Chu Xinghe narrowed his eyes. He recognized the equipment from modern archaeological reference books. It was a military-grade Ground Penetrating Radar, a tool used to scan anomalous structures deep beneath the earth's surface. The grey-haired old man stared at the monitor held by his assistant. Within seconds, his facial expression shifted drastically. He tapped his tablet screen repeatedly, as if he could not believe the data he was seeing.
"General!" the old man shouted to the military commander standing nearby. His voice rang out loudly, cutting through the surrounding cacofony. "Order your men to pull back from this impact point! Now!"
The commander furrowed his brow and stepped closer. "What is it, Professor Chen? Is that object emitting toxic radiation?"
"It's not radiation!" Professor Chen pointed at the monitor screen with a trembling hand. "This thing... this giant furnace didn't just crash into the ground. It landed exactly on top of a massive underground structure. There is a man-made cavity forty meters deep directly beneath this layer of asphalt and mud!"
Xinghe sharpened his hearing. A man-made cavity beneath the commercial port of Guangzhou? That made no sense. The city government had conducted massive dredging and infrastructure development in this area for decades. If there were historical structures down there, construction workers would have found them long ago.
The military commander looked at the scanner screen. His face tightened. "A man-made cavity? Are you certain this isn't just a natural cave or a fault line caused by last night's impact?"
"No!" Professor Chen countered firmly. He swiped through the three-dimensional display on his screen. "Natural caves do not have perfectly precise octagonal geometric shapes. And look at this; the base of the bronze furnace has crushed the hard rock layer and stopped exactly above that cavity formation. It is as if... as if this object intentionally anchored itself there."
Chu Xinghe's eyes widened slightly. He looked at the giant bronze furnace once more. The object had come from outer space, carrying nine giant corpses, creating a tsunami, and landing precisely on a specific point that hid an ancient underground structure. This was perhaps a landing of absolute target coordinates.
"Bring the excavators and sonic drills here!" the military commander ordered through his communication radio. "We will dig around the edges of this impact crater. Open a path to that underground cavity!"
In just twenty minutes, four medium-sized excavator units modified for military terrain arrived at the scene. Diesel engines roared loudly. Iron arms began to dredge the thick mud and concrete asphalt that had been destroyed by last night's impact. The excavation process was fast and crude. The military did not care about historical preservation at this moment; they only wanted answers as quickly as possible.
Mud and rock were cleared to the outer sides. A large crack gaping beneath one of the legs of the bronze furnace began to appear more clearly. The crack widened to form a dark, vertical hole. A blast of cold wind rushed out of the hole, carrying the scent of dry earth, stone dust, and something that smelled like rusted metal buried for thousands of years.
Professor Chen and his team immediately put on protective masks and turned on high-powered headlamps. They peered into the excavated hole. Xinghe moved forward slowly, ignoring the yellow boundary tape already trampled by mud. He wanted to see what was down there.
"Incredible," Professor Chen muttered. His voice was caught by the small microphone on his collar and broadcast through the portable speakers at the command tent. "This is cut stone. Giant blocks of stone arranged with precision without using mortar. Military, we need lighting down there."
The military commander immediately gave instructions, but a sergeant shook his head slowly. "General, the vehicles carrying the generators and giant searchlights cannot get through the thick mud on this path. Their wheels are stuck. We can only use large battery-powered portable lights, but we are short on personnel because most of the troops are searching for victims in the east block."
The general rubbed his face roughly. His eyes then swept over the crowd of civilians gathered not far from the excavation limit. Hundreds of civilians stood with intense curiosity, taking photos and recording the event.
"Hey, you lot!" the sergeant shouted as he walked toward the crowd. "We need assistance. Those of you who are young, healthy, and uninjured. We need people to carry portable generators and halogen lamp stands down to the crater. Who is willing to go down?"
The crowd of civilians looked at one another. Going down into a dark hole beneath a giant object that fell from the sky did not sound safe. However, for some, the curiosity and the urge to see closer were much greater than their fear.
Chu Xinghe immediately stepped forward through the crowd. "I'll go."
Li Wei, standing behind him, immediately widened his eyes and pulled at Xinghe's jacket. "Are you crazy? We don't know what's down there! What if that hole collapses?"
"Cut stone without mortar has structural stability stronger than modern concrete if arranged with proper gravitational principles," Xinghe replied calmly. He brushed off Li Wei's hand. "I have to see what this earth is hiding."
Zhao Lin saw Xinghe step forward, and his pride was instantly ignited. He did not want to be outdone by a youth he considered beneath him. Moreover, this was a golden opportunity to get exclusive video content from inside the discovery site.
"I'm going too!" Zhao Lin raised his hand high. He turned to his two guards. "You two, follow me. Carry those heavy things."
Han Dong, Fang Hua, and Lin Mei, already piqued by curiosity, finally stepped forward as well. Xin Yan and Yun Hai, feeling unsafe if left alone among the crowd of strangers, were forced to follow Li Wei's group, who ended up grumbling while catching up to Xinghe.
The military sergeant distributed lightweight reflective vests, surgical masks, and thick gloves to about thirty civilian volunteers, including Xinghe's group. They were directed toward a military truck parked some distance away. There, they lifted large battery boxes, thick cable reels, and tripod halogen lamp devices.
Chu Xinghe lifted a thirty-kilogram battery box onto his shoulder with ease. Li Wei puffed heavily as he carried a lamp stand along with Han Dong. Zhao Lin, of course, ordered his two guards to carry the heaviest equipment while he only carried a small spotlight.
"Follow the path secured by the engineering team," the sergeant instructed. "Do not touch the dirt walls, do not smoke, and if you hear a cracking sound, run back up immediately."
