but thanks to that, the private jet was able to land leisurely on the runway.
The private jet stopped on one side of the runway instead of at the terminal.
At the place where the private jet came to a stop, Chinese people had arrived in advance and were waiting.
Magreta and I stepped out of the plane together with the bodyguards assigned to us by the U.S. government.
When we got off, the Chinese people approached.
Soldiers in military uniforms and people in suits.
Among the people in suits, some looked like intelligence agents, and others looked like officials from the State Council.
They were all people I was seeing for the first time, but there was one person I knew.
The Chinese man who had come to Earth with us during the last return.
Secretary Li was with them.
After shaking hands with the others, I finally held out my hand to Secretary Li.
“As expected, Secretary Li went to that planet too.”
Taking my hand, Secretary Li gave a bitter smile.
“I came back alive, though I feel sorry to the others.”
Compared to when I had last seen him three weeks ago, his face had grown much more gaunt.
There was no way he, who had gone to Trappist, would not have been included in China’s exploration team.
He had been like that on Trappist as well, but seeing him return safely again this time, his ability to survive really was extraordinary.
“What on earth happened?”
At my question, he looked at an older soldier.
He was a soldier with ornate rank insignia.
On his green insignia, gold lines were drawn, and above them three gold stars were arranged vertically.
A shangjiang of the Chinese military, the highest rank in the Chinese army.
It was only natural, if anything, but a high-ranking person had come out as the person in charge.
When Secretary Li looked at him, the general said,
“Let us do that. We are short on time, so we will omit the welcoming ceremony.”
Once his permission was given, Secretary Li guided me.
“Please ride with me. I will explain on the way.”
At his guidance, the other Chinese people looked disappointed, but no one said anything.
As he led us to the car, he greeted Magreta, and we got into a military vehicle with him.
Magreta and I sat in the back seat of the military vehicle, and Secretary Li took the passenger seat.
Fortunately, the general and the others got into other cars.
The bodyguards who had followed us also got into another car, and then all the vehicles set off.
Once the car started moving, Secretary Li handed us bottled water.
“This is a high-altitude region, so you must be careful of altitude sickness. You are probably ordinary people on Earth as well, so while you are here, you should drink plenty of water and take frequent rests.”
Hearing that, I handed the bottled water to Magreta.
Secretary Li looked at me with a puzzled expression, but there was no need to explain it to him.
I watched Magreta drink the water, then looked outside.
Beyond the broad basin, I could see mountain ranges stretching endlessly.
Beside the road, most of the basin was an ordinary countryside of farmland, but there was not a single car on the road we were driving on.
It seemed they had deliberately blocked traffic.
As I looked outside, Secretary Li told me what had happened during that time.
“After receiving the location of the ruins from the United States, the authorities did everything they could to drill a passage down to the ruins. Thanks to those efforts, by the time I returned to Earth, they had succeeded in digging down to the ruins, and with American assistance, they had also finished activating them.”
According to Secretary Li, when he returned to China, the Chinese advance team was just about to depart.
As soon as he returned to China, he had ended up space-transferring to another planet again together with the advance team.
“Perhaps we were lucky, but the place we arrived at was similar to Trappist. It was a planet with a barren land connected to underground space-transfer ruins and air that could be breathed.”
Secretary Li also told me the planet’s name, but the name, made up of numbers, felt unfamiliar.
“It seems astronomers had not paid much attention to it because they had not discovered any planets orbiting that star until now. In fact, that star system had only one planet.”
A star system with only one planet.
I did not know much about space, but it did not seem like it would be common.
“Still, the moons in the sky were normal. They were small, but none of them were shattered satellites.”
Perhaps my expression looked strange, because he brought up something unexpected.
To think he would bring up Trappist’s shattered moon here... That left me with nothing to say.
“In any case, like on Trappist, the space-transfer ruins were deep underground. The ruins were connected to the surface by a long passage.”
I could not help but frown at the words that the space-transfer ruins were deep underground.
Paradise, where the space-transfer facility had been on the surface, and Trappist, where it had been deep underground.
Just looking at those two planets, the fact that the space-transfer ruins were deep underground meant the surface might be dangerous.
“When I saw that the ruins were deep underground, I told the others to be careful, but...”
As expected, Secretary Li seemed to have thought the same thing I had.
“Unfortunately, no one listened to me.”
He should have been the only one among them who had visited an alien planet. And yet they had not listened to him?
When I looked puzzled, he gave a bitter smile.
“It could not be helped. I had been given the position of adviser, but if the person in charge does not listen to what a staff officer or adviser says, that is the end of it...”
He said it was because he had joined the Chinese advance team too late.
By then, the positions and people in charge had already been decided.
But I knew very well that was not the only reason.
I could tell just by looking at the people who had come to meet me.
There were soldiers, bureaucrats, and even people from the intelligence service.
As an outsider, I had no way of knowing how many factions existed among them.
In a situation like that, there was probably nothing Secretary Li could do.
“In any case, like Trappist’s first base, the advance team built a temporary base around the surface entrance. While building the base, the advance team continued to search the surrounding area.”
If what he said was true, there was nothing particularly wrong with what the Chinese exploration team had done.
Building a base while exploring the surrounding area had been no different on Trappist.
“However, until the very end, we could not find a source of water, so we had to use the water we brought from Earth and even the moisture that had condensed on the cave walls. Other than that, though, there were no other problems.”
He said there were no problems, but I could not help but frown at his words.
It had not been a long time, but the fact that they had not found water until the end was not good news.
But that worry disappeared at his next words.
“For a long while, the monsters we had been calling native lifeforms did not appear, so we were both worried and relieved. Then those black bastards appeared.”
Secretary Li continued speaking with a dark expression.
