bioinnovel Chapter 480 Technological Treasures!
Chapter 480 Technological Treasures!
Qin Xiao's communication was filled with barely suppressed excitement.
"Brother Yan, another ring of things has been detected around the base." The 3D image he sent was spinning on the tablet. "Defense system wreckage, at least six sets of energy pipes, visibly intact."
Zhang Yan magnified a portion of the image.
The cross-sections of those pipes are regular hexagons, and the material attached to the inner walls is of the same origin as the energy trajectory of the Heavenly Craftsman's Heart during its operation.
Something from 30,000 years ago, buried in seabed rock strata, showed no signs of corrosion.
The stargazer's voice came in from another line: "The end of the pipe points to the core area of the base. Its structural features match the peripheral power supply circuit of the data storage array, and there is a high probability that there is a complete information carrier inside."
"Can you read it?"
"If the Heart of the Heavenly Craftsman can match the communication protocol of the carrier, remote reading will not be a problem."
Zhang Yan glanced at Nie Qingcheng sitting on the opposite sofa. She was scrolling through another document on her tablet with her finger when she looked up.
"Touching it might trigger the Abyss Eye's monitoring." Nie Qingcheng's tone was calm, as if she were saying that the weather was nice today. "That thing is currently in a dormant state, but that doesn't mean it has no perception threshold."
She pulled out a document and pushed it over.
Article 17, paragraph 3 of the Convention states, "No civilization may mine, move or destroy large prehistoric sites on a planet marked during the assessment period without authorization." Violators will be dealt with according to the assessment authority's decision.
Zhang Yan scanned it once.
"We will not mine, and we will not move."
Nie Qingcheng looked at him.
"But we have the right to conduct research," Zhang Yan said. "The convention does not prohibit 'observation' and 'data collection'."
Nie Qingcheng's lips twitched slightly, a curve Zhang Yan knew all too well, meaning "If you've thought it through, that's fine."
She put away her tablet, leaned back on the sofa, and shifted to a more comfortable position.
"Minimal intervention," she said, only four words.
Zhang Yan dialed Qin Xiao's number.
"Listen carefully, the entire team is not allowed to touch the base itself. Step back to 100 meters away to conduct non-invasive scanning and mapping. All sensors should reduce their power to passive receiving mode and are not allowed to actively transmit any detection signals."
"Understood," Qin Xiao replied readily. "Then what about the internal data?"
"I'll do it."
Nie Qingcheng added from the side, "After you're done, remove the sonar features from the base."
"Disguise it as ordinary seabed terrain." Zhang Yan nodded. "Observe the stars and prepare for remote coordination."
"Ready in position."
The communication was disconnected.
Zhang Yan stood up and walked towards the underground laboratory. Nie Qingcheng did not follow, but simply raised her hand to straighten the corner of his collar as he passed by.
The movements were as natural as breathing.
In the laboratory, Zhang Yan connected to the Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship, extending his consciousness to the depths of the distant sea.
Qin Xiao's team had retreated to a safe distance.
The base, silent for 30,000 years, remained still under the pressure of the deep sea, its surface untouched by the phosphorescence of the surrounding organisms—because it absorbed light itself.
When the perception of the Heart of Heaven touched the outer shell of the base, an extremely weak signal was captured.
It is not defensive.
It is a standby signal.
It's like a device that's been shut down for too long; the battery is long gone, but a chip on the motherboard is still maintaining a last bit of power.
Waiting to be awakened.
Zhang Yan did not rashly input energy.
He reduced the output of the Heavenly Craftsmanship to 0.01%, releasing only a very fine probe pulse.
The moment the pulse touched the surface of the base, something inside responded.
Like a sigh.
The system displays the recognition results.
[Compatible communication protocol detected.]
[Carrier type: Fourth-generation information crystal array.]
Data completeness: 17.3%.
[Remote access possible. Establish connection?]
17.3%.
After 30,000 years of wear and tear, less than one-fifth of the original data remains.
enough.
Zhang Yan chose to connect.
The Heavenly Craftsmanship Core establishes a reading channel as thin as a hair with the information carrier inside the base.
