Under the scorching blue sun, they walked toward the towering Babel-like spires for what felt like an eternity.
Yet its summit always remained impossibly distant.
By the time dusk fell, the poisonous blue sun disappeared beyond the horizon, replaced by darkness and the silent wilderness.
Cthonia's wasteland was almost devoid of beasts, there was nothing to sustain them: no water, no grass.
Herbivores could not survive, and neither could carnivores.
Illuminated by the glow of psychic power, Durm could just make out his surroundings, enough not to lose his way in the wilderness.
But as they entered the latter half of the night, a beastly roar suddenly echoed from afar, and in the darkness, dim green lights gleamed like those of wolves.
Durm tensed up. "Mentor, what monster is that?"
Caelan replied calmly, "Relax. That's a convoy."
Even on Cthonia, the nobles dwelling in the upper hives and spires enjoyed comfortable, luxurious lives; they would not risk leaving the hive.
When they did travel, they used aircraft.
The commoners of the underhive were bound by grueling labor and strict controls, they were not permitted to leave either.
Only the scavengers who lived in the outskirts would drive their modified, battered vehicles into the wasteland to loot salvage.
But Cthonia's sun emitted lethal radiation, so even the scavengers dared leave the hive only at night.
Caelan deliberately kept his psychic glow burning; its flickering light was as conspicuous as a firefly in the dark.
The light indeed attracted the scavenger convoy in the wasteland. When the vehicles closed to within a hundred meters, they could vaguely make out figures within the blue glow, and only then did the light suddenly extinguish.
Someone on the lead vehicle whistled, and the other vehicles instantly scattered like a pack of wolves on the hunt.
They swung wide to both flanks, stopping in a circle that surrounded the three of them.
Dark gun barrels poked through rusted gaps, all aimed at the trio in the center.
But some among them also popped their heads out from atop the vehicles, scanning the surroundings for possible ambushes.
They were experienced and aggressive, but at least they did not open fire immediately.
Clang!
A tall man wearing a gas mask leaped from the lead vehicle's cabin roof, his steel boots striking the ground and kicking up dust.
He stood in the dim glow of the headlights, facing Caelan, his right hand hovering over the pistol at his waist.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Caelan. This is Durm. We come from underground and are heading to the hive."
The man looked Caelan and the others up and down. Durm, in tattered rags, was clearly an under-dweller.
But Caelan's attire was utterly out of place among the under-dwellers, he did not even look like an underhiver.
Clothes make the man; fine garments allowed an observer to roughly gauge the wearer's wealth and status.
A poor man would hesitate for a long time before buying a hundred-dollar toy for his child, not because he didn't love his child, but because he couldn't bear the expense.
That hundred dollars could buy forty or fifty pounds of rice, enough to feed the family for a month or two.
But some could buy their children earrings worth over two million dollars, a testament to their family's wealth.
With Caelan's attire, he was at the very least a noble from the upper hive.
The man exchanged subtle glances with his companions, clearly weighing the risks and benefits.
"My name is Erwin, leader of this exploration party." He removed his gas mask, revealing a face crisscrossed with scars. "The hive is still dozens of kilometers away. I'm afraid you won't reach it by dawn even if you walk all night. Do you need someone to give you a ride?"
Caelan asked, "Wouldn't that be inconvenient?"
"We're heading back to the hive anyway. It's on the way."
Erwin's authority in the convoy was high; even with this decision, no one raised any objection.
Erwin did not ask where Caelan came from, why he was outside the city, nor did he demand payment.
He was a clever man.
Caelan sat calmly in the vehicle, showing no concern about any ill intent from the group.
Durm also sat nervously in the back. The roar of the engine was both frightening and novel to him.
There was nothing like this underground.
Erwin ordered, "Tel, back to the hive."
The driver lowered his voice: "Are we really going back?"
"Back to the hive." Erwin shook his head almost imperceptibly. He understood what the driver was thinking, but they could not do it.
Ambushing and killing a noble in the wilderness, even without other witnesses, was too risky.
