On an uninhabited desert.
Two rovers driving from a distance merged together.
Han Kangyu opened the car door and jumped out. He looked at Sun Wenzhe approaching him. Han Kangyu was wearing a spacesuit. He strode forward and asked with an anxious expression on his face, “Did you find him?”
With a solemn expression in his eyes, Sun Wenzhe shook his head.
“Nope. I’ve searched everywhere nearby. I can’t even find the crack where he fell… What about you? Did you find any clues?”
After hearing the bad news, Han Kangyu had an ugly look on his face.
“Nothing on my side either.”
He searched almost every corner he could find; he even ventured a short distance toward the inside of The Gates of Hell mountains. However, the result was just like what his teammate Sun Wenzhe said, he couldn’t even find a crack in the ground, let alone a person.
A pessimistic mood gradually emerged from his heart, and he began to wonder whether the missing Fan Tong was still alive.
“This is not good…”
Sun Wenzhe wiped off the sand sticking to the mask of the spacesuit. He looked at the overlapping mountains nearby with a headache. “It’s too unrealistic for us to search everywhere… What’s the situation with the headquarters? Didn’t the captain apply for support?”
“No support.” Han Kangyu shook his head and said gravely, “The ground command center wants us to use all the resources available on site to search and rescue. Apart from the already deployed equipment on Mars, they have no way to support us.”
“That is to say, there is no support?” Sun Wenzhe sighed. “But then again… It’s a two-week voyage. Even if it arrives, he’ll probably be gone by then.”
Equipment already deployed on Mars…
Except for the several space probes that were deployed a long time ago, they didn’t have many useful pieces of equipment deployed on Mars.
Han Kangyu looked solemnly at the time on the wrist-mounted computer. His eyebrows couldn’t help but show a trace of sadness.
Almost five hours had passed.
The hope of survival diminished with every passing minute.
However, just as the two were discussing how to proceed with the rescue work, an unnatural black spot appeared behind the rolling red sand.
As the black spot approached closer, its outline gradually appeared in their eyes.
The moment they saw the outline, the two were immediately dumbfounded.
They saw the culprit who made them worry for more than five hours riding an unmanned automated survey vehicle.
“Thank you.”
Fan Tong patted the roof of the survey vehicle lightly before jumping off the roof. His body was dirty, as if he had fallen into a coal mine.
The camera on the head of the car nodded up and down. It then turned around and headed back into the desert.
Fan Tong watched the unmanned reconnaissance vehicle that probably belonged to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study. He then looked at his two dumbfounded teammates and gradually showed a trace of shame on his face. He lowered his head and spoke.
“Sorry for making you guys worried.”
“Do you know what I want to do right now?” Han Kangyu’s eyes were fixed on Fan Tong as he said, “I want to punch you in the face.”
“I know, I want to punch myself too… But now is not the time to say this.” The ashamed expression on his face gradually became complicated. Fan Tong took a deep breath and continued with a smile, “I have important findings to report.”
…
Mars Scientific Research Station
The activity room was used as a temporary meeting room. Fan Tong, who was dressed in casual clothes, sat at the meeting table with four of his teammates. He told all of his experiences in the underground world in a straightforward manner.
After listening to his story, everyone, including Captain Liang Youcheng, was stunned.
Martian civilization?
Holy Relic?
This sounds like a sci-fi blockbuster…
“You mean… You saw an alien under the ground?” Liang Youcheng reached out and pinched his eyebrow. He sorted out his chaotic thoughts and continued, “But this voice is not from a Martian. They came from outside the solar system. They have been alive hundreds of millions of years, and they told you that a civilization once existed here?”
Sun Wenzhe, who had been silent, suddenly spoke.
“Apparently, people may suffer from hallucinations in extreme environments.”
“I swear it was not a hallucination,” Fan Tong said with a serious tone. His teammates had obvious looks of disbelief on their faces as he continued, “We introduced ourselves to each other. It also talked about the civilization that once existed on this planet… that is, the Martians. In fact, I did find evidence of the existence of a Martian civilization in the ground. I passed through a corridor, and there were two sides inside the corridor. It was like a coffin, and it claimed it was the ‘Holy Relic’.”
Sun Wenzhe caught a key piece of information, and he asked immediately, “What about the samples? Don’t tell me you didn’t take any samples of this.”
“It’s in the sample library, but if you want to extract the DNA, I think you should give up on this idea. Apart from the barely recognizable row of ‘coffins’, most of the materials have been weathered into biomass clastic rocks. Although it has not been tested for isotopes, I can infer from experience that the age of those biomass clastics is probably older than the trilobite fossils.”
Sun Wenzhe: “You never know until you try.”
“It’s up to you. This is your area of expertise anyway.”
Liang Youcheng saw Fan Tong lean back on the chair. He frowned as he spoke.
“Let’s not talk about the Martian civilization first… Are you sure you were underground and saw another civilization?”
“No, not exactly. The situation was very strange. I could feel that he was nearby, but maybe he was hiding. I couldn’t find him at all. He connected directly to my communication channel. He even spoke standard Mandarin with me. Oh yeah, I also ran into an invisible wall there. The place felt evil… Don’t look at me that way! I swear on my academic reputation that it was not an illusion.”
“Forget about it, look at the evidence.”
Fan Tong took the wrist-mounted computer off his arm and tossed it on the conference table.
Han Kangyu looked at the wrist-mounted computer and asked, “What is this?”
“I mentioned this earlier. After the friendly remarks, we each asked each other a question. I asked who he was, and he gave me a math problem… This is it.”
Fan Tong had already opened the information panel in the wrist-mounted computer and read the text message.
The five people sitting at the conference table moved closer.
Xiao Hong, the electrical engineer who had not spoken yet, spoke with a weird expression.
“This looks like a high-level math problem.”
Sun Wenzhe, who was standing next to him, gave him a wry smile.
“This thing is not a high-level math problem.”
Liang Youcheng looked at him immediately.
“You can do it?”
Han Kangyu interrupted suddenly, “If I remember correctly, this is the ABC conjecture?”
“Yes, it’s the ABC conjecture.” Sun Wenzhe looked at the four teammates in the conference room with different expressions. He nodded with a complex expression. “We have no hope of solving it.
“But… No one on Earth can solve it either.”
