Chapter 269: Blizzard Intermission

00:32, the joint train entered the Xilan City rail station.

After entering Xilan City, the fleet of the defense line separated. The Emperor Project team was escorted by the Investigation Corps to the Phoenix Society's station, while the 6 fleets including Qian Dele drove to the temporary end-of-the-world camp on the outskirts of the rail station near Central Avenue. Because there were many trains parked at the rail station, the *Infinity* and Longshan No. 1 turned from the branch line into the rail area originally used for freight mining lines to park.

Here, near the side of Fengluan Mountain, there was a large mining area. Because it was far from Central Avenue, the survivor camps gathered in this area were relatively fewer. However, Lin Xian still saw several fleet camps stationed in the freight station area of the original Xilan Mining Company, where many containers were placed, and the mining car tracks extended all the way.

Choosing to be in this area had another advantage: there were many rail gantry cranes used for hoisting goods, and for Lin Xian, there were also a large number of swallowable materials.

Rushing from Hengshan Pass all the way, having suffered repeated battles, the fleet's consumption was extremely large. Now, even the basic armor had problems, so he must take this opportunity to upgrade the train's protection well.

Longshan No. 1 was the same as the *Infinity* side, having encountered a dangerous blizzard pursuit battle, and everyone's nerves were stretched very tight. Once the joint train drove in, the personnel on the train began to move without stopping under the arrangement of fleet leaders like Shi Diyuan and Xiang Xiang Ningjing.

*Ssh*~ At this time, the all-terrain drive train of Longshan No. 1 was uncoupled from the rear of the *Infinity*, and the temporary docking frame in the front was also cancelled. This train of nearly a thousand people was combined together again.

*Clang, clang, clang*~

The carriage doors opened. There were as many as a hundred engineering and maintenance personnel on the Longshan No. 1 train, plus logistics support personnel. Very quickly, this quiet freight area suddenly boiled over. Hundreds of people began to busily prepare the carriages and dismantle the external armor, and the armed personnel on duty on the roof of the train were also tireless.

In order to understand the situation in the city, Shi Diyuan greeted Lin Xian and then personally led people to rush towards the central area. The remaining rest work was fully handed over to Xiang Xiang Ningjing.

It had to be said that there was strength in numbers. This train of nearly 2,000 meters was quickly being repaired intensively by hundreds of people. After power-on inspection, the long-stagnant portal tower cranes were also started.

In the wind and snow, the engineers of Longshan No. 1 set up rows of large lights, illuminating the freight area brightly. Perhaps because it was close to Fengluan Mountain, the wind and snow in this area were not as violent as outside the city, and the tall concrete walls also gave everyone a considerable sense of security.

As for the *Infinity* side, Lin Xian checked it once. The damage to the train armor plates was also very serious, including the left side. Before entering the Uliyasitai Mountain, it had also encountered a full day of Snow Demon tide, and the perforation density was very high. Fortunately, this time the all-terrain train of Longshan No. 1 protected the rear of the *Infinity*'s nuclear-powered train, plus the Gemini used special lead plates to thicken the armor to isolate nuclear radiation, so it did not suffer too much damage.

However, this time also gave Lin Xian a wake-up call. He had always put the Gemini at the end because he was worried about nuclear accidents. Although Carriage No. 12 was the weapon station, the protection at the rear was indeed a bit weak.

So Lin Xian prepared to add a special carriage for protection at the end. In addition, he also prepared to add an electric locomotive as power output to make up for the power link loss caused by the previous Huanxing 7F being used for upgrades.

In the wind and snow, Lin Xian looked at the busy maintenance team of Longshan No. 1. On this side, he did not let others come down to help, but arranged for several main backbone members to rest first.

Because he prepared to scout first to see if there were any available power units, and by the way, swallow more special steel machinery to obtain materials.

"Are you alone? I'll accompany you," Chen Sixuan said with worry when she saw Lin Xian arranging for everyone to rest.

"I have rested enough. There are many things to do tomorrow and I will need you. On the contrary, you need to rest well."

