Chapter 497: Extraterrestrial (4K)

The pirate ship sailed through the high-altitude isolation layer, Lei Yesi carefully turned the helm to control altitude and avoid scraping against the pipes above.

Including himself, several players had donned heavy chemical suits, allowing them to breathe freely without relying on magical bubbles.

Yet the journey was utterly boring—the navigation radar pointed in one unchanging direction, and the scenery ahead remained identical. Bai Ma Mubei brought out two reinforced beach chairs and laid them down for herself and the unconscious astronaut to rest.

Claudia sat against the wall, flipping through a massive, thick grimoire.

As for Li Cheng and Hui Yu, after playing a portable gaming console for two hours, they grew bored again and began sharply critiquing the pirate ship.

"The ship's good—360° view, solid endurance, smooth power delivery, seamless shock absorption. But the rear seating is cramped, power and configuration details are lacking, power feels sluggish, and sound insulation is mediocre."

"Why doesn't your ship have perforated carbon fiber engine covers?"

"It still requires full manual control by the pilot—feels nowhere near Hongmeng SmartDrive, Xiaopeng XNGP, Xiaomi XiaomiPilot, or Tesla FSD."

Lei Yesi listened to their back-and-forth critiques, his temple veins bulging uncontrollably.

What do you mean "full manual control"? I could hand it over to the autonomous system—but dare you ride in it?

If he weren't afraid of losing, Lei Yesi would've flipped his lid long ago.

Quietly, the third-in-command of the Jalisco Crime Syndicate turned on the sound system inside his suit and played Spanish rap to drown out their critiques.

In a daze, he was back in his student days, hiding in his bedroom, using music to mask the constant gunfire echoing through the streets of Juárez at night.

Fortunately, the oppressive silence didn't last long—the walls on both sides began contracting forward, slowly at first, then accelerating; after about ten minutes, the pirate ship finally reached the edge of the wasteland.

Bai Ma Mubei sat up straight, stunned: "What the hell is this?"

Hui Yu said solemnly: "The Bronze Gate."

"Like in The Tomb Raider Notes?"

Claudia, already used to Master Pi Fu and his servant's absurdity, rolled her eyes and stood up—only to see an actual, majestic gate.

Its design was peculiar: a rectangle enclosing two concentric circles, one large, one small.

The rectangular gate was about 150 meters long and 90 meters high; the large circle's diameter matched the rectangle's height, adorned with three patterns—

A central dot radiating fifty rays of varying lengths in all directions;

A blue dot trailed by a ring, with three dots inside the ring—one red and two green;

A Cartesian coordinate system, with a downward-sloping curve in the first quadrant—but no specific coordinates;

The three patterns left everyone baffled; even more confusing was that the small circle sat at the bottom of the large circle, roughly five meters in diameter, also bearing its own patterns.

They were: an isosceles acute triangle, a rectangle with the same proportions as the large rectangle, an isosceles trapezoid, and a circle nested within a regular pentagon.

The gate's actual material wasn't bronze, but the same extraordinary construction material as the dome pipes, capable of resisting acidic fog.

Before the gate, a small, tilted panel stood upright on the ground.

The players exchanged glances; Lei Yesi turned the helm and slowly descended to the ground, while Claudia released a bubble spell to temporarily shield the toxic mist.

"Unless something's wrong, this must be some kind of access control system."

Dressed in his protective suit, Li Cheng jumped onto the ground and quickly scanned the panel with his Info-Synthesis Glasses—no fingerprints or other biological data detected.

Bai Ma Mubei frowned: "Who built this? The Arena Security Guards?"

"I lean toward no," Li Cheng said. "Security guards of the construction type build random, functionally ambiguous structures—ranging from intricate underground mining transport systems to megastructures kilometers or even tens of kilometers tall."

"But this kind of clearly targeted access control system? I've rarely seen one."

Hui Yu scratched his head. "If not the Security Guards, then it couldn't be some guild, right?"

"Impossible."

Claudia crossed her arms, frowning. "Major guilds have cooperation agreements—members are obligated to map the Arena and upload them to the shared platform."

