The Age Beneath the Earth

When Laver and Qiao touched the airship's control panel deep inside the cave, they triggered a space-folding device left behind by the ancients. They thought they had been taken to an underground civilization, but in fact, they had been cast onto Earth in another timeline. The underground people weren't an underground civilization at all. They were survivors of the previous cycle of civilization, who had eked out an existence underground for tens of thousands of years.

The mystery of the time shift is explained: the few hours they spent in the cave corresponded to twenty-four hours on the surface. The cause wasn't the cave itself, but a difference in the flow of time: the two timelines operated at different frequencies.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.