Chapter 108

“Thump thump, thump thump.”

The regular rhythm tapped at his ear. It was the sound of knuckles rapping on the desk, a reminder. Horne stared blankly at the miniature city outside the window. The view was clearly filled with white noise and the clear calls of birds, yet his heartbeat still carried the dampness from last night.

“What’s wrong?” Han Ya asked strangely. He leaned close to Horne, but Horne didn’t move. He could only tap the desk again.

“Thump thump.”

Unable to hold back any longer, Han Ya touched Horne’s face and said softly, “Why is your face so hot? Are you sick too?”

Horne snapped back to attention. His body leaned back, dodging Han Ya’s probe. When he lifted his head, he realized that several people nearby were looking at him, each with different expressions in their eyes.

“No, I was just looking.” Horne answered calmly, acting as if his brief distraction had simply been from looking too intently.

There were over a hundred screens in the monitoring room. On the nearest one, a person wearing a mask walked past a street corner. He bought breakfast and hurriedly crossed the road, entering a building.

On the adjacent screen was a residential building with an open window. In one household, a grandmother accompanied her granddaughter as they washed up. In the next room, a couple was still sleeping. Later, they woke up, greeted each other good morning, started kissing, and began undressing.

Countless ordinary people, countless ordinary lives.

The recon drones followed in third-person view. Red lights marked their sensory systems. They roamed the entire city. People exposed outside were monitored in real time. For those indoors, the drones could stick to the walls, analyzing the vibration patterns transmitted through the structure to judge what people inside were saying or doing, though sometimes it was unclear.

The clouds still hung very low, so low that even the recon drones had to fly lower than usual.

“Is this what the recon drones see?” Horne stood behind Ains.

Ains had been working day and night for several days to crack the recon drone footage. She yawned several times in a row and nodded, also watching the varied scenes.

Ten or so people stood in the monitoring room: some support technicians, Homan, even Wang Wudao. Everyone stared intently at the monitors in front of them. You Wenjie stood nearby without speaking, while the remaining tech support switched screens from time to time.

Over a thousand recon drones. From these perspectives, they searched for that thing which completely did not belong on Earth.

“How exactly is this done? Cracking the code—doesn’t the Tower know?” Han Ya stared seriously at the screens. After watching for a while, he noticed something off and asked Horne, “Where’s Hels?”

At the mention of that name, Horne instinctively looked away. “I don’t know.”

They hadn’t spoken a single word since last night. He opened the terminal’s locator to check Hels’s position.

Slum.

He went to the Slum again? What was he always doing there? The underground tunnels shouldn’t be of any use now, right?

Ains walked over holding her computer and explained to Han Ya, “Simple. This is a fake echo synchronization chain. It’s not truly cracking the motherboard to gain control. Instead, the recon drones mistakenly think I’m one of the motherboard’s visual cache nodes, so they don’t send any alerts at all. How would the Tower find out?” Her tone was a bit high-pitched, smug and triumphant, just short of saying outright: Praise me already.

Homan reminded her from the side, “Be humble.”

Ains completely ignored him.

It wasn’t hard to see Loch City through the recon drones’ eyes. The hard part was finding, among thousands of screens, that one instant which might have captured the Fate Community.

They guarded these monitors 24 hours a day without interruption.

You Wenjie stood at the very front. After watching the monitors for a good while, he turned and asked, “So, Mr. Horne, what are your thoughts on what Jia Lan just said?”

At the mention of Jia Lan, Horne’s expression turned cold again. He crossed his arms over his chest, looking as if he had never zoned out, and said seriously, “I think none of that matters. We don’t need to understand the operational rules of the Tau Ceti Star System.

“The issue we need to consider now is the Tower’s silence.

“If rescuing Ains was a trap to lock us in the Obelisk, why have they still made no move now that we’ve successfully brought her out?”

Horne could think of two possibilities. First, Ais truly didn’t care about holding Ains hostage and could use her conveniently, but letting her go made no real difference to them. They had absolute confidence in holding out until Descent Day. Second, there was something else on Ains, like that Resident Chip.

To prevent Ains from being used again, Thunder Pavilion had fully tested and scanned her, but so far, nothing abnormal had been found.

