Chapter 332 Unknown Obstacles 10,000 Meters Below

The head of the Guanghan base stood in front of the main control console, his face ashen.

"What did they say in Kyoto?"

The communications officer looked up: "The rescue team can set off, but must not enter within three kilometers of the Red Light Rift Valley. The primary task is to retrieve data and confirm the last known location of the missing team. If any signs of pollution spreading are detected, evacuate immediately."

The person in charge paused for half a second. "What about the Underworld side?"

"We have already sent people to connect to the remote channel and delivered a batch of Soul-Suppressing Bone Talismans and three Yin Soldier Puppets."

"That's enough." The person in charge raised his hand and tapped the rescue route on the screen. "The rescue team will take the second route. First, retrieve the first relay station, then check the contamination status of the second relay station. Switch all equipment to mechanical backup mode; the electronic map is for reference only."

He paused for a moment, then lowered his voice. "Remember, this isn't an expedition. It's about bringing people back."

……

Half an hour later, the No. 3 airlock at the Guanghan base was activated.

The rescue team has assembled. Two heavy-duty rescue vehicles are parked outside the airlock. Their outer shells are twice as thick as those of ordinary exploration vehicles, and eight auxiliary mechanical legs are installed under the belly of the vehicles. Low-frequency suppression arrays and lunar pressure anchors are mounted on the roof. There are no fancy markings on the sides of the vehicles, only a line of cold, hard numbers painted on them: [Lunar Rescue-01] and [Lunar Rescue-02].

The rescue team leader was Chen Ge, a former mountain rescue soldier of the Earth Defense Force who later switched to the rune exoskeleton system. He was in the late stage of Foundation Establishment and had a colder personality than Lao Liu. He stood in front of the vehicle, inspecting the equipment piece by piece.

"Safety cable." "Lock it up."

"Spare life support kit." "Fully compressed."

"Bone talisman." "Fixed to the body."

"A flying sword?" The Golden Core guard beside him raised his hand, and the sword box trembled slightly.

Chen Ge glanced at him. "Flying on your sword at high altitudes is strictly prohibited unless absolutely necessary. The team ahead of us has already proven that the far side of the moon will corrupt positioning and perception. The higher you fly, the faster you'll die."

A young rescuer stood at the end of the line, his face pale. He had only recently been transferred from Earth and had initially thought the moon was just a mining area, a magic array, and a greenhouse. Only today was he seeing the other side of this planet for the first time.

Chen Ge walked up to him. "Afraid?"

The young man's Adam's apple bobbed: "Scared."

"If you're afraid, make sure you do every step correctly," Chen Ge said. "On the far side of the moon, courage can't save your life, but procedures can."

The young man nodded vigorously.

The airlock slowly opened. Darkness rushed in.

Two rescue vehicles drove out of the Guanghan Base, their tracks crunching over the freshly compacted lunar dust, silently advancing towards the far side of the moon. In the distance, the eerie blue flames of the Taiyi Furnace still flickered. The lights in the living quarters near the greenhouse bunker were dim, like a fire about to go out.

Chen Ge didn't look back. He knew that the light would disappear as soon as they crossed the ridge.

……

The first relay pile is still in use.

When the rescue team arrived, the short alloy pillar stood alone on the edge of the crater, its base faintly shimmering with array patterns. There were no signs of battle or bloodstains around. Of course, bloodstains are not typically found on the moon.

Chen Ge got out of the car and squatted down next to the relay station. "The outer shell is intact. The spirit patterns show slight ablation."

The technician connected the mechanical reader, and a few seconds later, the screen displayed a fragmented log.

[Deep Dive Team Update: All five members have normal vital signs. Low-frequency abnormalities are amplified. The Underworld Unit records: No souls at the bottom of the pit.]

The technician looked up, his expression changing. "What does 'soulless' mean?"

