The tip of the welding torch made a "click" sound, and the sparks were extinguished instantly.

Carl's hand froze in mid-air; the indicator light on the welding torch handle turned from red to gray, and then there was no further response. He pressed the restart button and tried twice more, but the machine didn't budge.

"Is it broken?" Chen Hao peeked over from the side, holding a screwdriver in his hand.

“It’s not broken,” Karl frowned. “It’s locked by the system.”

Nana walked over quickly, swiped her finger across the tablet a few times, and brought up the welding torch's operation record. She stared at the data for a while and said, "The last output energy exceeded the limit by 12%, the protection mechanism was activated, and the equipment entered sleep mode."

"How much over?" Chen Hao asked.

“One and a half times the rated power.” Nana looked up. “But it shouldn’t be this sensitive. It never automatically locked out even when overloaded before.”

Susan crouched down to inspect the bottom of the welding torch, running her fingers along the metal contacts. "It's a bit blackened here, like marks left from arcing."

Carl took the welding torch and disassembled the casing to inspect the internal wiring. "After the new power module was connected, the voltage fluctuations were greater than expected. The old model welding torch didn't have a dynamic adjustment function and couldn't handle it."

"So what do we do now?" Chen Hao scratched the back of his head. "We can't exactly tighten the screws by hand, can we?"

“We need to make a voltage regulator.” Karl closed the lid. “Using the circuit diagrams we brought back from the ruins, we need to redesign a matching module.”

"Then hurry up and draw it." Chen Hao stood up and patted his pants. "I'll start working as soon as your drawings are ready."

“It’s not that simple.” Karl shook his head. “Those drawings aren’t complete finished products; they’re more like… some kind of technical notes. The symbols are incomprehensible, and the logic is inconsistent.”

“We have to read it even if we don’t understand it.” Susan stood up. “Every day we delay, the risk increases. If the roof isn’t sealed, it will leak when it rains; if the electricity isn’t connected, all the subsequent equipment will be useless.”

Nana had already opened the console and connected the main control system of the research area to detection mode. The screen flickered and displayed a message: [Protocol not recognized, initialization failed]

She tried again on a different port, but the result was the same.

“All devices based on the technology modified from the relics cannot be started,” she said. “It’s not just the welding torches; the core processors in the entire research area are also stuck in the self-test phase.”

"What do you mean?" Chen Hao looked at her.

“The technology we brought back doesn’t match the existing system,” Nana said calmly. “It’s like trying to open someone else’s door with a key; the shape is similar, but it just won’t turn.”

The air was still for a few seconds.

"Wouldn't that be a waste of time?" Chen Hao said with a wry smile. "We worked so hard digging the foundation and building the framework, only to find that we can't even turn on the lights?"

“Not necessarily.” Susan pointed to the cable trays behind the control panel. “Check the physical connections first. What if it’s a loose connection or signal interference?”

“It’s worth a try,” Carl nodded. “It can at least eliminate some of the problems.”

The three immediately split up. Chen Hao was in charge of dismantling the protective panel and pulling out the cables buried in the wall section by section; Susan used a tester to check the continuity of each cable; while Carl and Nana checked the diagrams to verify the signal type of each cable.

Two hours later, they gathered around a workbench.

“Found it.” Nana pointed to a coded sequence on the projection. “All devices send an authentication request when they start up, but our system returns a generic response, while the relic device requires a specific key to be authenticated.”

"So that means?" Chen Hao asked.

“We’re missing a decoding process,” she said. “Without it, no device based on relic technology can be activated.”

"Where is this thing?" Chen Hao looked around. "Was it missed during the last scan?"

“It’s not in the database.” Nana shook her head. “The original data packet is complete, but the critical parts are encrypted. We need to crack it.”

"Who would do something like that?" Chen Hao shrugged. "Hiding their own things and making it all so secretive."

“It’s probably to prevent abuse,” Carl said in a low voice. “Advanced technology with high barriers to entry, normal operation.”

“But we can’t even get close to the threshold right now.” Chen Hao sat down on the box. “If we can’t untie it, what will we do next? Live in a thatched hut and retire?”

No one responded.

Nana reactivated the holographic projection, overlaying the technical map of the ruins with the current project progress. In the image, the residential area structure was marked in green, indicating that progress could proceed; while large areas of the research area were dark red, marked "Dependencies Missing".

“If we don’t decrypt it,” she pointed to the projection, “not only will lighting and heating not be able to be automated, but even the filtration module of the water supply system will not be able to be activated. In the long run, survival efficiency will drop significantly.”

"You mean, even if the house is built, we'll still have to rely on boiling water to drink?" Chen Hao's eyes widened.

"To be precise, it's the sediment that settles naturally after boiling," Nana nodded.