The data stream begins to transmit, but very slowly, like drawing water from a pipe that is mostly blocked.
Zhang Yan did not urge him.
Any acceleration could trigger abnormal fluctuations in the base, which could be captured by the Eye of the Abyss.
He just sat there and waited for forty-seven minutes.
Transmission complete.
Data extraction complete.
[Content Category: Technical Document (Incomplete)]
[Topic: Basic Materials Science of Doors - Third Phase Experiment Report]
Zhang Yan severed the connection, allowing the base to sink back into the silence of the deep sea.
He brought up the document and began browsing it.
The first half contains a list of material parameters and energy response curves. A large portion of the data is missing, but the experimental conclusions are retained.
The latter half is a highly complete set of notes, like a researcher's handwritten record.
Zhang Yan quickly grasped the core issue.
This node is not for combat or monitoring; it's for research.
Thirty thousand years ago, the Mohist civilization conducted an extremely cutting-edge experiment here, creating a door material that could "self-repair".
The goal is clear: to reduce the door's dependence on external maintainers and let the door take care of itself.
The experimental records were detailed.
They proposed a complete theoretical framework and conducted hundreds of material synthesis experiments. On the eighty-third attempt, they achieved a breakthrough and successfully synthesized an alloy matrix with self-healing properties.
Then it failed.
It wasn't a minor failure; it was catastrophic.
The handwriting on the last few pages of the notes was noticeably more illegible, recording the chain reaction of collapses that occurred after the alloy substrate was connected to the actual door.
The energy backlash destroyed the entire testing module, affecting three laboratories and resulting in the deaths of seventeen people.
The node is therefore rendered unusable.
The research was permanently shelved.
Zhang Yan read the analysis of the reasons for the failure three times.
"Insufficient startup energy", "Energy purity is below the critical threshold", "Once the self-healing process is started, it cannot accurately control the direction".
Three fatal flaws, each of which was unsolvable at the time.
But Zhang Yan was not disappointed after reading it.
He thought of something else.
The door is aging.
This is a ticking time bomb hanging overhead.
The self-sustaining model can last for three hundred years, but what about after three hundred years?
The door material itself is slowly deteriorating, and no one can guarantee that the next maintainer's awareness will be up to standard.
If the door can repair itself, this problem doesn't exist.
They failed 30,000 years ago because they did not have a sufficiently pure energy source.
Zhang Yan looked down at his chest.
The light of the Heart of Heaven's Craftsmanship pulsed steadily.
Having integrated the knowledge base of the previous generation, he knew better than anyone what quality of energy this core could output.
But being "pure enough" is one thing, while being "plenty enough" is another.
The energy required to activate self-healing is something that even the current Heavenly Craftsmanship Heart cannot sustain for long.
Zhang Yan packaged and encrypted the document, then left the lab.
When I went upstairs, Nie Qingcheng was pouring herself tea behind the bar.
She glanced at him.
"There's something here." Zhang Yan walked over and picked up a cup. "Thirty thousand years ago, they tried to make the door repair itself. The idea was right, but the energy couldn't withstand it, and it exploded."
Nie Qingcheng paused for a moment.
"Self-healing door?"
"The theory is complete, and the engineering solutions are all available. The only bottleneck is the purity and total amount of energy."
"Is that enough for you?"
Zhang Yan shook his head honestly: "Not at all."
Nie Qingcheng walked over to him with her teacup and leaned against the bar. Their shoulders were almost touching.
"But you're not alone," she said.
Zhang Yan looked at her without saying a word.
Nie Qingcheng took a sip of tea, and a message from Qin Xiao popped up on her tablet: "The base camouflage is complete, the sonar characteristics have been processed into ordinary underwater hills, and the entire team has safely evacuated."
Nie Qingcheng scrolled out the message and pulled up another set of data.
Energy spectrum analysis report of primordial fragments.
"The energy purity index of this thing," she pointed to a line of numbers, "how much does it differ from the 'critical threshold' you mentioned earlier?"
Zhang Yan looked down for three seconds.
My back is straight.