“If Ains checks out fine, we have to consider the first possibility. If it’s the first, we must speed up our progress. Also, there’s one other point that’s been bothering me.” Horne half-leaned against the window, sunlight turning his hair golden-brown. “When we escaped from the Obelisk, Jia Lan said he could only save two people.”

Jia Lan was on the other side of the meeting room. It nodded immediately.

“Only with an alien’s guidance could humans escape from inside. If Jia Lan protected Ains and You Wenjie to get out, then how did the other three of us get out?” Horne pointed the question at himself, Hels, and Wen Yu.

No one could answer him. All that awaited was a silence filled with still air.

Horne was about to continue speculating when You Wenjie interrupted him. “I’ll look into this matter, but no matter the reason, it doesn’t deserve to occupy everyone’s attention right now.”

Horne frowned slightly, still wanting to discuss the topic further, but You Wenjie said seriously again, “The top priority at the moment is the Hermit’s response frequency.”

“The Hermit?” Horne had wanted to ask. He had already heard that name many times but never knew what it signified.

Everyone except the core technical staff gradually left. The large monitoring room emptied a bit. The recon drones’ surveillance views still flowed slowly across the walls, recording everything happening in Loch City.

Horne was led to the “Hertz Resonance Room” in the technical area, not far from the monitoring room. It was a fully enclosed hexagonal cabin with a ring-shaped recessed structure and a semi-transparent circular platform in the center, like the resonant core of a tuning fork’s vibration.

Homan walked at the front. He explained to Horne that his technical team had set up a frequency capture net across all of Loch City. This net continuously broadcast the 440 Hz frequency to the entire city and received it in real time—not as sound, but as physical waves.

It was one link in a multi-frequency coordination band. Only those in sync could sense this frequency and respond in turn, or the technical team could actively locate the resonance point.

“Does this have to do with who the Hermit is?” The door closed slowly. Horne looked around at the resonance room’s walls.

Frequency module screens were embedded on all four sides, projecting waveforms, spectra, and harmonic superposition diagrams.

“Yes, because the purpose of this Hertz Resonance Room is to draw out the Hermit.” Homan walked to the main console and pressed one of the buttons. Semi-transparent 3D waveform towers appeared on the surrounding screens, with various waveforms twisting and intertwining inside like tangled threads.

“The Hermit is a highly respected alien.” Jia Lan’s voice sounded from behind. Horne didn’t turn around, still examining the circular room.

A transparent frequency net hung overhead like a thin membrane in the room’s open central area. If a 440 Hz resonance appeared anywhere in Loch City, the information and location would display here in real time.

“It rarely appears but always knows what will happen in the world it inhabits. That’s why we humans call it the ‘Hermit’—you can think of it as a ‘prophet.’ It was also the first alien to have positive contact with humans a hundred years ago. It once helped humanity, but after Ais became leader, it rarely showed itself again.”

Such an existence actually was out there. This was the first time Horne had learned specific details about the “Hermit.” He listened quietly without commenting.

The Tau Ceti Star System had many legends about the Hermit. It was said to have existed for nearly deep time scales. It traveled to many planets via frequencies, experienced many lives, and understood the universe better than any of them. Becoming an alien was merely one of its experiences. It held absolute authority in the Tau Ceti Star System but never interfered in racial processes, whether continuation or extinction. It only conveyed the consciousness of the universe, and the Fate Community, as the will of the universe, had accepted it.

“The Fate Community accepted it?” Horne didn’t quite understand.

Jia Lan explained that, to them, the universe they understood consisted of all things as frequencies and the links between them. The right frequency would resonate with the Fate Community, opening the room where it resided and accepting the lifeform in sync.

“There is one main reason: due to its frequency characteristics, the spacetime around it produces slight distortions. You can think of its location not as true ‘space’ but as a high-dimensional frequency collapse point, surrounded by a strong frequency coupling field. No matter— not even light—can escape it.”

Under such conditions, entering its range while in sync allowed one to see it as it truly was. If out of sync, it might appear as a wall, darkness, or an abyss, varying by person. Blindly rushing in would only result in being devoured or torn apart.

Homan opened the control panel. A holographic model of the Fate Community’s outer frequencies appeared in the cabin’s center—just a conceptual diagram. Rays of light twisted and entangled, waves surging like ocean swells, leaping unstably around the edges.