The Netherworld observer accompanying the team was a middle-aged man named Jiang Xiu. He didn't explain immediately, but simply walked to the edge of the pit, took off his gloves, and affixed a grayish-white bone talisman to the rock stratum. The talisman didn't react at all. It was as still as a dead object.

Jiang Xiu stood up, his expression not very good. "It is indeed clean here."

The young rescuer breathed a sigh of relief: "Isn't being clean a good thing?"

Jiang Xiu glanced at him. "The reason there are no ghosts in the mass grave isn't necessarily because there aren't any dead people."

The young rescuer fell silent.

Chen Ge interrupted them: "Continue."

……

The location of the second relay stake was harder to find than expected. It wasn't because of the distance, but because the terrain had changed.

The rescue vehicle followed the trail left by the deep-sea exploration team. But the further it went, the fainter the track marks became, as if the team had never passed through this area at all.

Chen Ge ordered the vehicle to slow down. "Fire a temporary beacon for every kilometer you advance."

The technician whispered, "Captain, at this rate, the rescue will take longer."

"Then let's extend the timeline." Chen Ge stared into the darkness within a hundred meters ahead. "I don't want a third team to come and rescue us."

The rescue vehicle continued its advance. Two hours later, they finally spotted the second relay pile.

It stood upright, neither fallen nor destroyed, in the distant black moon dust. Yet it shone with a dark red light. Not from its surface, but as if something within it was slowly breathing, its light flickering.

The rescue vehicle was parked a kilometer away. Chen Ge didn't get out. "Remote probe."

A mechanical probe popped out from under the vehicle and crawled forward, skimming the ground. Five hundred meters. Three hundred meters. One hundred meters. The image transmitted back by the probe grew increasingly dark. When it reached twenty meters from the repeater, the image suddenly became static.

The technician gripped the control lever: "Signal attenuation."

Chen Ge: "Cut the wire."

An extremely thin titanium steel signal cable trailed from the probe's tail, continuing to transmit the image. The probe then crawled forward another ten meters.

On the screen, the details of the repeater pin finally appeared. Everyone fell silent. Dark red patterns crawled all over the repeater pin's outer shell. These patterns weren't adhesions, nor did they resemble corrosion. They looked more like some kind of blood vessel-like substance, growing out from inside the metal and gradually replacing the original array patterns.

The technician's voice was hoarse: "It's... rewriting our formation."

Jiang Xiu suddenly pressed his hand to the bone talisman on his chest. "Withdraw the probe."

Chen Ge didn't ask for a reason. "Withdraw."

The technician immediately pulled back. The instant the probe turned, the red light on the repeater suddenly flashed. In the image, black lunar dust surged silently. A shapeless shadow emerged from the bottom of the repeater, like some extremely thin membrane, and swiftly lunged towards the probe, skimming the ground.

The technician suddenly pulled the throttle to full power. The probe only retreated half a meter before the screen went completely black. The next second, the titanium steel signal cable taut.

*Click.* It broke.

Silence filled the carriage. Chen Ge stared at the blacked-out screen for a moment before speaking. "Second relay failed. Contamination confirmed. Go around."

The technician looked at him: "Captain, according to orders, we cannot enter the three-kilometer radius of the Red Light Rift Valley. After bypassing the second relay, we are only 4.2 kilometers away from the rift valley."

Chen Ge looked at the map. "We won't go beyond the three-kilometer mark."

"Then how do we find them?"

Chen Ge looked up, gazing ahead. "Find the beacon they left behind."

……

On the other side of a slope, they found the manual beacon that Lao Liu had driven in. The beacon was extinguished, its outer shell showed obvious signs of frost damage, and the bottom half was buried in black lunar dust. Chen Ge personally used pliers to pull it out and handed it to the technicians for disassembly.

A few minutes later, a fragmented recording was recovered. Old Liu's voice was rough and had obvious static.

"Don't send in newbies. Rescuing people is fine. Don't send them away."

The recording cuts out here. Then there's a heavy breathing sound. Then Li Xiang's voice comes through.

