Starting to Gain Experience from Push-Ups Chapter 1264 - 613:

"Other than the doubled gravity and the extreme radiation, there aren’t any other significant issues."

Fang Cheng commented, offering his assessment.

With that, he advanced, making his way down the stone steps before the altar and proceeding into the narrow, dark passage leading outward.

The echo of his military boots struck the hard stone slates, resonating within the hollow mountain.

After traversing several hundred meters, a dark crimson glow forcefully ruptured the darkness at the passage's end.

It was clearly the exit.

Fang Cheng hastened his steps, drawn toward the light.

As he emerged from the cave mouth, blasts of scorching hot winds assailed him.

The view was now unobstructed, vast and open.

He found himself perched at the edge of a cliff, an immense drop of hundreds of meters below.

Fang Cheng paused, slowly tilting his head upward to survey this unfamiliar world.

The sky presented a dark, blood-like crimson hue.

Dense clouds composed of black volcanic ash hung low in the atmosphere.

Deep within these clouds, thick purple lightning writhed like an intricate spiderweb, violently splitting the heavens.

The air was oppressively hot, with visible heat waves distorting the distant horizon as if it were rippling water.

However, what truly stunned Fang Cheng was not the hostile natural environment, but the desolate state of the land.

Upon scanning his surroundings, a scene of utter devastation unfolded.

There were no ethereal heavenly palaces, nor primal jungles from an ancient epoch.

The red, scorched earth was strewn with thick, rusty steel bars protruding haphazardly.

In the distance lay collapsed concrete slabs that once served as load-bearing walls, and the skeletal remains of skyscrapers, stripped bare of everything but their metal frames.

The howling wind lifted ash from the ground, whistling mournfully as it swept through the pockmarked ruins of modern-day structures.

Near the edge of his vision, several colossal volcanoes were in the throes of violent eruption.

Plumes of smoke mingled with molten crimson lava, spewing skyward and painting half the sky a vivid red, reminiscent of blood.

This desolate landscape bore no trace of verdant life, nor any clear signs of human settlement, appearing much like the Avici Hell described in Buddhist scriptures.

Whirlwinds ascended from the abyss below, creating a gusting roar that rustled his clothes intensely.

Fang Cheng collected his thoughts, his gaze descending as he swiftly assessed the terrain beneath him.

He did not seek the buried route back down the mountain; instead, he advanced a few more steps, the weighty edges of his military boots coming to rest upon the weathered rock at the precipice.

*Crunch—*

A scattering of loose stones, unable to withstand the pressure, crumbled and tumbled into the abyss.

In the subsequent moment, Fang Cheng's thigh muscles tensed sharply as he gathered his strength.

Confronting the forceful updraft, he plunged off the cliff face, a sheer drop of hundreds of meters.

The wind's roar escalated to a piercing shriek, flooding his ears.

The doubled gravity exerted its relentless pull on his body, accelerating his descent at an unbelievable rate.

Fang Cheng maintained his composure, his eyes narrowed slightly against the fierce wind.

While airborne, the vital blood within his body surged, and his limbs extended swiftly.

His wide sleeves were instantly inflated by the powerful upward current.

Harnessing this lifting force from the wind, he glided like a magnificent bird of prey, tracing a graceful arc beneath the maroon sky, thereby mitigating a significant portion of the impact from his fall.

*Bang!*

His heavy military boots landed squarely on the scorched red earth, kicking up a swirling vortex of hot dust.

Fang Cheng's legs flexed slightly, acting like hydraulic shock absorbers, before channeling the residual physical impact through his feet into the ground.

He stood upright, casually brushing volcanic ash from his coat.

His gaze swept across the barren expanse, fixing on the colossal ruins of a city several kilometers distant.

Without a moment's hesitation, Fang Cheng covered the ground in long strides, heading directly toward the ruins.

Only dry, cracked red soil and scattered stones littered the desolate field.

The scorching wind swept up ash, traversing the plain unimpeded and emitting a low, mournful sound.

As he progressed, the immense structures of steel and concrete gradually grew larger in Fang Cheng's field of vision.

The collapsed skyscrapers stood like colossal black tombstones, silent beneath the dark crimson sky.