The group began moving down the steep mud slope toward the large crack beneath the bronze furnace. The air felt increasingly cold as they stepped into the earth's fissure. The grey sunlight above them was slowly blocked by the shadow of the incredibly large bronze furnace leg.
Xinghe walked in the front line, right behind a few soldiers and research assistants. The walls of the excavation hole were initially just red soil and asphalt remains, but after descending about fifteen meters, the view changed drastically. The dirt walls were replaced by an arrangement of very neatly cut granite stone blocks. Each stone was the size of a van.
They arrived at a wide corridor that descended diagonally. This corridor was clearly not a natural formation. Dust swirled as the soldiers in front began to turn on the first portable lights. The bright white light swept through the darkness, revealing a very magnificent underground tunnel.
"Hurry, set up the lights along the walls," the soldiers ordered the civilian volunteers.
Xinghe placed his battery box at the designated spot. He connected the cables quickly, then stood tall and stared ahead. This tunnel culminated in a very vast artificial cave room. In the center of the room, the bottom-most part of the giant bronze furnace was visible, piercing through the stone cave ceiling, breaking part of the room's upper structure, but stopping in a very symmetrical position in the middle of the underground formation.
Xinghe stepped slowly into the vast room. Professor Chen and his team of archaeologists were already inside, busy illuminating the walls and structures around them. Inside the room stood eight giant stone pillars. Each pillar had a diameter of at least five meters and towered high, supporting the remaining cave ceiling. These eight pillars circled the central area where the bronze furnace had fallen. Their positions formed a precise octagonal formation.
"Halogen lights, aim at pillar number one on the east side!" Professor Chen shouted with exploding enthusiasm.
Han Dong and Li Wei immediately set up a lamp stand near the designated pillar and turned it on. The bright light illuminated the stone pillar's surface. Everyone in the room fell silent. The surface of the stone pillar was not plain. Its entire part from the base to the top was filled with ancient carvings and symbols. However, these were not just ordinary decorative images.
Chu Xinghe walked toward the pillar, ignoring the military sergeant's call to step back. His eyes were fixed on the rows of characters carved deep into the stone surface. The strokes were very stiff, straight, and sharp-angled, resembling cracks on a burnt tortoise shell.
"This is... Jiaguwen," Xinghe murmured softly. His eyes traced the symbols. Oracle Bone Script, the oldest recognized form of Chinese writing, a heritage from the Shang Dynasty. Xinghe was very familiar with this script. His grandfather had once forced him to memorize hundreds of Jiaguwen symbols from a worn leather book when he was only twelve years old.
Professor Chen, standing not far from Xinghe, turned in surprise. "Young man, you recognize this script?"
Xinghe did not look at the Professor. His focus was entirely sucked in by the writing on the stone pillar. He felt the shallow carvings. "This is the character for 'Heaven,' but it is written upside down. And next to it... this isn't an ordinary character. It is a combination of the symbols for 'Prison' and 'Void'."
Professor Chen immediately moved closer, directing his thick glasses at the carving pointed out by Xinghe. "You are right. This is an extremely rare ancient dialect variation. This pillar tells of a vessel or space that locks something away. But look at the pattern."
Professor Chen pointed to another carving at the bottom of the pillar. There was an abstract depiction of wavy lines representing the sea, and above it, an image of nine curved lines tied together toward a single central point.
Xinghe's mind spun fast. Nine curved lines tied toward a single point. He looked up, staring toward the base of the giant bronze furnace piercing the cave roof right in the middle of this eight-pillar formation. On the earth's surface up there, nine giant corpses of dragons and birds were tied by chains to the bronze furnace.
"They already knew," Xinghe whispered, feeling a chill creep up his neck. "The people of the Shang Dynasty era... they didn't build this as an underground temple. They built this as a landing pad."
Zhao Lin, who had just parked a spotlight in the corner of the room, laughed dismissively. He approached while turning on his phone camera. "A landing pad for what? A UFO pad? Don't start babbling about your ancient alien conspiracy theories here, Xinghe. This is clearly just an old ancestral worship site that happened to be hit by debris from outer space."
"Space debris does not have carvings that resonate with its landing pad, Zhao Lin," Xinghe replied without turning. He walked away from the first pillar and toward the second pillar on the southeast side of the room.
The portable flashlight in Xinghe's hand shone brightly, illuminating the second pillar. The symbols on this pillar were different from the first. They were no longer orderly Jiaguwen characters, but rather large-scale mural images carved with terrifying detail. The mural depicted a sky being split open.
Inside the split in the sky were giant figures with many arms and eyes staring down. On the land, mortal humans were depicted burning, while several other human figures depicted with halos of light around their bodies flew through the clouds to fight against the figures from the split in the sky.
"A battle," Xinghe murmured. He continued to trace the pillar. At the very bottom of the mural, the figures with halos were depicted defeated and falling. Their bodies were then placed into an object shaped like a giant three-legged cauldron. The cauldron was then pulled by nine dragons and disappeared into the darkness.
Xinghe took a step back. His breathing was slightly hurried. The story on this pillar was very specific. This was not a myth of the world's creation. This was a historical record of a crushing defeat. And the cauldron depicted in the ancient mural thousands of years ago was now right several meters above their heads.
"Professor," called one of the young archaeologists from the north pillar. His voice trembled with panic and awe simultaneously. "You have to see this. The material of this pillar... the spectrum scanner detects that this is not ordinary stone. Its mineral composition is not in the earth's periodic table. Its age... our radiometric carbon dating machines cannot read it. It shows numbers that exceed the limit of billions of years."