Six in the morning. The sky had yet to fully brighten.
The big screen was lit up, with Wei Qingyan’s face at the center.
The old academician had been up all night. His eyes were sunken, yet the light in them shone brighter than the conference room’s ceiling lamps.
Spread out before him was a handwritten proposal. The corners of the pages were curled, and every inch of paper was covered in formulas and sketches.
“Leaders,” Wei Qingyan began without preamble, “I’m requesting a complete halt to all physical extraction.”
The Minister of Science and Technology frowned. “Elder Wei, we already settled this at the meeting two days ago. Exploration only. No contact.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Wei Qingyan raised the proposal toward the camera. “I mean taking the initiative.”
Several people in the conference room exchanged glances.
“Taking the initiative?” Zhao Guodong’s brows drew together. “Old Wei, have you lost your mind? When the temperature rose by 0.8 degrees last time, three army groups on the front line nearly triggered a nuclear alert. And now you’re telling me to take the initiative?”
“By ‘taking the initiative,’ I don’t mean poking it with a drill.” Wei Qingyan slapped the proposal down on the table and tapped one of the pages. “I mean communication.”
He brought up a three-dimensional model of a skull. A holographic projection of a skull fifty kilometers across slowly rotated on the screen.
“Look here.” Two red dots appeared on either side of the skull. “These are the geological regions corresponding to its ears. The supercomputer has already modeled its complete auditory structure.”
“It has ears. It can hear.”
Wei Qingyan’s voice was hoarse, but every word came out sharp and firm.
“The data from the past few days speaks for itself. When we vibrated it with the drill, the fetal membrane reacted. When we burned it with lasers, its body temperature reacted. When we scanned it with radar, it remained completely stable throughout. That shows it doesn’t object to low-intensity contact.”
“Its sensory system is active. We’ve been throwing bricks at an open door this whole time, without ever trying to knock.”
The conference room fell silent for several seconds.
Zhou Mingyuan sat at the head of the table, tapping his fingers against its surface. “What’s the plan?”
“Ultrasonic resonance.” Wei Qingyan spoke the five words slowly. “We’ll drill holes in the surface region corresponding to its ears, implant high-powered ultrasonic transmitters, and use low-frequency sound waves at twenty hertz to penetrate the rock and directly stimulate its auditory sensory network.”
“Twenty hertz is at the lower threshold of human hearing. Sound waves at this frequency have extremely strong penetrating power and attenuate slowly. They should be able to travel along the geological structure to a depth of three thousand meters.”
“If it reacts—even if that reaction is nothing more than a 0.1-degree fluctuation in body temperature—it will prove that this path is viable.”
“Then we’ll be able to establish the first communication channel in the true sense of the word.”
The Minister of Science and Technology couldn’t help speaking up. “Elder Wei, what if it finds the noise irritating? Last time it was irritated, its body temperature shot straight up.”
“That’s why we’ll keep the power at the lowest effective level.” Wei Qingyan had clearly anticipated the question. “The sound intensity will be equivalent to a mosquito buzzing beside its ear.”
“One mosquito can’t kill anyone.”
Zhou Mingyuan stared at the massive skull projection on the screen and remained silent for a long time.
Two more cigarette butts joined the others in the ashtray.
“This is the first time humanity has ever tried to speak to it,” he said slowly. “Not mining. Not exploration. A greeting.”
“I approve it.”
Zhou Mingyuan rose to his feet, his gaze sweeping across the room.
“Front-line engineering teams, execute immediately, at all costs.”
“But remember one thing.” He fixed his eyes on Wei Qingyan on the screen. “You may knock on the door, but you are not allowed to kick it down. If it so much as frowns, cut the power immediately.”
“Understood!”
…
That afternoon, the Shennongjia front-line command post.
When Wei Qingyan’s helicopter landed, the sky was dark and heavy. Black clouds pressed down over the mountaintops, and the air was thick with moisture.
Old Ma had already brought the best members of the engineering team to wait by the helipad.
“Chief Engineer, drilling again?” Old Ma rubbed his hands as he came forward. “Whenever I think about that twenty-million-yuan drill bit from last time, my chest starts to ache.”
“We’re not drilling into it this time.” Wei Qingyan slapped a coordinate map against his chest. “We’re drilling beside it. Eight hundred meters deep, thirty-centimeter diameter. Position error must not exceed half a meter.”
