After the green indicator light came on, it was as if some of the air in the control room had been sucked away; no one spoke first.

Nana's voice broke the silence: "The signal is stable, and the data stream has been completely imported into the main system."

Chen Hao crumpled the draft paper covered in lines into a ball and threw it towards the corner trash can. It veered off course by two centimeters and rolled to the wall. He didn't pick it up.

“Then let’s not just stand there,” he said. “Didn’t that star map say the coordinates were under the South Pacific Ocean? Now let’s see if we can find the doorknob.”

Susan was already retrieving the latest deep-sea topographic map. The screen was divided into two parts: the left side showed the predicted trajectories of seven stars, and the right side showed a 3D model of the current ocean floor. When the two were overlaid, the discrepancy immediately became apparent—the location marked on the star map differed from the actual geological structure by more than 300 kilometers.

“The impact of plate drift is greater than expected,” she said. “Moreover, the hydrothermal vents have been subsiding over the years, so the coordinates need to be recalibrated.”

Carl squatted down next to the terminal to check the wiring and casually asked, "Should we add a crustal deformation coefficient? I have an old model here that we can use."

“Yes,” Nana said. “I will run the reverse simulation program simultaneously to reconstruct the seabed topography from 200 million years ago.”

Several devices started up simultaneously, and the cooling fans began to spin. Chen Hao yawned, pulled out a bag of potato chips, and took a bite.

“You can take your time calculating,” he said. “My job is to eat and ask silly questions.”

Nobody paid him any attention.

Ten minutes later, three overlapping areas finally appeared on the screen, arranged in a triangle, each labeled with a number.

“This is the most likely candidate point at the moment,” Susan said, pointing to the center of the image, “but we can’t yet determine which one is the true core location.”

Chen Hao leaned closer to take a look. "Choosing one out of three, what's the difference between this and a lottery?"

“It’s not a lottery,” Nana said. “We have an old map.”

She pulled up the symbolic diagrams she had previously scanned from the pottery jar, and on the other side, she displayed the pulse frequency curves after decoding the nameplate. The two images looked completely unrelated; one was a series of crooked, grotesque marks, and the other was a waveform bouncing up and down.

“The scales don’t match,” Carl frowned. “One is a symbolic road map, and the other is the actual terrain. Trying to overlay them will result in errors.”

“Then let’s not let the machine guess,” Chen Hao suddenly said. “When the ancients drew maps, they always needed a reference point, right? Like mountains, gullies, vents, and the like.”

“That’s how it is in theory,” Susan nodded.

“Then let’s find the ‘road signs’.” Chen Hao picked up a pen and drew a simple rhythmic symbol on the paper. “Three short ones, one long one, stop, then do it again—this thing keeps repeating, right? Maybe it’s used to mark important points.”

Carl's eyes lit up: "You mean... this rhythm might correspond to a specific location on the map?"

"Let's give it a try," Chen Hao shrugged. "Anyway, we don't have any other leads right now."

Carl immediately wrote a matching algorithm that converted the pulse frequency into virtual scale lines and scanned the edge cracks of the ancient map segment by segment. The program ran again and again until a certain jagged, broken outline perfectly matched a fault canyon in the sonar image.

"Found it!" He jumped up, his chair sliding back a bit. "The variation in the spacing of this crack matches the pulse rhythm 91 percent of the time!"

Susan zoomed in on the area. The canyon had collapsed in a ring shape, with a long, thin crack at the bottom, as if it had been torn open by some enormous force. More importantly, the sonar thermal image showed a faint but persistent energy fluctuation there.

“This spot is different from the other two,” she said. “There’s a reaction here.”

Chen Hao leaned closer to the screen and stared at the crack for several seconds. "Places that sound like a heartbeat are usually not very safe."

“Indeed.” Nana pulled up the database records, “The energy characteristics of the ancient hydrothermal civilization are low-frequency piezoelectric resonance, and the spectrum matches the current reading by 87 percent.”

“So,” Carl said, “there really is something ‘working’ down there?”

“It’s possible that the residual energy system is still functioning,” Nana replied.

The room was silent for a few seconds.

Susan opened the task management system, circled the point in red, and entered the name: Origin Point-01.

“Mark it as a Class A target,” she said. “Initiate 24-hour surround sonar patrols.”

The system automatically removed the monitoring queue, and six groups of detectors will take turns scanning the area to ensure that no abnormal signals are missed.

Chen Hao leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. "Shouldn't we be getting ready to go down now?"

“The equipment needs to be evaluated,” Nana said. “The target area is located at a depth of 12,300 meters, and the pressure is close to the limits of existing submersibles.”

“Then fix it,” Chen Hao said. “If that doesn’t work, we can weld it, and if that still doesn’t work, we can wrap it with tape.”

Carl looked down at the sensor interface he had just reinforced and silently wrapped another layer of tape around it.

“I’ve checked all the connection points,” he said. “This time it shouldn’t break.”

"You say that, but something always goes wrong." Chen Hao chuckled.

“Last time it was because you insisted on plugging the antenna into the power port.” Carl rolled his eyes.

“I thought it was USB,” Chen Hao said, shrugging. “Who would have thought that your era still has reverse-engineered interfaces?”

Susan didn't join their bickering; instead, she reviewed the energy readings again. The pattern was very regular, with a small peak appearing every forty-seven seconds, like some kind of periodic release.

She noted down the time intervals and saved them to a temporary file.

Nana stood still, her eyes glowing steadily with a blue light, while the background continuously simulated environmental parameters. Her voice was soft: "I suggest adding a passive monitoring array to capture potential signal feedback."

“Add it.” Susan nodded. “Also, increase the sonar sensitivity by two levels, so we don’t wait until something is right in our face to detect it.”

As Carl checked the equipment's status, he muttered, "I hope this time it's not just another case of digging up a pot and being done with it. I'm really interested in seeing what those ancient people actually looked like."

"What if it's an octopus?" Chen Hao said. "Eight legs, can write, and can create star maps. That sounds reasonable."

“Octopuses don’t have vocal cords,” Nana said. “They can’t produce complex speech systems.”

“They can knock on stones,” Chen Hao insisted. “Thump, thump, thump, three short and one long knock, that’s how they greet each other.”

Susan couldn't help but laugh, but quickly stopped herself.

The atmosphere in the control room had changed. It was no longer just about analysis and testing; there was a sense of impending departure. Everyone's movements became more tense, and their speech more decisive.

Chen Hao stopped eating the potato chips, crumpled the bag into a ball, and this time accurately threw it into the trash can.

He stared at the slowly rotating 3D positioning model in the center of the screen, muttering to himself, "Twelve thousand three hundred meters... in a place so dark that even a light can't penetrate it, what exactly are you hiding?"

Nana's data stream was still running, and the vents were emitting a slight breathing sound.

Susan saved the last report, her finger hovering over the submit button for a moment before pressing it.

After wrapping the last loop of tape around his neck, Carl patted the detector's outer casing.

"Alright," he said. "This time there's really no problem."

As soon as the words were spoken, a notification popped up in the bottom right corner of the main screen:

[Signal interruption in the 4th unit of the detector array]

Everyone looked up.

Karl's confident expression froze for a second.

He rushed over to check the interface status, quickly flicked a few cables with his fingers, and restarted the module.

Five seconds later, the green indicator light came on again.

He breathed a sigh of relief and muttered a curse under his breath.

Chen Hao looked at him and grinned.

“See, I told you so,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe what you said.”