Apocalypse Star House Hoarding

Chapter 316

The term train planet did not mean a planet composed of trains but rather described how an entire planet had been entwined and pierced through by an endless network of trains.

On land, over the sea, in the sky, and underground—trains sprawled across the planet like wild vines.

They had ruptured the ground, emerging from the depths before extending toward the sky, only to change angles at a certain altitude and continue stretching in another direction. They crossed cities, tunneled through mountains, and vanished underground once more.

Then, somewhere far away—be it in another city, an ocean, or a snowy wasteland—the trains would resurface from beneath the earth, reappearing in the open sky.

The individual train carriages were no different in size from what she knew, but the endless chain of connected carriages stretched so far that they wrapped around the planet in countless layers, forming a crisscrossing web that obscured the planet’s original appearance entirely.

Surrounding the trains was a dark, unknown substance—dense, massive, and cloud-like. The train bodies flickered in and out of sight within this “fog,” which seemed to be a kind of spatial medium, possibly the reason why the trains could traverse different dimensions.

The colossal shadow she had once seen spanning the sky in her memory fragments had been part of this train network. But unlike in her dream, that vision had come from the memories of the planet’s inhabitants, taken from the day the catastrophe first struck.

At that time, the trains had not yet formed the crisscrossing labyrinth they were now. There had been no surrounding black fog either.

And the time she had entered this world…

It had been long, long after that day.Everything she had seen in the Easter Egg Fragment had come from the memories of those who had lived through it.

In the real post-apocalyptic world she had entered, this planet was already dead.

The trains had infested it like a parasite burrowing into an apple, piercing through its core and suffocating it.

They had destroyed the planet’s ecological balance, absorbing energy from the oceans, deep-sea mineral veins, and even the planet’s molten core.

In the memories of the planet’s inhabitants, the “Yu Xi” of this world had not been a soldier from the beginning. She was just an ordinary person who had enlisted in response to an emergency call after a large number of soldiers perished in the train disaster.

She became part of a newly formed military unit and eventually joined an expedition team tasked with investigating the trains.

Those helmet-based virtual training exercises had not been meant for mere “game simulations.”

They were designed to push their physical capabilities, combat skills, reflexes, and endurance to the absolute limit in the shortest time possible.

Because they didn’t have much time.

With each passing day, the number of trains grew.

Like living organisms, they expanded unchecked.

Every country had launched attacks and research efforts against them, but no one could determine what the train carriages were made of. Even the most powerful missiles could not destroy them.

Instead, every attack seemed to trigger an explosive growth period.

At the time, no one understood why.

Only later did they realize—the trains were absorbing the energy from the explosions.

But by the time they made this discovery, it was already too late.

The planet was in the midst of a full-scale nuclear crisis.

Everything had already spiraled out of control.

The research teams had also been trying to understand the trains in other ways. They soon discovered that whenever they refrained from using force and instead sent people to approach the trains directly, the doors would open on their own, as if inviting them inside.

However, multiple waves of expedition teams had entered the trains, and not a single person had ever returned.

The military command center’s monitors displayed the life signals of every operative inside the train. Each vital sign flickered out within minutes of their entry, with every lost signal representing a lost life.

Those outside had no way of knowing what had happened inside.

The trains remained motionless.

From the outside, normal humans could freely enter and exit the carriages.

Inside, everything looked like an ordinary train, with no connecting doors between carriages and no other visible exits.

But once a carriage reached capacity, the external doors would shut automatically, and all communication would be cut off.

Some nations had tried sending in exploration machines, but any non-living entity was completely rejected by the trains.

The trains’ rapid spread across the planet triggered countless natural disasters.

Time was running out.

Eventually, a new wave of soldiers was sent in, determined to break the cycle.

And finally, someone made it back alive.

That person was the first to bring back information about the Endless Train world.

**

Time flowed differently inside and outside the trains.

Once inside the Endless Train world, they would lose all memories related to the trains.

The inside of the train acted as a massive teleportation device, transferring their consciousness into another world.

His body changed—he became different from normal humans.

He gained a personal storage space, and the items inside could be retrieved and used.

