The situation was critical.
Fan Tong only had three options.
One was to use his bare hands to fight against the rock formations, the other was to climb a 20-meter deep pit in five seconds…
Or cut the rope and fall.
It only took him a second to make a decision. He immediately unlocked the hook on his waist.
In fact, his judgment was correct.
The closing rock walls didn’t give him five seconds at all. It was at most three seconds before the rock formations cut off the light from above…
It seemed like the best decision at the time.
However, half an hour later, Fan Tong began to regret his decision.
The situation he was facing now, apart from being able to keep his corpse intact, did not seem to be any better than being squashed. He had been walking for almost half an hour, yet this cave seemed to have no end, making it impossible to see any hope.
“F*ck… This is like a maze.”
I should have been more careful, but it is too late to say those things.
There was a slight tremor from the ground.
The place where he had fallen was already buried by the rock walls. Fan Tong took a deep breath and calmed himself down as much as possible.
In order to make himself feel less frustrated, he tried to convince himself that this was just a scientific expedition.
“The silty quartzite… It’s not hematite anymore. I didn’t expect to find such an interesting site here.
“What is this? Biomass clastic rock?”
This is an incredible discovery.
The frustration in his eyes was gradually replaced by a touch of excitement. With the multifunctional shovel in his hand, Fan Tong carefully knocked out some samples without damaging the rock.
As he looked at the treasure in his sample bag, the excitement in his eyes grew stronger.
“… It would be great if half-life testing could be done here. Then I could determine the age of the sedimentary layer in this area.”
If the current situation was better, he really wanted to share this happiness with other researchers in the base.
After packing up the tools and samples, he began to move forward along the cave.
Although doing these things did not increase his probability of surviving, at least… in the case of his unfortunate death, these valuable research materials would become a scientific research heritage.
Of course, if someone could find his body…
The path ahead was getting harder and harder to traverse.
He had to go in and out of several pathways before he found the real pathway.
He rested for a while, drank some liquid food, and looked at the few supplies left. He couldn’t help but feel a little depressed.
But what was interesting was that he noticed a phenomenon along the way. The core of Mars had cooled, but as he walked deep into the abyss, the surrounding temperature increased by about 5 degrees.
Although the surrounding environment was still very cold, it at least brought some comfort.
After recording these bits and pieces of discoveries, Fan Tong got up and moved on after taking a break.
The passage became narrower, it took a lot of effort to squeeze through.
He gradually began to wonder if he had gone the wrong way when a deep pit about five meters wide suddenly appeared in front of him.
The laser ranging showed that the depth below should be about 10 to 20 meters, which was exactly the same as the situation he encountered before.
He stood at the edge of the pit as a touch of hesitation appeared on his face.
What do I do?
Go down, or find another way?
If I continue to go down, I’ll be in a deeper location, and the hope of someone collecting my body will be even slimmer.
However, even if I didn’t go down, the people at the research station probably won’t be able to dig my body from 20 meters underground.
He thought back to the maze-like path he had walked before and felt his scalp itch.
He realized that the situation could not be worse than it was now. He finally gritted his teeth and made a decision. With the help of the multifunctional shovel in his hand, he bravely slid down the pit in front of him.
He slid down the nearly vertical pit.
His feet touched the ground and felt something unexpected.
Maybe…
This is the real “bottom”?
While Fan Tong was thinking, he stood up and looked forward. His whole body froze.
He followed the light from his flashlight and looked at the steep corridor in front of him. It took him a long time to digest the shock in his heart. He managed to squeeze out a word from his mouth.
“F*ck!
“This… is a f*cking… bunker!”
A set of red-brown stone steles about two meters high stood on both sides of the corridor, connecting the ceiling and the ground. Intricate patterns were exposed on the surface of the stele. Although it had been damaged to a certain extent, there was still a trace of carving on the surface.
Everything in front of him could no longer be explained by simple geology.
No matter from which angle he looked at it, it was not natural.
It was a work of art…
A pile of artworks located in the ancient ruins…
Fan Tong pointed the flashlight and the camera on his helmet at the row of sculpture-like cultural relics. He pressed the shutter frantically.
If it wasn’t for the lack of signal, he would have reported everything he saw here back to the base station.
All of the discoveries on the previous journey were inferior to what he found here.
There were traces of civilized activity in Mars underground!
Human civilization was not the only one in the universe!
They were not alone!
He couldn’t imagine what kind of sensation this news would cause on Earth if it were made public. The excitement of discovering the treasure made him tempted to shout out loud.
“The material is the same as the sand outside, it has been weathered into hematite!
“A totem of the Martian civilization? Or some kind of artifact for religious ceremonies? Or some kind of handicraft…
“Wait a second…”
There was a slight itch in his mouth. When he fumbled and found a damaged stone monument, he tried to knock off the oxide layer on the surface with the multifunctional tool he carried. He found that the inside of the stone monument was not completely composed of hematite.
It was the opposite…
The material was calcium carbonate, which contained almost no iron.
“Calcium carbonate… No, this should be some kind of biomass fossil, it may be very old. It looks older than the trilobite fossils on Earth.”
Fan Tong carefully sampled five rock particles of equal size from the inside and put them in the sample bag for preservation.
“… I didn’t expect that I would become an archaeologist.”
The outside was hematite and the inside was biomass fossils. He inferred that the outer shell of this thing should be some kind of iron-based alloy material and some kind of living thing was sealed inside like a coffin.
His intuition told him that this place might be similar to a cemetery.
Although there were other interpretations, this was undoubtedly the most likely one.
Fan Tong grabbed the multifunctional shovel in his hand and continued along this ominous corridor. Although the shovel in his hands didn’t bring him a sense of security, it was better than nothing.
Contrary to the situation he encountered before, as he continued to walk into the corridor, the road ahead suddenly became wider.
When he stepped into a spacious “hall”, he instantly felt a sense of relief.
However, just as he was about to move forward, he unexpectedly discovered that his knee seemed to be against an invisible wall, and he was unable to take a step forward.
Just as he was groping on the invisible wall in front of him in confusion, a strange scene suddenly happened.
His wrist-mounted computer suddenly received full bars of signal.
When Fan Tong noticed the flashing signal light, he restarted the communication module.
A series of noisy electric currents soon came from the communication channel.
Just as he looked disappointedly at the signal on the wrist-mounted computer, thinking that it was probably some kind of naturally formed electromagnetic wave, a sound suddenly rang in his headset.
“Ahem.
“… Can you hear me?”
