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

The faceless spacesuit wore Lin Jibai's face, and even the pauses in his speech were perfectly mimicked when his lips moved.

"Open the box," it said. "I can't hold on much longer."

Lu Chen raised his bow and fired an arrow, causing the screen to explode with static. The next second, all the off monitors displayed that face. It didn't attack; it just kept repeating the same sentence, making it impossible to tell which was true and which was false.

Lin Jibai coughed from inside the box: "The fake ones will rush you, the real ones will only scold you for being slow."

Xiaoman stopped crying and smiled, then wiped away her tears. She connected to the listening panel of the Dream Network and divided all the "Lin Jibai's voice" she heard into two columns: verifiable details and unverifiable requests.

Xu Wangshu added the timestamp.

Qin Lan added the on-site notes.

Lu Chen used his bow to cut off the unverified audio playback.

The falsetto spoke more and more urgently, while the real voice gradually became clearer.

Lin Jibai told them that the reverse maintenance well is not a spatial rift, but a rule that turns maintainers into interfaces. The more eager someone is to fix everything, the more likely they are to be recognized by the well walls as "someone who should stay here forever."

Lin Wangchuan did not die at Nantianmen back then.

He deliberately blocked a maintenance position, preventing Nantianmen from completing its self-inspection.

"Is he still there?" Xiaoman asked.

"The image is still there," Lin Jibai said, "but it's not a complete person anymore."

Xu Wangshu placed a bronze key, brought back from the far side of the moon, belonging to the keeper of the vault, beside the box. The key originally granted access to the Guanghan Palace's cold storage, but she had now broken it in two.

Qin Lan frowned: "What are you doing?"

"Don't open the door," Xu Wangshu said. "Give him a maintenance line."

Instead of pulling Lin Jibai out, she established a one-way recording channel at the zero relay station: Lin Jibai could transmit the structures he saw back, but the human world could not send commands into the well. In this way, he remained a participant, not a trapped tool.

Lin Jibai remained silent for two seconds, and then a sentence appeared on the screen.

[Dr. Xu, you've finally learned how to fix things!]

"Shut up, save electricity," Xu Wangshu said.

Once the information flow was connected, the blueprints of the reverse well were gradually drawn out. At the bottom of the well wasn't the Northern Heavenly Gate, but an old maintenance ring suspended between the Earth and the Moon. Thousands upon thousands of unanswered audio recordings hung on the ring, and in the very center was a figure, its back to them, tapping on a broken pipe.

The man was wearing old repair clothes, and his back was much more hunched than Lin Jibai remembered.

Lin Jibai's flashlight flickered violently.

[I found my dad.]

From deep within the blueprints came Lin Wangchuan's aged voice.

"Ji Bai, don't save me, take that pipe off first."

Xiaoman covered her mouth, tears falling silently.

Lin Jibai didn't agree immediately. He knew his father too well. The more casually Lin Wangchuan spoke, the less trivial the matter seemed. Dismantling the pipes would definitely come at a price, and that price would likely be more than Lin Wangchuan could bear alone.

Xu Wangshu enlarged the inspection ring structure. The broken pipe connected the zeroth relay station, the old meteorological tower, the XJ-0717 manhole cover, and the bottom of the toolbox. It was like a main beam wrapped with multiple temporary patches, supporting the last section of the reverse well entrance.

"What will happen if it's demolished?" she asked.

Lin Wangchuan remained silent for a few seconds.

"The ring will dissipate."

"And you?" Xiaoman asked.

There was no reply.

Lin Jibai muttered under his breath, "Old Lin, don't play the silent fatherly love game with me. You know I hate that."

At the other end of the broken tube, Lin Wangchuan finally chuckled.

"I'll also take a break."

Those words made Xu Wangshu realize that the sound crisis was not a temporary change.

Lin Wangchuan had seen the same thing ten years ago.

He didn't temporarily put himself in the maintenance position; rather, knowing that the next round would bypass the light, he blocked the old sound path, which was most easily exploited, in advance. He just hadn't anticipated that ten years later, the world would have more nodes, and rules that no longer wanted to leave someone forever stuck in a crack in the door.

