103: Chapter 102 Three Questions about Civilization

Countdown: 3 hours 52 minutes

In the deepest encrypted conference room of the "Bedrock" base, the final holographic proofreading was underway.

Lin Shen stood in the center of the room, surrounded by seventeen floating layers of independent documents—each representing a core chapter of the report, with text, data, images, and energy spectrums slowly flowing within them. He hadn't closed his eyes for forty-eight hours, but adrenaline and a deeper sense of mission kept him terrifyingly lucid.

Professor Chen Qiming was performing the final grammatical and logical verification, a waterfall of scrolling data streams reflecting off his glasses. "'Preliminary Observations of the Gaia Network Activation Phenomenon' appendix, Section 3, Paragraph 3, the energy fluctuation unit is wrong; it's 'Joules per cubic second,' not 'Watts per square meter.' Corrected."

Zhou Zhe, on the other side, was checking the timestamps and source calibrations of all technical data. "Sensor data No. 47 from the East China Sea peak event has a 0.3-second clock offset, out of sync with the main timeline. Should I adjust it or just annotate it?"

"Annotate it," Lin Shen said without looking up. "Explain in the footnotes: the sensor is located at the edge of the eruption's core zone and may be affected by local spacetime distortions. Keep the raw data for comparison."

Chu Yunshen had his eyes closed, but his fingers were tapping in the air—he was reviewing every phrasing from a strategic perspective for potential interpretation risks. "Regarding the expression 'requesting limited access to the galactic technology trading network,' I think we should add a qualifying condition: 'under the premise of ensuring technological security and civilizational independence.' Otherwise, the other party might think we are willing to unconditionally accept any technological implants."

"Add it." With a swipe of Lin Shen's finger, a line of text was embedded into the corresponding paragraph.

The air in the room felt compressed to its limit. The countdown ticked in the corner of everyone's vision: 03:41:18.

Elena Costa pushed the door open, holding a memory crystal that had just finished being decrypted. "Sorry, I just got the latest batch of decryption results from the Cradle database. There's some supplementary intelligence regarding the tactical characteristics of the 'Pruning Faction' main fleet."

She inserted the crystal into the reader slot. A holographic screen unfolded, displaying fragmented combat records—evidently the final transmission from a destroyed sower outpost.

The footage shook violently and was full of noise. Against a pitch-black background, dozens of sharp-edged geometric shapes were releasing some kind of purple energy beams. The sower ships hit did not explode; instead, like melting candles, they slowly "decomposed" from the edges into streams of fundamental particles.

"That's not the point." Elena fast-forwarded to a specific segment, the screen freezing on a close-up of the belly of a "Pruning Faction" ship. There was a complex rotating symbol consisting of three nested hexagons and twelve radiating lines. "This symbol. It wasn't found on the wreckage of the previous vanguard units. But I just found a matching record in the Cradle's 'Enemy Unit Identification Library'—it represents units equipped with 'Planetary-Scale Reality Stabilization Anchor Strippers.'"

Lin Shen's pupils contracted slightly. "Are you sure?"

"99.7% match." Elena pulled up the database entry. "This weapon isn't conventional energy or kinetic lethality. Its working principle is to locally modify fundamental physical constants—for example, briefly lowering the strong nuclear force constant in the target area, making atomic nuclei unable to maintain stability; or increasing the electromagnetic force constant, causing all chemical bonds to instantly overload and break. Theoretically, it can 'neutralize' and destroy any structure built based on known physical laws without producing collateral explosions or radiation."

Dead silence filled the room.

"Stargazer 742 warned us before," Chu Yunshen finally opened his eyes, his voice low. "He said they would carry such weapons. But seeing the actual footage... it's still different."

Chen Qiming adjusted his glasses. "If we mention our awareness of this weapon in the report, will it reveal that our understanding of the sowers legacy is too deep?"

