The call connected.
"Hello, who's speaking?" Lin Wanqiu's voice came through the receiver, calm as a freshly brewed cup of green tea, without the slightest ripple. She was sitting at a small outer desk in the logistics office of the Northwest Supply Point, her fingertips tapping lightly on the mainframe casing, checking the cache logs left after last night's stream.
Cheng Ye stood beside the SUV, sunlight slanting over his black combat uniform, the mechanical watch on his left wrist glinting faintly. He did not look around, only stared at the half-open iron gate ahead, as if he could see the person inside through the gap.
"I'm looking for Lin Wanqiu," he said. "I have a few questions to confirm in person regarding the streaming equipment you used yesterday."
"Oh, that's me," Lin Wanqiu replied, her tone still steady. "May I ask who's calling?"
"Cheng Ye, Special Operations Division of the National Security Bureau," he stated his identity calmly. "Temporary investigation permit number XJ-9027. It can be verified through the supply point authority system."
There was a pause of less than two seconds.
"Please come in," she said. "I'll wait for you in the outer room."
The door was unlocked. Places like this were rarely locked — the sandstorms in the Gobi were fierce, and locks tended to rust solid. When Cheng Ye pushed the door open, he saw Lin Wanqiu had already stood up, holding a tablet and swiping quickly across the screen. She wore light gray modified hanfu, with bamboo patterns stitched along the cuffs, and a bronze hairpin in her hair — simple in style, but clearly well-polished.
The streaming mainframe sat on the table, its casing showing obvious signs of handcrafting, with several strips of colored tape around the ports, as if it had been repaired many times. Beside it was a pothos plant, its leaves tilted about fifteen degrees south, its roots placed in an old mineral water bottle.
"I've already checked your credentials," Lin Wanqiu set the tablet aside. "To be honest, it's my first time seeing someone from the National Security Bureau show up over 'equipment static.'"
Cheng Ye took off his sunglasses and put them away. His gaze was steady, not so much examining her as measuring spatial distance.
"It's not just about static," he said. "The time and place where it happened were somewhat unusual."
"Unusual enough to send the Special Operations Division?" She raised an eyebrow, her tone less skeptical than curious.
"We detected an abnormal energy pulse in Area A-7 six minutes before your broadcast ended," Cheng Ye said, pulling an encrypted card from his inner pocket and inserting it into the desktop reader. "The frequency matched the output of your mainframe's wireless module, but the intensity exceeded the theoretical limit by more than 300 times."
Lin Wanqiu glanced at the mainframe, then back at him.
"So you suspect my equipment has been modified?"
"All possibilities are open for now," he answered crisply. "But I'm not here to seize or take away the device. I only want to understand the details — like the static you mentioned. When did it start?"
She sat back in her chair, her fingers unconsciously brushing the ventilation holes on the side of the mainframe.
"Three days ago," she said. "It lasted about ten seconds each time I turned it on, like noise from an old radio tuning. I thought it was aging wiring. I opened it up twice to check, found no short circuits or swollen capacitors."
"What about the most recent occurrence?"
"Right before the broadcast ended last night," she recalled. "About five seconds after I finished talking about the tensile structure of Warring States bamboo slips. Then it stopped."
Cheng Ye's gaze fell on the audio output port of the mainframe.
Five seconds. That exactly matched the duration of the energy pulse captured by the high-altitude sensors.
He said nothing, only walked to the mainframe, opened his portable detection kit, and took out a palm-sized spectrometer.
"May I perform a non-destructive scan?" he asked.
Lin Wanqiu stared at the instrument for two seconds. "Yes. But please don't disassemble the core module. I need it for my next stream tomorrow."
"Only the wireless transmission unit," he nodded, placing the probe near the antenna base.
The screen lit up, and the waveform rolled slowly. At first, everything was normal — until the frequency jumped to the 3.14 GHz range, where the reflected signal suddenly burst into a set of regular spikes.
Unknown substance resonance detected
Analyzing composition… No database match
Recommended magnification
Cheng Ye frowned and switched to microscopic imaging mode. When the image was magnified ten times, several translucent crystals appeared in the gaps of the antenna base, arranged in an extremely regular hexagonal cluster. Each was less than 0.2 millimeters in diameter, nearly invisible to the naked eye.
But he knew this was not dust.
Nor was it solder residue.
These crystals had directional resonance properties, and their lattice angles were completely different from standard silicon-based materials. They seemed embedded in the metal gaps by some high-precision method, positioned far too accurately to be accidental.
"Have you ever noticed this before?" he asked, pointing at the screen.
Lin Wanqiu leaned closer for a look. "No. This thing… was it inside the whole time?"
"It should have attached recently," he said. "And not by physical welding or adhesion. More like… it grew directly in place."
She did not laugh or show surprise. She only touched the mainframe casing softly and murmured: "No wonder the wind was so strong that day. I thought sand had gotten into the circuit board."
Cheng Ye put away the instrument and fell silent for a few seconds.
He now had two choices: one, report immediately, activate Level 1 isolation procedures, and bring the mainframe back to the underground data center; two, continue observation to see if any other variables remained unidentified.
He chose the latter.
Because his intuition told him the real problem was not the device itself.
It was the person using it.
"Ms. Lin," he put away the spectrometer, "other than the static, did you sense anything unusual during the stream? For example, overheating, lag, or hearing voices that weren't your own?"
Lin Wanqiu shook her head. "No. Everything proceeded as usual. I also checked the replay. Clean audio, stable picture."