There had been two other surviving team members in the same carriage with him.

Every other soldier had perished.

When the survivors exited the train carriage, the life signals of the deceased vanished from the command center’s monitors.

And then, the carriage they had entered disappeared completely, as if it had never existed.

Did that mean that once a mission inside a carriage was completed, and at least one person survived, the carriage would vanish?

The military began targeted training for future teams, hoping to send more people into the trains to find a way to stop their spread.

But during this process, the global situation worsened.

Some of the leading war factions made a secret decision.

They launched nuclear missiles.

Several major cities were wiped off the face of the planet.

The international alliance collapsed.

Tensions between nations soared.

The train crisis remained unsolved, but now, humanity had turned on itself.

A global war broke out.

The planet stood on the brink of total destruction.

Yu Xi’s nation secretly initiated a contingency plan—the cryogenic survival project.

And she—or rather, the “Yu Xi” of this world—was chosen for the program because she had no family and had excelled in training.

“Yu Xi” was placed in cryogenic sleep.

And she slept for one hundred years.

A century later, the planet had changed completely.

After the global nuclear war, the trains expanded even further.

The planet itself fragmented, breaking apart into several pieces, yet the trains still bound them together.

The population had been reduced by ninety-five percent.

The last remnants of humanity retreated to space stations.

For a long time, survival was their only concern.

They had no time for anything else.

To sustain themselves, they modified the space stations, focused on long-term survival, and only after another hundred years did they finally turn their attention back to the trains.

By then, the trains had already grown beyond the planet, spreading into space.

Some train carriages now floated close to the space station.

The surviving scientists revived a group of soldiers who had been placed in cryogenic sleep a century earlier.

These soldiers varied in age and background—before the war, most of them had simply been ordinary people who had enlisted in desperation.

Among them was “Yu Xi.”

The moment she entered this world was the moment “Yu Xi” had been sent into one of the trains near the space station.

Because she had been frozen for a hundred years, her memories were jumbled, a chaotic mix of before and after her stasis.

Before she could fully process them, she had entered the Endless Train world, cutting off her connection with Xing Min.

At that moment, only two things had been clear to her.

First, exploring the Endless Train world was her current mission.

All those previous objectives—gathering supplies, bringing clean water back to the disaster-ridden survivors—those were nothing more than echoes of a past that had existed a hundred years ago.

The space station was now fully self-sustaining. All she had to do was survive the train and return with information about its interior.

Second, once she entered the Endless Train world, she might lose all memories related to the train.

Since the scenes she had seen were originally from the memories of the world’s “Yu Xi,” receiving them had already been chaotic. If they were erased afterward, she might end up in a completely disoriented state.

So, before entering the Endless Train world, while preparing her inventory, skills, identity, and appearance, she had secretly left a note in her personal space. It contained a simple explanation of her circumstances.

She had intended for it to remind her later, but she hadn’t expected the Endless Train world to be so perfectly balanced.

As soon as she woke up in the Endless Train, the note in her space was automatically reduced to black ash.

A small amount of it remained, which she later found as traces of dust on the outer shell of her metal storage box.

At the time, just from that little bit of ash, there was no way she could have pieced together the full story.

As for Xing Min, since she had been pulled into an even deeper space the moment she entered the mission world, he had completely lost their connection.

He had no choice but to wait. If he forcibly cut off the world link, she could be permanently trapped inside, severed from him forever.

So, Xing Min made a quick decision—he took over the body of another frozen soldier who had just been revived and was about to be sent into the train.

He followed her into the Endless Train world.

The good news was that, this time, the human body he had taken over was in perfect health, meaning he would no longer appear weak inside the Endless Train world.

The bad news was that, due to the train’s strict fairness rules, he, like Yu Xi and the other mission participants, lost all memories related to the train.

The others, because they had lived their past lives on the planet before its destruction, still retained their memories of peaceful times. They remembered who they were, where they came from, their family and friends—only their train-related memories had been erased, including their emergency enlistment and subsequent training.

But Xing Min, like Yu Xi, had nothing.

Yet, he knew one thing for certain.

He wasn’t here without reason.

