It started when a bloody rain was about to fall.

After hearing Ji Yuezi's reply, everyone had mixed feelings.

Zhao Mingyuan's fingers hovered over the keyboard, forgetting to fall. He had never heard Ji Yuezi utter the words "I don't know."

In his memory, Ji Yuezi's dictionary did not contain the word "I don't know." She either gave an answer or remained silent; there was never a middle ground.

Faced with the infinity of the universe, even she could only say "I don't know".

It turns out she was just like us, standing in the same fog.

But because she stood so close to the front, the mist left its mark on her more heavily than on any of us.

Chen Siyuan lowered his head, staring at his reflection on the screen. The lenses reflected a blurry facial outline, like an old photograph soaked in water.

When she doesn't say "I don't know," we all assume she knows everything.

Now that she's told us, we realize that if even she didn't know, then this matter is probably much bigger and more complicated than we imagined.

Xu Zhixing finally put down his pen. He gently screwed the pen cap back on, the subtle "click" sounding particularly clear in the silence.

He looked at Ji Yuezi and saw that on that face, which was so perfect it was almost like a law, a very faint crack appeared for the first time. It wasn't a sign of weakness, but of honesty.

She was willing to say "I don't know" in front of us. That wasn't a sign of weakness; it was a sign of trust.

She believes we are worthy to stand with her in the face of this unknown fog.

Wang Ya's gaze lingered on Ji Yuezi's face. The faint wrinkle between her brows remained, like an almost invisible crack on ice.

She had known Ji Yuezi for three years, and this was the first time she had seen such marks on that face.

That wasn't confusion, it was alertness.

It is the silence of a hunter when he discovers the tracks of his prey, not out of fear of the prey, but because he is calculating the distance and wind direction.

"But the stars... the universe... are never silent statues. They are telling a story in a 'grammar' that we have not yet deciphered, or even fully understood."

These peaks, with their time series, spectral characteristics, and accompanying background perturbations, do not conform to any statistical model of known natural noise or astronomical activity. They are more like…”

The silence was broken when Ji Yuezi's voice rang out again, and then her words hung in the trembling air.

At the same time, her gaze was locked by an invisible force, fixed on the area beneath the three stars of Orion's Belt that appeared to the naked eye as merely a hazy dark patch.

The tranquil cradle where M42 was born seemed to faintly pulsate within Ji Yuezi's consciousness, sharpened by data and perception, with a weak, stubborn, and eerie inner rhythm.

It's as if a colossal creature, slumbering deep within the coldest womb of the universe, is slowly stretching its limbs across light-years, emitting its first heavy, slow, and rhythmic heartbeat upon awakening.

That heartbeat pierced through billions of light-years of void, landing precisely in Ji Yuezi's senses, like a preordained rendezvous.

"Senior Yue! Your necklace—"

Just then, Lin Wei gasped, and her right index finger involuntarily rose.

His voice was filled with an incredulous tremor.

His pupils contracted, his lips parted slightly, and he seemed frozen in place, with only his right index finger trembling slightly.

As soon as Lin Wei exclaimed, the other six people inside the observation dome looked over.

Zhao Mingyuan suddenly looked up.

He had never heard Lin Wei speak in such a voice before. The tremor in her voice was not surprise, but an instinctive alertness, like a small animal smelling the scent of a predator in the air.

"What is she afraid of? Hmm? It's that silver pendant, it's glowing! A deep blue and bright." Witnessing all this, Zhao Mingyuan thought in disbelief.

Chen Siyuan stood up halfway from his seat, then stopped.

His gaze shifted from the direction Lin Wei was pointing to to Ji Yuezi's chest, where he saw specks of pale blue light, like eyes suddenly opening in the deep sea within the cold white dome.

At the same time, Chen Siyuan exclaimed inwardly, "No! No! That light, that's not a reflection, it's coming from inside the pendant!"

At this moment, Xu Zhixing saw the silver pendant on Ji Yuezi's chest shining brightly, and his hand unconsciously clenched the pen, his knuckles turning white.

The pale blue light reflected on the lenses of his silver-rimmed glasses, like a drop of ink falling into clear water, spreading silently.

"That light is coming from inside the pendant! It's not a reflection, it's glowing on its own?!" Xu Zhiyuan thought in astonishment.

