Earth, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Reston, Virginia, 24 hours before the beacon tower is launched.

Professor Clemens Scott, sitting in front of his computer in his office, stared at the screen in deep thought.

In the scene, a black spire breaks through the ice on the snow-covered land, looking out of place with its surroundings.

Clemens brought his face closer to the screen and muttered to himself, "What the hell is this thing...?"

“Nobody knows.” A young woman in a white lab coat walked into the office, carrying two cups of coffee and a thick envelope tucked under her right arm. She said to Clemens, “It suddenly appeared on the Antarctic Peninsula three days ago.”

Clemens turned to look at the woman and asked, "Liz, tell me the details of what you found again."

Liz placed the coffee on the table and said, "Three days ago, a magnitude 5.3 earthquake occurred on the western coast of the Weddell Sea, about 200 kilometers east of Alexander Island, in the middle of the Antarctic Peninsula."

"Because this region is not located in an area of ​​active tectonic plates, and there are no sudden disasters in the surrounding area, Esperanza Antarctic Station sent an expedition team to the region to conduct research and discovered this..."

Liz pointed with her chin at the black spire on the screen.

Clemens took a sip of his coffee. "Has the expedition reached any conclusions?"

Liz: "They examined the black thing on the spot and found that it was neither metal nor a common carbon group, and that it came from a very deep underground location, even beyond the limits of what the machine could detect."

Clemens looked up: "They took samples?"

Liz: "They tried to take samples with the tools at hand, but found that no matter what tools they used, they couldn't collect even a tiny sample."

Clemens frowned, remained silent for a moment, and then suddenly asked Liz, "Besides these blurry pictures and videos, and those dubious guesses, isn't there any other data?"

Liz shrugged. "You know those guys."

Clemens fell silent again.

Liz crouched down, looked at the screen, and said with emotion, "Can you imagine? There are such buildings buried underground inside the Earth... If it weren't for that earthquake, probably no one would have discovered it."

Clemens took another sip of coffee and slowly said, "The Earth's radius is 6,371 kilometers, and the deepest point humans have explored underground is only 12 kilometers below the surface. In other words, humanity's current understanding of the underground is only 0.2% of the Earth's radius. Beyond that, humanity knows nothing."

Liz turned her gaze to the massive black tower on the screen: "You don't really believe this building extends all the way to the Earth's core, do you?"

Clemens shook his head and said, "I don't know. For people in our line of work, maintaining proper restraint when it comes to the unknown is the bare minimum."

Liz smiled and leaned down, gently placing her hand on Clemens's leg, and said softly, "The night before last, I never saw the word 'restraint' in your eyes..."

Clemens felt a little embarrassed and reached out to touch Liz's cheek.

"dad……"

A little girl in a pink dress stood at the office door, disrupting their rhythm.

Clemens quickly sat up straight, coughing to cover his panic, and said to the girl, "Alice, weren't you going to visit the exhibition hall? Why are you back all of a sudden?"

Alice glanced at Liz, then at her father, and said, "I've read it all, but if you'd like, I can go back and read it again from the beginning."

Seeing Clemens' wry smile, Liz smiled and said to Alice, "Let your father continue working. I'll take you downstairs; a batch of toy machines just arrived there."

Liz took Alice's hand, placed the thick envelope she had brought on the desk, and said to Clemens, "I almost forgot, you had an urgent letter. I brought it for you."

Clemens breathed a sigh of relief as he watched Liz and Alice leave the office.

He focused his attention on the letter, first looking at the sender's address.

The letter was sent from an unknown town in Norway, but when Clemens opened it, he discovered that the text inside was actually in Russian.

After reading the letter, Clemens finally understood what was going on.

The sender was a Russian geographer he knew. Three days earlier, an earthquake had occurred in Murmansk, Russia. During a routine screening of the epicenter, the geographer discovered something astonishing.

Upon opening the photograph in the letter and seeing what was inside, Clemens' eyes widened and his mouth slightly opened.

In the scene deep underground, there is a huge black tower that pierces through the soil and points straight towards the surface, just like the one on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Clemens flipped the photo over, and at the bottom blank space was a line of small print: "Taken at the Kola Superdeep Borehole."

The filming took place three days ago.

A second black tower?

Clemens stared at the photo, completely bewildered, his mind filled with questions.

He began to consult materials and compare data again and again, discovering that the truth was far more complicated than he had imagined.

When he logged into the national geological database and searched using keywords such as "black tower" or "underground tower," the results were all empty.

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