94: Chapter 94 Research

After making his decision, Chen Mo did not hesitate any longer.

The Force Field wrapped around the sphere and all its fragments once again. He lifted the hundreds of tons of silvery-gray wreckage, slowly rising from the lunar surface, then accelerated, flying toward that blue planet.

Chen Mo's figure turned into a faint golden stream of light, dragging the massive silvery-gray sphere like a miniature comet, streaking across the 400,000 kilometers of darkness.

He repeatedly deduced various possibilities in his mind.

In the process of excavating the wreckage, he had thoroughly surveyed the area within a depth of seven kilometers beneath the lunar surface.

He found no traces left by other alien civilizations, nor was there a second piece of wreckage or any abnormal signals.

The entire moon, perhaps, held only this one piece of wreckage, sleeping deep within the lunar crust for who knows how many tens of thousands of years.

As for the deeper and more vast regions of the moon, those would have to be left for future exploration.

A dozen or so hours later, Chen Mo's figure appeared above Jing City.

He did not stop, flying directly toward the direction of the Highest Research Institute.

The sphere within the Force Field emitted a cold, silvery-gray light, making it exceptionally conspicuous in the night.

The guards on duty on the ground looked up, seeing that faint golden light and the thing it was dragging behind, and they were all stunned in place.

Chen Mo hovered above the institute, simultaneously sending a message to Minister Li Long.

Short. Direct.

"Come to the research institute, I have a discovery."

The people at the research institute arrived faster than Chen Mo had expected.

When Chen Mo slowly released the Force Field, and the ten-meter-diameter silvery-gray metal sphere, along with dozens of fragments of varying sizes, was placed in the experimental hall, dense footsteps were already heard from outside.

The door was pushed open, and an old man with graying hair was the first to walk in.

It was Elder Liu from the Ministry of Science and Technology, whom Chen Mo had met a few times at the promotional conferences for the Human Breathing Method.

Elder Liu walked into the hall, glanced at the massive metal sphere, and his footsteps immediately came to a halt.

"Mr. Chen Mo,"

His voice was somewhat dry. "Where did this thing… come from?"

"The Moon."

Two words fell, and the entire hall fell silent.

Elder Liu stood stunned in place, his lips moving, but he couldn't speak.

The several department heads standing behind him wore the same expression, a look of bewilderment as if their cognition had been forcibly torn open.

Brought back from the moon.

Everyone present understood the significance of this sentence.

There is no industry on the moon.

No smelters.

No metal processing workshops.

If this thing was dug up from the moon, it could be almost one hundred percent confirmed that humanity is not the only intelligent civilization in the solar system.

At the very least, not the first intelligent civilization to arrive here.

Elder Liu took a deep breath, and just as he was about to speak, a rush of hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside the door.

The various high-level officials and researchers of the institute had arrived.

At first, most of them had run over with a skeptical attitude.

In the hallway, some were still whispering, "What on earth is it?" and "How could such a thing exist on the moon?" with tones full of doubt.

But when they pushed open the door to the experimental hall and saw the silvery-gray metal sphere lying quietly under the lights, all sounds of questioning vanished in an instant.

Academician Wu, who researched metal Materials, walked at the very front.

His gaze fell upon the surface of the sphere, his footsteps slowing down more and more, until he finally came to a stop just half a meter away from the outer wall of the sphere.

He reached out his hand, not touching it, but simply hovering his palm above the silvery-gray surface, his fingers trembling ever so slightly.

It was the instinctive awe of someone who had been in the industry for over half a century upon seeing a new Material that was unprecedented and completely beyond the scope of his cognition.

The luster.

That was not an effect that could be produced by polishing or plating.

Any metal, after polishing, would have micron-level scratches and uneven light scattering on its surface, but the surface of this sphere…

Even outside the damaged and impacted areas, it was as smooth as solidified liquid.

When light shone on it, what reflected back was not a blinding bright spot, but an extremely uniform diffusion, as if the metal's own lattice structure was actively absorbing and redistributing the light energy.

Academician Wu's hand finally landed on the metal surface.

He touched it.

Then he knew, this was real.

Chen Mo stood beside the sphere, and after the commotion in the hall had subsided slightly, he spoke.

His voice was not loud, but everyone heard him clearly.

"This metal has an extremely high density; a palm-sized fragment weighs nearly twenty kilograms. Its compressive strength also far exceeds all metals known to humanity, capable of withstanding tens of thousands of megapascals of pressure while leaving only shallow marks."

The hall went quiet again.

No one questioned him.

Because the data Chen Mo stated never needed to be questioned.

"There is no radiation; I have already checked."

