pjbooks Chapter 475 One Flag!
Chapter 475 One Flag!
Nie Qingcheng answered quickly.
"It's locked," she said. "It hasn't been opened since the day you left. What's the problem?"
Zhang Yan didn't explain immediately. He packaged and transmitted the signal data released by the elite species before its death.
There was a four-second silence on the other end of the communication.
"I'll go down and check now."
"No." Zhang Yan's tone was so decisive that there was no room for negotiation. "Don't touch anything, wait for me to come back."
The Chaos Mech has turned around, its power reactor overloaded to 140%, and is sprinting at full speed toward the inner solar system.
Nie Qingcheng didn't speak again, but the communication was not interrupted.
Her breathing was still steady, which reassured Zhang Yan a little.
He mentally reviewed all the items in the laboratory.
The workbench, the material rack, the prototype of the dimension compressor... and that black crystal.
Crystals on the remains of a deep-sea tentacle.
When it was first intercepted, it was confirmed that it was receiving signals from the far side of the moon. Later, he cleared the location on the far side of the moon, thinking that the crystal had lost its receiving target.
He left it in the lab, intending to conduct further research.
But he overlooked one possibility: it wasn't just the receiver.
It is also a transmitter.
"Qin Xiao." Zhang Yan switched to another communication line.
"Brother Yan." Qin Xiao's voice replied instantly.
"Immediately take people to the perimeter of the villa and establish the highest level of security. Do not enter the interior or approach the underground entrance."
"Received. What's the situation?"
"There might be a beacon in the lab."
Qin Xiao didn't ask any further questions and hung up the call.
The return journey was compressed to three hours by the extreme speed of chaos.
For three hours, Zhang Yan was constantly rehearsing the worst-case scenario.
Before dying, the elite creature sent a signal to the crystal, which could be an activation command or a coordinate confirmation.
If it's the latter, it means the crystal has been broadcasting its location information, and the community already knew where it was.
Why wasn't it discovered before?
Because of the delayed field.
The Six Paths Gate's delayed field was activated a month ago.
The operating mechanism of a delayed field is to lengthen the time within the field while simultaneously creating information shielding from external information.
However, the area covered is a network node, not every inch of the Earth.
His villa is not within the coverage area of any door.
The low-frequency broadcasts from the crystal can penetrate without interference.
When Zhang Yan finally understood this, his fingers unconsciously clenched.
Spoils of war… He thought the crystal was spoils of war at the time.
The community, however, packaged a positioning beacon as a trophy and delivered it to him.
It started with that time in the deep sea.
When Chaos landed in the mecha hangar behind the villa, Qin Xiao's containment zone had already been deployed.
Three black SUVs were parked about 100 meters from the villa, and twelve people were scattered in different directions.
Zhang Yan emerged from the mecha and headed straight for the underground entrance.
Nie Qingcheng stood at the bottom of the basement stairs, holding a tablet in her hand.
She was wearing black loungewear, her hair was not tied up, but her expression was cold.
"Data." She handed over the tablet.
Zhang Yan took it and glanced at it.
These are the monitoring records that Nie Qingcheng made during the three hours of his return journey.
Energy radiation log of the villa's underground laboratory over the past thirty days.
The curve is very smooth, with almost no abnormalities visible.
However, Nie Qingcheng marked the slight fluctuations that occurred every seventy-two hours with a red line.
The amplitude is extremely small, less than three-thousandths of normal background radiation.
You'll never notice it unless you're specifically looking for it.
"Every three days," Nie Qingcheng said, "and it lasted for at least twenty days."
Zhang Yan did not hesitate any longer.
He pushed open the sealed door of the laboratory and went inside. The Heart of Heavenly Craftsmanship was activated simultaneously, and golden light shone on his chest.
Full-band scanning initiated.
The result popped up after eleven seconds.
[Laboratory biological scan: No community of life forms.]
[Location of energy anomaly source: Storage container B-7.]
[Anomaly type: Continuous low-frequency signal transmission, frequency highly matched with the community communication protocol.]
Container B-7
It's that black crystal.
Zhang Yan walked to the storage rack.
Inside the transparent container, the fist-sized black crystal lay quietly, its surface showing no signs of abnormality.
But the perception of the Heart of Heaven told him that this thing was releasing a weak positioning pulse every seventy-two hours.
The pulse points out of the solar system, towards the direction from which the parent body of the colony originates.
The signal emitted by an elite species before its death is not an activation command.
Yes, it's confirmed.
They are confirming: the beacon is still there, the coordinates haven't changed, and the target is right here.
Then this confirmation information will be transmitted back to the parent body through some mechanism.
Zhang Yan didn't think much of it.
The Heavenly Craftsmanship Center focused at full power, and the purification pulse was aimed at the crystal and blasted inside.
The moment the golden energy was poured in, a blinding white light burst forth from the surface of the crystal.
The entire crystal trembled for 0.7 seconds in the light.
Then it goes out.
The flowing dark patterns on the surface disappeared, leaving only a lifeless object. The launch module was completely burned out.
But that 0.7 seconds...
Zhang Yan looked at the system's records.
An abnormal signal burst has been detected.
Duration: 0.7 seconds.
[Intensity: 4,600 times that of a normal pulse.]
[Direction: Outside the solar system, perfectly aligned with the movement direction of the parent body of the community.]
Zhang Yan stood still, staring at the string of numbers.
0.7 seconds.
Four thousand six hundred times the strength.
The direction is precisely aimed at the mother body.
That's not residual discharge.
That was the last scream before the crystal was destroyed.
It unleashed all its energy reserves in an instant, shouting its last words at maximum volume.
There's only one message: I'm here.
Nie Qingcheng's footsteps came from behind.
She walked over to Zhang Yan and glanced at the monitoring data on the tablet.
There was a few seconds of silence.
"It knows where we are now," Nie Qingcheng said.
His tone was as calm as if he were talking about today's weather.
Zhang Yan turned to look at her.
Nie Qingcheng raised her eyes and met his gaze.
There was no panic, no fear in those beautiful eyes, only an extremely clear-headed coldness.
"Then prepare according to the shortest possible timeframe," she said. "Call Qin Xiao and Guan Xing over for a meeting tonight."
Zhang Yan nodded.
He reached out and took the crystal, which had become inanimate, out of the container, and held it in his palm.
The icy touch seemed to mock him.
It's been by my side from the very beginning.
He thought he had received a sword.
It is actually a flag.
A flag planted in front of one's own house.
It says above that what you're looking for is here.