Don't go to the moon, there are gods on the far side of the moon.

Xiaoman froze, tears falling onto the toolbox exterior.

Lin Jibai's voice was very soft, as if it were coming through a thick iron plate, or as if he had just surfaced from very deep water: "Don't cry. If moisture gets into the tank, who will pay for the repairs?"

Xiaoman laughed and cried at the same time: "It's on your debt."

The main control cabin and the zeroth relay station fell silent simultaneously. No one dared to interrupt this genuine human voice. Xu Wangshu stood beside the box, his finger hovering over the recording screen. He paused for two seconds before continuing to type: Lin Jibai has resumed independent expression; his voice is weak, the content is cross-verifiable, and the right to refuse must still be protected.

"I was dragged into an upside-down maintenance well," Lin Jibai said intermittently. "The well walls were filled with sounds. The sounds you all made, the sounds left over from the old station, the sounds Tianheng deleted, and the sounds of Dad knocking on pipes."

Qin Lan asked, "What's on the outside?"

"It's neither human nor god." Lin Jibai took a breath. "It has no body. It relies on others to identify it, name it, and open doors for it, piecing together a shape layer by layer so that it can enter."

Wen Zhaolin whispered, "So the old Heavenly Court's authorization logic is a ready-made ladder for it."

"Pretty much," Lin Jibai said. "You built a level for it back then."

Wen Zhaolin did not refute.

Xiaoman asked anxiously, "Have you seen Dad?"

There was a moment of silence in the toolbox.

"I saw him, but I couldn't see him clearly. He was tapping on the pipe in the well, telling me not to climb up. That's not the exit."

Xu Wangshu's heart tightened.

The paper tape suddenly started spewing out text on its own.

Please release the internal maintainer to complete two-way verification.

Lu Chenggong stepped on the switchboard and pinned the paper tape to the ground. The paper tape continued to emerge, the writing becoming denser and denser, and even began to list a specific plan to "awaken Lin Jibai": open the bottom of the toolbox, connect to the main line of the zero relay station, and let him walk out of the reverse well as a maintainer.

The plan is complete, reasonable, and attractive.

It even lists the success rate.

79 percent.

One of the medical team members couldn't help but look up: "This is better than the current conservative treatment."

Qin Lan asked coldly, "Who gave us the success rate?"

The man immediately shut up.

Xiaoman stared at the paper strip, her nails digging into her palms: "Can Brother come out?"

"Yes," Lin Jibai said softly, "but it can also come out with me."

Xu Wangshu closed her eyes briefly, then turned and threw the paper proposal onto the public review screen. She neither rejected nor agreed on Lin Jibai's behalf; she simply made public the risks, the methods of inducement, and his remaining statements.

"Lin Jibai," she said, "can you make a decision now?"

A soft laugh came from the toolbox: "Dr. Xu, you're asking questions like you're signing a death certificate."

"answer."

"able."

"Do you agree to open the bottom layer of the toolbox now?"

"No," Lin Jibai said, "I don't agree to open it now."

The cold white waveform suddenly spiked. All the headphones in the relay station simultaneously emitted a piercing shriek. The faceless figure in the spacesuit appeared on the underground station's screen for the first time.

It raised its head, and a blurry outline emerged from the mask.

It was Lin Jibai's face.

It said in Lin Jibai's voice, "She's trying to harm me."

Xiaoman suddenly stood up.

Xu Wangshu did not back down.

She looked at that face, her voice as cold as a stone on the far side of the moon: "The real Lin Jibai wouldn't be so concise. If he were to insult me, he would use at least three sentences."

A weak but clear laugh came from the toolbox.

This sounds true.

The one-way recording channel is not stable when it is first established.

Lin Jibai's returned drawings were always missing corners, like someone was constantly tearing at the other side of a well. Xu Wangshu didn't rush him, but simply asked the technical team to mark each incomplete section instead of letting it automatically fill in the gaps. The old system used to love filling in the gaps, and in the end, the people involved would disappear from the system.

"So what if it's missing?" she said. "The gap is also evidence."