"On the contrary." Lin Shen turned to look at everyone. "It proves we are seriously studying the threat rather than passively waiting. Add this analysis to the 'Threat Assessment' section of the report, but note: the intelligence source is the analysis of historical combat records in the legacy database, not that we already have countermeasures."

The modification was quickly completed.

Countdown: 02:15:03.

General Zhao Yan's holographic image connected to the conference room—he had returned from Antarctica and was undergoing recovery treatment in a medical pod after low-temperature exposure, but he insisted on participating in the final stage. "I just reviewed the military section of the draft report. Regarding the description of our self-defense actions, I suggest adding a detail: during the East China Sea skirmish, we had three unmanned reconnaissance craft that actively withdrew after completing intelligence gathering and did not participate in the attack. This can corroborate the claim of 'restrained defense.'"

"A good detail," Lin Shen nodded. "Add it in."

Time slipped away minute by minute.

01:00:00.

The report integration was complete. The total page count (converted to Earth standard documents) reached 1,473 pages, including 412 data attachments, 87 holographic video records, and over 7 million words of textual discourse. This didn't even include Elena's technical appendix on "Gaia Network Activation" or the visualization report on the "Entire Process of ice abyss Sample Transfer" produced by Zhou Zhe's team.

"Final holographic preview," Lin Shen ordered.

The entire room was filled with the report's 3D projection. Text flowed like a river, data charts twinkled like stars, and combat footage was interspersed like memory fragments. From the first discovery of the lunar ruins to the consciousness preservation of Sarah Chen, to the East China Sea crisis, the Antarctic operation, and then the analysis of the "Silent Watch" and "Hibernators"... the entire history of humanity's interaction with the ancient legacy over the past three years was condensed, organized, and woven into a complete narrative line.

The core logic was clearly presented:

Who are we? A young civilization that accidentally discovered the legacy of a higher civilization but actively chose to assume management responsibility rather than plunder.

What have we encountered? Unprovoked attacks from the Inheritors of the "Order Reconstruction Faction" (the Pruning Faction), who intend to destroy us and the legacy we protect.

What do we want? Legitimate rights to self-defense, limited opportunities for cooperation, and a chance to prove ourselves on the galactic stage.

Chu Yunshen slowly let out a breath. "If I were a censor for the Galactic Council... this report would at least make me willing to listen to the end."

"That's enough." Lin Shen closed the holographic projection. "Final confirmation. All attendees, please conduct the final authorization vote."

Voting interfaces popped up in front of the holographic images of the seventeen federal representatives. The five members of the Dragon Country team received the same request.

Three seconds later, the results appeared:

In favor of sending: 22 votes.

Opposed: 0 votes.

Abstained: 0 votes.

"Consensus reached." Marta Richter's holographic image nodded. "May this report win humanity the respect it deserves."

Countdown: 00:58:17.

Lin Shen pulled up the quantum super-membrane channel interface left by Stargazer 742. It was a pure optical construct composed of countless rotating Möbius strips, with a bottomless "void" at its center.

"Report encapsulation complete," Zhou Zhe reported. "All data layers have finished final encryption. The encryption protocol mixes human quantum keys, the spacetime signature of the sowers legacy, and... a one-time chaos algorithm generated by Nuwa. Even if intercepted, without all three keys decoding simultaneously, the information will entropy within 0.1 seconds."

"Good." Lin Shen reached toward the control interface. His finger hovered three centimeters above the "Send" command.

The conference room was so quiet that the faintest hum of the ventilation system could be heard.

00:01:00.

00:00:30.

Chu Yunshen suddenly spoke: "Lin Shen, do you know what's most ironic?"

Lin Shen didn't look back. "What?"

"We spent twenty-four hours preparing this report to prove to a higher civilization that we are worth keeping alive." There was a hint of rare fatigue in Chu Yunshen's voice. "And five hundred thousand years ago, the Sower Civilization might have done the same thing—proving to some even more ancient existence that they were worth existing. The history of civilization might just be an endless... defense of a thesis."

00:00:05.

