Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

During his rappelling, he continuously broadcast real-time updates via radio.

"Fifty meters," his voice came through the walkie-talkie, "Seventy meters. This section of the cliff is black, very dense and smooth, probably basalt. I've descended to a depth of one hundred meters. Oh, something's not right. There's a clear dividing line here, and further down it turns into reddish-brown rock. It seems to be heavily weathered, like it's been hollowed out."

"That's normal," Mira's voice was a little weak. "The overlying layer may have originated from lava flows, and its hardness is much greater than that of the sandstone at the bottom, so the sandstone at the bottom is more easily eroded by sandstorms."

"Maybe," Song Xingye said.

He had stopped rappelling and was now hanging on the edge of the cliff.

"The rock face here is so wide that I can't see the end at all. It looks like a cave, but it extends horizontally, as if a deep crack has been cleaved into the entire cliff face."

"Don't rush into further exploration," Commander Sheng Tianhong interrupted him in a calm voice. "Don't linger there. The primary task is to ensure the safety of the 'Rock Jumpers'."

"Understood, Captain. Wait a moment, let me set up the light. Goodness, this crevice is incredibly deep, truly bottomless. Wait, if I lower it a little further and swing it slightly, that's it, we've reached it. Okay, I'm standing on the ledge now."

"Don't untie the safety rope under any circumstances," the captain ordered.

"Received. The cave ceiling is very high; you can walk upright in it, it's incredible. I still can't figure out how deep it is. Hey, that rock you're standing on? It looks pretty solid, right? Actually, the bottom has been hollowed out."

The cave floor stretched horizontally inwards for who knows how many kilometers, its surface smooth as a mirror, covered in crystals that shimmered under the light. Some crystals were as big as a fingernail; I couldn't immediately tell what they were made of—some purple, some blue.

Purple? Han Jing thought, amethyst?

"Wait, the crystals deep within the crystal bed are all white and translucent. They don't look like quartz, nor are they hexagonal; they're quadrilateral."

"Wait a minute," Mira interjected, "a quadrilateral? Are you sure it's a quadrilateral?"

"Yes, they have both square and rectangular ones, and they look quite familiar."

“I bet you’ve seen it before,” Mira said. “It’s a halide, which is salt.”

"Salt?" He paused for a long time. "You know what, I think it really is salt; the whole cave is covered with salt crystals."

……

Fifteen minutes later, Han Jing also rappelled down into the cave below, landing steadily on the smooth cave floor, the beams of their headlamps meeting at one point.

He finally saw clearly that those were indeed salt crystals, and even the crystals closest to the edge of the canyon had gradually turned violet color under the radiation of cosmic rays over billions of years.

Apart from these salt crystals, the cave is almost empty. The ceiling is flat and smooth, and the ground is the same. There are no stalactites or stalagmites, nor any other typical cave geological structures.

Han Jing suddenly realized that this place was once a vast salt flat, a layer of salt left behind after the ancient ocean dried up. Over the long years, these salt flats were buried layer by layer by volcanic ash and lava erupted from the Tharsis volcano group.

Later, when Mariner Canyon cleaved the Martian crust like a sharp blade, the flowing water gradually dissolved and carried away some of the salt layer, eventually leaving a horizontal fissure up to three meters high and stretching for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers on the canyon walls.

Han Jing fell into deep thought. Just how thick was this salt layer? Could this planet have been completely covered by an ancient ocean? Is there a global salt crust beneath Mars' crust? Or is this merely a geological wonder unique to the equator? More importantly, did that ancient ocean... ever harbor life?

He longed to stay, to explore the cave more deeply, to examine the rocks inch by inch under a microscope, and to search for possible microfossils. But that was just wishful thinking. They had only two options: either continue forward or die here.

However, it wouldn't hurt to take a few more glances while they're here. In fact, it's perfectly reasonable for others to come down and broaden their horizons before they leave.

These crystals... Song Xingye had never mentioned that they were so big. Several clusters of crystals were clustered in front of him, each as big as a milk carton, with sharp edges and corners, looking like precision-machined man-made objects.