Old Ma lowered his head to study the map. The coordinates were marked on the northeastern side of the core area, more than ten kilometers from the edge of the enormous skull projection.
“What are we drilling here for? There’s nothing here.”
“This is its ear.”
Old Ma froze. The map nearly slipped from his hands.
“Its… ear?”
“The mountain beneath your feet is its head.” Wei Qingyan pointed at the coordinates on the map. “Three thousand meters below this location is the outer side of its ear canal. We’re going to deliver a message to it here.”
Old Ma stood there with his mouth hanging open for a long moment.
He had spent thirty years in drilling and exploration. He had bored through oil fields and punched through mineral veins, but this was the first time he had ever heard of speaking to a mountain.
“Chief Engineer, I didn’t study much. Don’t scare me like that.”
“Enough nonsense.” Wei Qingyan glared at him. “All three holes must be finished by midnight tonight. Can you do it?”
Old Ma rolled up the map and tucked it under his arm.
“We can do it!”
…
Night fell, and rain came down in torrents.
The autumn rain in Shennongjia was cold and dense, drumming sharply against their raincoats.
Three small drilling rigs worked silently beneath the floodlights. All the equipment had been soundproofed. The engines were wrapped in insulating material, and even the commands from the control team had been reduced to hand signals.
No one dared speak loudly.
The order from above was clear: they were delivering a message to a god, not tearing down a building. If they made too much noise, who knew whether that big guy would find it annoying?
At two in the morning, all three boreholes were complete.
Three high-powered industrial ultrasonic transmitters were lowered slowly to the bottom of the shafts on steel cables. Arranged in a triangular formation, they were anchored firmly into the rock layer eight hundred meters underground.
The cables were pulled up through the boreholes and connected to a temporary control console inside the command post.
3:15 a.m.
The main control room of the command post.
Wei Qingyan stood before the control console, rainwater still clinging to his body.
Chen Hao sat at the controls, his fingers hovering over the frequency adjustment knob. His palms were slick with sweat.
“Frequency locked at twenty hertz,” Chen Hao reported. “Output power set to the lowest effective level.”
“Vital signs?”
“Temperature: 9,847 degrees. Cardiac cycle: 3,600 seconds. Everything is stable.”
Wei Qingyan stared at the enormous humanoid figure sleeping on the monitor. His chest rose and fell twice.
“Start.”
Chen Hao pressed the switch.
Humm—
A low-frequency vibration, almost impossible for human ears to detect, traveled down the cables and pierced through more than two thousand meters of rock, slowly spreading toward the sleeping body below.
…
Three thousand meters underground.
Jiang Che was sleeping soundly.
In deep sleep, every pore of his body had relaxed. The residual heat within the Primordial Chaos fetal membrane seeped into him bit by bit, warm and soothing, as if he were soaking in a hot spring.
Comfortable.
Just then, a sound wormed its way into his sea of consciousness.
Humm… humm-humm…
It was faint, shrill, and persistent.
Jiang Che’s consciousness drifted sluggishly up one layer.
What the hell was that?
The sound wasn’t loud, but it had an astonishing penetrating power. It circled relentlessly around his ear canal, impossible to shake off.
Humm… humm-humm-humm…
Jiang Che remembered.
He knew this noise well. In his previous life, the shabby little apartment he rented had been haunted every summer by a mosquito just like this one. It always chose three in the morning to buzz beside his ear. Turn on the light, and it vanished without a trace. Turn off the light, and it came right back.
“No…” Jiang Che’s brows drew together in his sleep as a surge of irritation at being woken churned upward from the depths of his mind. “Has the surface downgraded its service?”
“A couple of days ago, it was head massages and bodywork, with one technique after another. And today they’ve switched to releasing mosquitoes?”
“It’s the middle of the night, for crying out loud. Don’t you people understand noise pollution? Where’s the property management office? What’s the complaint number?”
Bzzzzzz—
The sound kept burrowing in.
Jiang Che was fed up.
He instinctively tried to raise a hand and swat the damned mosquito away from his ear.
His enormous body couldn’t move. The thought circled once through his mind before settling on the only place he could still make a slight adjustment.
His right index finger.
That finger, which had become a mountain range stretching for dozens of kilometers, lifted ever so slightly and slowly, curling upward.
The movement was less than a meter.
From his own perspective, it didn’t even qualify as scratching an itch—at most, it was a muscle twitch in his sleep.