If he was in this world, it meant something had happened to Yu Xi.

He had to find her as soon as possible.

He wandered through one station after another in the Endless Train world.

Until, finally, at the Light Academy station, he found her.

**

Yu Xi awoke on the narrow single bed of her cabin, turning her head toward the train planet outside the space station.

She had spent almost half a year in the Endless Train world, but in reality, only about five months had passed.

For those five months, her body had remained seated in the train carriage without food or oxygen. Logically, she should have been long dead, but strangely, aside from some weakness, she was completely fine.

She spent a day recovering her strength. When she checked the world mission, she found that everything was completely different from before.

world mission: explore the endless train world and return alive to the train planet’s post-apocalyptic world. mission complete.

earned star credits: ∞

current available star credits: ∞

would you like to leave the post-apocalyptic world?

“This infinity symbol… does it mean what I think it does?” Yu Xi suddenly felt like she had just struck gold overnight.

Xing Min, whose body in this world had only just awakened, was still recovering in another part of the space station. For now, they were communicating through their consciousness.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “You already understand my past, and you now know that the so-called system and missions are just methods of operation. The star credits you earned earlier were essentially energy. When you left anchor points in mission worlds, you also returned a portion of energy to me and the ship.”

“This energy allowed me to maintain your connection to the mission worlds, manufacture star constructs, and restore the spaceship’s hull—what you know as the star house. The star credits displayed to you were actually the energy reserves you could freely use.”

“But now that you know everything, there’s no need to present it as a system or mission anymore. In short, all of the energy is yours. You can use it to create any star construct you want, or repair any part of the spaceship—whatever is within your energy limit.”

“Everything is now up to you. You have full control.”

“Including me…”

His voice trailed off at the last sentence, as if something had crossed his mind.

Yu Xi could guess what he was thinking.

Before they left the Endless Train world, they hadn’t just stopped at that embrace.

When she had deliberately teased him, asking which one he preferred—a bite, a lick, or a kiss—his ears had turned red again as he leaned in.

The kiss that followed had caught her off guard.

Though Xing Min had no prior experience, he had absorbed all the knowledge, culture, and habits of her world through the data network.

So he might have been inexperienced, but he wasn’t ignorant.

He was always calm and composed, speaking little. But when he pressed against her lips, guiding the kiss deeper, he was like fire bursting through ice—controlled yet burning with intensity.

Sitting on her bed now, Yu Xi licked her lips at the memory.

“Want to come find me now? We can do some further research together?” she teased.

“…”

Xing Min, of course, did not go find her.

The human body he was currently using would regain its original consciousness after he left, and he had no desire to approach her through someone else’s body.

They could have left this world immediately, but once they did, even Xing Min wasn’t sure when Yu Xi and her teammates would meet again.

So, they chose to stay a few more days to say their goodbyes.

One by one, they gathered in Yu Xi’s small cabin. It was one of the better independent rooms in the space station.

Their first discussion was about supplies.

Just as Yu Xi had seen in her dream of the virtual world, the materials and storage spaces they had obtained from the Endless Train had seamlessly merged with their original inventory.

This meant that everything they had brought back from the train could be taken out of this post-apocalyptic world with them.

They discussed which supplies to leave behind and who would take charge of them.

At the same time, Yu Xi also asked about their systems. Lin Wu and Ya Tong’s systems remained the same as before—still just mechanical voices with no apparent change. Perhaps some transformations would only occur after she returned to her original world and Xing Min rebooted the spaceship system.

This time, they didn’t leave the post-apocalyptic world together but chose to say farewell one by one.

Xi Yuan, unusually, after sending off Lin Wu and the others, found an excuse to pull Xing Min aside and privately requested that he leave first.

He wanted to stay an extra day to say his own goodbye to Yu Xi.

Xing Min looked at him with an indifferent gaze, but Xi Yuan only smiled.

“Relax. I can’t go to her world. Once she leaves this time and the spaceship system reboots, all of this will likely come to an end. She probably won’t return to the System Tower’s apocalyptic worlds anymore. She and I… we were always from two different worlds. This will be the last time I get to be with her. Once the journey is over, I’ll let her go back to you. You don’t have to worry.”