Better-equipped squads must also install pulse transmitters at regular intervals as beacon towers to guide others."

"If this were built by a major guild, there'd be other obvious markers nearby. The gate wouldn't use these cryptic patterns—it'd just say, 'Private Territory of 【Guild Name】, No Trespassing, Violators Penalized 725.8.'"

The others turned to look at Claudia. Lei Yesi asked, confused: "Why so specific? Why 725.8?"

Claudia smirked. "Earlier, the Monutong Alliance, the Zhong Lou, the Evil Science Alliance, and a few other magic-arcane guilds held a symposium. A friend of mine was sneaking a smoke on the balcony and burned a Zhong Lou antique rug."

"Lost his lighter, had to pay compensation, and got fined over seven hundred by the guild."

Okay, fair enough.

The players turned back to study the gate. Hui Yu pulled out an e-cigarette and said solemnly, "What century are we in? Still smoking traditional cigarettes? Tell your friend—e-cigarettes are the real trend."

Then he performed fancy pen spins and blew smoke rings with the e-cigarette.

After scanning the area with his Info-Synthesis Glasses and confirming no traps, Li Cheng exchanged glances with Lei Yesi and Bai Ma Mubei, then reached out and pressed the small panel.

Zzz—

A faint, rhythmic frequency echoed from behind the gate; a thin beam of light lit up on the small circle, extending from the center outward.

As Li Cheng moved his fingertip, the light traced a circular path around the center.

"It's a touchscreen?"

Li Cheng paused, then pressed several times—each press added another light beam. At most, four beams could appear simultaneously; any more would reset everything to zero and restart.

"So it's a four-digit rotary combination lock."

Lei Yesi, as a mid-to-high-level player who'd endured puzzle segments in scenario quests, immediately began racing through calculations: "Wait—could the patterns be the puzzle clues?"

The more clues, the more complex the solution. But the dial had no markings—the possible four-digit combinations could be astronomical.

"Let's start with common passwords. Treat the circle as a 12-hour clock: 0000, 1234, 1314, 0369."

Li Cheng swiped the panel repeatedly—the gate remained unmoved, only the noise behind it fluctuated.

He converted the rectangle's length and width into numbers and entered them—still no response.

If that didn't work, he had to think seriously. Li Cheng stepped back two paces and studied the gate's patterns carefully. "Any of you see a pattern?"

"Uh," Bai Ma Mubei admitted honestly, "I dropped out of high school." Hui Yu pointed at the ray pattern: "This looks kind of like an animal's chrysanthemum."

"I figured it out."

Claudia, still expending magic to maintain her bubble spell, pointed to the four geometric shapes around the small circle: "The first isosceles triangle's acute angle is 36°, its base angles are 72°."

The third pattern is an isosceles trapezoid whose top base equals the length of its legs, and whose base angles are 72°.

As for the fourth pattern, a regular pentagon is inscribed within a circle. Connecting all five vertices of the pentagon yields twenty triangles of Figure One and five trapezoids of Figure Three.

Hui Yu asked without shame, "Then?"

"Golden ratio."

Li Cheng's eyes lit up, and he said quickly: "In simple terms, divide a line segment AB into two parts, AM and MB, such that the ratio of the longer segment AM to the whole AB equals the ratio of the shorter segment MB to AM."

This division is called the golden ratio; the ratio is called the golden number, with a value of (√5 - 1)/2, approximately 0.618, usually denoted by the Greek letter Ф.

In an isosceles triangle with a vertex angle of 36°, the ratio of its base to its legs is Ф.

In the isosceles trapezoid of Figure Three, the ratio of its top base to its legs, and to its bottom base, is also Ф.

The composite figure of Figure Four also embodies the golden ratio."

"Got it. The password is 0618."

Lei Yesi exhaled in relief, stepped forward, and swiped across the panel, aligning the four light pointers toward four directions. Yet, no response.

"Huh?!" Lei Yesi refused to believe it, re-entered the numbers in reverse order, and still got nothing.

"It's not the golden ratio, but it's definitely tied to it."