…
On the surface, 3:17 a.m.
Boom!!!
Without the slightest warning, a muffled explosion erupted from deep underground. The entire main peak of Shennongjia suddenly heaved upward, then slammed back down.
Magnitude 4.5.
The windproof command tent let out a grating screech of twisting metal. Three load-bearing steel frames bent on the spot, and the entire roof collapsed with a thunderous crash.
“Get down!”
The guards’ shouts were swallowed by the deafening roar.
The control console was crushed beneath the steel frames. Two monitors burst into blinding sparks, sending black smoke billowing upward. The backup power indicator flashed frantically, while alarm sirens tore through the air.
Outside the tent, the drilling rig that had just installed the transmitter was flung half a meter away, its cables pulled taut. From the mountains in the distance came the rattling roar of landslides. Loose rocks rolled down the slopes, striking the roofs of the armored vehicles with a clanging din.
“Earthquake! Magnitude 4.5! Hypocenter depth—” Chen Hao had been thrown beneath a chair. Clutching his terminal, he shouted hoarsely, “Still 2,998 meters! Still the same location!”
The shaking lasted six seconds.
Six seconds later, the mountains fell silent once more. Only the rain remained.
Amid the wreckage, two guards were pressing Elder Wei firmly to the ground.
“Elder Wei! Are you injured?” Their voices had gone hoarse.
Wei Qingyan didn’t answer.
He shoved aside the steel frame pinning him down and staggered to his feet, covered in dust and grime. A shard from the shattered monitor had sliced open his forehead, and blood ran down along his brow. He wiped it away without even looking.
Then he stumbled toward the backup monitoring screen that was still powered on.
The thermal readings were still there.
9,847 degrees. Stable.
Heartbeat waveform: 3,600 seconds. Stable.
It hadn’t awakened.
It had merely… moved.
“Cut the power! Cut the ultrasonic power immediately!” Wei Qingyan roared into the communicator, his voice rasping itself raw.
“Power cut!” Chen Hao called back from the other side of the wreckage.
Wei Qingyan collapsed onto half of the overturned console, his chest heaving violently.
Exhilaration and terror twisted together across his aged face.
“There’s a response…” he murmured. His voice grew louder and louder. “There’s a response!”
“It can hear the twenty-hertz low-frequency sound waves! It can really hear us!”
Wang Lei had just crawled out of a pile of shattered glass. Hearing that, he froze.
“Elder Wei, is that supposed to be good news?”
“Of course it is!” Wei Qingyan slapped a broken section of the desk. “We got a message through! This is the first time in human history that we’ve knocked on its door!”
“But, Elder Wei…” Chen Hao straightened from a corner with the mud-smeared deep-earth radar terminal in his arms, his face frighteningly pale. “You… you should look at this first.”
“What did it do after receiving our message?”
Wei Qingyan snatched the terminal from him.
On the screen was the three-dimensional underground map captured by the radar array during those six seconds.
A red displacement trajectory lay quietly at the center of the display.
Its starting point was the skeletal structure of the enormous humanoid’s right index finger.
Its endpoint was directly above the starting point.
Wei Qingyan’s eyes moved to the calculated data beside the trajectory.
[Displacement of right index fingertip: 0.87 meters]
[Duration of displacement: 1.2 seconds]
[Surface earthquake triggered: Magnitude 4.5]
[Direct damage: Main command structure, 11 monitoring devices, and 2 communications arrays]
Inside the tent, the rain poured relentlessly.
Wei Qingyan stared at that line of numbers.
0.87 meters.
Less than a meter.
A life-form five hundred kilometers long had merely curled the tip of its finger, moving it less than a meter.
On the surface, mountains collapsed and the earth split open. Most of the command system had been crippled.
What if one day it woke up and wanted to stretch?
What if it wanted to stand up and loosen its limbs?
Wei Qingyan’s hand began to tremble uncontrollably around the terminal.
Would the Earth still exist at all?!
Cold sweat mixed with rain and ran down his back, soaking through his work clothes.
“Elder Wei…” Wang Lei edged closer, his voice wavering. “How… how are we supposed to write this report?”
Wei Qingyan opened his mouth.
It took a long moment before he managed to force out a sentence.
“Write it exactly as it happened.”
“Write this—We successfully exchanged our first words with it.”
“And then it got impatient… and waved us away.”
