I live in the Martian wilderness!

Gu Yu let out a long sigh of relief. The plan was grand yet full of a glimmer of hope.

"But Lieutenant Colonel," Xuanjian's voice rang out again, "I must remind you that all of this is based on one premise."

"That means their civilization still follows the logic and physical rules that we can understand."

"If the other side's civilization is far more advanced than we imagine, or if their detection methods have transcended causality and distance, enabling them to directly perceive the essence of all intelligent activities within a galaxy..."

"Then everything we do, whether it's creating a noisy forest or disguising ourselves as a poisoned apple, will be meaningless disguise."

"Therefore, the ultimate goal of Noise Forest is not a one-time 'deception,' but to buy time at all costs."

"Turning Mars into a firewall, a wall that may be indestructible or crumble at the slightest touch."

"But as long as it can buy the Earth even a day, or an hour, of strategic early warning time, its mission is accomplished."

"As for what kind of more advanced defense system Earth needs to build behind the firewall, or what kind of communication strategies we can't even imagine should be adopted..."

"That would be beyond my capabilities and would require deeper and more nuanced strategic decisions from command."

Gu Yu listened quietly, and the last bit of excitement he felt from the grand scheme gradually subsided.

Xuanjian was right; he was not a savior, but merely a sentinel.

His duty was not to win the war, but to light the first beacon the moment the enemy appeared on the horizon.

"Very good." He nodded, his eyes no longer showing any hesitation. "Write the words 'Noisy Forest' and the girl's photo into that [Red Alert] form."

"Xuan, at the end of the report, I attach my highest-level command: From the date of receipt of this report, I will lead Oasis One Base into a state of 'strategic silence' indefinitely."

"During the period of silence, I will suspend all active communication with Tianwen-1. Unless there is an unavoidable direct threat, I will not actively contact Earth again."

Xuanjian's core logic worked at lightning speed, instantly grasping the profound meaning behind the instruction.

This is sending the strongest possible signal to Earth—the seriousness of the situation has exceeded what can be described in words.

"Instructions entered, Lieutenant Colonel. I will send them immediately during the next instruction window."

Just then—

"Beep! Beep!—"

The alarm, which was not part of the Earth Agreement, blared again!

The signal indicator lights on the Zhurong were flashing wildly; another encrypted email had arrived!

Gu Yu looked up abruptly, his heart pounding: "Not again?!"

The image of that girl is no longer on the screen.

Instead, it was a magnificent and breathtaking map of a planet he had never seen before.

It was a vast, dark red plain, seven parts similar to the Utopia Plain beneath his feet.

But on the plain, a deep blue river, as wide as a giant dragon, meanders!

On both sides of the river are vast expanses of emerald-green tundra vegetation, stretching all the way to a majestic mountain range shrouded in a thin mist in the distance.

The sky was a clear, azure blue, similar to the Earth at dusk, with a few wisps of white clouds floating above it.

This...this is Mars?

No, not possible!

Gu Yu's mind went blank for a moment, then went completely blank.

He subconsciously turned his head to look at the eternally unchanging red desert outside the shelter's porthole.

It was a vacuum world where even liquid water could not exist stably, a barren land corroded by iron oxide for hundreds of millions of years.

The planet in this picture clearly already has a thick atmosphere, flowing rivers, and vast areas of vegetation!

This is a planetary terraforming miracle that even the world's top ecologists could not accomplish in the centuries!

"Mysterious! Immediately compare this image with the high-precision satellite topographic map of the Utopia Plain in our database... to determine the geomorphic feature points!"

"Understood, Lieutenant Colonel. Initiating terrain matching algorithm..."

Xuanjian's computing power was pushed to its limit. The vibrant photograph on the screen began to overlap with a Martian topographic map composed of countless contour lines and geological markers.

The AI ​​began frantically searching for geological fingerprints in the two images that could not be easily altered by time—the relative positions of the craters, the orientation of the large canyons, and the radial ridges.

A few seconds later, the matching results came out. Xuanjian used red circles to mark three perfectly matching feature points on both images simultaneously.

"Lieutenant Colonel... please look." For the first time, Xuanjian's voice revealed a shock that even data could not conceal.

"The mountain range in the upper left corner of the picture matches the outline and altitude of the Hesperia Plateau edge mountain range 80 kilometers to our northeast with a 99.8% accuracy."

"In the center of the image, the meandering riverbed perfectly coincides with the course of the ancient 'Mawers Valley' riverbed beneath our feet, which has been dry for hundreds of millions of years."

"And those three craters in the background, arranged in a triangular pattern... those are the 'Three Sages' impact craters that we see on the horizon every day!"

Gu Yu's breath caught in his throat.

If a single image could be a coincidence, then the complete alignment of three macroscopic geological features spanning hundreds of kilometers and unlikely to change over billions of years suggests only one possibility—

This photo shows where he is right now!

Just as he was utterly shocked by this fact, a new line of small seal script appeared below the image.

Xuanjian immediately translated:

"Your signal is coming from a strange source. The Celestial God deduced the coordinates to be [Mars, 109 x 109 x 25], but the Celestial Eye only sees a grassland there. Do you need help?"

"boom--!"

When that string of words, full of oriental charm yet pointing to a coordinate, appeared on the HUD interface, it instantly shattered all of Gu Yu's logical defenses!

109 vertical columns and 25 horizontal columns?

"Mysterious! We don't know their coordinate system. Could we convert this coordinate system into our preferred latitude and longitude system?"

"Not entirely, Lieutenant Colonel. We possess a crucial piece of 'plain text'—the terrain map."

On the screen, a vibrant image of Mars and Gu Yu's own satellite map were displayed side by side.

"I have confirmed three perfectly matching geological features: the Hesperian Plateau, the Maws Valley, and the Three Sages Crater."

"Therefore, the precise latitude and longitude of these three points are known in our own coordinate system."

"Then, using these three points as anchor points, we establish a 'three-point positioning' reverse calculation model."

Xuanjian's computing power began to surge, and complex matrix operations appeared on the screen.

"By comparing the relative positions, distances, and angular deviations of the three anchor points in our two coordinate systems..."

"Reverse-calculating the rotation matrix, translation vector, and scaling factor of the other coordinate system... Calculating... Calculation complete!"

"The origin of the other party's coordinate system is roughly located at what we define as [X degrees east longitude, Y degrees north latitude]. Its coordinate axes deviate from the rotation axis of Mars by 0.02 degrees."

Its unit, "one," is approximately equal to 0.98 "degrees" as we define it.

"Initiating coordinate system transformation of [vertical 109, horizontal 25]... Transformation complete."

[109.x degrees East longitude, 25.x degrees North latitude]

On the screen, the result given by Xuanjian sent a chill down Gu Yu's spine, and he shivered uncontrollably!

He remembers these coordinates even better than his own birthday!

This is the very spot where China's first Mars rover, "Zhurong," made its first landing more than 20 years ago!

Although the current shelter is still tens of kilometers away, all the communication signals he sent out in order to wake up the Zhurong were based on that coordinate as the beacon reference point!

The coordinates she mentioned were the very coordinates of the photo he sent to Earth!

And the desolate Mars where he was now, and the Zhurong spacecraft that should have been at that coordinate point, were all absolutely real...

Therefore, Gu Yu concluded that he must still be in the Milky Way galaxy. But how could two completely different physical realities exist simultaneously at the same spacetime coordinate point?!