FWF Chapter 212 Historical Retrospection
Chapter 212 Historical Retrospection
After Zhao Wenbo left, Zuo Cheng did not open the box immediately.
He placed the box on the table, washed his face, and waited in the break room for the coffee machine to finish brewing a cup of black coffee. By the time he returned to his office with the cup, it was already bright outside, and people were starting to walk down the corridor.
He closed the door, sat back down at the table, and picked up the small, dark gray box. He positioned it with the connector facing up, aiming it at the computer card reader.
The data in the box began to be read. After about three minutes, a file directory popped up on the screen. It wasn't a video, but a complete set of documents. The folders were named by year, from 2004 to 2020, sixteen folders in total, each containing dozens of files: notes, photos, analysis reports, experimental data, and scanned copies of manuscripts.
The topmost folder has only two words in its name: Origin.
Zuo Cheng clicked on it.
The first document was a geological exploration report dated August 2004. It was signed by Chen Xinghe, who at the time was a researcher at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The report's content was standard: a survey of the deep geological structure of the Taklamakan Basin, project number, sampling point coordinates, and core analysis data. However, on page thirty-seven, there was a note circled in red.
At a depth of 302 meters, the drill bit encountered unusual resistance. The material is unknown.
Attached below are several photos. These are core samples, magnified 100 times under a microscope. The cross-section of the core does not show the texture of natural rock, but rather a regular honeycomb structure. The accompanying label states: man-made material, inorganic non-metallic, harder than diamond.
In September 2004, the second report was submitted. Chen Xinghe applied for special funding to increase the drilling depth from 300 meters to 350 meters. When the drill reached 312 meters, the drill bit broke through the edge of the artificial material and fell into a cavity.
The cavity is seventeen meters high.
Zuo Cheng turned to the next page. The photo showed the interior of the hollow space; the light shining down only illuminated a small area. What was clearly visible were the floor and walls, all made of the same material, emitting a faint blue light. It wasn't fluorescence, nor phosphorescence; the material itself was glowing. It was as if some kind of energy was slowly being released from within the walls.
Chen Xinghe wrote a sentence under the photo: This is not from Earth.
The following documents document his four-year solo investigation. Isotope dating, along with uranium-lead, potassium-argon, and rubidium-strontium methods, were cross-validated by three independent laboratories, and the conclusions were consistent. The cave was estimated to have been built approximately four billion years ago, with an error margin of plus or minus fifty million years.
He wrote this conclusion on the last page of the report, with only one line below it. I can't explain it.
In 2008, a medical report appeared in the folder. Chen Xinghe's health had begun to deteriorate. The initial symptom was trembling fingers, which later progressed to unsteady gait, and then difficulty speaking. The diagnosis was progressive neurodegenerative disease of unknown cause.
He wrote something in his notebook that year: "I went to that cave six times. Each time I went in, I felt something watching me. Not a threat, but a kind of waiting. It was waiting for someone. Not me."
In 2010, a company called Chenxing Technology was registered in Beijing. The registered capital came from all of Chen Xinghe's savings.
In 2012, Chenxing Technology's first product, a neural signal acquisition chip, successfully completed its tape-out. Its performance parameters were three times that of similar products on the market at the time. The industry was shaken. Someone asked Chen Xinghe, "How did you come up with this technical approach?" He replied, "It wasn't something I came up with; it was something I saw."
In 2015, Chenxing Technology changed its name to Xingchen Technology. In the same year, the NX series of nano-neural patches was launched.
In September 2016, the first batch of NX-07 patches entered clinical trials. Zuo Cheng's name was on the list of applicants.
Zuo Cheng paused for a long time when he saw this page. It turned out that everything had been arranged from the moment he lay down on the operating table, starting with NX-07. Chen Xinghe hadn't chosen the test subjects randomly. He was waiting for someone who could understand his design to appear in the technical report.
In 2018, Chen Xinghe's condition worsened to the point where he was unable to work. In his final internal memo, he wrote three things: First, hand over the company's daily operations to Zhao Wenbo. Second, archive the core technical documents, retaining only three product lines for continued iteration until a successor takes over. Third, record a video message as his last words.
The last line of the memo read: "I've held the fort for fourteen years; it's time to hand over the reins."
Zuo Cheng browsed through all sixteen folders, then opened the last one. The folder was named "Leave it to the Heir."
There are only two files inside.
The first was a hand-drawn map. Drawn in pencil, it marked the precise coordinates of the cave in the Taklamakan Desert. Next to it were the access routes: how long it would take to drive from the nearest road to the abandoned drilling platform, which steel cable led down to 300 meters below the platform, and the location of the cave entrance. Every mark was written clearly in neat small handwriting, like a signpost left by someone knowing their days were numbered for those who would follow.
The second document was a scanned copy. The original was an inscription on a cave wall, which Chen Xinghe had copied with a pencil. The inscription wasn't text or a pattern, but a set of pulse-signal-like codes, densely packed across the entire sheet of paper. Next to it was a translation attempt he had written in red pen, one line of original text followed by one line of translation; he had translated less than a third of it.
Zuo Cheng read the translated portion three times.
First sentence: We are the pioneers, from your unnamed star system.
The second sentence: Every planet with the potential for life will be sown with seeds, waiting for a suitable host.
The third sentence: The seed will awaken after the seventh knowledge transfer.
Fourth sentence: The awakener will gain access to the next migration.
The translation of the last sentence stopped halfway through, and Chen Xinghe drew a question mark at the break. Below it was a line of small handwritten text. I couldn't decipher the encoding that followed. But the encoding structure of the preceding sentences was completely consistent with the neural signal encoding principle of brain-computer interfaces. This is not a coincidence. The civilization that left behind the seeds used the same logic for information transmission as the way our brains process information.
In other words, the way the human brain works was not evolved; it was designed.
Zuo Cheng leaned back in his chair.
The sunlight outside the window had already illuminated the entire building, and the sounds of colleagues greeting each other as they arrived at work could be heard in the corridor. He reviewed the hand-drawn map and the scanned rubbings again, then closed all the files, removed the box from the card reader, and put it back in the drawer.
Before closing the drawer, he glanced one last time at the small, dark gray box. It was very light, and inside lay the whole truth that someone had spent sixteen years piecing together.
Thirty years of waiting, sixteen years of recording. Three sentences and one question.
They are the pioneers. The seeds are waiting. You have been chosen as the Awakener after the seventh migration.
The question is, what happens after it's awakened?
Zuo Cheng opened the technology tree panel. The light spots were still pulsating, and the edge of the seventh leaf on the eighth branch glowed faintly. On the waveform diagram of dimensional perception, the resonance intensity was slowly increasing. The system didn't speak, but it was telling him in its own way.
Where to go next?