I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

Old Zhou reacted the fastest.

He slammed the note on the table, turned, and walked towards the telephone, already organizing his thoughts: "Target's phone is off, possibly in the process of evacuation. Command post is advised to initiate..."

"Wait a moment."

Chen Zhiyuan's voice came from the delay line control position, interrupting Lao Zhou's hand that was reaching for the crank handle.

Old Zhou stopped and looked back at him.

Chen Zhiyuan stood motionless beside the oscilloscope, his brows furrowed, his gaze fixed on the unmoving baseline on the screen, as if trying to identify a vanished ink mark.

"If they were really on the run, the signal should be weakening."

He turned to the previous page of the notebook and pressed his finger on the data set at 3:02.

"Look at this last set of pulses, the amplitude is the same as before, there is no decay, no drift, and then it's cut off in one stroke."

Old Zhou withdrew his hand from the telephone, but the urgency on his face did not diminish.

"Cutting off the phone is just like turning it off, right? Turning it off means no signal, isn't that just running away?"

"Shutting down the phone is shutting down, and running away is running away; these two things are not necessarily linked together."

Chen Zhiyuan closed the notebook.

"If he wanted to run, why didn't he run during that four-minute silence two hours ago? Why wait until 3 a.m.? 3 a.m. is exactly when the encirclement forces arrive at their designated positions. How did he know that?"

Old Zhou said in a deep voice, "If he didn't know, then it's just a coincidence."

"Is it a coincidence, or is he waiting for us to make a move?"

The two looked at each other for a few seconds, but neither of them said anything.

The only sounds in the wooden house were the hum of the vacuum tube filament in the receiver and the background noise of the oscilloscope's time base circuit.

Lu Qinghe did not participate in the debate.

She had turned back to the receiver panel, her right hand resting on the frequency knob, her left hand holding a pencil with the tip touching the beginning of a blank line in the notebook.

She's adjusting the frequency.

The knob starts at the current listening frequency of 3.8 MHz and turns slightly to the right each time, in increments of approximately 50 Hz.

The baseline is calm.

Turn one more space, and it's still calm.

Chen Zhiyuan noticed her movements, walked over and stood behind her without making a sound to disturb her.

The oscilloscope showed nothing when the knob was turned through 3.9 MHz, 4.0 MHz, and 4.2 MHz.

Lu Qinghe loosened her grip, flexed her fingers, then put her hand back on and continued sweeping upwards.

Old Zhou asked in a low voice from behind, "What are you looking for?"

Lu Qinghe didn't turn around, her voice low: "Jiang Ming once relayed a pattern via telegram: when an old-fashioned underground shortwave radio is approached by a direction finder, it will suddenly switch to a backup frequency, transmit briefly to confirm that the link with the other end is still working, and then enter a long period of silence, making the tracker think that the signal source has moved or withdrawn."

Her hand paused briefly near 4.5 MHz before continuing upwards.

"If he didn't escape, but instead switched frequencies and waited, I should be able to find traces nearby."

The knob was turned to 5.0 MHz, but there was no response.

She stepped back and scanned again from 4.8 MHz.

Chen Zhiyuan glanced down at his watch.

3:08 AM.

The signal has been missing for five minutes.

When the knob reached 5.2 MHz, Lu Qinghe's hand suddenly stopped.

She didn't stop it on her own; the oscilloscope baseline jumped slightly.

It was so brief that she wouldn't have noticed it at all if she hadn't been staring at the screen the whole time.

A bright line, as thick as a needle tip, bounced off the baseline, but before it could take shape, it collapsed back down.

The time before and after is no more than 0.05 seconds.

Lu Qinghe's pencil tip landed on the notebook, writing down two numbers: 5.3 kHz slightly high, 0.05 seconds.

She waited for a full three minutes, but the knob didn't move again.

No second jump appeared on the oscilloscope screen.

"Only once."

She turned the notebook to Chen Zhiyuan and pointed to the azimuth reading next to that data.

The azimuth is 147 degrees.

The orientation of the pulses was completely consistent with all previous "three short, one long, three short" pulses, and the error was within the measurement accuracy.

"It's still there."

Chen Zhiyuan's voice was somewhat hoarse.

"It's still there."

Lu Qinghe repeated it, then stood up and walked towards the radio station.

Old Zhou understood what she was going to do and stepped aside to make way.