Xing Min slowly furrowed his brows. “She doesn’t belong to you. She doesn’t belong to me either. You don’t have to ‘return’ her. Neither of us has the right to control her choices.”

Xi Yuan chuckled. “Oh? But tell me, do you really believe she has no feelings for me? Not even a little bit?” He hesitated for a moment before finally speaking. “Back in Seven Layers of Hell, did you ever wonder about the person inside Yinyin’s body?”

Some things didn’t need to be spelled out—just a hint was enough.

Xing Min looked at him, instantly realizing what he meant. “It was you?”

“Yes. That time, I returned to save her. But I couldn’t reveal my identity—doing so might have put her in even more danger. So I never told her, not when I saved her, not when I left.” Xi Yuan’s voice was calm, but there was an underlying tension. “I know this means a lot to her. If I told her now, do you think she’d be moved? Even if we never see each other again, at least I’d always have a place in her heart.”

“You can tell her. That’s your choice. And I should also say thank you,” Xing Min replied.

Xi Yuan studied his composed expression and let out a quiet laugh. “You’re so boring. You’re possessive as hell, but you pretend to be so magnanimous in front of me.”

He exhaled lightly. “I know that if I told her, I could take advantage of the moment and ask for all sorts of things. But… forget it. I don’t want to guilt-trip her like that.”

**

Xi Yuan was surprised—after their conversation, Xing Min really did leave first.

After he was gone, Xi Yuan stuck to Yu Xi’s side, saying he just wanted to spend one more day with her.

Yu Xi eyed him for a while with a half-smile, then said, “Alright.”

The next morning, Xi Yuan knocked on her cabin door early. The two had breakfast together inside before heading out to wander the space station. They strolled through the plaza, browsed the trading hall, then had lunch together in the mess hall.

In the afternoon, they stood on the observation bridge, looking out at the endless expanse of the universe. By evening, they sat on the viewing deck, facing the train planet in the distance.

“Xi Yuan, I’m leaving,” Yu Xi said suddenly, turning to look at him. “This time, I want you to be the one to send me off.”

Xi Yuan was confused. “This time?”

Yu Xi smiled and continued, “Thank you for being here. You didn’t just save me—you saved someone who is very important to me.”

Xi Yuan’s expression changed.

That was exactly what she had said to him back in the Seven Layers of Hell world, when he had been inside Yinyin’s body.

“You… how do you—”

How did she know?

Of course, Xing Min had told her before he left.

To Xing Min, this might be the last time Xi Yuan and Yu Xi would ever meet. If Xi Yuan had never realized the truth, then that would have been that. But now that he knew, Xing Min couldn’t selfishly keep it from Yu Xi.

He understood how deeply she valued the person who had risked everything to save her back then. She deserved to know.

Xi Yuan suddenly understood.

Covering half his face with one hand, he let out a sheepish laugh. “That guy… doing things so openly, so straightforwardly… makes it really hard to keep disliking him.”

Yu Xi looked at him and, after a moment, leaned in and hugged him. “Thank you, Xi Yuan.”

Thank you for risking yourself for me.

And thank you… for liking me.

“Why are you thanking me? I was selfish. I just wanted to see you, even if I couldn’t say anything… I still wanted to see you,” he murmured, burying his face in her hair and holding her tightly.

If he could, he would have held her like this forever.

He didn’t want to send her away.

He didn’t want to say goodbye.

Yu Xi seemed to understand, patting his back lightly as if to comfort him—or perhaps to say farewell. “We’ll see each other again, Xi Yuan. We definitely will.”

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, no words came out.

“Yu Xi… don’t forget me.”

“I won’t,” she promised, pulling back and kissing his cheek. “Goodbye, Xi Yuan.”

**

Ninth post-apocalyptic world mission complete. star credits: ∞

Welcome back. spaceship system rebooting. no new mission world required at this time.

Rest well, Xiao Xi.

When she regained full consciousness, she stared at the familiar walls and space around her, dazed for a long time.

…

Thingyan: I wanna cry 🥺🥺🥺