"Old Lin," Lin Jibai said in a low voice, "why didn't you tell me all this back then?"

Lin Wangchuan's voice came from behind the broken pipe: "Back then, you couldn't even turn the water pipes upside down. What's the use of telling you?"

"Now it's turned upside down too," Xiaoman interjected, crying.

Lin Jibai: "Which side are you on?"

Someone in the underground station couldn't help but chuckle. The laughter was brief, but it felt like tearing open a hole in the cold air pressing down on one's chest.

Lin Wangchuan smiled too.

"Ji Bai, I don't want you to take over my job," he said. "I just don't know who else can take over the reins."

Lin Jibai quieted down.

Xu Wangshu couldn't answer for him. Neither could Xiaoman. In the end, Lin Jibai knocked on the side of the box himself.

"Then don't leave it to me," he said. "Leave it to anyone who doesn't want the door opened indiscriminately."

This sentence was written into the work order guidelines by Qin Lan. It's not a declaration, but an operational rule. Every maintenance action must be reviewable, must be rejectable, and must be exited upon completion. There are no permanent gatekeepers, no innate talents, and no one's suffering can automatically translate into permissions.

The maintenance ring is starting to loosen.

The word "home" was too faint; if it weren't for the white noise being suppressed by the bow light, almost no one would have been able to see it. Lin Jibai stared at the transmitted image, remaining silent for a long time.

Xiaoman asked softly, "Did Dad carve it?"

"It's similar," Lin Jibai said. "The handwriting is consistently ugly."

Xu Wangshu incorporated the engravings into the structural diagram and soon discovered that the reverse maintenance well was not completely sealed. Lin Wangchuan had left tiny offset grooves next to each section of the main rail. The grooves were very narrow, just enough to transmit records, not enough for anything to pass through completely. That was exactly what he meant by "it can still be heard even without light".

He didn't find his way home, but he left a crack for those who came after him to hear his story.

Qin Lan ordered all nodes to stop sending any "rescue encouragement" into the well. It wasn't cold-bloodedness, but rather that these words were too easily manipulated by the outside into pulling orders. The ground would only receive, not urge; only record, not promise; only confirm the boundaries, not plan sacrifices for those inside the well.

After listening, Lin Jibai said in a low voice, "I feel much better. Just now, a bunch of people were waiting for me to come out, like they were urging the delivery guy downstairs."

Lu Chenggong scolded him, "You still have the mind to joke around?"

"Poverty is also a form of self-expression," Lin Jibai said.

Xu Wangshu didn't laugh, but he remembered the sentence. As long as he could still be sarcastic, he wasn't just a tool.

The maintenance ring drawings continued to unfold. Lin Wangchuan's location was not at the center of the ring, but in a side slot obscured by old markings. This meant that he hadn't designed the maintenance position as the outer side, but had instead forcibly stuck himself in the offset slot, constantly disturbing the main rail by tapping on it, preventing its smooth handover for ten years.

Zhou Jianguo stared at the structural diagram and suddenly said, "This isn't standing guard; this is using yourself as a wedge."

Chen Rui asked, "Can the wedge be pulled out?"

Old Zhou didn't answer immediately. He touched his bandaged hand before saying, "Yes, but someone has to hold the beam up first. Otherwise, if we pull it out, the beam will collapse, and we'll be dead."

This sentence made Xu Wangshu's eyes light up.

They don't need Lin Jibai to take Lin Wangchuan's place. Nor should anyone else. What they need is to break that beam down into many temporary supports, distribute the weight evenly, and then remove each support point in a timely manner.

Qin Lan began calculating the available nodes, speaking extremely quickly. The hospital, the exhibition hall, the western suburbs, Tianheng, the lunar far-side lighthouse, the main control module—each location could only withstand a few seconds, and there had to be a clear breakpoint.

Seemingly sensing the plan, the fake Lin Jibai's face reappeared, but this time he didn't urge them to open the box. He simply said softly, "You're too late."

The real Lin Jibai knocked on the side of the box.

"When it comes to fixing a broken pipe, nobody's going to race you," he said. "We're going to race each other to see who can tighten it more precisely."