93: Chapter 93 Discovery of Traces of Extraterrestrial Civilization

As his Mental Perception swept over that piece of metal, Chen Mo's figure suddenly vanished.

The next instant, he was already standing in front of that metal fragment.

His gaze fell upon a patch of dark red lava beneath his feet that had not yet completely solidified.

The fragment was embedded in the cooling surface of the magma, with only a small portion exposed.

Chen Mo reached out, hooked his fingers around the edge of the fragment, and gave it a gentle pull.

The weight of it in his hand made his pupils contract ever so slightly.

He held the fragment and slowly turned it before his eyes.

It was the size of a palm.

The surface was a nearly eerie silver-gray.

That silver-gray seemed to emanate from the molecular structure of the metal itself, with a texture so uniform that there was no color variation whatsoever.

There was no rust, no oxidation layer, and no scratches.

The edges bore signs of fracture, proving it had once belonged to a larger structure, yet the surface was as clean and smooth as new, as if it had been forged just yesterday.

But there is no atmosphere, no liquid water, and no microorganisms on the Moon.

How long had it been here?

A thousand years? A hundred thousand years? A hundred million years?

There was no way to tell.

Chen Mo's attention turned to its weight.

Palm-sized.

Calculated by Blue Star's gravity, it weighed a staggering 19.4 kilograms.

He quickly performed the density conversion in his mind.

This value far exceeded gold, and even exceeded osmium, the element with the highest known density on Blue Star.

This was not anything on the natural periodic table of elements.

An alloy.

And an alloy of extremely high density and extremely high strength.

Chen Mo flipped the fragment over and his gaze fell on the cross-section.

The cross-section revealed a very fine, layered structure, with each layer being extremely thin.

These were traces left by precise smelting and processing; it could not be a naturally occurring mineral.

He was silent for a moment.

Then, he clenched his right fist with all his might, mobilized all his strength, and with a burst of three thousand tons of physical force, slammed his fist into the fragment.

The vacuum swallowed the sound of the impact.

The moment his fist made contact with the metal, he saw a faint golden light flash across the metal surface.

That was the stress flash produced by the metal itself under extreme pressure.

He lifted his fist.

On the surface of the fragment, only a shallow mark remained.

Chen Mo looked at that mark, and the hypothesis in his heart was thoroughly confirmed.

A metal of this strength could not possibly be manufactured by humanity at present.

No laboratory in any country, no known metallurgical process, and no piece of industrial equipment could forge a material with a density exceeding 40 grams per cubic centimeter that only shows a shallow mark under a three-thousand-ton impact.

There was only one possibility.

Another intelligent species, an "alien civilization," had once come to the Moon.

This was something they had left behind.

Chen Mo's gaze shifted from the fragment to the lunar surface beneath his feet.

If there was one fragment here, it was impossible for there to be only one.

He moved.

No tools.

His hands were the tools.

He plunged a hand into the cooling magma layer, his power extending downward along the cracks in the lunar crust, forcibly tearing open a fissure several meters wide.

He began to dig.

At a depth of five kilometers, the second fragment appeared.

At ten kilometers deep, the third and fourth fragments.

The fragments varied in size and had different fracture angles, but the material was identical.

Chen Mo's movements did not pause.

His Mental Perception extended downward, scanning every abnormal signal deep within the lunar crust.

Those fragments presented a unique echo in his Mental Perception—extremely high density and extremely dense structure—forming a sharp contrast with the surrounding basalt and lunar soil, like signal lights in the dark night.

The fragments became increasingly dense.

He began to adjust his direction along the path of the fragment distribution, as if tracking some trajectory, pushing deeper into the lunar crust.

Fifteen kilometers. Twenty kilometers. Fifty kilometers. One hundred kilometers.

The pressure of the lunar crust was increasing, and the surrounding temperature was rising.

Chen Mo's Force Field kept everything at bay, the pale golden light burning silently in the dark, deep underground, illuminating rock layers that had been buried for who knows how many years.

Two hundred kilometers.