Upon hearing this, Lin Jibai chuckled softly: "Dr. Xu is quite adept at speaking like a human being now."

"It saves effort."

The blueprints gradually became clearer. Many old labels hung on the outer wall of the reverse repair well: Repairman, Warehouse Keeper, Houyi Sequence, DreamNet Node, Adaptor. Behind each label lay a shadow of someone once forced to endure hardship. Some were dead, some were written as accidents, and some didn't even leave their names.

Looking at the shadows, Xiaoman suddenly understood why her brother refused to come out.

It's not that he doesn't want to live.

He didn't want to come back by stepping on these unrecorded people, and then let the outside world use them as stepping stones again.

Qin Lan ordered the review of old incidents to be initiated, and all unnamed records in the zero relay station logbook were temporarily numbered and marked as "Personnel to be Investigated," and were not to be classified as losses.

The moment the number appeared, many shadows on the well wall moved slightly.

It's like someone finally told them they weren't materials.

The sound of Lin Wangchuan tapping the pipe became clearer as a result. After three short taps and two long taps, he added a rhythm that only old-fashioned repairmen would understand.

Lin Jibai translated: "He said, 'Don't just look at me, look behind the pipe.'"

Xu Wangshu enlarged the back of the broken tube, where a line of very faint characters was engraved.

[It can still be heard even without light.]

Upon hearing the words "Don't let things go to waste," Xiaoman almost immediately wanted to call out "Dad," but she clenched her teeth and held her voice firmly. It wasn't that she didn't want to respond; she had simply finally learned that the more she wanted to respond, the more she needed to first confirm where she stood.

Xu Wangshu placed the earphones into a soundproof box, preserving only the mechanical vibration recordings. She didn't announce that it was Lin Wangchuan, only labeling it as: "Suspected former repairman's voice, containing protective content, pending verification."

Inside the toolbox, Lin Jibai took a soft breath: "It's him."

"Evidence?" Qin Lan asked coldly.

"He said 'connect,' not 'connect to,'" Lin Jibai said in a low voice. "Old Lin scolded me for never using the full word when fixing circuits, saying it was too much trouble."

This evidence, though not substantial, is difficult to forge. Xiaoman adds: The father's everyday language aligns with family memories, but it still doesn't constitute sufficient evidence to open the box.

Lin Jibai chuckled: "You guys are all harder to fool now."

"I was trained by you," Xu Wangshu said.

The fake Lin Jibai on the screen began to contort its face. It realized that the more it resembled Lin Jibai, the more it would be compared to the real Lin Jibai's trivial habits. It could learn to feel pain, to plead, to blame, but it couldn't learn the rough edges that come with living a long life.

So it changed its strategy. The screen displayed Lin Jibai's past debt details, food delivery platform fines, hospital payment screenshots, and night shift records at his sister's bedside. It no longer said "she ruined me," but instead laid out his predicament, as if to prove that such a person had no right to refuse a more efficient rescue.

Lu Chengong's anger flared: "Using poverty as evidence?"

Xu Wangshu didn't look away. She knew it was all true, and it was precisely because it was true that it was all the more vicious. The outsiders didn't need to fabricate charges; they could simply present the wounds of life as a verdict.

Qin Lan had the finance, medical, and platform records verified separately, and then added the same sentence to each one: "Genuine difficulties do not constitute a right of others to access resources."

As soon as those words were uttered, the features on the fake face seemed to be sliced ​​open, revealing churning white noise within. For the first time, it let out a scream that was unlike anything human.

Lin Jibai weakly commented, "It's awful, a bad review."

Xiaoman laughed through her tears: "You can give your comments after you've survived."

The old chair at Relay Station Zero was moved back a few inches, revealing a ring of polished metal rails in the center of the floor. Many arrows were engraved on the rails, all pointing to the same spot: the bottom of the toolbox.

Xu Wangshu crouched down to examine it and discovered even shallower, reversed scratches next to the arrow. These were made later, stroke by stroke, with a screwdriver, in the opposite direction to the original track.

Two words were written at the end of the engraving.

Come back home.