Upon seeing the strange phenomenon of the silver pendant glowing, Shen Linxi froze in her seat.

Her expertise is in spectral analysis, and she understands the essential difference between "luminescence" and "reflection" in the spectrum better than anyone else.

The edge of the pale blue halo had a gradient she had never seen before, a waveform that no known artificial light source or natural reflection could produce.

The light did not follow any of the optical laws she had learned. These thoughts flashed through Shen Linxi's mind one after another.

As for Wang Ya, she even paused for a moment after seeing the silver pendant on Ji Yuezi's chest emit a ghostly blue light.

At the same time, her hand unconsciously pressed on the lab table, her fingertips touching the cold metal surface. The coolness spread from her fingertips to her wrist, but she couldn't suppress the chill that rose up her spine.

"That silver pendant? I remember, Junior Sister Yue never took it off. In the three years I worked with her, I never saw it glow! Never." Wang Ya thought in surprise.

Looking at the silver pendant that shimmered with a deep blue light, Lu Beichen couldn't help but frown.

He had seen too many inexplicable celestial phenomena in the wild, such as ball lightning, ground lights, and unidentified luminous objects.

But they all had one thing in common: "You could at least sense that they belonged to this world. But the eerie blue light on Ji Yuezi's chest gave him a completely different feeling."

That's not something from this world. Or rather, it's not something from this "era." Lu Beichen suppressed his surprise and doubt, muttering to himself.

At the same time, Ji Yuezi lowered her head upon hearing this.

Her six-pointed star pendant, which she never parted with, was her mother's only heirloom. The ancient silver ornament "Star's Pulse," passed down through generations and with a mysterious origin, was now emitting an extremely faint yet absolutely unmistakable dark blue glow from the gemstone's core.

The light flickered. Slowly, steadily, with an almost breathing rhythm.

The deep blue light seemed to resonate perfectly with the eerie "pulsations" she sensed deep within the distant nebula, their frequencies in perfect sync.

It was as if a silent, deadly resonance, exceeding the speed of light, was taking place across the boundless void and spacetime.

At this moment, the light shone on Ji Yuezi's pale skin, on her deep, dark blue-purple hair, and on her spotless white lab coat, giving her an otherworldly, mysterious, and eerie halo.

Then Ji Yuezi raised her right fingertip and touched the surface of the pendant.

The familiar, enduring touch, as if from the depths of an ancient tomb or cold stardust, has vanished.

Instead, there is a gentle warmth, like the pulse of blood within a living being.

The warmth, carrying an eerie sense of foreboding, rushed rapidly into Ji Yuezi's right fingertips, winding its way up her spinal cord, and suddenly intertwined with the cold unease that had been accumulating in her heart since the data anomaly first appeared.

In that instant, a fleeting, elusive ripple crossed the depths of Ji Yuezi's ever-calm eyes—not fear, but something deeper and more ancient than fear.

It was as if the memories of her distant ancestors, ingrained in her blood, had been suddenly awakened.

At the same time, Zhao Mingyuan saw that ripple. It vanished in an instant, as quickly as if it had never existed. But he had indeed seen it.

That look—no, that wasn't Ji Yuezi's look.

That wasn't the same person. In that instant, something seemed to be looking at the world through her eyes.

At the same time, Xu Zhixing's pen slipped from his fingers, bounced twice on the table, and rolled to the ground. He didn't pick it up.

He simply looked into Ji Yuezi's eyes, those eyes he had never dared to look directly into, now filled with an emotion he could not name.

"What did she see? But it didn't seem like she was seeing with her eyes; it was more like something inside her was seeing it." Xu Zhixing thought with a shudder.

Shen Linxi also saw it; at that moment, her hand clenched silently on the table, her nails digging into her palm.

She had never believed in anything beyond the realm of scientific explanation, but the scene before her eyes rendered all the theories she had learned incomprehensible.

A silver pendant was glowing eerily, and the moment Shi Linglong touched it, it felt as if her entire being had been replaced.

"This is not scientific. This is not scientific. But it is happening." Shen Linxi could only mutter this to herself to ease the confusion and shock in her heart.

Seeing this, Chen Siyuan's heart tightened like a string, Wang Ya's breath hitched, and Lu Beichen's brows twitched violently. But all three of them had the same thought in their hearts as Shen Linxi:

"That's not scientific."