Chen Hao was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly laughed: "I thought the worst that could happen was sleeping on the ground, but it turns out I'll have to drink mud soup from now on."

Susan didn't laugh. She stared at the projection for a long time before speaking: "So the problem isn't the materials, nor is it the manpower. What's really holding us back is the technological gap."

"Then why build any houses?" Chen Hao waved his hand. "Let's figure out this pile of cryptic books first."

Carl shook his head: "I don't recommend halting construction. Once it stops, it's hard to rebuild morale. Besides, the sooner the structural work is completed, the more stable the working environment will be."

"You want to push both at the same time?" Chen Hao looked at him. "We can't even get electricity right now, how are we supposed to do research?"

“We can simulate it manually.” Carl opened his notebook. “Draw out the key circuits and test them using existing components. Although it’s slow, it will get us closer to the answer step by step.”

"Are you confident?" Chen Hao looked directly at him.

“No,” Karl answered frankly, “but I have to try. Otherwise, next time we encounter a crisis, we’ll still have to rely on makeshift modifications to get through it.”

The room fell silent again.

Nana stood in front of the control panel, her finger hovering over the data upload button, hesitant to press it. She knew that once deep parsing of encrypted packets began, system resources would be heavily consumed, even requiring routine monitoring to run at reduced frequency.

"What do you think?" she asked.

Susan stood against the wall, holding a stripped electrical wire in her hand. "I don't think arguing about what to do first is meaningful. We need to change our approach—if the technologies are incompatible, we should find a way to make them compatible."

"How do we ensure compatibility?" Chen Hao asked.

“Build middleware,” she said, “something that understands the old system and can read the new protocol. Like a translator.”

“It’s theoretically feasible,” Nana nodded, “but I don’t have a ready-made template.”

“Then let’s modify it as we go.” Susan rolled up the wire and put it into her tool bag. “Anyway, we don’t have any other way out right now.”

Chen Hao looked at Karl, then at Nana. "So... are we going to build houses, decipher alien codes, and invent a translator while we're at it?"

"More or less," Susan said casually.

"I'm really going backwards as I get older," Chen Hao sighed. "Homework wasn't this hard when I was a kid."

Carl looked down and wrote a string of characters on the paper, then circled a few of them. "These symbols appear repeatedly on different drawings in fixed positions; they are probably some kind of check code."

"Can you guess it?" Chen Hao leaned closer to look.

“I can’t guess,” Carl shook his head. “But we can try. List all the possible combinations and verify them one by one.”

"That would take forever to try," Chen Hao rolled his eyes.

“It’s better than sitting here doing nothing.” Carl picked up his pen and wrote a line on the corner of the paper: **Key Missing—System Unable to Activate**

Nana began organizing the raw data packets, preparing to import them into the analysis module. She separated the encrypted sections, set up multiple parsing paths, and retained the manual intervention interface.

Susan checked the spare parts and found that the stock of several core chips was almost gone. She made a note of the list and planned to rearrange the usage plan tomorrow.

Chen Hao sat in the corner, turning a nut in his hand. He looked at Karl's back as he wrote at his desk, then at the scrolling code on Nana's screen, and suddenly felt that all of this was a bit absurd.

The four of them huddled in this newly built, dilapidated shed, trying to solve technological puzzles left over from thousands of years ago. There was no laboratory, no server, and they even had to boil their own water.

But strangely enough, no one mentioned giving up.

"Hey," he suddenly spoke, "what if we still can't solve it in the end?"

The three of them looked at him at the same time.

“I mean,” he said, shaking the nut in his hand, “what if there’s no way to solve this thing, or the key is already lost? Wouldn’t all our efforts have been for nothing?”

Karl stopped writing.

Nana paused the data loading.

Susan looked at him quietly.

After a few seconds, Karl spoke up: "That proves we're not qualified to use this technology."

"What's the meaning?"

“It means,” he looked up, “that some things shouldn’t be taken by just anyone. If we can’t even cross the most basic threshold, then perhaps… we shouldn’t have it yet.”

Chen Hao was stunned.

Nana restarted the parsing program, and the progress bar on the screen moved slowly.

“But we can give it a try,” she said.

Chen Hao didn't say anything more. He put the nuts on the table, stood up, walked to the pile of materials, and began to sort and organize the remaining connectors.

The roof wasn't sealed yet, and the wind seeped in through the gaps, ruffling a corner of the blueprints on the table.

Karl continued writing his deductions, the pen scratching softly.

Susan took out her notebook and began sketching the layout of the temporary work area.

Nana's gaze fell on the first line of characters in the encrypted section, and her fingers tapped lightly on the keyboard.

When the parsing process reached the thirty-seventh minute, a prompt suddenly appeared on the screen:

[82% matching rate of similar coding structures found]