Chapter 291 "Echoes of Spiritual Energy" in the Vacuum

Synchronous orbit main platform, temporary technical area.

Qin Lie slammed himself heavily onto the seat and roughly ripped off his helmet. He gasped for breath, sweat streaming down his hard face, turning into tiny droplets that floated in mid-air in the microgravity.

This less than two-hour high-orbit operation outside the cabin was more tiring than killing people for three days and three nights in the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

The chilling feeling of being swallowed by deep space at any moment, and the extreme micro-management required to walk a tightrope amidst the raging spiritual pressure, almost drained every last bit of energy from this late-stage Foundation Establishment sword cultivator.

"Phew... I survived."

Several technical experts also took off their protective suits one after another, their faces pale, but their eyes were filled with undisguised excitement.

The first batch of crucial "seeds"—superconducting titanium crystal alloy plates and high-frequency pressure-resistant array central modules—have been safely delivered to the main platform's temporary isolation chamber and are undergoing adaptive thawing. Once these core components are replaced, the second-generation heavy-duty transport module will be able to completely shed its "half-finished" status and truly shoulder the heavy responsibility of wartime space-to-ground transport.

The entire technical area was filled with a sense of relief at surviving a disaster and the joy of an initial victory.

However, Lin Feng did not participate in this brief celebration.

He hadn't even had time to take off his protective suit before diving headfirst into the control panel. His hands flew across the virtual keyboard, abruptly cutting off the material receiving footage playing on the main screen and forcing his way into an extremely complex band analysis interface.

"Lin Feng, what's wrong with you? We've got the first batch of components, why aren't you checking the parameters? What are you staring at with this bunch of gibberish?" Wu Di walked over with a frown, holding a cup of freshly reheated instant coffee.

"Something's not right... Brother Wu, the data we just scanned around the Chang Geng is extremely suspicious."

Lin Feng didn't even look up, his eyes flashing with an almost pathological focus.

His unusual reaction caused Qin Lie, who had been resting with his eyes closed, to open them as well.

"What do you mean? There are living creatures in the sealed area?" Qin Lie's right hand subconsciously reached for the hilt of the sword at his waist.

"It's not a living thing. If it were, it would have been alerted when that arc of psionic energy erupted just now."

Lin Feng took a deep breath and zoomed in on the band chart on the screen several times. "Look at this."

It was an extremely strange curve.

It differs from the steady wavelength of any known spiritual material on Earth, and also from the violent and disorderly sharp peaks of high-altitude spiritual pressure turbulence.

It was so faint that the detector wouldn't have been able to detect it at all if the electrostatic arc hadn't caused a brief period of spiritual pressure vacuum.

But it is also extremely profound, like an undercurrent hidden beneath a raging storm, pulsating with extreme stability and coldness in a specific frequency band.

"What is this? Residual electrical leakage from old equipment inside the Chang Geng?" Several senior experts also gathered around.

"impossible."

Wu Di immediately denied it, saying, "The core compartment of the Chang Geng uses absolute physical isolation. Even if the nuclear fusion battery leaks electricity, it can't penetrate that titanium crystal armor. Besides... this wave doesn't look like an electromagnetic wave."

"What if it's high-energy cosmic radiation clutter?" someone speculated.

"Even more impossible." Lin Feng pulled up a set of comparison data. "I just used the main platform's filter array to filter out all the regular cosmic ray background. This band not only didn't weaken, but it actually... became clearer."

He swallowed hard, his voice a little dry: "And the strangest thing is... it resonates with us."

"Resonance?" Qin Lie frowned.

"Yes." Lin Feng opened another record. "Look, this is the data for the three seconds when the hatch opened and you used your true energy to open the shield, Captain Qin."

On the screen, when Qin Lie's true essence erupted, the extremely faint curve seemed to have a life of its own, jumping upwards very slightly, creating a very brief, almost synchronous intersection with the frequency of Qin Lie's true essence.

Moreover, even the batch of superconducting titanium crystal alloy plates they brought back exhibited extremely weak similar fluctuations the moment they were removed from their sealed environment.

The control room fell into dead silence.

Everyone's expression changed.

They are all elites who have struggled and risen through the ranks during the era of spiritual revival, and they know all too well what this means.

The spiritual energy on the earth's surface is both gentle and violent, and can be absorbed by cultivators to strengthen their meridians.

But there should be nothing in a vacuum!

The common knowledge in the cultivation world is that spiritual energy depends on the earth's veins and living things for its existence. Once it leaves Earth, the great nurturing environment, and enters this absolute zero vacuum environment where there is no air, spiritual energy should quickly dissipate and disappear.