It was a frequency-induced structural illusion shaping cognition. Once, some aliens could enter, but as fewer and fewer resonated at 440 Hz, no one could reach the Fate Community’s location anymore—not even the leader now.

After they invaded Earth, the Fate Community hardly responded to any of its kin. To this day, only one alien could approach it.

That “one” was the Hermit.

The resonance room’s role was to find that resonance point. They needed to capture the Hermit. But Jia Lan believed that for a being like the Hermit, it had long transcended tribal boundaries. It cared not for racial survival but for cosmic frequencies. It knew the aliens were about to descend en masse and occupy Earth, an act that would only accelerate their race’s deviation from the rules and lead to extinction. Thus, it would surely respond to humans. They just needed to provide a channel and wait.

“And the result?” Horne asked.

Homan shook his head. “A few months ago, it briefly responded for an instant. Too fast—we couldn’t capture it.”

The Hermit… Horne still felt the name was familiar. He had heard it before anyone mentioned it to him, but at this moment, he couldn’t recall where.

Homan said, “If the Hermit still doesn’t respond by the end, we’ll have to use the frequency tuner tech to enter the Fate Community’s location.”

“While feasible, this method is extremely risky,” Jia Lan didn’t fully agree. “The Fate Community can distinguish real from fake. What you tune out is scientific data, not true resonance. You’re too reliant on religion.”

They had argued about this many times.

Homan was somewhat annoyed. Wrinkles deepened on his furrowed face. “I’ve explained it so many times, and you still don’t get it. I’m talking about science—matter determines consciousness. That’s the absolute truth. For anything I can solve with science, I won’t pin hopes on an inactive, metaphysical, nebulous thing like the Hermit. If not for connecting to its frequency recently, I’d even doubt its existence. Understand?”

His knuckles rapped the desk: “Thump thump.” Homan’s voice grew louder. “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in religion. Don’t question me.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Jia Lan remained calm. “But I believe the essential difference between human science and religion isn’t ‘truth or falsehood,’ but the ‘degree to which it’s allowed to be questioned.’ When a system is upheld as absolute and unquestionable, what is it then?”

Homan was about to flare up when the door opened. A familiar figure walked in. The moment Horne saw the newcomer, his back stiffened. Memories from the previous night surged up. He averted his gaze.

Hels walked over, bringing a light woody breeze. He stopped beside him and said softly, “Morning.”

It wasn’t morning anymore.

Hels casually greeted Homan. Homan turned his back to Jia Lan and gave Horne a puzzled look.

Horne shifted his body slightly, positioning himself to avoid facing Hels as much as possible. He didn’t look, didn’t listen, didn’t care, and didn’t respond. His throat bobbed. That warm touch felt infinitely amplified. His fingertips rubbed together for a moment before he turned and walked to the other side. To make his movement seem justified, he stared at the detector on the wall.

Hels stayed put. His gaze lazily swept over Horne, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

Those eyes were cold, devoid of any ripple, yet under the lights, they still shimmered with waves of light.

Horne shifted his attention from Hels. “But why should we pin our hopes on an Alien?”

You Wenjie said, “We’ve never pinned our hopes on it, nor will we, nor could we. Though its response would be ideal. Humans can’t enter the Obelisk without an Alien to lead the way. If the Hermit is there, we can enter without suffering the Fate Community’s spatial distortions. If it doesn’t show up in the end, we still have our own way to break that lock.”

“But if the Hermit helps humanity, that’s the optimal choice,” Jia Lan added.

By then, the high-energy particles would act like a massive nuclear bomb targeted solely at the Aliens, shattering the Fate Community.

“Boom—”

Blood surged through his veins, nosebleed splattering everywhere.

The noisy environment, the hazy lights, the screams and wild laughter—all were present. Horne panted for breath and waited a few seconds on the arena stage. The opponent, beaten senseless by him, never got back up.

Today’s 20 consecutive wins broke the Red Light District’s single-day individual arena battle record, netting him 10,000. Cheers and jeers alike rang out, but Horne tuned them out. He wiped sweat from his brow with a towel at random, sat at the bar to rest, and caught his breath.

He had come straight here from the Hertz Resonance Room. As soon as he left, terminal messages arrived one after another.

Hels: [Walked so fast? Where to?]

Hels: [What are you doing in the Red Light District?]