Chapter 334 The Shadow Returns

0.03 grams.

This is the lightest sample obtained since the establishment of the Guanghan Base.

But this tiny thing, even less noticeable than dust under a fingernail, caused the entire third underground special-grade experimental area of ​​the Guanghan Base to be placed under the highest level of physical and array-based dual sealing.

The cool white lighting in the experimental area was deliberately kept to a minimum.

Above the central control panel, only a lone spotlight remained.

Within that magnetic levitation field, a speck of deathly black metallic powder floated silently.

It comes from a depth of 9,800 meters on the far side of the moon.

It comes from that black metallic surface that doesn't belong to the natural rock layer.

The holographic projection of the chief scientist of the Academy of Sciences stood to the left of the control panel, while several elders of the Array Court stood to the right. Jiang Xiu stood on the outermost edge, holding a black wooden box engraved with soul-suppressing runes in his arms.

The large psionic analyzer emits a low hum when operating at full capacity.

"The data from conventional optical microscopy and the sensory probe showed completely contradictory readings."

The chief scientist of the Academy of Sciences looked at the error codes that kept popping up on the terminal, his voice cold and hard.

"When bombarded by an electron beam, its microscopic lattice undergoes a brief shift. It's not thermal expansion and contraction, nor is it a normal refractive change. It's as if it's... avoiding observation."

"Avoidance?"

"In scientific terms, it's adaptive occlusion," the chief of the academy said, adjusting his glasses. "But the result is about the same. The more we try to see it clearly, the more it changes the way it's seen."

Jiang Xiu spoke slowly from the shadows.

"When the array probe swept across it just now, I also felt a little feedback."

"What feedback?"

Jiang Xiu stared at the speck of black dust.

"It's recording."

The experimental area became quieter.

Jiang Xiu pressed the black wooden box in his arms and continued, "It's like some kind of passive remnant. We are observing it, and it is also recording our way of observing."

This statement sounds almost absurd.

But no one laughed.

The chief scientist of the Academy of Sciences did not refute the argument, but instead directly pulled up a set of extremely high-magnification composite images.

The surface texture of that powder was magnified 100,000 times.

The court president stepped forward, leaning on his cane, his cloudy eyes suddenly narrowing.

The black metal surface lacks the irregular crystalline cross-sections characteristic of natural minerals.

Instead, it presents an extremely fine geometric groove.

The grooves are severely worn, and the edges have been blurred by the passage of time. Yet, even so, one can still see that they once possessed an extremely high degree of regularity.

It's not text.

It is not any array pattern known on Earth.

It doesn't resemble a naturally formed mineral vein structure at all.

The court president tapped the ground lightly with his cane.

"This is not a natural metal."

His voice was hoarse, yet unusually resolute.

"The surface geometry error is abnormally low. Nature can create sharp crystals and complex mineral veins, but it cannot create this kind of structure that maintains order even after being worn down."

"So, this is a man-made object?"

The court president did not answer immediately.

He stared at the screen for a long time before slowly saying:

"It is at least not a natural product of the moon."

After those words were spoken, the atmosphere in the experimental area became completely subdued.

"Perform a comparison of the underlying bands."

The chief scientist of the Academy of Sciences rapidly tapped his fingers on the floating keyboard.

The home screen is split in two.

On the left is the spectrum and psionic band diagram of this 0.03 gram of black metal from the far side of the moon.

On the right is a dark red file classified as top secret.

During the Los Angeles Void Disaster, the Void Beast that Gu Qing killed left behind a very small number of tissue fragments.

That is a nightmare that many people still don't want to recall.

The two sets of waveforms began to be forcibly superimposed.

Initially, they were almost unrelated.

A group of cold, stable, inorganic substances.

A group of violent, chaotic entities, rife with high-dimensional biomass contamination.

But when the chief of the Academy of Sciences stripped away the surface differences, leaving only the most fundamental abnormal noise, an extremely hidden undercurrent slowly emerged.

That line is very thin.

So fine that it was almost drowned out by background radiation.

But they snapped together.

The breathing in the experimental area stopped for a moment.

"The overlap rate of the underlying abnormal segments is 60%."

The chief scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences remained calm.

But his eyes had changed.

"It cannot be proven that they are the same thing. But it can be determined that they have come into contact with the same type of high-dimensional rules."

The chief scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences drew up two structural diagrams.

"That monster in Los Angeles is a living, high-dimensional organism. Its underlying wavelengths are outward-emitting, expanding, and devouring."

He looked at the black metallic powder.

"And this sample is inorganic. It has no signs of life, no bioactivity, and no mental activity."

"But its underlying frequency bands look like the residue from being subjected to the same type of pollution for a long time."