Lin Shen pressed the command.

"Send."

There was no sound, no light. But everyone felt a certain "weight" vanish from the center of the room. That report, which condensed three years of struggle, wisdom, fear, and hope of the entire human civilization, was compressed into a structural masterpiece of an information packet and hurtled toward the center of the galaxy along the super-membrane channel laid by Stargazer 742. Its speed exceeded that of light, its mechanism beyond understanding.

It was gone.

In the conference room, people remained silent, as if waiting for some kind of echo.

00:00:00.

The countdown hit zero.

"So," Chen Qiming broke the silence, "now we... wait?"

"Now we continue working." Lin Shen closed all interfaces. "The report is just the beginning, not the end. General Zhao, what is the progress on phase two of the Lunar Fortress? Dr. Zhou, any new discoveries from the reverse engineering of the Pruning Faction vanguard wreckage? Elena, continue digging into the records related to the Silent Watch. Consultant Chu, I need you to start drafting the framework for the 'Civilizational Leap Roadmap'; we have six months."

Orders were quickly dispatched. People began to relax from their state of high concentration, but it was replaced by a deeper tension—like a hunter waiting for an echo from the darkness after throwing a stone to test the way.

Three minutes later, the first anomaly appeared.

It didn't come from deep space, but from within the base.

Nuwa's synthesized voice rang directly in the neural interfaces of all core members, her tone set to the preset "Priority One":

"Anomaly quantum signal detected. Source: Direction of the galactic core. Characteristics: 99.3% homology with Stargazer 742's channel protocol. Signal strength: Extremely weak. Content: Unable to fully parse, but repeats a single symbol pattern. Attempting to match with the builders' writing library..."

A string of flashing characters appeared on the holographic screen:

▽◁▽▽◁◁▽◁▽◁▽◁▽▽◁◁▽

"Match complete," Nuwa reported. "Corresponds to the 'Receipt Acknowledged' symbol in the builders' basic communication symbol set. Typically used in ultra-long-range communications to indicate 'Signal received, processing.'"

"That's it?" Zhou Zhe frowned. "No other information? No estimated reply time? No..."

His words were interrupted by a second notification sound.

This time, the notification appeared only on Lin Shen's private terminal—and on a completely isolated physical-gap channel that theoretically only he and Nuwa's core protocol had access to.

A line of plain text jumped onto the screen. No source identification, no encrypted signature; the words were displayed directly:

Defense accepted. Prepare to face the 'Reviewer.' Time is running out.

— 'watch spirit' (?)

Lin Shen stared at that last parenthesis and question mark. The sender wasn't even sure of their own identity?

"Nuwa," he said in a low voice, "can the transmission path of this message be traced?"

"Untraceable," the AI's reply came almost immediately. "It did not use any known communication protocol. It's more like it 'appeared out of thin air' within the base's internal network. Preliminary analysis suggests the information carrier might be some kind of non-electromagnetic quantum entanglement state write-in, directly modifying specific bits of your terminal's storage medium. The technological level exceeds my comprehension by 37 orders of magnitude."

Lin Shen slowly sat back in his chair. Outside—if there were windows here—the simulated sunlight system was adjusting to noon brightness, but the seven hundred meters of rock overhead blocked out all real sky light.

He looked at the people leaving the conference room one after another, at the "Receipt Acknowledged" symbol still flashing on the holographic screen, and at that mysterious warning on his private terminal.

"Dr. Lin?" Elena turned back at the door. "Are you okay?"

Lin Shen closed his terminal screen and looked up.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice regaining its usual calm. "I just suddenly realized that we just handed in our exam papers."

He stood up and walked toward the door.

"And now, the examiners have the papers. More than one."

The corridor lights stretched his shadow long. And in the deep space where shadows could not reach, at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, that darkness that had once rippled was now slightly warping, as if something... was adjusting its focus.

Aimed at the sun.

Aimed at the Earth.

Aimed at this young civilization that had just submitted its defense.