At 5:07 a.m., the wind and sand in the northwestern Gobi began to die down.
Cheng Ye's convoy pulled up at the edge of the depression. The wheels crushed over the final gravel slope, and the dust they stirred was sliced diagonally by the morning light into a gray-yellow curtain. He pushed open the door. His black combat uniform sat straight on his shoulders; the mechanical watch on his left wrist ticked steadily, each second hand jump marking time for the silent wasteland.
He chewed a piece of sugar-free gum. The flavor had faded almost completely, but he did not change it. Never alter habits during a mission — that was the first lesson they taught at the military academy.
"Team A, circle around and block the escape route. Team B, follow me to the main control room," he said in a low voice, every word clear through the earpiece. "Spectrum instruments forward. Stop every three meters. Record all abnormal fluctuations."
The team dispersed quickly, moving sharply. Their boots pressed into the sand with short, crisp sounds. Portable scanners advanced with antennas raised, their green waveforms refreshing constantly on the screens.
"Chief, 300‑meter sweep complete," the technician reported quietly. "Strongest signal residue concentrated inside the structure. Peak frequency 3.1415926 GHz, duration 0.3 seconds, terminated at 04:58:17 — exactly nine minutes after the broadcast ended."
Cheng Ye nodded and said nothing.
The number was far too neat to be a natural phenomenon.
He stepped over the collapsed barbed wire. Rust scraped softly against his combat trousers. Ahead lay the main control room of Area A‑7: its gray-blue outer wall badly peeling, window frames crooked, fine sand piling under the door. Consistent with satellite imagery — no signs of human damage.
"The wall breach is on the south side, caused by a storm two days ago," another team member confirmed against the logs. "Legal entry record shows the last visit was yesterday at 11:23 a.m. Registrant: a popular science streamer surnamed Lin. Equipment ID: LWQ‑ZB03. Registration type: civilian low‑power streaming terminal."
Cheng Ye narrowed his eyes at the door lock.
The scratches on the iron handle were fresh — not worn by wind and sand, but from frequent key insertion. The sand along the door crack showed faint drag marks, as if someone had left not long ago, their shoes brushing away part of the pile.
"She left ten minutes ago," he calculated silently. "The equipment needs at least five minutes to cool after power-off. Residual field strength is still detectable — meaning transmission power exceeded the limit."
He kept it to himself.
Some things: observe first, think second, speak last.
The main control room door creaked open on rusted hinges. Dim light filtered through the high windows, falling onto the tables and chairs, dust motes swirling slowly in the beams.
The main computer sat in the center of the console, untouched. The monitor was dark, the keyboard neatly arranged. A pothos plant stood quietly in the corner, its leaves turned 0.3 degrees toward a distant star — unnoticed by anyone.
"Scene undisturbed," a team member checked quickly. "Doors and windows intact, no prying marks. No extra footprints on the ground. No biological signs other than the streamer."
Cheng Ye walked to the computer and knelt down.
A faint palm print still marked the side of the case — the spot where Lin Wanqiu had tapped it. He reached out and touched it. The fingerprint oil had dried, but the impression remained. He stared for two seconds, then opened his tool kit and placed a military‑grade spectrum probe near the power port.
Beep —
A soft alarm sounded.
"Residual cached field strength 0.87 microtesla, 43 times the theoretical upper limit for this model," the technician said, voice trembling slightly. "This is impossible… unless it wasn't just sending signals. It was broadcasting."
Cheng Ye did not respond.
He pulled open the drawer. It was almost empty, only a corner of a hand‑drawn map wedged in the gap. He did not pull it free, only glanced at the marked route — from the control room to the vehicle depression, handwriting neat, direction clear.
"She left calmly," he said.
"What?" the team member did not catch it.
"Nothing."
He stood up, took off his gloves, and unclipped the computer case with his bare hands.
The screws were untouched, the seals intact. The motherboard model matched the records: civilian‑grade X230‑A, wireless module standard Wi‑Fi 5 chip, maximum output 1 watt. With this configuration, it could not even reach the neighboring hill, let alone penetrate the ionosphere.
Yet the data showed the signal had indeed broken through.
And it had received a response.
He disassembled the components one by one, testing each. Power module normal. Memory chips unmodified. Cooling fan bearings showed no abnormal wear. He removed the wireless unit separately, placed it on the test station, and scanned the back of the circuit board with a nanoprobe.
"Wait." He suddenly stopped.
On the probe image, near the audio output terminal, lay a tiny crystalline structure. Its arrangement was not artificially etched; it resembled some kind of naturally formed mineral deposit. Semi‑transparent grayish‑blue, texture similar to quartz, but with a refractive index far beyond any known material.