Three hundred kilometers.

Three hundred fifty-four kilometers.

Chen Mo's hands broke through a massive layer of basalt, his Force Field pushing the rubble aside, as his Mental Perception suddenly captured a massive anomalous signal.

His hands stopped.

Before him, in a vast cavity deep within the lunar crust, a broken, massive metal sphere lay quietly.

Silver-gray. The same luster and texture as the fragments.

The sphere was about ten meters in diameter, its surface covered in cracks and dents.

The largest crack almost split the sphere in two, the broken edges curled outward, revealing the densely packed metal structures inside.

Those structures were embedded layer upon layer, like some kind of extremely precise mechanical viscera.

Chen Mo moved a little closer.

He carefully observed the internal structure.

There were no seats, no control panels, no display screens, and no devices that he could name as being for "riding" or "piloting."

Those metal structures were densely stacked together; he could not discern the logic of their function, only feeling that their complexity far exceeded any human machine.

There were no traces of any text or markings on the sphere.

Chen Mo observed the sphere for a long time.

The hypothesis in his heart, before this ten-meter diameter broken sphere, changed from "highly probable" to "confirmed."

There is other intelligent life in the Universe.

They had once been here.

Three hundred fifty-four kilometers beneath the Moon, they had left behind one of their—spaceships? Probes? Or something else entirely that he could not comprehend?

Chen Mo enveloped the entire metal sphere, along with all the scattered fragments, with his Force Field.

The weight of hundreds of tons created almost no burden under the effect of the Force Field.

Chen Mo lifted this pile of wreckage, slowly ascending from deep within the lunar crust, passing through the fissure he had torn open, and returning to the lunar surface.

He laid the sphere and fragments flat on the lunar surface, seeing its full appearance for the first time.

Ten meters in diameter.

The metal thickness was around three centimeters. Weight: hundreds of tons.

Judging from the damage marks, it was not caused by natural aging.

The cracks exhibited dual characteristics of high-temperature melting and tearing.

Some violent energy impact had struck it from the inside or outside; the metal had simultaneously endured high temperature, high pressure, and physical tearing in an extremely short period, ultimately bursting into countless fragments and scattering deep within the Moon.

Not natural destruction, but an accident.

A disaster that happened who knows how long ago.

Chen Mo stood on the Moon, looking at this pile of wreckage from another civilization, the astonishment in his heart unable to settle for a long time.

He believed that in the vast Universe, humanity could not be alone.

But when he truly stood before this evidence, when he touched with his own hands a metal creation left by another intelligent civilization, that shock was something no imagination could replace.

His Mental Perception probed the structure inside the sphere over and over again.

Every layer of metal, every circuit, every node—he probed them repeatedly, trying to find some understandable pattern from some angle.

But he did not find any.

This thing also had no relation to Spiritual Qi.

Chen Mo completely enveloped the sphere with his Mental Power, not perceiving any abnormal flow of Spiritual Qi, nor any residual traces of Spiritual Qi.

This surprised him.

He had always thought that the technology of a higher civilization might have some connection with Spiritual Qi, but this wreckage completely lacked such a link.

He tried injecting Source Power into it.

The pale golden light flowed along his fingertips toward the metal surface.

The moment the Source Power touched the silver-gray metal, the light scattered like water droplets falling on a stone, sliding along the surface without penetrating, without reacting, and without activating any device.

Chen Mo withdrew his Source Power, stood in place, and swept his gaze back and forth between the sphere and the fragments.

He did not know what energy it was driven by.

Not Spiritual Qi, not Source Power, not electric current.

At least not the kind he could understand.

Perhaps its power System was completely destroyed in the explosion, or perhaps its driving method was completely beyond the human cognitive framework, just like an ant could not understand the operating principle of a laser.

Incomprehensible.

Then he would just take it back first.

He did not have enough knowledge to interpret this discovery, but there were tens of thousands of scientists on Blue Star who could try.

Handing the items over to them would be far more effective than him scanning them repeatedly right here.