In the cockpit, Lin Xian had just finished talking to Longshan No. 1, and then said to Chen Sixuan: "Judging from the situation we entered, Xilan City should be considered safe for the time being. This kind of opportunity is hard to come by. Everyone fought to the death for a day. It is rare to have such an opportunity, so we must seize the time to rest. You too~"

Lin Xian looked at Chen Sixuan. At this time, Chen Laoshi's face was full of various blood stains and frostbite, because she had been busy until now since Lin Xian fell into a coma, and had no chance to rest at all. From the Foundation research institute, out of Hengshan Pass encountering the lamp-head monster, all the way to now, this university teacher who once couldn't carry or lift had completely joined the combat sequence, and her growth speed was amazing. The heavy anti-material sniper rifle in her hand had gradually begun to be handled with ease, solving quite a few troubles for the team.

And Lin Xian had rested for a few hours during his coma, so he was considered energetic at this time. Plus, his main purpose tonight was to swallow materials and redesign the train's external armor first, so he didn't need too many people to help.

"Alright," Chen Sixuan looked at Lin Xian with a complex expression. She didn't know why, but when Lin Xian fell on the roof of the train before, she felt as if her whole heart was being grabbed.

Just when Lin Xian was about to turn around, she suddenly stepped forward, took the initiative to reach out and wrap her arms around Lin Xian's neck, and pressed her soft lips up.

The softness was fleeting. After separating, Chen Sixuan looked at him with eager eyes: "Take care of your health."

Lin Xian was stunned by this unexpected "initiative," and then responded with a smile: "Good."

Late at night, the wind and snow did not stop.

*Hum*~

Lin Xian opened the Mechanical Heart and called up a special blueprint. This was a strangely shaped component. In fact, it was the configuration design of the right arm composite armor of the Prototype that Lin Xian had secretly scanned when he was in the Terakama Ice Valley.

This was actually his impromptu idea. Although most of the materials used by the Prototype were composite armor made of high-level materials such as super-carbon-alkyne alloy and nano-ceramics, which Lin Xian found difficult to convert in large areas through the preparation factory for use as train external armor, his idea was that he could make do with what was available, using titanium alloy to replace it with tungsten-titanium alloy and tungsten carbide steel.

After obtaining the blueprint of this composite armor, Lin Xian was greatly surprised, secretly sighing that this move of his was indeed wise.

Compared to the external armor plates he had manually drawn in Jiang City at the beginning, which had no design to speak of and only rough steel plate splicing, the composite armor plate design of the Prototype was simply amazing in Lin Xian's view, making him have to sigh at the professionalism of the Emperor Project design personnel.

"Active defense layer..."

Composite armor structure (5-layer design from outside to inside)

Active defense layer (0-5mm)

Material: Monolithic forged tungsten-titanium alloy Type II

Energy dissipation layer (5-15mm)

Material: Boron nitride ceramic/titanium alloy honeycomb interlayer

Main protection layer (15-25mm)

Material: Super-carbon-alkyne alloy

Process: Laser additive manufacturing porous-dense alternating structure

In addition, there was a 【buffer isolation layer】 using basalt fiber three-dimensional weaving, and a self-healing lining layer using magnesium-based composite materials and shape memory alloys...

Seeing this blueprint, Lin Xian deeply felt the awesomeness of his Mechanical Heart, which could almost solve the powerful industrial system of materials science, structural mechanics, metallurgy/chemical/new materials, precision machinery/military equipment, etc., with his own strength.

Plus, now that there was a research and development center, even research and design were solved along with it.

"It doesn't need to be so complicated. Simplifying the materials should also work..."

If armor plates manufactured using this design configuration were used, the protection level would certainly be much better than the previous pure plate combination. And one more point, it would look better.

The original *Infinity* was almost a rail fortress armed with black armor plates, with no aesthetics at all. Although talking about aesthetics had no use in this apocalypse, having it was better than not having it.