Lu Qinghe sat down at the telegraph table, pressed the telegraph button, and sent a short telegram in plain language.

"Notify the command post that the target has not moved, is in standby mode with its signal silenced, and remains in its original position. We recommend proceeding as planned, with the timing unchanged."

After sending the message, she released the button and waited for a reply.

The wooden house fell silent again, with only background noise coming from the radio.

Old Zhou walked back to the map, his gaze lingering on the red pencil oval before turning to Lu Qinghe.

Are you sure?

"The location hasn't changed."

Lu Qinghe's answer was short, and her tone was as flat as when she was recording data.

"What if he deliberately revealed himself? Intentionally let you find him, to make you think he was still there, when in fact he had already escaped through another exit?"

Lu Qinghe returned to the receiver and sat down, without giving a direct answer.

She pulled out a copy of the topographic survey conducted by the surveying team three years ago and pointed to the location of the old bunker with a pencil.

"The entrance faces southwest and is three to four meters deep. The depression is surrounded by wind-eroded hills on three sides, and the only way out is from the southwest."

"The first company approached from the southeast along the dry riverbed, while the second company detoured from the west, and the southwest direction was blocked."

She pushed the copy aside and turned her gaze back to the oscilloscope screen.

"If he wanted to run, he couldn't now."

"If he doesn't run, this silence is just him waiting for us to show our faces so he can launch a counterattack."

"No matter what the situation, the manhunt cannot stop."

Suddenly, a series of rapid ticking sounds came from the radio speaker.

The command post has replied.

Chen Zhiyuan leaned over to copy it down, his pencil moving quickly across the paper.

After he finished copying, he handed the note over.

Four words: Execute according to plan.

……

It was exactly 3:30 a.m.

The night sky over the Gobi Desert outside the wooden house was pitch black, with no transition between the horizon and the sky.

The sandstorm of the day had subsided, and the air was freezing cold.

On the southeastern horizon, a point of orange-red light bounced off the ground, trailing a long, thin streak as it climbed higher.

The red signal flare exploded at the highest point, illuminating the sandy ground within a 200-meter radius with a dark red glow.

The low sand dunes and wind-eroded hills took shape in an instant, then the light faded, fragments drifted in all directions, and the Gobi Desert was swallowed by darkness once again.

Lu Qinghe saw the afterglow of the signal flare in the reflection of the window glass.

She didn't turn around; her hand was already back on the receiver panel, the pencil in her left hand held between her index and middle fingers, and the notebook turned to a new page.

The ammeter pointer of Jia Ling Er remained at 134 microamps, showing no change.

The receiver frequency has been tuned back to the 3.8 MHz main monitoring channel, and the delay line has been restored to standard configuration.

If the enemy station activates communication during the encirclement process, she needs to capture the change in location immediately and report it to the command post.

If the other party remains silent, she will keep her eyes on the baseline until the operation is over.

Three minutes passed, and the baseline remained silent.

Five minutes passed, and it was still quiet.

Eight minutes passed, and nothing changed.

Old Zhou stood by the window, his gaze fixed on the southeastern horizon, trying to discern the traces of the encircling troops' advance.

But you can't see anything in that direction.

Tenth minute.

Chen Zhiyuan picked up the enamel mug, took a sip of the cooled boiled water, and the mug made a slight tapping sound as it touched his teeth.

Eleventh minute.

On the oscilloscope screen, the green baseline that had been quiet for eight minutes suddenly expanded from a thin line into a white wall without warning.

It was not a pulse, there was no interval, no modulation, and no waveform characteristics seen before.

It was a continuous white noise that rose from the bottom to the top of the screen, covering the entire amplitude range that the scan lines could display.

A dense hissing sound erupted from the speaker, so loud that the limiting diode at the output of the receiver's preamplifier gain tube was forced into a cutoff state.

Lu Qinghe's pencil tip drew a crooked ink mark on the notebook.

Her gaze shifted from the oscilloscope screen to the microammeter on the Jia-02.

The pointer is visibly moving to the left.

134.

One hundred and twenty.

One hundred and five.

The cathode coating of the Jia-02 began to collapse under the high-power radio frequency impact across the entire frequency band.

The rare earth emission layer inside the tube, which had lasted for more than 200 hours, was being rapidly depleted.

Ninety micro-annual units.