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

Chapter 4, Volume 1: A Letter from the Far Side of the Moon - Dr. Xu Says This Is Not a Myth

Lin Jibai hid Xiaoman in the old residential area of the aerospace city.

That was an old house that my father was allocated before. No one had lived there for ten years. The walls were moldy, and the water pipes were so rusted they couldn't be turned on. The good thing was that the neighborhood was about to be demolished, half of the surveillance cameras were broken, and the property management company only had one hard-of-hearing old man left.

He fixed the water valve in half an hour and then sealed all the glass with old curtains.

After Xiaoman fell asleep, he sat on the living room floor and inserted the cache chip into the offline computer.

The screen flickered three times.

In addition to the photos of the far side of the moon, a string of encrypted data was added to the folder.

Just as Lin Jibai was about to solve the problem, there was a knock on the door.

Three short and one long.

That's not the style of the Men in Black.

He picked up the wrench and brought it close to the peephole.

A woman was standing outside the door.

She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing a white shirt and a black trench coat, her hair neatly tied back, carrying a shockproof case. She looked up through the peephole, her tone cold: "Lin Jibai, open the door. If you try to read that chip with your consumer computer again, it'll burn through your electricity meter."

Lin Jibai did not move.

The woman added, "My name is Xu Wangshu. I'm from the Lunar Geological Research Group. I saw the unusual images from Wangshu-3 last night before you did."

The door opened a crack.

The wrench is placed behind the seam.

"Identification documents".

Xu Wangshu pasted the documents on.

After reading it, Lin Jibai asked, "How did you find this place?"

"The water meter in your father's old house just started reading again," Xu Wangshu said. "Isn't it common sense to turn off the Internet of Things before hiding from people?"

Lin Jibai remained silent for two seconds.

He dislikes intelligent people.

He especially dislikes smart people who are better at identifying and filling in gaps in their knowledge.

After entering the room, Xu Wangshu first looked at the curtains, then at Xiaoman's room, and finally at the computer screen.

Give me the chip.

"On what grounds?"

"Because it contains the original data from Wangshu-3, which belongs to a national project."

"And there's my dad's voice."

Xu Wangshu paused for a moment.

She didn't say "you're hallucinating".

This lessened Lin Jibai's hostility towards her.

But only a little.

Xu Wangshu opened the shockproof box, inside which was a portable cryogenic reader and a transparent chip. After she took control of the chip, the data finally stabilized.

The photo of the far side of the moon was enlarged.

The regular patterns on the surface of the broken column became clear.

Xu Wangshu's expression changed for the first time.

"This is not a basalt structure."

"I can tell it's not a mountain either."

"You can't tell," she said coldly. "You can only tell it doesn't look like it. I can assure you it shouldn't exist."

Lin Jibai resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Xu Wangshu retrieved another set of data.

That's a sample analysis diagram from the far side of the moon.

"Before losing contact, Wangshu-3 collected some dust with a drill. Its initial composition resembled lunar soil, but the crystal lattice arrangement exhibited an artificial periodicity. This wouldn't happen naturally, unless someone had burned a material furnace larger than a city on the far side of the moon."

"So what is that?"

"Evidence," Xu Wangshu said, "proves that the myth is false, or that our definition of false is too narrow."

No sooner had she finished speaking than Xiaoman's painful groan came from the bedroom.

Lin Jibai rushed in immediately.

Xiaoman curled up in bed, her forehead covered in cold sweat. A sliver of moonlight shone through the gap in the curtains, falling directly on the back of her hand.

Fine lines appeared beneath that patch of skin.

Xu Wangshu followed in and, upon seeing the pattern on the door, his breath clearly stopped for a beat.

She took a probe out of the box and tried to get closer.

Lin Jibai grabbed her wrist.

"Don't touch her."

"I need to take a sample."

"She is not your sample."

Xu Wangshu looked at him, her tone still cold, but lower: "If we don't figure out the synchronization mechanism, she'll be dragged away by the next lunar echo. You think you can win by running away with her? Lin Jibai, you're not facing the mafia, you're facing an abnormal system that's already connected to the deep space link."

Lin Jibai stared at her.

"Then can you save her?"

"It cannot be guaranteed."

"Can you help me find my dad?"

Xu Wangshu remained silent.

A moment later, she put the probe back.

"I can prove to you that his disappearance back then was not an accident."

That's enough.

Lin Jibai let go.

Xu Wangshu returned to the living room and played a hidden audio clip from the chip.

This time it wasn't Lin Wangchuan.

It was a lot of chaotic mechanical sounds.