"The internal structure is extremely complex, but its function is unknown."

"How long this metal sphere stayed on the moon, what the operating mechanism of its internal construction is, and what energy it is driven by—all these I leave to you to research."

After finishing, Chen Mo took a step back.

The hall was silent for a moment, and then, it moved.

On the faces of everyone present, there was a mixture of that most primal shock and surprise when facing an unknown discovery, as well as the irrepressible excitement of researchers facing a Domain they had never touched before.

Someone immediately took a fragment sample and pushed it into the sample chamber of a spectrometer and electron microscope.

Someone climbed up the temporarily erected ladder and probed into the crack above the sphere, the light from their headlamp sweeping across the complex internal structure, their mouth constantly emitting low, unintelligible exclamations.

Someone picked up a high-precision micrometer and surface roughness tester, repeatedly measuring the outer wall of the sphere; after each measurement, the expression on their face was one of both shock and bewilderment.

More things were discovered one after another.

A Materials science researcher, under a transmission electron microscope magnified three million times, discovered that the metal's lattice structure was not any form known to humanity.

It was not body-centered cubic, not face-centered cubic, not hexagonal close-packed.

The lattice presented a three-dimensional nested dodecahedral symmetric structure, unbelievably uniform at the atomic level, without any lattice defects or dislocations.

This meant that its strength was physically theoretically perfect; there were no stress concentration points that would lead to fracture.

"This is unreasonable," he muttered to the screen. "This kind of lattice structure theoretically cannot exist stably under normal pressure… It requires processing conditions that we are completely unaware of."

Another professor specializing in thermodynamics performed differential scanning calorimetry on a fragment, and the result left him speechless for several seconds: the melting point of this alloy exceeded twelve thousand degrees Celsius.

There was no furnace on Earth capable of reaching this temperature, and no known Material could serve as its container.

The entire experimental hall turned into a giant beehive.

In every corridor, every laboratory, and in front of every workstation, people were busy.

There was a sense of urgency in their movements that Chen Mo rarely saw in scientific researchers, like a hunger of "must figure out what this is immediately."

After Minister Li Long and the others arrived, Chen Mo went with him to the conference room.

Chen Mo first recounted the matter regarding the crisis in its entirety:

The crisis's scope of influence covered the entire Blue Planet and also covered the moon, indicating that its source was not within the planet, but could be some kind of more macroscopic upheaval.

But what could be confirmed was that this crisis had no impact on him personally; the intensity was not enough to threaten his current level.

Additionally, that metal sphere was not the source of the crisis; there was no connection between the two.

To some extent, this news was actually good news.

If the intensity of the crisis were high enough that even Chen Mo could not withstand it, then this world would truly have no way to cope.

After listening, Minister Li Long nodded with a serious expression and immediately spoke about their preparations.

"We have made multiple contingency plans, covering various possible cataclysmic scenarios."

"Currently, the one with the highest probability and the one that needs priority response is a major earthquake."

"We have already begun to relocate the population in seismic zones to safe central areas, away from fault lines and tectonic plate boundaries."

"At the same time, we are building various earthquake-proof and disaster-prevention structures nationwide, reinforcing key hubs and lifeline projects."

"There is also a plan to lower the water levels of major reservoirs to below the safety line in advance to prevent dam failures and secondary floods."

He paused, then added: "We will immediately notify other countries and share this early warning information."

Chen Mo calmly replied:

"Good. Humanity only has this option. Make all preparations."

Minister Li Long was silent for a moment, his gaze turning outside the window; through the conference room glass, he could see that massive silvery-gray spherical wreckage on the distant platform, with researchers still busy around it.

"Then… how should we handle that thing?"

Chen Mo's answer was equally concise: "Research it yourselves."

His tone had no major fluctuations, as if he were handing over an ordinary research project: "All kinds of testing methods can be tried."

"Cutting, heating, radiation, electromagnetism, particle bombardment—see what conclusions can be drawn."

"This sphere is very likely a type of spacecraft; its Materials and construction logic might help humanity open up interstellar travel faster and push for a leap in key technologies."

After giving his instructions, Chen Mo left the conference room.

He did not participate in the subsequent discussions, nor did he stay at the institute to watch the first round of tests.

To him, everything had already been handed into the hands of the right people.

The best way to deal with danger and the unknown has always been only one.

Becoming stronger.

The strength of that alien product was indeed very high.

But when Chen Mo used Source Power, that outer shell could still be easily destroyed by him.

This meant it could be destroyed.

If it can be destroyed, then it is not strong enough—he is not strong enough, and the other party is not strong enough either.

The Universe is vast, and there won't be only one civilization within it.