I live in the Martian wilderness!

"Your concerns are very valid, Lieutenant Colonel. The main storage unit of the Zhurong is radiation-resistant flash memory from the 2020s, with a total capacity of only 2GB."

"It can't even fully store a single ultra-high-resolution image like the one you just received; we were able to receive it because I took over the data stream in real time."

"But if the other party sends a huge data packet next time, the hardware cache of the Zhu Rong will be exhausted within 0.1 seconds, resulting in communication interruption and data loss."

Gu Yu stood up and walked towards cargo hold number two: "We must replace the storage of the Zhu Rong with a sufficiently large one before the next interaction."

In the spare parts area of ​​cargo hold number two, Gu Yu found his target: a palm-sized 10TB military-grade solid-state storage device for Tissot.

Its capacity is two thousand times that of the Zhurong's built-in storage.

The next few hours were spent on a decades-long renovation of the Zhurong.

Gu Yu first had Xuan Jian use the micro-carving function of the Divine Crafts module to accurately 3D print a physical adapter for "LVDS to Universal Data Bus" smaller than a fingernail.

Then, he put on his heavy black armor combat suit and left the shelter.

On an open field not far from the "Water-Collecting Tree," the Zhurong Ship stood quietly, like a silent sentinel.

A thin electric heating cable from cargo hold number two is connected to its external power supply port.

This is the "life support cable" that Gu Yu deployed immediately after bringing it back to the base.

For the past two weeks, this cable has been continuously supplying power to the internal thermal control circuit of the Zhurong ship, activating its built-in "passive thermal control" system.

That high-tech "hot water bottle" keeps its core temperature above the safe dormancy line of -20℃, preventing it from freezing into a pile of scrap metal.

Gu Yu walked to its side and knelt down. Guided by Xuan Jian's AR perspective, he carefully opened the onboard computer access port on the side of the Zhu Rong.

As several rusted screws were unscrewed, an old circuit board full of historical significance was revealed in front of Gu Yu.

It is covered with DIP (Dual In-line Package) chips that are now obsolete. The densely packed pins resemble centipede legs, exuding a retro industrial aesthetic.

Holding his breath, he used precise tweezers to firmly attach the tiny, newly crafted adapter to the diagnostic interface on the motherboard.

"Physical connection complete," he said softly. "Xuan, it's up to you now."

"Understood, Lieutenant Colonel. Injecting compatibility driver via interface... Driver loaded... Formatting new storage array..."

"The new partition [drive E: capacity 10TB] has been successfully mounted to the Zhuronghao file system."

Gu Yu looked at the green confirmation message that popped up on the HUD and let out a long sigh of relief.

Now, this veteran, born in 2020, has an external hard drive from 2047.

He resealed the access panel and returned to the command center. "Very good. Now we can ask questions with peace of mind. 10TB should be enough for now."

Xuanjian sent the letter he had edited into the void, and the waiting time seemed to stretch out indefinitely.

Every second, Gu Yu could hear the heavy pounding of his heart in his chest.

He didn't know if there would be a reply to this letter, nor what it would bring—would it be deeper curiosity, a wary silence, or...?

......

Less than ten minutes later, the alarm on the Zhurong sounded again!

"Beep! Beep!—"

Gu Yu sprang up from his chair, his pupils instantly contracting: "Xuan! How could it be so fast?!"

"Ten minutes?! That's not even enough for a single signal to travel back and forth! Does this make sense in physics?! Are they in orbit around Mars?"

"No, Lieutenant Colonel. According to the model calculations, a light signal would take at least 4-5 minutes to travel one way..."

Xuanjian's voice held an almost confused tone. "The signal vector is exactly the same as before, and the source still seems to have appeared out of nowhere."

"How did they do that?" Gu Yu pressed. "Could they complete reading, thinking, and replying in a fraction of a second? Or...is their signal speed faster than the speed of light?"

"Unexplainable, Lieutenant Colonel." Xuanjian projected two timelines on the screen representing the round trip of the signal, with the line representing the other party's response time being so short it was almost a non-existent point.

"This has already touched the boundaries of our existing physics models... The other party may possess some kind of faster-than-light communication that we cannot understand, or a thought process that is so fast as to be negligible."

In the midst of this chilling conversation, the incredibly swift reply was deciphered.

The girl's figure reappeared on the screen.

She seemed to have just seen Gu Yu's letter, and a clear look of confusion appeared in her pale green eyes.

Xuanjian's translation appeared: "Is your spaceship encrypted? The gods didn't request authorization from me to crack it. Did you forget to unlock it?"

Gu Yu's temple throbbed when he saw that sentence.

His mind was still reeling from the immense shock of "faster than light," and now he was struck by the even deeper, more eerie information revealed in those words.

Forgot to turn off encryption?

Her own military-grade dynamic frequency hopping protocol seemed to her like an unlocked door.

And that omnipotent "god," who deciphered his own top secret, actually needed to ask this girl for authorization?

In an instant, Gu Yu felt that he was facing more than just a technological gap.

What he glimpsed was a power structure and social form that he could not comprehend at all.

The green-eyed girl's replies continued.

"Rescuing refugees in the sea of ​​stars should not be for reward. The appearance of refugees on the royal land is the emperor's dereliction of duty and a disgrace to the empire!"

"I don't need you to pay me anything."

"Is your spaceship engine broken? But I don't know what you mean by 'nuclear fusion engine,' it sounds like a way of using solar energy."

"This is one of the most common engines in our empire, including blueprints and maintenance instructions. It is suitable for most civilian starships and has excellent stability."

"You should be able to buy replacement parts at any county repair port. Hope this helps."

"Also, thank you for your compliment."

As the translation disappeared, a highly compressed data packet began to download!

Gu Yu hadn't had time to think about the meaning behind the words: Emperor... prefectures and counties... star raft... thank you for the compliment.

An unprecedented burning sensation suddenly erupted from deep within his temples, instantly spreading throughout his entire cerebral cortex!

"Lieutenant Colonel!" For the first time, Xuanjian's voice lost its usual calmness, becoming sharp and urgent, even producing intermittent electronic tearing sounds due to the data stream overload!

"The data packet size... 1.2TB! The other party is using a compression algorithm that I can't understand yet! I... I'm trying to reverse engineer its decompression logic!"

"Warning! Computing power 100%! Neuron synchronization chip temperature exceeds warning threshold!"

Xuanjian devoted all its computing power to this "race" against the god-level algorithm.

It's not so much like deciphering a mystery, but more like an exceptionally bright student who, after seeing a standard answer, frantically reverse-engineers the solution behind it.

"Stop learning! Save the data first!" Gu Yu clutched his throbbing head.

His "carbon-fixing respiration" has been passively activated to its limit, frantically repairing the brain nerves that are constantly being burned up under the onslaught of information.

"Soon, Lieutenant Colonel! I'm about to understand it! This algorithm... it doesn't compress pixels, it compresses the information itself!"

"I... have a basic grasp of its decoding protocol... and am building a local database for the algorithm... temporarily named [Type 001 Folding Algorithm]."

"Based on the decoded portion of the data structure, it can be inferred that the total original data volume exceeds... 120TB!"

Gu Yu gasped! 120TB! Losslessly compressed into a 1.2TB data packet?

A compression ratio of 100:1! This is a remarkable achievement compared to any existing compression algorithm on Earth.

He gritted his teeth, enduring his headache, and said, "Xuan! Well done! Just by mastering this compression technology, we've already made a fortune!"

"You're right, Lieutenant Colonel. I can now perform more efficient selective decompression... I'm... I'm prioritizing the capture of key frames for the critical technology framework..."