Ashen God
Chapter 341 - 340: Seventy-Two Thousand Kilometers Underground

Chapter 341: Chapter 340: Seventy-Two Thousand Kilometers Underground

After coming up with the answer of an eighty-centimeter diameter, Zhang Yanhang began to work backwards from the diameter and found that when the length of the crimson iron ore pillar reached two meters, its volume was exactly one cubic meter.

Zhang Yanhang calculated the volume of the crimson iron ore pillars mainly to avoid wasting inventory space, since the volume limit for each inventory slot was one cubic meter, and for higher efficiency, it was necessary to fill up the entire cubic meter.

"Well, since that’s the case," he thought, "let’s set the length of each crimson iron ore pillar to forty meters. That way, each pillar would exactly have a volume of twenty cubic meters. My Storage Box +3 has a total of eight hundred slots, more than enough to accommodate forty pillars in a row, which means I could mine out a distance of one thousand six hundred meters at a time.

One thousand six hundred meters... Still feels a bit short... Perhaps I can do some simple reorganization of my Waist Bag slots, I should be able to free up some space."

As Zhang Yanhang muttered to himself, he began to take stock of his Waist Bags. He currently had four Waist Bag +4s, one Waist Bag +3, one Waist Bag +2, one Waist Bag +1, and two ordinary Waist Bags.

"Hmm? It seems that I can just fuse together another new Waist Bag +4?"

Zhang Yanhang remembered that the two separate ordinary Waist Bags were obtained from the zombies dressed as police officers in the slot machine’s third-prize pool when he last did a thorough clearing of Raccoon City, but at that time, he was too busy organizing the contents of the Ashen Treasure Box to consider fusion.

After briefly recalling the past, Zhang Yanhang immediately initiated Alchemy to start the fusion of the new Waist Bag +4. With the activation of the Alchemy Array, the five Waist Bags with different Fusion Times began to melt and fuse in sequence.

After a slight waste of time, a brand new Waist Bag +4 appeared before Zhang Yanhang. "Considering this newly fused Waist Bag +4, I now have a total of five Waist Bag +4s. With thirty-two slots each, that’s one hundred and sixty slots in total...

If I organize the contents of the slots in the various Waist Bags, I could easily free up another hundred slots for holding crimson iron ore pillars."

"Once I’ve finished organizing the slots in my Waist Bags, the preparatory work for the early stages will be completely done," Zhang Yanhang sighed silently, then began emotionlessly sorting through the slots.

After he had organized all the slot positions, Zhang Yanhang found the situation better than he had anticipated. All his belongings filled just forty slots, which meant he had an additional one hundred and twenty slots available to use while mining the tunnel, totaling nine hundred and twenty slots now.

"Nine hundred and twenty slots can hold forty-six forty-meter-long crimson iron ore pillars. Therefore, I’ll have to make a round trip every time I mine a distance of 1840 meters, clear the slots, and then continue mining the tunnel. If I calculate based on a depth of seventy-seven kilometers, I’ll need to make forty-two round trips.

Forget it, let’s not think about this anymore. Just start mining; the specific figures will have to be worked out through practical experience."

Zhang Yanhang sighed again, feeling a sense of despair for the tedious work ahead.

...

October 19th, the eleventh day after the end of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holidays, was also the fifth day since Zhang Yanhang left the Main World. At ten o’clock in the evening, at the Crimson Iron Ore Vein, in a vertical tunnel, seventy-two kilometers underground.

At this moment, Zhang Yanhang was climbing a Crimson Iron Chain with an expressionless face. Perhaps because he had already made dozens of trips up and down this thing, his movements looked extremely agile and skillful.

Indeed, because a vertical tunnel with only an eighty-centimeter diameter really isn’t a convenient space to move in, Zhang Yanhang had crafted Crimson Iron Chains for traveling back and forth between the bottom of the tunnel and the inside region of the Crimson Iron Ant Nest Dala Gu.

As he proceeded deeper, although Zhang Yanhang had become especially proficient at climbing chains, the distance of over seventy kilometers still required almost an hour of his time to climb up. Of course, the descent was much faster; he could just let himself fall naturally.

According to physical formulas, an object in freefall experiences a constant acceleration depending on the time. Simply put, the higher the height of the fall, the faster the terminal velocity – the overall acceleration has no cap.

In theory, as long as the distance is long enough, the continually compounding fall velocity could even surpass the speed of light, but the premise is that the accelerated object can withstand such speeds without disintegrating. So, exceeding the speed of light is ultimately just theoretical.

For the seventy-plus kilometer vertical tunnel that Zhang Yanhang had mined, his descent was more than ten times faster than his climb.

Of course, limited by air resistance, Zhang Yanhang’s initial falling speed was only ten meters per second, so he usually gave himself a boost of Spiritual Energy at the start to achieve a quicker buildup of speed.

Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that even though Zhang Yanhang’s Constitution Attribute had reached the Second Tier Limit of fifty points and he possessed the Indestructible Golden Body LV.MAX, if he were to simply crash down at the bottom of the channel, he would still be smashed to death. After all, the length of over seventy kilometers was too horrifying.

Hence, even though the accelerating force of the fall was a good thing, enabling Zhang Yanhang to quickly reach the bottom, he still occasionally slowed down to prevent a fatal crash.

To be specific, Zhang Yanhang would instantaneously expand his Energy Shield to halt himself in the middle of the tunnel, thereby negating the acceleration, before restarting his free fall. Repeating this step usually a few times allowed him to safely reach the bottom, which, at most, required just a few minutes.

As a side note, because of this acceleration, Zhang Yanhang got to experience what it was like to move at sonic speeds during his descent, which frankly was quite exhilarating.

However, compared to this passive, position-locked sonic movement, Zhang Yanhang preferred the prospect of active sonic movement.

According to his estimation, he should be able to achieve sonic movement by advancing to the Third Tier at the very least. Then, he would naturally acquire the passive Skill of Sonic Punch, though the definition of Sonic Punch in Magic Treasure might differ from his, but this wasn’t a big issue.