High-temperature radiation warped the air, causing the city's outline to appear blurred and wavering, imbued with an aura of death.

He walked for approximately half an hour.

Fang Cheng lifted his leg, stepping over a completely fractured relic of the city's ring road overpass, officially entering the ruins of this eerily silent metropolis.

The once expansive avenues were long submerged beneath thick layers of black ash and fractured debris, rendering it impossible to discern the original asphalt surface.

On either side stood the remnants of decaying edifices.

Thick, rusted steel reinforcements, having broken free from the confines of weathered concrete, jutted unevenly into the soil and air like the twisted bone spurs of some monstrous entity.

An oppressive silence blanketed the surroundings.

No car horns blared, no pedestrian bustle could be heard.

Within the vast emptiness, the only audible sound was the wind's whistling passage through the skeletal remains of buildings.

Nevertheless, the distinct sound of Fang Cheng’s military boots crunching on debris echoed through the desolate street.

Snap.

His right foot came down on a segment of thick, rusted steel pipe half-buried in the ground.

The special steel, once capable of withstanding several tons, now disintegrated into a powdery, reddish-brown mass, much like brittle, weathered deadwood, beneath Fang Cheng’s tread.

Pausing, Fang Cheng gazed at the steel that had turned to dust.

With the tip of his boot, he lightly swept aside the dust that coated it.

The Masked Guest had previously recounted his visit to the ancient civilization site in West Mountain, noting its emptiness and ruinous state.

Now, witnessing these shattered skyscrapers firsthand, Fang Cheng profoundly grasped their significance.

This so-called "ancient civilization" was evidently once a highly advanced modern society.

However, some unknown cataclysm over vast ages had completely obliterated it.

Time had etched its most merciless marks here.

After millennia upon millennia of erosion, it was sufficient to transform steel into mere mud, resetting civilization back to zero.

As Fang Cheng stepped over a fallen load-bearing wall.

From the shadows of the ruins ahead, a distinct sound of chitinous rustling suddenly emerged.

A few multi-legged arthropods, each exceeding half a meter in length and clad in black scales, were disturbed by Fang Cheng’s advance.

They brandished their scythe-like forelimbs, swiftly retreating into a broken underground drainage pipe.

It was clear that the creatures inhabiting this place had long since mutated under conditions of extreme radiation and gravity.

Compared to their Earthly counterparts, each possessed a bizarre form, appearing anything but benign.

Yet, perhaps only through such adaptations could they endure these unforgiving circumstances.

This was the essence of "survival of the fittest."

Fang Cheng withdrew his attention, preparing to step over the concrete slab before him.

From the skeletal framework of the leaning building above, several small stones dislodged and fell.

Fang Cheng halted momentarily, his peripheral vision instantly zeroing in on the upper left.

Without any preceding roar or warning.

A colossal shadow, clinging to a severed load-bearing pillar, plummeted towards him like a projectile.

It was a mutated behemoth, approximately three meters in length.

Its appearance was akin to a hunting dog stripped of its skin, its entire body rippling with knotted muscles, and thick, gray-white bony plates shielding its back.

The environmental factor of double gravity imparted a terrifying initial velocity to its descent.

Four robust claws sliced through the air, zeroing in on Fang Cheng’s throat.

Fang Cheng made no movement to evade in panic.

His legs remained firmly planted on the scorched earth, as unyielding as hydraulic presses.

Then, his waist twisted with explosive force, channeling the ground’s reactive pressure upward through his spine.

With the muscles in his right arm bulging and tendons taut like drawn bowstrings, he launched a devastating punch at the charging mutated beast.

Boom!

Pure physical might, augmented by fierce golden True Qi, erupted at the exact moment his fist impacted the beast’s skull.

Under the influence of double gravity, the surrounding air possessed a noticeably higher density.

This punch compressed the air before his fist, creating a semi-transparent wave visible to the eye.

The hardened gray-white bone plates were instantly obliterated, shattering like fragile ice.

The beast lacked even the fraction of a second to whimper before its entire upper body was annihilated into a bloody mist by Fang Cheng’s overwhelming assault.

Its remaining lower half was propelled backward, slamming with immense force into a concrete wall over ten meters distant.

The sheer kinetic energy punched clean through the remnant wall, raising a vast plume of dust.