After arriving in Xilan City, it could be seen from other fleets stationed here that the city seemed to be relatively safe, but Lin Xian did not dare to relax at all in his heart. He must work overtime to get the armor out before he could rest assured.

Because most of the personnel were arranged by Lin Xian to rest, and there were no guards on duty, now the train had a sentry system plus thousands of people from Longshan No. 1 next to it. Lin Xian could completely let the team cool off under the big tree and rest well. After all, these partners had just experienced a cruel battle and were all exhausted, so they must recover their energy quickly.

Besides that, there was another person who was very tired, but was pulled by Lin Xian to work.

Kiki.

"Using this armor configuration design, then the original armor grille might have to be cancelled, and a synchronous window design should be done directly with the train windows?"

In Carriage No. 2, the carriage lights had been extinguished, and the computer in the information center was still glowing with fluorescence. Kiki sat in front of the computer and adjusted the train's armor design for Lin Xian.

The little girl's eye sockets were slightly dark, and she was already yawning. Originally, her ability had been almost emptied during the battle before, and she was exhausted at this time, but she had been helping Lin Xian with the design, and her hands were busy without stopping.

"Wouldn't this be unsafe? After opening the window, it connects to the outside, and the whole train is airtight, which is too oppressive," Lin Xian frowned and said.

The temperature in the carriage was warm. Kiki took off her heavy cold-proof clothing, wore casual shorts, and floated in front of the computer with her clean legs crossed. She poked Lin Xian's chest with her finger and said: "You can't have both fish and bear's paw, brother~"

"Just add a layer of high-strength polyester bulletproof glass in the middle of the grille armor. You should open the window when you need to. You can't just fire blindly outside during combat," Lin Xian said directly.

Kiki pursed her lips upon hearing this: "Since that's the case, why not just make it an automatic machine gun turret, and people can use monitoring to remote control it inside the carriage."

Lin Xian looked at her speechlessly: "Then just go for the rail combat cabin group."

"Right, right, right~" Kiki's eyes lit up: "Omnidirectional array cannon!"

"Then I'll just upgrade directly to a rail battleship."

"Good, good, good!"

Lin Xian poked her back with one finger: "The more you talk, the more unreliable it gets. If these things could be done now, I would have rebuilt the train or floating city directly. Why add armor?" "Hee hee hee~"

Kiki laughed and said: "I was just teasing you, but the plan you just mentioned is not bad. I think it's feasible."

Lin Xian took a breath, stood up and nodded: "Then let's do it like this. You rest first, I'll go get some materials."

He prepared to take advantage of the time to get the armor materials out, and by the way, see if he could scan the blueprint of the TriangleTrack magnetized all-terrain drive module modified by Longshan No. 1. If he could get it done, it would be considered solving a trouble. As long as it was manufactured before entering the ocean orbit, his *Infinity* could have one more choice and could leave the rail terrain to go to many places.

"Hey, are you okay? I saw you faint before."

Seeing Lin Xian about to leave, Kiki asked in a low voice with a tone of feigned nonchalance.

"Just like you before, just excessive use of energy, nothing serious," Lin Xian responded.

"Then~"

Kiki said, suddenly flew over and wrapped her legs around Lin Xian's waist like before, hugging his neck like a kangaroo and hanging on Lin Xian, looking at him with big eyes: "Do you want me to accompany you? I can protect you~"

Seeing the bloodshot eyes of this little girl, and her fresh lips were also very dry at this time, Lin Xian sighed in his heart, directly reached out and picked her up, walked to her bed, bent down and placed her on the bed.

"Who can you protect in this state? Wait until you wake up~" In order not to disturb Shasha who was sleeping above, Lin Xian said in a low voice.

!

Seeing that Lin Xian actually dared to refuse her, Kiki was furious. Although she was lying on the bed, her hands and feet were tightly hanging on him, refusing to let go, and she said unyieldingly: "Oh, look down on this lady's super ability, believe it or not I..." After speaking, she became savage, aimed at Lin Xian's nose with a cunning light in her eyes, and immediately prepared to bite him, trying to give him a little "lesson."

