A glimmer of light appeared at the bottom of the bottomless cave. After descending for so long, they finally reached the end.
Hao Ren looked up at the direction where they came from. The entrance of the cave was nowhere to be seen. There was only a misty darkness above. The cave was so deep that there was a cloud of dust in the middle. Hao Ren was shocked by the depth of the cave. "Oh my god, it's so deep … Can Baptiste really come down here alive?"
Vivian nodded. "Wizards have many tricks up their sleeves. Maybe he knows how to fly. As long as he is not torn apart by the monsters, he will be fine."
As the car continued to descend, Hao Ren noticed that the light outside did not come from below. Instead, it came from the dark walls of the cave. After descending to a certain depth, there were many huge cracks on the wall in the distance. Those cracks seemed to lead to the outside world.
After descending for another few hundred meters, they finally touched the ground.
"It's safe here." Turcan observed the environment outside. "Let's go in any direction. The cracks around us should lead to the outside world."
The bottom of the cave was a place where light and shadow intertwined. It was still very dark here, but there were some triangular cracks in the distance. At first, Hao Ren thought that he would arrive at an open space after coming down from the cave. But now it seemed that the passage was like some kind of pipe that led directly to the ground. After reaching the end, he would have to crawl out of the crack on the "pipe" to see the real view of the second level of Inferno. He started the car and drove towards the biggest light source. Along the way, everyone subconsciously held their breath. This strange place made everyone very nervous.
The ground at the bottom of the cave was rugged. There were many strange stones scattered on the ground. Occasionally, something else could be seen.
Hao Ren saw a pile of debris in front of him. A large area around him was dark red, and there were clear cracks on the ground. There was no doubt that this was a monster that fell from the surface.
It was unknown how many creatures had fallen from that terrifying cave in the past ten thousand years, but it was conceivable that there must be a large amount of debris piled up on the ground under the wheels. These unlucky creatures that fell from the surface world turned into dust here, very far from where they lived.
The wheels rolled over the debris, and the team continued to explore. The light in the distance was getting closer and closer. In the crisscrossing light and shadow, Hao Ren saw some thick, pillar-like objects hanging down from above, and the crack where the light was coming from was obvious, the higher it was, the more inwardly inclined it was. The strange structure stunned him for a moment. Everything in this place was too big, and his common sense of space and imagination were challenged. It took him a long time to realize what kind of shape he was in: the bottom of the cave was gradually expanding outwards, and the deeper he went, the wider it became.
He sped up and drove into the light outside.
An incomparably vast world appeared before everyone's eyes.
Their field of vision suddenly widened, and the scenery of the second level of Inferno made everyone speechless. They saw a vast expanse of land spread out outside the car window. The undulating hills and low slopes were covered with shocking verdant green, and the whole land was covered with green grass and lush flowers and trees. This vast land stretched all the way to the end of their sight. There was only a clear horizon, and there was no edge of the cave that existed in their imagination.
In a daze, Hao Ren opened the car door and went outside. He felt that he was stepping on a soft grassland, and his nostrils were filled with the pure fragrance of soil and plants. He looked up at the 'sky', which should have been a thick and dark rock dome, but he saw a large expanse of white clouds. This underground world was too vast, and its dome was even higher than the limit of cumulus, so water vapor and dust formed clouds in the 'cave', blocking the rocks above. The clouds emitted the same soft white light as the outermost cloud top of Inferno, but the light was so bright that the entire underground world was as bright as day.
Hao Ren's eyes wandered between the clouds. The clouds here were not as airtight as the cloud top above, so he finally saw what he should have seen between the two clouds: a deep darkness, extremely far away. Even with his eyesight, he could only see some rough gully lines. That was the earth's crust.
Or something similar to the earth's crust.
The others also got out of the car. Hessiana kept her head up for a few minutes, staring blankly. After a long time, she finally took a deep breath and said, "This … is … a cave?"
"I've said it before. Although the second level of Purgatory is underground, its scale is indescribable." Although Vivian said so, her expression was not much calmer than the others. "I didn't expect it to be like this … I thought it would be a worse place."
"After all, the surface is like hell," Lily frowned, looking at the vibrant world in disbelief. "This is' Inferno '? Inferno doesn't live up to its name. "
Nangong Wuyue could feel that the water elemental environment around her had finally regained its affinity. That inexplicable sense of danger and hostility seemed to only exist on the surface. So she turned into a normal sea serpent with a satisfied expression on her face. "The water here is very peaceful. It's like a different world from the surface."
Hao Ren did not say anything because there was only one question in his mind: how vast is this place?
Thinking of this, he could not help but turn his head to look at the 'passage' that they came from.
A towering mountain peak appeared in front of him. As expected, it was impossible to make out its shape at this distance.
He only saw some huge black ridges sprinkling down from above, continuously extending into the distance until they became one with the verdant land. The upper half of the mountain gradually contracted, turning into a giant wall that was almost perpendicular to the ground, until it disappeared into the depths of the endless clouds. The entire mountain was dark in color and had a rock-like texture. However, after careful observation, he found that the rock had a strange shape.
A lightning-fast idea suddenly came to him. He immediately called everyone into the car and said, "Quick, let's go somewhere further!"
The group returned to the car, and Hao Ren immediately drove into the distance. The 'mountain' that they came from was quickly left behind. Lily sat in the last row and looked out the window. Her eyes widened and finally could not help but shout, "A tree! It's a tree trunk! "
Hao Ren stopped on a grassy high ground. He and the others looked in the direction of the 'mountain'. From here, they could finally see the full appearance of the behemoth. Just as Lily said, it was a giant tree, and it was a tree with developed roots and aerial roots that swelled out of the ground. The trunk of the giant tree pierced through the clouds and connected to the bottom of the crust above as if it was supporting the entire land above. The lower part of the tree was clinging to the ground. The slanted ridges and cone-shaped mountain that Hao Ren saw were none other than the roots of this giant tree.
And the place where they came from was self-evident: it was a hollow tube inside the tree trunk.
At this time, the MDT suddenly said, "There are new images from other probes. Some probes have found other entrances to Inferno. They are in the same situation as us."
As the MDT said, it transferred the images from several probes. All of the images depicted the same scene: the giant tree supporting the entire land (or sky), and the vast green land around the giant tree.
"Other high-speed probes have reached the other side of the planet, and they have also found the entrance to the second level of Inferno."
"The second level of Inferno is not one or a series of caves, but another layer of crust," Hao Ren said slowly. "This planet is layered. I'm not exaggerating, it's a solid description."
The world's speculations about the structure of Purgatory were ridiculously wrong. The otherworldlings once believed that there was a series of deep, gigantic caverns beneath this world, and that those caverns were another hell. However, in reality, all the caverns were connected together, and they were actually a single space. Not only that, this space was not dangerous, it was like a paradise.
This planet had a double crust, and Inferno was just its surface.
Maybe there was a third crust, but who could say for sure?
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