The very thing that had worried the conductor for a month finally happened.
With a violent shake, several railway lines leading to Changli were blown up simultaneously.
Dozens of tons of steel rails twisted into grotesque shapes in the explosion, railroad ties flew into the sky, and debris shot out in all directions like shrapnel grenades, blowing the demining drones into heaps of electronic waste mid-air.
Even the ground beneath the tracks exploded, leaving a large pit.
The dust fell like rain, and faint whispers and cold laughs could be heard.
"See, somebody blew up his tracks."
"What kind of brainless person would think of running a train in the apocalypse?"
"Because they simply don't understand that tracks require maintenance. Who would maintain them in the apocalypse..."
A buffer of just three hundred meters was enough for the slow-moving train to stop at the broken tracks.
The clanging rhythm was abruptly halted.