Who knew that Lin Xian had already seen through this little girl's movements, directly leaned his body forward, and kissed her little mouth.

*Pop*~

This unexpected move made Kiki dazed immediately. Her hands reflexively let go of Lin Xian's neck, covered her little mouth and said: "You!"

Lin Xian took the opportunity to break free, frowned and touched his mouth, and said to her meaningfully: "Actually dared to steal a kiss from me, good, then we're even."

"I... I, I didn't steal a kiss from you!"

Kiki was completely confused by Lin Xian's shameless reaction. Realizing that she had been counter-attacked, she was about to throw a tantrum, but saw Lin Xian looking at her seriously and saying: "You want to follow me so much, is it because you want to steal a kiss from me when I'm not paying attention?"

"Pah!" Kiki's little face turned blue and red, she spat at him fiercely, pursed her lips and stared at Lin Xian's gaze. The next instant, she avoided his gaze with a guilty conscience, turned around directly, pulled the quilt over herself, turned her face away, and gave a light snort: "Hmph, if you don't want to, then don't. Who cares? Freeze to death outside then~ Bye-bye, I'm going to sleep."

Lin Xian breathed a sigh of relief, a trace of a smile flashed in his eyes, and then he turned and left without saying a word.

Chen Laoshi and the little girl were the people who had accompanied him since the first day the *Infinity* drove out of Jiang City. Of course, he could feel their care for him. This feeling transcended the loneliness in the apocalyptic winter, making people's hearts hot.

Just after Lin Xian left, Kiki, who was lying on the bed, quietly turned her head, looked at Lin Xian's departing back, gritted her teeth angrily, with a complex expression, not knowing what she was thinking.

Immediately, she closed her eyes to avoid seeing and worrying, silently reciting in her heart, sleep quickly, sleep quickly, sleep quickly...

The Heterostructure Rubik's Cube in the carriage shielded the fear invasion power from the dark night and blizzard, making the *Infinity* carriage have less of a cold feeling that stimulated the nerves than outside. Seeing that the entire carriage had quieted down, Lin Xian took a long breath, opened the carriage door, and stepped into the wind and snow.

In the blizzard, the lonely shadow of Fengluan Mountain stood above, and the figures of Longshan No. 1 were busy outside, with the sounds of various steel plate welding and cutting machines never stopping all night.

Lin Xian saw the warm yellow lights in those double-decker carriages, and many families behind the armor were resting. Children who came out of the safety cabinets looked at the window blankly. Seeing Lin Xian passing by, their eyes fell on him, and they waved at him.

Lin Xian smiled slightly and waved back in response.

Immediately, he climbed onto the roof of the train and used the power armor's vision enhancement system to observe this mining freight station in the wind and snow. In a large square, thousands of containers and freight cabinets were placed densely, stacked very high, and covered with wind and snow.

The rail system extended all the way to the foot of the distant mountain, which had been completely blocked and seemed to have collapsed.

Lin Xian continued to climb up a tower crane to look into the distance, and found that he could see the surrounding city walls. The sky there was still flickering with fire, but the intensity was much lower than when they first entered. At this time, although he was in the blizzard, for some reason, it was the first time in months that Lin Xian felt a sense of security.

Having been running away alone in the dark night, he hadn't had this feeling for a long time.

There were no zombies or anomalous entities found in this city at present, and thousands of survivor fleets had gathered in the city. Looking at those survivors who had entered the city earlier and were resting peacefully in the wind and snow, Lin Xian believed that members on both the *Infinity* and Longshan No. 1 would be extremely envious.

Looking in the direction of the mountain, Lin Xian found that there were still quite a few freight trains carrying iron ore parked there. Immediately, he took a long breath and set off to rush there.

After walking through the wind and snow for ten minutes, several abandoned mining cars appeared in the field of vision. Many had already been buried under deep snow, with only the car bodies above the car frames exposed outside the snow layer.

Freight carriages generally couldn't be used by survivors, and they didn't even meet the conditions for being a shelter, so generally, no one cared. And Lin Xian possessed the Mechanical Heart, so these large mechanical structures could provide a large amount of materials.