That's why they had to inscribe the "Great Heavenly Spirit Locking Array" on the transport capsule, to prevent the spiritual energy from leaking out.

However, Lin Feng's detection data has now overturned this view.

"What...what exactly is this thing?" an old expert muttered to himself.

"It's not 'living' aura."

Lin Feng stared intently at the screen, gritting his teeth as he said, "The spiritual energy on the surface is like a basin of hot water, but this thing... is colder, more diffuse, and deeper. It's like an echo hidden in a vacuum."

"Retrieve the original construction blueprints for the space elevator's main cable. Especially the part that was entered with the highest authority during the 'Connection Ceremony' back then," Qin Lie suddenly said, his voice cold and hard.

"Captain Qin, why are you calling that up?" Lin Feng was taken aback.

"Pull it up. Check the auxiliary array node at the top of the main platform, numbered 'Tian Shu-17'." Qin Lie's eyes flashed with a look of surprise and uncertainty.

Lin Feng didn't dare to delay and immediately started typing rapidly on the keyboard. A few seconds later, an ancient blueprint bearing a top-secret watermark was projected into the air.

Those were the underlying data left over from several years ago when the main shaft of the space elevator was finally connected. Back then, it was the Daoist Master Gu Qing, who resided high in the Heavenly Palace, who personally appeared and stabilized the main cable with his supreme divine power, allowing this miraculous project to be completed smoothly.

At the top of the drawing, there is a solitary array node.

"This node... I remember it." An elderly expert from the Academy of Sciences pushed up his glasses. "Back then, we all thought it was a stabilizing anchor point that was casually carved out to counteract the gravitational shear of high orbits. Because it has never been used or absorbed any energy in the past few years, we considered it a redundant design."

"Overlay its frequency with that group of abnormal frequency bands from before," Qin Lie ordered.

Lin Feng slammed his hands down on the keyboard.

Swah——

The two curves rapidly approached each other on the screen, and then, under everyone's gaze, they overlapped perfectly!

The error is zero.

"hiss--"

A collective gasp filled the control room.

That "redundant node," dormant for years, was not a stable anchor point at all. It was a receiver! A tuning fork!

Since the day the space elevator was built, it has stood quietly on an orbit more than 200 kilometers high, and its preset frequency perfectly matches the "cold energy" that they just captured today.

This is not a divine instruction or a sudden, direct instruction.

This is a "question" that Dao Lord left at the end of the Heavenly Road many years ago, when humanity hadn't even figured out how to kill all the monsters on the surface.

Or rather, a key that has been crafted long ago is hanging on the door frame, waiting for humans to climb up, discover the door, and then insert it into the lock.

"He knew all along... that a vacuum isn't empty." Wu Di felt a chill run down his spine.

"In other words, after the spiritual energy on the Earth's surface enters high orbit, it interacts with this cold vacuum, with those violent high-energy particles in the universe, and even with the radiation from stars for a long time... resulting in an extremely unfamiliar transformation?"

"Or rather..." Lin Feng followed Wu Di's train of thought and proposed an even more outlandish hypothesis, "This high-level, icy energy has always existed in this starry sky! It has always been there, but in the past, we were locked to the surface by the atmosphere, and had neither the ability nor the qualification to 'hear' it!"

It lies hidden deep within the background noise of the starry sky, like a proud bystander, coldly watching these newly emerging Earth creatures.

"Could we...capture it and take a look?" A military expert's eyes gleamed with extreme greed. Since it could resonate with flying swords and formations, what if it could be extracted for weapon forging?

Stop dreaming.

Qin Lie shattered his illusions without hesitation, "Just now outside the cabin, when my true essence shield came into contact with this fluctuation, it felt like stabbing a red-hot iron block directly into liquid nitrogen! My meridians were almost shattered by that cold, high-dimensional texture. With our current formation and physical strength, if we forcibly try to extract it, the entire main platform would be frozen into powder within three seconds."

The control room fell silent again.

Everyone clearly realized that they were not just there to move a few pieces of old metal from the sky.

They inadvertently touched upon some grander, colder truth in this starry sky.

"Pack this set of band data, encrypt it at the highest level, and send it directly back to the highest scientific academy on Earth!"

Wu Di took a deep breath and made a decision, "We can't touch this right now, but it's definitely more important than the titanium alloy in the Chang Geng!"

"Lin Feng, continue monitoring this frequency band and incorporate it into the new radar system of the transport capsule."

Qin Lie picked up his helmet again, his eyes becoming incredibly sharp.

"Whatever it is, since it's here, and since the Dao Lord left clues, one day we will tame it."

Outside the window, the pitch-black universe remained deathly silent.

In this seemingly empty abyss.

It conceals something that is not spiritual energy, yet is colder than spiritual energy.