The chief scientist of the Chinese Academy of Sciences remained silent for a second.

"If that monster in Los Angeles was something that was released."

He stared at the barely perceptible speck of black dust on the screen.

"Then this layer of black metal on the back of the moon may have been some kind of structure that released them."

After he finished speaking, the experimental area fell completely silent.

In the Kyoto joint control room, Wang Mingyuan shifted his gaze away from the two overlapping waveforms.

He pulled up the topographic map of the far side of the moon from the Guanghan base.

"Chen Ge".

"arrive."

What is the depth to which the lateral drilling reaches the bottom?

"Nine thousand eight hundred meters."

"Bottoming area?"

"The drill bit has a cross-section of 30 centimeters," Chen Ge replied. "But at that depth, the sound of the probe didn't detect any natural rock undulations. It was an extremely flat surface."

Wang Mingyuan did not ask any further questions.

He forcibly superimposed Chen Ge's drilling coordinates with the deep seismic echo data collected by the Guanghan base around the Aitken Basin over the past six months.

The supercomputer began operating at full capacity.

Thirty seconds later.

A massive three-dimensional redline model is being gradually outlined beneath the strata on the far side of the moon.

It was like the outer shell of some enormous creature, buried by the moon's long layers of rock and dust, with only a tiny edge showing.

Wang Mingyuan looked at the outline, but there was no panic in his eyes.

Only extreme cold.

"Notify Guanghan Base."

"Stop all drilling at that depth."

"All samples related to the deep layers of the far side of the moon have been transferred to the highest level of archive sequence."

……

Kunlun, the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds.

Gu Qing stood alone at the edge of the observatory, his hands behind his back.

His gaze pierced through the vacuum of 380,000 kilometers and landed on that grayish-white celestial body.

In his deep vision, a high-dimensional causal line, imperceptible to ordinary people, is rolling on the far side of the moon.

That line is very thin.

It's very light.

But it was like a hook reaching out from the depths of darkness.

[System Warning: Human civilization has touched the surface of a higher-dimensional relic.]

Should we perform causal masking and sever underlying connections?

Gu Qing looked at the prompt in his mind, his eyes showing no emotion.

He also knew that the real starry sky never sheathes its fangs just because someone isn't ready.

"No need to cover it up."

Gu Qing said calmly.

【confirm?】

"confirm."

The system went silent for a moment.

[Causal obscuration has been removed. Civilizations will bear the risks of any subsequent consequences themselves.]

Gu Qing didn't look at that message again.

He simply gazed at the moon, a faint chill surfacing deep within his eyes.

"Go and face that shadow yourself."

"Since you've reached into the darkness, you must learn how to pull your hand back when the darkness bites you."

……

380,000 kilometers away.

Lunar slope drilling point.

Before ordering the borehole to be sealed and the crew to evacuate, Chen Ge, in accordance with reconnaissance regulations, left an extremely small, low-frequency mechanical probe at the bottom of the 9,800-meter-deep borehole.

Nobody expected it to last long.

It was stuck at the junction of the lunar basalt crust and the black metallic outer shell.

The faint, cool white LED light struggled to stay afloat in the darkness thousands of meters deep.

The video feed was transmitted intermittently back to the encrypted server at the Guanghan base via extremely low frequency signals.

The lens moved slowly, close to the metal surface.

Dead black.

smooth.

Icy.

Even the scratches left by the drill bit's friction are disappearing at an extremely slow rate.

It's like that layer of metal is healing itself.

The probe continued to crawl forward.

A few minutes later, the smooth metal surface suddenly stopped.

Instead, there is a huge, bottomless mechanical seam.

That wasn't a natural crack.

It's too straight.

It's like the gap left during the assembly of some super-large structural components.

The probe beam slowly swept deep into the seam.

Within the dead black metal angle, there was neither lunar soil nor dust.

There was a layer of dark red fibrous tissue attached there.

Like dried-up blood vessels.

It also resembles a fungal network that has been dead for many years.

They clung tightly to the metal wall, presenting a desolate texture that had been decaying for millions of years.

Inside the encrypted server at the Guanghan base, the automatic comparison program kept popping up alarms.

[Biomass Residue Suspected Match: Los Angeles Void Disaster Sample]

Match score: Cannot be calculated stably.

[Pollution Risk: Unknown]

The probe battery is almost empty.

Large snowflakes began to appear on the screen.

The cold white light flickered on and off.

Just two seconds in the last minute.

In that dim, almost extinguished light, the layer of dark red, dried tissue deep within the seam moved extremely slowly—

It twitched slightly.

呲——

The signal was completely cut off.

The screen went dark.