"Did you notice that the pothos leaves sway slightly when you speak about certain knowledge points?"
She froze for a moment, then turned to look at the plant.
"You mean the way it tilts?" She actually smiled. "I know you saw that in the monitoring data. But it's just an old issue — ever since I repotted this pothos three months ago, it's been leaning south. I tried turning the pot, blocking the light, nothing worked. A botanist friend said it was probably uneven root distribution causing a center-of-gravity shift."
Cheng Ye looked into her eyes.
She was explaining, but she did not look away.
Nor did she panic.
She even joked: "You don't think it's an alien signal receiver, do you?"
Yet it was this calmness that convinced him further — she truly had no idea what she was doing.
He looked down at his watch. The hands pointed to 13:22.
Thirty-seven minutes had passed since he left the underground garage.
The USB drive was still in his inner pocket. The report remained unuploaded.
He took a deep breath and decided to push one step further.
"May I remove the shield and take a look?" he asked. "I'll put it back within ten minutes. It won't affect your later use."
Lin Wanqiu hesitated for two seconds.
"Okay," she said. "But you must promise not to damage the original structure. This is a modified frame left by my father. I don't want it altered beyond recognition."
"Understood." He nodded. "I just want to find out how these crystals formed."
He put on anti-static gloves and carefully removed four fixing screws with a tiny screwdriver. Once loose, he lifted the shield slightly. The internal circuit board was exposed, neatly wired, with clear hand-soldered marks.
And right beneath the antenna base, the microcrystals lay quietly embedded in the metal gaps, glowing with an extremely faint blue light, flickering slowly as if breathing.
Cheng Ye held his breath, used tweezers to place one sample into a sealed tube, and activated the portable mass spectrometer.
Preliminary judgment: Non-terrestrial natural formation
Lattice contains unknown element T-7
Energy absorption peak concentrated at 3.14–3.15 GHz
It perfectly covered the civilian Wi-Fi main band.
And it was exactly the signal frequency he had monitored.
He set down the instrument and turned his gaze back to the mainframe.
This device had no modification records, a standard civilian motherboard, and only 1 watt of power. Theoretically, its signal could not even reach the next tent.
Yet it had indeed sent a detectable energy pulse 500 kilometers into the sky.
And the trigger seemed to be a specific moment after Lin Wanqiu spoke certain sentences.
More importantly, these crystals appeared on her device, not someone else's.
Why her?
Why this stream about bamboo slip accounting, of all things?
He suddenly remembered a line she had said during the broadcast:
"Carving depth affects information retention; quantitative standards existed as early as the Warring States Period."
A completely ordinary technical statement.
But what if… these crystals were receiving some kind of response?
Not one-way transmission, but two-way communication?
Like an old walkie-talkie, quietly connecting to the other side without anyone noticing.
He abruptly looked up at Lin Wanqiu.
She was tidying the cables, her movements skilled, her focus complete — completely unaware that every word she had just spoken might have been heard, analyzed, and answered by some distant existence.
In that moment, a thought flashed through Cheng Ye's mind:
She was not the signal source.
She was the bridge.
A bridge that did not even know what it was connecting.
He slowly closed the shield, tightened the screws, and pushed the mainframe back into place.
"Done," he said. "Inspection complete. No further procedures needed for now."
Lin Wanqiu looked up at him. "What's the conclusion? Are those crystals dangerous?"
"So far, they don't appear harmful to humans," he replied. "But I suggest you avoid using the equipment in strong sandstorms recently. These particles may spread and attach through airflow."
She nodded and asked no more questions.
The two walked out of the testing room back to the outer area. Sunlight slanted through the window onto the pothos in the corner, its leaves still tilted fifteen degrees south.
"Thank you for your cooperation." Cheng Ye stood still and handed her a contact card. "If the equipment acts up again, contact me immediately."
Lin Wanqiu took the card, glanced at it, and slipped it into the hidden pocket of her sleeve.
"Don't be too nervous," she said suddenly. "I've run into strange things a lot over the years doing popular science. Last time I streamed salt crystallization at Qinghai Lake, viewers said they saw moving geometric shapes on the water. It turned out to be a visual illusion from light refraction and fish movements."
Cheng Ye's mouth twitched faintly, almost a smile.
"But this time is different," he said. "No one saw shapes this time. But we received a response."
She froze.
"A response? From who?"
"Not yet certain." He turned toward the door. "But one thing I know for sure — your equipment isn't malfunctioning."
He pulled open the iron gate, and sand and wind rushed toward him.
"It's the content you spoke about that turned the impossible into possible."
The door closed behind him.
Lin Wanqiu stood there, staring at the quietly waiting mainframe, her fingertips brushing lightly along the edge of the ventilation holes.
Five minutes later, she restarted the device and ran a self-test.
System status: Normal
Wireless module: Pass
Cache data: Intact
External attachment scan: No abnormalities
The static did not return.
She closed the interface, unplugged the power cable, and prepared to pack it into her bag.
Outside the window, a black SUV slowly drove away from the supply point, dust trailing a thin gray line in the sunlight.
She did not watch the vehicle. She only checked the zipper of her equipment bag to make sure it was locked.
Then she opened her tablet and created a new document.
The title read:
Tomorrow's Script — The Mechanical Wisdom of Mortise-and-Tenon Structures
The cursor blinked.
She typed the first line:
"Today we'll talk about the most basic connection method in ancient Chinese architecture."
Midway through, she suddenly stopped and turned to look at the pothos.
Its leaves were still tilted south.
But she could have sworn she had turned it straight that morning.