This is the place where the team members of Cassini Station found the black ball twenty years ago, Liu Peijia remembered that the trio who carried out the extravehicular mission dug up the ball from the ground, and the development of the situation has become strange since then, which is the starting point of all mysteries and the beginning of all chaos.

"How did you get here?" Liu Peijia muttered, "It's really unlucky." ”

"The Napoleon Pit is on the way back to Cassini Station at Half Foot Lake, not far from Cassini Station." "It's a good thing that this is an abandoned research base, and it shows that we are gradually returning to human society...... At least where humans once been. ”

Liu Peijia swept away the tools that were discarded in the snow, and it was indeed a place where humans once stayed.

"It's good to get closer, try to contact Mumu and see if there is a signal."

"Watch your feet, there's a borehole." Stong reminded, "There are still cracks. ”

The two groped in Napoleon's pit, and they found a total of four deep holes in the ground.

Each deep hole is thirty centimeters in diameter, almost regular circles, with neat and smooth edges, apparently made by a borehole sampler, which is often used in geological surveys, which can be driven straight into the ground to a depth of thousands of kilometers and then extract ice cores or cores.

I don't know how deep these four holes are, Shi Teng used his headlamp to shine in, and the black hole at the bottom was hollow, and the light reflected on the smooth hole wall.

"How deep is this?" Liu Peijia was lying opposite Shi Teng, and also looked down.

"Thousands of meters less." Stong replied.

Liu Peijia shuddered, "You said that if they keep fighting down and going down, can they penetrate this planet?" ”

"I can't." Stern shook his head, "At most, it will penetrate ice and rock formations, and there will be a liquid ocean underneath, and the drilling machine will not work." ”

Liu Peijia got up, took a few steps back, and slammed into something.

Liu Peijia stumbled.

"What's that? Nearly tripped me. He turned and bowed his head, crouched down and frowned.

"It's a sample." Stong poked his head out of his shoulder? Two people's headlamps in one place? illuminated the crimson storage box half-buried in the snow, and the lid of the storage box was kicked open by Liu Peijia just now? Exposing the insulation cushioning material and the dark brown core embedded in it? "They haven't had time to take them yet."

Liu Peiji took the core out of the box, a cylinder with a diameter of thirty centimeters and a length of forty centimeters? The surface has delicate textures, and it is a rock layered under high pressure.

Liu Peijia held it in his hand and looked left and right? Didn't he study geology? He really couldn't see anything with such a stone.

"What research value can this thing have?" Liu Peijia asked.

"There are some things that can only be used in the hands of experts, and they are worthless in the hands of fools." Stong said.

As soon as Liu Peijia heard this, he turned around and stuffed the core in his hand into Shi Teng's arms, and then patted it? "You're worthless now."

There are many more samples on the ground.

More storage boxes buried in snow? Shi Teng and Liu Peijia opened them one by one, and the boxes were all lying quietly on the excavated cores.

They have been here for twenty years.

The extravehicular task force was responsible for excavating rock samples from under Napoleon's pit, but for some reason they didn't bring them back, and they abandoned the stones for the time being.

Twenty years later? Now Shi Teng and Liu Peijia both know what it is.

Because they dug up a black ball.

What Jiang Zilouqi was thinking when they were on an extravehicular mission is now unknown, and they may have urgently suspended the excavation mission after discovering the black ball? It was decided to bring the black balls back first, and the cores would be dealt with later.

"What a lot ......" Liu Peijia muttered as he opened the last box? There was still a cylinder in the box, "How many are there?" Twenty dollars? ”

"Because these cores are long sections of truncated segments." Stong said? "It's like a knife shaved noodles."

"Not knife-cut noodles? Should it be a hand-rolled dough? Knead the flour into large strips and then cut into sections...... Ah! Liu Peijia suddenly exclaimed.

"What's wrong?"

Shi Teng leaned over, and he saw Liu Peijia holding half of the cylinder in his hand, and the other half of the core fell into the snow.

It was a cracked core that was tightly embedded into a complete cylinder when lying in the box, but as soon as Liu Peijia picked it up, it split in two.

Liu Peijia looked at the stone in his hand in a daze, and it took a long time to spit out a sentence: "They were ...... back then." What did you dig up? ”

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Shi Teng and Liu Peijia sat there for a long time.

Both were silent.

This discovery was so astonishing that none of them dared to assert it with certainty.

After a while, Liu Peijia tried to contact Cassini Station again, but the signal was still unstable, and the response came and went.

"I'm Liu Peijia, I'm Liu Peijia, call Mumu...... Can you hear me? Can you hear me...... Mumu? Mumu? Yes, it's me, I'm Liu Peijia! I'm sitting next to Lao Shi! We're both alive, I'm alive, Lao Shi is alive, it's okay! No injuries! ”

"Car, you say? The car is gone! Right! Gone...... The kung fu of turning around is gone! Pretty fucked up. ”

"So we're walking, rushing back."

"In the pit! That's right, a big hole...... What's the name...... Old history, old history? Oh yes, Napoleon pit. ”

"Napoleon pit! Take-break--lun! Emperor Napoleon of France! It's the same place where they dug up the black ball! ”

Stong sat silently on the box next to him, holding two cores in his hand and one in each hand.

He slowly put the two cores together and formed a broken cylinder, about thirty centimeters in diameter, which was the last sample that Jiang Zi and the others dug up that year.

Stong slowly broke it open again, and inside the cylindrical core, there was a cavity -

This is what the people at Cassini Station dug up back then, and they found an unknown object in the core, so they urgently interrupted the mission and prioritized bringing it back to Cassini Station.

Cold sweat broke out from Stern's forehead.

Liu Peijia was still shouting on the side, "No——! Not right——! You must be mistaken! All wrong! ”

It's all wrong.

Steng's lips were dry, and he couldn't help but lick them.

"That's not a ball——!"

Stern stared at it for a long time, and he felt that whatever was dug up at Cassini Station twenty years ago would definitely not be a ball.

Because the cavity inside the core is irregular, Ston imagined what the object contained inside the core looked like based on the shape of the cavity -

Its main body was oval and nearly square, like a flat steamed bun, and then extended four short tentacles in one direction, and Steng remembered what it looked like.

Hand.

A tiny hand.

A hand with just four fingers.