And this time, the materials Lin Xian needed were not only high-level but also large in quantity, so these freight carriages stretching for hundreds of meters became very useful to Lin Xian.

And this place was far away from other survivor fleets, so he could be more open when swallowing. Although Lin Xian no longer minded his mechanical ability being exposed, swallowing a large number of train carriages for no reason would still make people feel very surprised. It was better to have one less thing than one more, and he couldn't do this in a group of strange fleets.

"Just this one."

Lin Xian climbed onto the top of a mining car carriage, swept away the snow on it with one foot, and pondered.

Just when he was about to start swallowing, his eyes swept, and he suddenly discovered something. His eyes lit up, so he jumped down again and ran forward along the tracks. He swept through the carriages one by one until he walked to the head of that freight train, and only then did he see a big guy parked here.

It was a heavy-duty electric locomotive Weilong-class dedicated to freight. It was very heavy, divided into two sections, with a combined length of over 60 meters, and was yellow and black. These two carriages were one high-power traction motor and the other was an energy storage system and auxiliary motor. Although it looked a bit old, it looked very sturdy overall.

Lin Xian didn't know much about this car model. After finding the locomotive nameplate, he knew that this traction locomotive was mainly used for mining, with a power of up to 70,000 kilowatts, even more powerful than the previous Huanxing 7F electric locomotive.

"Worthy of being an industrial heavy city, actually having such a big guy."

Lin Xian reached out and put it on directly, the Mechanical Heart unfolded, but not long after, his face changed.

"Broken? No wonder no one took it."

This kind of drive train itself had no value in the apocalypse due to the lack of energy, and it was still a broken one. Lin Xian checked it, and the problem was in the circuit system. It was very simple for him to repair, but for other survivors, inspecting the circuit system of a heavy electric locomotive in an apocalyptic environment was not a simple matter.

Now Lin Xian understood why these survivors had been parked in Xilan City for so long, and there was still an electric locomotive parked here. After all, many end-of-the-world trains now had small vehicle-mounted nuclear power systems, and taking a Weilong-class electric locomotive on the road shouldn't be a problem.

If it wasn't broken, it probably wouldn't have been his turn.

"Just happened to pick up this bargain." Lin Xian became interested. This electric locomotive could well guarantee the voltage stability of the Gemini nuclear-powered locomotive, and it was sturdy. As a tail car, it could provide nearly 70,000 kilowatts of power output at a critical moment, perfectly satisfying Lin Xian's vision.

Although the carriage couldn't be directly connected, he only needed to cover it with heavy armor plates and monitoring systems, and he didn't need to care about anything else. At worst, he would arrange for PX-05 robots to be stationed inside the carriage for instruction maintenance.

Speaking of PX-05 robots, Lin Xian prepared to manufacture a few more of these things next. They could serve as mechanical maintenance assistants to help Lin Xian solve many problems, and could perform repairs in combat. At critical moments, they could also help teammates deliver things. As long as the program was set, they could be completely used as service robots on the *Infinity*.

No sooner said than done, Lin Xian immediately began to swallow the freight carriages behind. After clearing the tracks, he prepared to repair this Weilong-class electric locomotive and then move it back to be hooked behind the Gemini nuclear-powered locomotive, and then start manufacturing new armor plates.

*Hum*~

The speed of the level 4 mechanical swallowing was more than twice as fast as it was at the Yushan station before. A freight carriage that originally took about 30 minutes, Lin Xian now only needed ten minutes to make a dozen-ton empty frame carriage disappear on the spot.

*Clatter, clatter*~

A large amount of snow fell rapidly as the carriage turned into fly ash. Lin Xian took advantage of the night, and in less than two hours, he swallowed all a dozen freight carriages.

After this busy work, the mechanical source points only increased by a little over a hundred, but his purpose itself was for materials. At this time, the decomposition center became rich again. After finishing all this, Lin Xian began to repair that Weilong-class electric locomotive.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 270 =====