The red earth of the Arizona Wilderness, once the sky was shrouded by the crimson, looked like an alien battlefield.

After nightfall, the crimson turned into a dense pitch-black, the minus-fifty-degree gale scraping a layer of blood frost across the ground. The Joint Train line lay in a winding halt on the plains, flanked on both sides by parked motorcades and the Iron Guard Brigade’s forces, stretching toward the distant darkness as far as the eye could see.

More than two million people were like a great migration across the wasteland, a mighty steel dragon still on constant combat readiness. In the dark, apart from drones and manned Mecha equipped with Dark Energy Synchronization Devices on patrol, everyone else was holed up inside their vehicles.

It wasn’t just the crimson, but the bone-deep cold. Anyone exposed to this hellish environment could clearly feel death drawing near. Under these conditions, Tongshi Devices driven by Blood Essence were more important than food and water—these were the key items that kept the shelters everyone relied on for survival running.

From north to south, thousands of train cars of all shapes and sizes were joined end to end. These trains were not interconnected; they were life-links formed by more than two hundred convoys aligned into a single front.

In some cars, cold fluorescent light shone on ammunition prep tables, where piles of freshly die-cast brass casings were stacked into small hills. Many people were working through the night to ready ammunition for a battle that could break out at any moment. In other cars, screams rose one after another as medics ripped open blood-soaked bandages, shouting "Hold him down!" and then immediately began injecting painkillers.

In the living car of the Soaring, the women were distributing food. A middle-aged woman leading them tapped a long ladle against an iron barrel. "Those who fight eat first, the rest of you wait!"

On the armored truck of the 22nd Brigade, 3rd Regiment, 9th Battalion, Iron Guard soldiers flipped up their Power Armor Masks as steam spurted from self-heating field rations. The new recruit Wang Lei stared at the mushy potato and beef in his can and suddenly gagged dryly, only to get his back skull slapped by the squad leader. "You brat, no one can guarantee you’ll get hot food tomorrow. Eat it, now!"

The line of sight ran on; every single car was packed with passengers. Some convoys were racing to repair damaged cars, welding torches spraying sparks. Out in the wasteland, a few survivors in Full Coverage Power Armor were fumbling around in the dark, trying to scavenge Blood Essence from piles of Monsters, only to be barked at and chased off by patrolling Iron Guard Brigade Mechanical Team units.

Toward Red Stone Rift Valley, in the dark, thick fog, the drone construction phalanx under Viola’s control was urgently laying track. Tonight, the team in charge of protecting the construction drone swarm was led by Ryuji and Lv Chang, who was piloting a Fire God.

Inside the Sky Dome Train Main Bridge, the comm channels were almost never quiet. At the operations meeting, most people accepted the proposal from the Utopia, forming a Steel Refining Factory construction lineup composed jointly of the Utopia, the Iron Guard Brigade Information Corps, the Silver Star, the Infinite Alliance, and the Common Alliance. At the same time, drone-based track laying had not been halted.

As soon as the meeting ended, Marcus and Sean from the Utopia immediately began pushing forward site selection and construction. Nearly thirty thousand personnel from the various main forces were assigned in, and resources from practically all convoys were mobilized and started to assemble.

In an instant, convoys large and small were all set in motion. Lights blazed inside the Orbit Team cars as all kinds of Mechanical Material and drone swarms began converging toward the rift.

On the Sky Bridge of the Sky Dome Train, Chen Sixuan looked down at the dense lattice of mechanical lights below, her expression grave. She was discussing something with Monica and Qian Deli when a voice rang out.

"Building a Steel Refining Factory in forty-eight hours—honestly, I originally thought only that person could come up with a plan like this." Jian Xuwei strode over in silver Battle Armor, Jiang Yun walking beside her.

Chen Sixuan turned to look at Jian Xuwei. Over the past few months, Jian Xuwei had used the Silver Star as her foundation and practically unified most of Dawn City’s rail resources and convoys into a single immense power. In Chen Sixuan’s eyes, this woman possessed a kind of transcendent leadership charisma—one that couldn’t be underestimated even under the crimson sky.

Calm, rational, organizing and deploying engineers, conducting terrain surveys, charting breakthrough routes—the entire plan for advancing along the tracks had come almost entirely from this woman. It was nothing if not formidable.

"You mean Lin Xian?" Chen Sixuan’s brows dimmed slightly, then she said, "As for him, he doesn’t really need a Steel Refining Factory."

Jiang Yun smiled. "That’s true. He is a factory... No, he’s an entire industrial cluster. A normal factory can’t manufacture a single train without a parts supply chain."

Their gazes met, and they shared a faint smile.

"By the way, can this Steel Refining Factory really be realized?" Qian Deli, leaning against the guardrail with arms crossed, looked at Jian Xuwei. "I don’t really understand these technical issues, but I’d imagine metal smelting and preparation can’t possibly be simple."

"Theoretically, it’s impossible. It looks like a simple rail, but the industrial chain and level of technology it embodies are anything but simple." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Jian Xuwei’s expression was steady. "High-strength rails require special steel mills and the iron-and-steel metallurgy industry, which in turn need civil engineering, subgrades and bridges, and then the four major electrical systems integrated: communications, signaling, traction power supply, and power distribution..."

"So with the resources we have now, building a factory inside this crimson is absolutely impossible. But of course Marcus and the others know that. Their plan is actually to upscale the metal-printing drones, then pool all usable metal resources to solve the current efficiency problem of the drones. That’s actually easy enough to achieve—to put it bluntly, it doesn’t demand much in the way of technical sophistication."