"Never seen this," the technician leaned closer. "Not circuit contamination either. The edges are too neat. It's… grown inside."
Cheng Ye frowned.
He had seen electromagnetic pulses burn chips on battlefields, and solar storms distort silicon lattices. But he had never seen something growing inside an electronic component.
He touched the crystal gently with tweezers.
It did not break, did not fall off.
Instead, at the moment of contact, the detector screen flickered, and a very short pulse code jumped on the waveform, gone in an instant.
"What was that?"
"No idea. It auto‑recorded."
"Play it back."
The technician pulled up the data stream and zoomed the timeline. The code lasted only 0.03 seconds, with violent frequency jumps, like some compressed information packet. They attempted decoding and failed. The format matched no known communication protocol.
"Looks like a response signal," Cheng Ye muttered.
"Responding to who?"
"No idea."
He closed the computer case slowly.
The machine looked ordinary.
But what it had done was anything but.
"Seal the entire set," he ordered. "Main unit, monitor, antenna, voltage stabilizer — pack everything and take it back to the center. Include the pothos. Don't let it dehydrate."
"Even the plant?"
"I said everything."
He turned toward the door, glancing back one last time at the control room.
Tables and chairs aligned. The outline on the whiteboard was still visible:
1. Bamboo fiber tensile strength vs. wooden tablets
2. Carving depth and information retention rate
3. Scroll vs. slip assembly: pros and cons
The handwriting was neat, the tone plain, with no unusual content.
A popular science stream about bamboo slip accounting.
Yet it had activated a probe beacon near Mars and turned six alien observation units toward Earth.
It made no sense.
Even more illogical: no one had modified the device, no one had tampered with the wiring, not even a USB drive had been inserted.
Then how had the signal been sent?
He stepped outside. The wind had weakened to almost nothing. The sky shifted from dark to pale blue, the Big Dipper gradually fading. In the distance, transport vehicles were loading equipment cases. A canvas cover fell, perfectly covering the palm print on the side of the computer case.
"Chief, ready to depart."
"Mm."
He stood outside the main control room, left hand resting on his holster, right hand squeezing the scrap of map he had taken from the drawer. The paper was old, edges worn, but the creases sharp from frequent use.
He sealed it in an evidence bag and labeled it:
Exhibit 04‑01, Source: Gap in drawer, Area A‑7 main control room.
Then he looked up at the antenna pole.
Its tip trembled slightly — wind or metal fatigue.
He looked away.
"Board the vehicles," he said. "Return to base."
The team boarded one by one. Doors closed. Engines started. He glanced once more at the abandoned satellite station: iron door tightly shut, sand piling deeper along the crack. The cooled computer casing was condensing dew.
He climbed into the command vehicle and sat in the passenger seat.
The convoy slowly left the depression, tires crunching over gravel.
In the rearview mirror, Area A‑7 shrank, eventually fading into a faint silhouette on the horizon.
Inside the car, silence.
No one spoke.
Cheng Ye leaned back and closed his eyes, but his mind did not rest.
Broadcast. Equipment. Crystal. Signal. Response.
The words collided in his head, but could not form a complete picture.
He only knew one thing:
This was not ordinary signal leakage.
Not a hack.
Not active alien contact.
Someone — or something — had used an ordinary streaming device to achieve interstellar communication never before accomplished by humanity.
And that someone had just hummed Cai Wei, driven off-road, and gone home.
He opened his eyes and looked out the window.
Dawn had not yet broken. The world still hung at the threshold between darkness and wakefulness.
He took out a fresh piece of gum, tore open the wrapper, and put it in his mouth.
Mint burst upward, with a faint bitterness.
He chewed slowly.
At that moment, the vehicle computer suddenly popped up an automatic alert:
Monitoring update:
At 04:55:33, a decommissioned weather satellite 500 kilometers above detected an energy pulse.
Frequency: 3.1415926 GHz. Duration: 0.3 seconds.
Source: Area A‑7.
He stared at the line for a full five seconds.
Then he reached out and tapped the touchscreen: Acknowledged.
No comment.
No repost.
No social media comments blowing up with "What the hell is this".
No netizens screenshotting and posting with #MysteriousSignal trending.
Everything happened in the unknown pre‑dawn hours, in a forgotten depth of the Gobi, after a stream no one watched.
But it had happened.
Just like the pothos leaf, turning 0.3 degrees silently.
Just like the broken antenna fragment, resonating for 0.7 seconds when no one was watching.
Just like at this moment, Cheng Ye sitting in the returning vehicle, chewing his third piece of sugar-free gum, his left hand unconsciously rubbing the face of the mechanical watch his father had left him.
Engraved on it:
Time will prove everything.
He did not look up.
He only whispered softly:
"Soon."