Not everyone in the convoy was of one mind; he could not guarantee they would all keep silent.
Even if they did, there would be traces to follow.
If they dared kill and rob Caelan, taking his valuables,
Once those items entered the market, the nobles would surely trace them back relentlessly.
Those high-and-mighty nobles would not let it go, they would make an example to warn the lower classes that even a fallen noble was not to be touched by the common rabble.
If they killed Caelan but took nothing and destroyed the evidence,
That would indeed leave almost no clues, but then why kill him at all?
Caelan had neither been aggressive nor provocative.
There was no conflict between them. Where was the motive for murder?
With no motive, enormous risk, and no profit, only a bloodthirsty madman would think of killing.
But since they had run into Caelan in the wild, they could not simply pretend nothing had happened.
If they ignored him, they would surely offend him.
Once Caelan returned to the hive, retribution would follow.
Even if Caelan only gave some subtle hint to the underhive gangs, countless people would try to please the noble by making life difficult for Erwin.
So, though they seemed to have many choices, in truth they had only one: they must, and could only, escort Caelan safely back to the hive.
Only then would the noble not hold a grudge, and might even reward them with some coin.
Escorting Caelan to the hive was far easier than exploring ruins. The wealth amassed by hive nobles over generations was astronomical; whatever Caelan gave as recompense would not be shabby, otherwise he would lose face before other nobles.
Moreover, they had to give a generous reward to set an example for the lower classes, showing how great the benefits were of saving a noble.
So that the next time the lower classes encountered a noble in distress, they would think of rescue rather than harm.
Not asking Caelan for payment was for the same reason.
What the noble gave was charity to the lower classes, but they would not tolerate anyone demanding payment from them.
Erwin had thought it through thoroughly, and indeed it was the convoy's only option.
Even if Caelan gave them nothing, they would at least escape the death penalty.
Surviving was already a gain.
Though it was also possible the noble might kill them to keep the secret of his downfall.
In that case, killing him first would be the better choice.
But that possibility was low.
Erwin did not want to gamble, nor did he dare.
Nobles might look harmless, but they all had various ancient heirlooms and legacies.
Caelan certainly had some too, the blue light they had seen earlier was likely one of them.
Even if they really tried to murder him for his goods, it might not be Caelan who died.
The wilderness roads were extremely rough; the convoy's progress was difficult, jolting and bumping almost all the way.
Zero comfort rating, even those who did not get carsick would be thrown about until sick.
When the hive's towering walls finally appeared on the horizon, the convoy slowly drove into the low, decrepit slums outside the city.
In the hive's rigid hierarchy, underhive dwellers were already at the bottom of the pyramid.
Though underhivers endured brutal exploitation, working hard only for a meager ration barely enough to survive, with foul air pumped down from the upper hive, and gangs and enforcers further squeezing them outside the rules,
Compared to the bottom hives and the outskirts, the underhive was practically paradise!
Underhive commoners at least got corpse-starch rations, bland and unappealing in appearance, but nutritious and non-toxic.
But the residents of the outskirts and bottom hives had to scavenge like hyenas in garbage heaps, eating whatever they could find.
The air there was not only foul but toxic, and they constantly had to watch for mutant attacks.
This was also one of the driving forces that kept underhive workers motivated, to avoid becoming bottom-hivers.
The scavenger convoy was also from the outskirts. As they passed through the narrow alleys between shanties on both sides, men and women wearing gas masks swarmed forward with cheers.
"Erwin, you're back so early today, did you find something?"
"How much food will this haul get us?"
"Don't just think about food! Erwin, any batteries? Got batteries?"
"Batteries aren't edible!"
"Idiot! Without batteries, we'd be dead already!"
Erwin lowered his head, unable to meet their eyes.
Gradually, the crowd sensed something amiss. Many stopped in their tracks and did not follow.
Only the young children still naively ran alongside the convoy, some even reaching out excitedly to grab onto the slow-moving vehicles.
In the outskirts, even being a scavenger was considered a respectable job.
