It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

While Shi Linglong, Qin Lan, and others, who were geologists, fell into silence because of the unusual geological phenomena deep underground in Mount Tai in Dongcheng and the eerie glow of the stone bead bracelet, no one knew that a similar scene was spreading in another land thousands of miles away.

South City.

The steel jungle of this megacity is bathed in the afternoon sunlight.

The sunlight had shifted from bright white to a dusky yellow, and the steel beams clinging to the glass curtain walls and viaducts slanted slowly westward. The entire city resembled a giant, dissected honeycomb, with every street a ravine flowing with golden sap.

The hustle and bustle continues—the roar of traffic, the noise of pedestrians, the crashing sounds of construction—all these sounds, like the tireless heartbeat of the city, together compose its grand narrative day after day.

Speaking of which, the location of Nancheng is quite peculiar.

Its straight-line distance from both Beijing and Dongcheng is almost exactly the same, around 1,000 kilometers.

The three megacities on the land form a nearly perfect equilateral triangle.

Is it a coincidence of geological movements, or some mystery yet to be deciphered?

Nobody can say for sure. And nobody has the time or inclination to think about it.

More than 100 kilometers outside the southern suburbs, nestled among the folds of mountains, the Beihang University Astronomical Observatory sits atop a mountain known as "Star-Picking Peak".

Heading west from the southern urban area, the first thing you see is a straight highway built amidst rolling mountains, with roadside trees, flowers, and greenery stretching for seventy or eighty kilometers, and distant mountains rising one after another to the horizon.

Then there is a winding mountain road that clings to the edge of the cliff. It is about 15 meters wide, and the asphalt surface is whitened by the mountain wind. Every hundred meters there is a tiny crack, like the interlaced lines on the back of an old man's hand.

The sound of falling rocks echoed through the canyon from time to time, lingering for a long time.

The guardrails along the road were rusty, and in some places there were no guardrails at all, only the abyss gaping its dark green maw.

At the end of the highway lies Zhaixing Peak.

This mountain is the highest point within a radius of hundreds of miles, and it stands above the clouds for most of the year.

It was afternoon, and the clouds were churning around the mountainside, while the summit was bathed in a strange light—the sun was already setting in the west, and the light slanted across the ridge, splitting the entire mountain into two halves of light and shadow.

The mountain is steep and sheer, like an outstretched hand of the earth, its fingertips trying to touch the sky, but always falling short by a certain distance.

The Beihang University Astronomical Observatory is located on the summit, like a silver wedge driven into the ridge, firmly embedded in the rock's skeleton.

The observatory is a silver-white circular building, about thirty meters high, resembling a small building, with a simple and almost austere appearance.

The exterior walls are covered with wind-erosion resistant alloy panels, the surface bearing fine riveting marks, gleaming with a cold metallic sheen in the afternoon's slanting sunlight—

Half of it is bathed in warm copper sunlight, while the other half is shrouded in dark blue shadows, as if the building itself is splitting into two different times and spaces.

The mountain wind blows ceaselessly year-round, whistling as it brushes against the walls, as if the building itself is breathing.

The building has three floors.

The base is a thick concrete foundation, embedded tens of meters deep into the rock mass, growing together with the mountain's skeleton to withstand the strong winds that often blow from the summit.

The base has a rough surface covered with textures left from the pouring process, resembling solidified magma.

The central area is the work and living area, arranged in a ring shape. The windows are narrow and deep, like portholes on a warship. Standing in front of the window and looking out, the view perfectly frames a corner of the scenery; and when you look up slightly, your gaze can go over the window sill and onto the blue sky above.

The top layer is the observation dome.

A huge hemispherical steel shell, about thirty meters in diameter, is coated with a matte white anti-radiation coating, and looks like an inverted porcelain bowl from a distance.

In the center of the dome, there is a slit that can be opened and closed from north to south. It is slightly open at this moment, like a half-open eye, silently gazing at the sky that is gradually turning grayish-blue.

The dome can also rotate 360 ​​degrees. The entire structure is supported by sixteen sets of hydraulic bearings and is almost silent when in operation—but if you put your ear close, you can hear a very subtle, continuous vibration, like the heartbeat of some living thing.

Upon entering the observation platform, one first encounters a long, wide passageway with sound-absorbing panels and pipes embedded in the walls on both sides.

The pipes are painted in different colors—red for heating, blue for water, and green for oxygen—and are neatly arranged along the ceiling, extending like blood vessels to every corner of the building.