On the other side is a perfect octahedron, like a modern glass sculpture. Are these really all salt?

The surface layer is indeed like that, but something else seems to be hidden deep inside, whiter in color, with a hint of milky blue.

He tried to scrape off the surface and found that the texture inside was quite soft, obviously different from ordinary rock salt. The "Rock Jumper" vehicle is equipped with a mass spectrometer, so if he could collect some samples to take away, he could conduct component analysis later.

Is the same true for the deeper structures?

Han Jing shone his headlamp into the depths of the cave and continued to walk in, wanting to explore its depths.

……

Commander Sheng Tianhong paused briefly in the crevice cave, which was indeed an excellent place to land. Instead of untying the microfiber safety rope around his body, he walked deeper into the cave and stood side by side with Han Jing and Song Xingye, marveling at the spectacular salt rock formation.

Based on previous radio reports, they confirmed that the crack in the cliff face extended inward for about thirty meters before ending.

"Completely smooth," Song Xingye exclaimed, "It's like it's been polished, a whole wall of pure white stone."

"I'm curious, just how far does this salt layer extend?" Han Jing asked.

"Don't expect to figure out the depth without drilling," Song Xingye said. "I bet this salt layer is thicker than you can imagine."

"Hundreds of kilometers?"

But these things were not important to Sheng Tianhong. What he was more concerned about was how to get all the team members safely down to the "rock jumpers" below the cliff and ensure that they could successfully endure the long trek to the bottom of the valley.

He initially wanted to blame Song Xingye for delaying the progress due to cave exploration, but upon further reflection, it seemed understandable, since they had traveled all the way to Mars for exploration.

He planned to speak with Song Xingye privately later, reminding him that no matter what earth-shattering secret he had discovered, advancing northward as quickly as possible was the most urgent task at hand.

Before leaving the cave to continue rappelling, he carefully checked the connection buckles of the rappelling line and safety rope one last time, confirming that everything was intact. He then gave the microfiber rope a hard tug and said through the communication channel:

"Prepare the safety rope."

His rappelling rope and safety rope remained anchored at the top of the cliff, and Sergei's reply came through the walkie-talkie: "Safety ready."

Sheng Tianhong leaned out and looked down; below was a dizzying vertical drop.

It is still nearly a kilometer from the bottom of the valley.

Then, he leaned back, his feet leaving the edge of the cliff. The microfiber main rope instantly tightened to support his weight, but suddenly snapped without warning, and he fell into freefall.

Oops.

"I've fallen!" he yelled. "Hold on tight to the safety rope!"

The safety rope tightened instantly and grabbed him. The enormous inertia caused him to swing away from the cliff like a pendulum, his body twisting clumsily in mid-air.

Immediately afterwards, the safety rope broke.

He began to tumble in the air, his body instinctively adopting the posture of a skydiver, arms outstretched and legs spread in a V-shape.

"Tighten it!" he roared in vain, but he knew better than anyone that it was no use.

All the ropes had snapped, and now only two kilometers of thin Martian atmosphere remained between him and death.

He felt as if he had fallen for an entire century before finally crashing heavily to the ground.

……

Sheng Tianhong lay on his back on the slope piled with rubble and sand, his mind filled with disbelief. He hadn't died.

It's a miracle he's still alive.

The fall felt incredibly long in his mind, but the actual speed of his descent was astonishing. He tried to estimate his final velocity at the moment of impact with the ground, but his thoughts were tangled and he couldn't concentrate.

He did not appear to be injured.

In fact, he didn't feel anything unusual; he just felt as if he were enveloped in a comfortable warmth.

The helmet hadn't even broken yet, and he was now absolutely certain that this thing absolutely deserved the overwhelming publicity, a true miracle of materials science: light, clean, yet indestructible.

He should really give the manufacturing company a piece of his mind: "I just fell off a cliff half a kilometer high, my head slammed into the rocks at the bottom, and this carbide helmet is still completely intact!"

He really hoped that the rest of the spacesuit was as sturdy as the helmet. At this moment, he could clearly hear the strange noises of air escaping from the damaged area.