If you could not be a scavenger, you had to become a junker, living among garbage day and night.
Everyone had to work.
The convoy stopped beneath the towering walls, a ring of metal mountains hundreds of meters high, stretching between the wilderness and the hive like an insurmountable chasm.
Erwin said "I can only take you this far. You'll have to find your own way to get the door open."
Durm asked in confusion: "You can't open the door?"
Erwin gazed up at the hundred-meter-high gate, a self-deprecating smile tugging at his lips. "We outcasts aren't even counted as hive population. The hive's gates will never open for the likes of us."
Durm's eyes widened. "You've never been inside the hive?"
Erwin shook his head. "Never. We outskirt folk are even worse off than you under-dwellers."
"The enforcers never come to the outskirts either. The last time was last year, a noble lady accidentally lost her watch, and its tracker showed it had been dumped with tons of garbage at the trash mountain near our town."
"That day, the hive gates opened for the first time in my life."
"Those enforcers held us at gunpoint and forced the whole town to sift through the trash mountain for two months."
Durm asked, "Did they find it?"
"If they hadn't, you wouldn't be seeing me now."
"Then… the one who found it must have been rewarded, right?"
Erwin let out a hoarse laugh. "Reward? An eight-year-old girl found the watch. The enforcers gave her two corpse-starch bars, but she'd been exposed to too much radiation in the trash mountain and rotted to death the next day."
"Within a year, half the people in our town died."
The deadliest things in the hive's garbage dumps were the radioactive waste from reactors and other industrial facilities.
These radioactive wastes could turn an entire trash mountain into a radiation hill. The junkers had to stoop and sift through that radioactive mountain, searching for kitchen waste that had not been contaminated.
If lucky, they might find half a corpse-starch bar, or a lump of bread mud covered in mold and grime.
That was why experienced junkers never ventured deep into the trash mountains, they only searched the periphery.
But when they were forced at gunpoint to dig through the mountain, they had no choice.
Durm couldn't help asking, "Didn't you ever think of fighting back?"
Erwin answered with another question, "Then why don't you under-dwellers fight back?"
Was it because they didn't want to? Of course not.
It was just that the power gap was too great. What could they fight with?
Cthonia's hive was only a small hive, yet it held hundreds of millions of people.
The nobles commanded a standing army of hundreds of thousands, plus millions of enforcers.
The outskirts town had only a few thousand people total. What could they resist with?
If they didn't resist, half died from radiation.
If they dared resist, they would have all died already.
Durm fell silent.
The under-dwellers endured the same suffering, he did not disbelieve it; he had experienced it himself.
He just did not understand: in the under-dwellers' worldview, hive-dwellers were the upper class, living countless times better than those underground.
Yet the outskirt folk lived even worse than the under-dwellers. At least underground, there were truly no enforcers.
If any enforcer dared enter the underground, they would never leave alive.
Gangs did not care about rules, whoever came, they were all just meat.
Since they were all so miserable, who exactly was enjoying life?
Erwin patiently explained to Durm, not out of kindness, but hoping to curry favor with Caelan.
Though he did not understand why a noble would be close with an under-dweller, he guessed the under-dweller must have saved the noble's life underground, or at least helped him escape.
Caelan's attitude toward the under-dweller was very friendly, he must be someone who repaid kindness.
The more kindly Erwin behaved toward Durm, the better impression he would leave on Caelan.
He was also curious about who Caelan really was, and even more curious how he would get the hive's guards to open the gate.
Caelan asked, "What time do you set out tomorrow?"
Erwin replied, "After sunset."
No one could withstand Cthonia's toxic sun. Even they had to stay underground during the day, daring to venture out only at night to scavenge.
Caelan said, "Wait for us here after sunset tomorrow. Give us another ride."
Erwin was taken aback. 'You're back at the hive, why would you go underground again?'
Erwin hesitated and nodded. He felt he might have misjudged Caelan's identity, but he was still curious how Caelan would get into the hive.
The next second, he heard a piercing screech of tearing metal.