“It was when we first found destroyed ruins near the base. Instead of the exploration team that had gone to investigate the ruins, monsters appeared from that direction. They were the monsters we had called scouts on Trappist.”
As expected, the Akzar monsters had been hiding on that planet as well.
Were those things on every planet with dark energy?
Since they had even come to Paradise, where the dark energy had grown sparse, that seemed likely.
The reason they had not come to Earth and Venus was probably because, at that time, there had been no dark energy in the solar system.
“Those monsters attacked the base and killed people. I took others with me and ran into the cave connected to the underground ruins, but not many people made it inside. Fortunately, the creatures were large, so they could not enter the cave, but...”
I said the words Secretary Li could not bring himself to finish.
“They’re still digging through the cave.”
At my words, he nodded.
“That is correct.”
As Secretary Li said, there were still more survivors on that planet, but the ruins outside Earth had a limit on the number of people who could be transferred at once.
In the end, Secretary Li was the only one who returned to Earth, and the others must still be inside the underground ruins, forced to watch as the scouts dug through the cave and approached.
There were still survivors alive on that planet.
If I were Chinese, it would have been a story that made me anxious.
Unfortunately, however, I was not Chinese.
The reason the Chinese authorities were so desperate was not because of the survivors either.
The Chinese government was probably more worried that the scout monsters would descend into the underground ruins.
There might be more user candidates, but not more ruins.
If the ruins on that planet were destroyed, China would have no other option.
They would have no choice but to cling to America’s planet, “Paradise.”
Of course, that planet was also on borrowed time, but neither America nor China knew that.
After hearing the whole situation, I looked at him and nodded.
“More importantly, for you to be able to come to Earth again this time—you were lucky.”
He had ultimately survived on Trappist, and this time too, he had come to Earth alone.
That survival ability of his was absolutely not ordinary.
But he shook his head.
“In order to deal with the monsters, the best option was for me, who had gone to Trappist, to return. And it is hard to call it fortunate, since I have to go back again.”
Well, thanks to him coming, I could at least have this conversation.
If it had been someone else, I would probably have only heard a brief explanation of the situation.
“So in the end, was it because of me?”
That thought came to mind, but I merely shrugged.
It did not matter anyway.
A little while later, the car left the main road and entered an unpaved road.
After that, we spent more than an hour traveling along a winding, dangerous cliff road before the car stopped.
“Because it is between gorges, the wind is too strong to come by helicopter. It is dangerous, but we had no choice but to come by car.”
Magreta and I listened to Secretary Li’s apology as we got out of the car.
The road continued farther on, but that was not the direction we were going.
Beside the road, there was a hole in a nearby rock wall.
A large hole with various equipment and heavy machinery piled up in front of it.
The rough hole did not look as if it had been made long ago.
We approached the cave together with the others.
Unlike elsewhere, many soldiers and technicians were waiting for us in front of the cave.
I was quite surprised when I saw the cave.
That was because the depth of the cave I sensed was incredibly deep.
“You dug this in just a few months after the war ended?”
At my words, the Chinese people looked troubled.
While I was feeling puzzled, several people came over and hung necklace-like tags around our necks.
Everyone else was wearing those necklaces as well.
“What is this?”
At Magreta’s question, the general who had come with us answered.
“Radiation identification tags.”
At the word radiation, I thought of the backpack on my back.
Could it be that they had noticed the nuclear weapons I had?
Judging by the general’s expression, that did not seem to be the case.
Instead, I heard an answer I had not expected.
Secretary Li said,
“There is still some radiation left inside the cave. We suppressed it as much as possible, but since nuclear bombs were used, there was no way to avoid residual radiation.”
“Don’t tell me the way this cave was dug was...”
“Yes. We did not have time, so we dug the cave with nuclear bombs. Seismic waves similar to an underground nuclear test spread outward, but I heard that was concealed in cooperation with the United States.”
My mouth could only fall open.
To think they had used nuclear weapons to dig a cave just because they were in a hurry.
It was something that could only be done by China.
As I stood there in shock, Magreta glared at me.
“It is absurd, but you are not allowed to be surprised, Hyeon.”
She was right.
I closed my mouth.
We descended underground together with the others.
Still, we did not go down several kilometers like with the other ruins.
The ruins, located hundreds of meters below the center of the mountain range, were similar to the Baekdu Mountain ruins.
At the center of the stone chamber, where a magic circle spread out, stood an altar with an electronic device attached to it.
Around the electronic device, Americans and Chinese who looked like scientists had gathered and were adjusting the device.
As I watched that scene, the general said,
“There is no time. We must hurry.”
I did not know whether he was worried about the survivors or the ruins, but as he said, it seemed we needed to hurry.
I walked to the altar with the electronic device attached and placed my hand on it.
I sent energy flowing into the altar.
A line that people could not see formed above the altar.
The line pierced through the ceiling and shot up into the sky.
That line was directed toward the planet connected to these ruins.
Originally, it had only been visible during space transfer, but now I could see it just by placing my hand on the altar.
As my abilities had grown to roughly the level of a high-ranking mage, I realized that my use of the box and space-transfer magic had changed from before.
I had come to know that more than two-thirds of the items inside the box would remain during space transfer, and that simply placing my hand on space-transfer ruins allowed me to know the coordinates of the destination.
The fact that more than two-thirds would remain in the box was a tremendous development, but what was inside the box right now were nuclear missiles.
In this situation, I could not space-transfer recklessly.
I sent energy into the altar again.
Another line formed above the altar.
This time, it was a line leading to Trappist.
For China, the survivors or their ruins might be important, but for me, the nuclear missiles inside the box were more important.
I had no intention of wasting nuclear weapons by going to another planet for no reason.
I intended to go to Trappist first.
Pacific