His body lay sprawled on the ground at an extremely contorted angle, half of his body facing upwards, the sky above displaying a rare red hue, dotted with a few feather-like yellow clouds.

He desperately wanted to turn his neck and look around, but out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a glaring crimson blood pooling at the bottom of his helmet, around his right ear.

He tried to call his teammates via radio, but found that he could no longer make a sound. Moreover, he strongly suspected that the communication module had been broken long ago.

The bloodstains inside the helmet were getting bigger and deeper.

At this moment, he felt an unprecedented calm. He knew very well that he owed the universe a life long ago, and death had finally come to collect its debt.

A fleeting thought crossed his mind.

It's impossible for anyone else to get to him in time. And even if they did manage to get there, what could they do in this situation?

Breathing began to become extremely difficult, and the air inside the spacesuit became increasingly thin.

Now, the chance to survive will be left to someone else. Is this enough to satisfy God? Is the price finally enough? What a wonderful game of balancing. He has finally paid off all his debts and can leave this universe without any regrets.

Around Sheng Tianhong's right ear, at the bottom of his helmet, blood had pooled into a pool six centimeters deep. As the air pressure inside the damaged spacesuit dropped sharply and gradually reached equilibrium with the extremely low Martian atmospheric pressure, the warm blood began to slowly boil and bubble.

Sheng Tianhong lay quietly on the Martian slope, awaiting death.

……

When they finally arrived at the crash site of Commander Sheng Tianhong, Song Xingye knew in his heart that it was already too late.

The body lay quietly on a steep, rocky slope. Before Han Jing went forward to examine it, Song Xingye strictly required each team member to secure themselves firmly to the hard cliff face with a safety rope.

Han Jing's examination was very brief. After he stood up, he told everyone that the enormous impact had instantly taken the commander's life. Even in the low gravity environment of Mars, no one could possibly survive such a horrific fall.

"He looked very calm," Han Jing said in a low voice.

"But he is indeed dead." Mira's voice carried the chilling truth.

Sheng Tianhong's body was stuck to the scree slope with congealed blood. It took the three of them a lot of effort to pry it off. But just as Song Xingye let go to grab the rope, the body slid down the steep slope, flipped slightly, and triggered a small avalanche of scree.

His body finally came to a stop when one of his feet became stuck in the gap between two giant rocks hundreds of meters below. This time, they did not try to move him again.

The slope was full of hard rocks, making it impossible to dig a proper grave. They could only place him in a natural recess between the boulders and then cover the body with fist-sized pebbles.

Finding stones here is a piece of cake; the entire hillside is scattered with rocks of all sizes, from tiny pebbles to huge boulders as big as spaceships.

Without any form of funeral, Song Xingye suppressed his grief and organized the team, repeatedly checking that everyone's safety ropes were secure.

He had to get everyone moving, and before their brains had fully processed the shock of death, concentrate all their energy on completing this deadly downhill mission.

They had no way back; the Xihe had long since been reduced to ruins, leaving them nowhere to go. They had no choice but to continue downwards and forward.

The scree slope beneath their feet extended downwards at an exaggerated angle of nearly forty degrees, fraught with danger. The loose rocks under their feet could easily trigger a small scree landslide if subjected to any external force.

Song Xingye must remain highly vigilant at all times and strictly require all team members to stagger their positions while moving. No one should stand directly below another team member. In this terrain, even the slightest slip could not only sprain an ankle but could also lead to an irreparable tragedy.

Given the extremely poor road conditions, Song Xingye made a decision: the safest solution was to stuff the remaining four people into the "Rock Jumper" all-terrain vehicle and then use the microfiber ropes firmly fixed to the cliff face as traction to allow the machine to slowly slide down the scree slope.

Because he only allows himself to fully exert himself on the microfiber rope during emergency braking, the "rock jumpers" descend at an alarmingly slow pace. Looking ahead, to reach the flat area at the bottom of the canyon, they would have to trek at least fifteen to twenty kilometers on such steep slopes.

Author Space Pioneer personally recommends: I hope you enjoy the story of "Reborn in 2011, I am the Chief Designer of Aerospace" on Cola Novels.