Passing through the partition wall, you arrive at the circular corridor on the middle floor.

One side of the corridor has more than a dozen rooms—including duty rooms, rest rooms, kitchens, equipment rooms, and more.

Through the porthole on the other side, one can see the surging sea of ​​clouds at the mountainside.

At this moment, the sea of ​​clouds presents a thick, grayish-white texture, slowly churning like the breath exhaled by the earth.

Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the clouds, casting several huge beams of light that moved slowly through the valley, like an unseen hand caressing the earth.

The air was filled with the slightly warm smell unique to electronic devices, mixed with the faint fragrance of metal and insulating materials.

Climbing the spiral steel staircase to the top floor leads to the main observation room.

This is a sanctuary built of technology and absolute silence, as dark as the starry sky.

Fill lights cast cold, white, rational squares from high above the dome, cutting through the thick darkness.

Dust particles floated and swirled within the beams of light, like miniature galaxies imprisoned, performing an eternal, silent mass beneath this man-made dome.

The air vibrated with the continuous low-frequency hum of the instruments—the steady pulse of modern technology.

On a deeper level, there is the icy aura emanating from the metal, optical glass, and the vacuum chamber approaching absolute zero.

Inhaling it into my lungs, with a refreshing sting, it felt as if each breath was a secret exchange with the vacuum of the universe.

A cool breeze seeped in through the gaps in the dome, bringing with it the desolation of fallen leaves and rustling grass outside.

It gently brushed past the silent, towering equipment, touching the cold hardness of winter with the softness of spring, leaving behind a fleeting sigh.

The inner walls of the dome are lined with sound-absorbing foam, and the floor underfoot is made of steel grating with an anti-static coating. Stepping on it produces a hollow echo, as if there is a suspended abyss below.

The air was so quiet it was almost a vacuum, except for the continuous low hum of electronic devices running, like some kind of ancient chanting.

In the center of the room stood a main optical telescope—a reflecting telescope with a diameter of 100 centimeters.

The lens barrel is jet black and slender, coated with a matte anti-reflective paint, resembling a cannon pointing skyward, silent and solemn.

The telescope's base is a huge equatorial mount, its mechanical structure, made of brass and steel, is extremely precise, and the gaps between the meshing gears are filled with a small amount of lubricating oil, which gleams with an amber luster in the afternoon light that seeps in through the porthole.

When it rotates, you can only hear a very faint servo motor sound, like the buzzing of some kind of insect flapping its wings, brief and restrained.

The control console is flush against the north wall, with three screens arranged in an arc, displaying real-time star charts, spectral data, and dome status.

The star chart is densely marked with the coordinates and brightness of celestial bodies, and those names are both familiar and unfamiliar—Tian Shu, Tian Xuan, Kai Yang, Yao Guang, as if calling out some lost memory.

In the corner, there was also a small radio telescope receiving terminal, with a green light flashing rhythmically, like the beating of a heart.

It was 3:30 p.m., a typical observation period.

In the workstation area at the edge of the observation dome, six astronomy master's and doctoral students are engrossed in their respective work.

Zhao Mingyuan, a second-year graduate student, wears thick-rimmed black glasses, the thickness of which speaks volumes about his years of dealing with data.

He was calibrating the parameters of the spectrometer, his fingers making fine adjustments on the knob with movements so precise they were almost mechanical.

He glanced at the slender figure standing quietly beside the main telescope, adjusted his glasses, and his gaze behind the lenses faltered slightly—

The soft sheen of her chestnut-brown hair under the cool white light resembled the gentlest stroke of ink in a springtime scene in Jiangnan, softening even the cold metallic lines of the instruments.

No wonder everyone says that a junior student who stepped out of a painting has joined the astronomy department. Looking at her up close today, she really does look like a page cut from a Song Dynasty poem.

Beside him stood Chen Siyuan, a tall and thin graduate student, whose eyes always bore the weariness of staying up all night. At this moment, he was staring at the data stream jumping on the screen, his eye sockets sunken and dark circles like marks.

As he looked up and rubbed his temples, his gaze inadvertently swept over Lin Wei's profile—her half-drooping eyelashes cast faint shadows in the cold light, and her focused expression revealed an innocent clarity untouched by the world.

Lin Wei's expression as she looked at the data reminded Chen Siyuan of the first time he walked into this dome three years ago—his eyes were shining, and his heart had not yet been calloused by his thesis and reality.