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

On the third night, the stove crackled to life.

It wasn't the sound of fire.

It was not the whisper of the Zhu Rong Terrace.

It's a tapping motion.

It was a very light touch, like someone tapping the edge of the stove with their knuckles.

The signal, transmitted over the narrowband, relayed by Mars, and finally reached the main control module's listening channel in just a fraction of a second.

The technician on duty initially thought he had misheard.

Until the second time.

Then came the third time.

After three taps, it stopped.

Qin Lan slowed down the audio by ten times.

After slowing down, the three taps sound very clear: fast, slow, fast.

"It's not the beat," she said. "It's the rhythm."

"Where is the difference in rhythm and tempo?" Lu Chenggong asked.

"The beat is counted by a machine," Qin Lan said. "The rhythm is created by the person striking it."

When these words were spoken, no one answered on the monitoring channel. Because everyone understood: the sound of the Zhu Rong Terrace wasn't for timing, but for signaling to learners.

Xu Wangshu looked at Lin Xiaoman.

Xiaoman's face turned pale.

"I know this."

Everyone in the main control room looked at her.

"The watermark," she said, "that's the dripping sound."

Qin Lan immediately retrieved the sample from the artificial pressure relief seam under the west gate of the exhibition hall.

The comparison results showed that the two rhythms matched.

Almost exactly the same.

"The sound of water from my father's pot," Lin Jibai said from his toolbox.

His voice was weak, but he spoke the sentence slowly and steadily.

"Zhurongtai is learning what my father left behind."

"Why?" Lu Chenggong asked.

"It doesn't know what human actions mean," Lin Jibai said. "It only saw someone use this rhythm to announce a message. So it uses this to knock on the door."

Qin Lan stared at the audio recording, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

Who is knocking on the door?

No one answered.

Because everyone was thinking of the same thing at the same time.

If Zhu Rongtai is learning to use "human signals" to knock on doors, it means that it no longer simply regards the human world as its object.

It is trying to talk to people.

In its own way.

Xu Wangshu did not respond immediately.

She saved the three taps in the border file and also made a separate backup.

Then she did something that seemed like a small thing.

She didn't knock back.

She simply had the lighthouse play a low-powered environmental recording in the narrow band direction.

There are only two things in the content.

The sound of water at the west gate of the exhibition hall.

And the heartbeat of the toolbox in the main control cabin.

After these two items were sent out, there was no response from the other end of the narrow channel.

Zhu Rongtai did not respond.

It simply turned the stove opening a little more.

This time the angle of rotation was very small.

So small that it's almost invisible.

But Xiaoman saw it in the Dream Network.

The charred little bird raised its head slightly after the tapping stopped.

It's not facing the stove.

It's towards the direction of a heartbeat.

Qin Lan made a separate note of this small incident: "No one knocked on the Zhurong Terrace, and the stove turned about one degree."

After she finished writing, she asked Xu Wangshu, "Should I reply to it three times?"

"No."

"Why don't you go back? It's already knocking on the door."

"Because it was our doorbell that rang," Xu Wangshu said. "The doorbell ringing doesn't mean we can come in. Whether we hear it or not, and whether we open the door or not, are two separate things."

Xu Wangshu glanced at it and added half a sentence: "The deflection direction is directly facing the main control cabin."

"Facing the main control module?" Lu Chenggong repeated. "How does it know where we are?"

"It doesn't need to know," Xu Wangshu said. "It just follows its heartbeat."

"It can even detect a heartbeat?"

"A heartbeat is not a coordinate system," Xu Wangshu said. "A heartbeat is what a living person looks like."

After that sentence was said, no one in the main control room spoke loudly anymore.

Everyone unconsciously lowered their breathing, as if afraid that the stove outside the window might actually follow a certain breath towards them.