"A stable cavity structure exists underground. The source of the red light is suspected to be a non-natural energy channel. Spatial parameters near the second relay are abnormal; approaching is not recommended."

......

The recording ended. The carriage was eerily quiet. The young rescuer's face was deathly pale.

Chen Ge put the beacon into the sealed box. "Continue."

"Captain," the technician couldn't help but speak up, "they've most likely already..."

"I know," Chen Ge interrupted him. "But that's probably not a conclusion. We need to at least find the last place they disappeared from."

……

The final trajectory stopped near a horizontal crack. The crack was no more than three meters wide. But when the rescue vehicle's searchlight shone down, the beam of light was swallowed up in less than ten seconds.

Chen Ge did not allow anyone to approach the edge. He ordered the two rescue vehicles to deploy the anchoring array, and eight lunar pressure anchors were driven firmly into the lunar crust, forming a temporary fixed platform.

"Deploy the low-frequency detection ball."

A black spherical detector was sent out by a robotic arm and slowly lowered along the crack.

One hundred meters. Five hundred meters. One thousand meters. The images transmitted back by the probe were all of black rock walls. Occasionally, dark red streaks could be seen on the rock walls, but they quickly disappeared, like some kind of illusion.

After 3,000 meters, the temperature data became meaningless. After 5,000 meters, the gravity parameters began to drift. After 7,000 meters, the timestamps transmitted by the probe became inaccurate.

The technician stared at the screen, his forehead covered in sweat. "Captain, the dimensions of the space below are wrong."

Explain yourself.

"Based on the cable length, it has descended to 7,800 meters. But the changes in the rock face texture in the footage make it look like it has only descended less than 2,000 meters."

Chen Ge's eyes darkened: "Spatial folding?"

The formation master whispered, "It's more like it's been stretched. There's something below that's widening the distance itself."

The atmosphere inside the rescue vehicle froze. The probe continued its descent.

8,000 meters. 9,000 meters. 9,600 meters. 9,900 meters.

Finally, when the cable length exceeded 10,000 meters, the probe suddenly stopped. It wasn't that the cable had reached its end; it seemed to be supported by something unseen.

The technician attempted to lower it. The cable continued to extend, but the probe's position remained unchanged. "It can't go down."

Is something blocking the way below?

"Unlike physical obstacles, if it were rock formations, the probe would give a collision feedback. But not now. It's like..." He couldn't find a suitable description.

The formation master continued, his voice soft. "Something like this below cannot be allowed to continue existing."

Chen Ge stared at the pitch-black screen. Just then, the screen flickered. A very thin red line appeared in the darkness. It wasn't light. It looked more like the edge of some massive structure, briefly illuminated by the detector.

The next second, the probe ball transmitted a very low-frequency vibration.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Like a heartbeat. Or like someone knocking on the door.

Jiang Xiu's expression changed drastically: "Take it back!"

Chen Ge immediately ordered, "Retrieve the probe sphere!"

The cable began to rewind at high speed. But less than three seconds later, the entire cable suddenly taut. A piercing metallic straining sound came from the rescue vehicle's exterior. It was as if something deep within the crack had seized the probe.

Chen Ge pressed down on the cut-off switch. "Sever the cable!"

*Snap!* The explosive lock cut the cable. The rescue vehicle shook violently. All the gauges simultaneously turned red, then quickly returned to normal.

Below the crack, the low-frequency vibration disappeared. Everything returned to silence.

Chen Ge stared at the crack, slowly releasing his hand from the control panel. "Record."

The technician's voice was hoarse: "Record what?"

Chen Ge stared at the final, frozen image on the screen. Ten thousand meters deep. Darkness. Red line. No further descent.

He spoke slowly and deliberately, "Ten thousand meters below the lunar rift, there is an unknown obstacle. It's not natural rock. It's not an ordinary formation. It's suspected to be a spatial-level sealing structure." He paused for a moment after speaking. "The deep exploration team has not yet found anything."