Claudia was constantly draining her magic, so she was naturally more anxious. She forced herself to calm down: "The golden ratio is famous primarily for its artistic harmony, aligning with human intuitive aesthetics."

For example, the Parthenon, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Venus de Milo statue. The reason is that the number 0.618 itself conforms to the natural laws of the universe—for instance, plants evolved spiral arrangements of leaves and petals to maximize light and airflow efficiency.

The atomic spacing ratios within some crystals are also 1:0.618.

Claudia's muttering sparked a realization in Li Cheng. He stepped back two paces and observed the rectangular door: 149.35 meters long, 92.3 meters high.

"Fibonacci sequence." Li Cheng snapped his fingers and began swiping across the panel.

Hui Yu blinked. "What's that?"

"A sequence proposed by the mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 377."

In short, from the third term onward, each term equals the sum of the two preceding terms.

Its relationship to the golden ratio is that the larger the Fibonacci number, the closer the ratio of a term to the next term approaches 0.618.

The length and height of this rectangular door, measured in human-defined units, are not Fibonacci integers, but their ratio is Ф.

This itself conveys a message:

The patterns on the door are written for cosmic beings, using the galactic standard language—mathematics."

As Li Cheng spoke, he swiped across the panel.

Multiplying 360 by 0.618 four times consecutively yields the numbers: 222.48, 137.49, 84.97, 52.5.

Li Cheng adjusted the light directions, not aiming for precision but rotating roughly. As the four light beams aligned, the frequency noise behind the door vanished instantly.

The concentric circle patterns rotated sideways, and the entire door split down the middle, retracting into the wall, revealing a vast abyss behind.

The abyss was bottomless, its temperature freezing, and air currents from the wasteland generated violent winds.

Everyone hurried aboard the pirate ship and, aided by its levitation engines, descended along the abyss walls, following the guidance radar.

When the wind slightly subsided, Bai Ma Mu Bei scratched his head and asked: "I still don't get it—how does the Fibonacci sequence connect to cosmic beings?"

"Simple. The concept of the 'meter' is merely a human definition. Originally, it was one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along Paris's meridian; later, it was redefined by the speed of light and cesium frequency. It has no inherent significance."

If Qin Shi Huang had conquered Earth after unifying the six states, today's human definition of the meter would be based on his arm length or leg length."

Li Cheng shrugged: "Unlike length units, mathematical language is universal across the galaxy."

Any intelligent civilization, whether using base-six, base-eight, base-twelve, or base-twenty systems, can understand the mathematical patterns of geometric shapes."

They can derive their own language's version of pi and the Fibonacci sequence."

That's why the entire door has no written instructions—only images."

The deck fell silent. Claudia used an air scanner to confirm the abyss air was non-toxic, then dismissed the bubble spell, relying instead on the pirate ship's own magic array to maintain air circulation.

"I get it. So the small circle has no 360° markings. No matter what scale you use, as long as the aliens understand geometry and mathematics, they can still rotate the lights to the four-digit code."

Bai Ma Mu Bei pondered. She hadn't attended university, but her IQ was genuinely high; she quickly grasped Li Cheng's meaning: "The door's length and width conform to the builders' civilization's definition of the integer 'meter.' They're aliens."

"There's also a slight chance it's the imperial system, deliberately opposing global standards."

Li Cheng smiled: "One pound equals 16 ounces; one ounce equals 437.5 grains. One gallon equals 8 pints; one foot equals 12 inches; one yard equals 3 feet; one mile equals 1760 yards."

"It's deliberately anti-human."

Lei Yesi's eyebrow twitched; his eyes clearly conveyed: 'Got it. The British are aliens.'

Claudia shot him a look: 'Don't be ridiculous. Even the British don't use most of these units anymore—it's just the Americans who still do.'

"Besides, there are other details. The panel uses touch input, not force to turn—some aliens might be too weak to rotate even something as simple as a clock hand."

A steady hissing sound had persisted behind the door, and as the lights turned, the sound rose and fell. It wasn't mechanical noise—it was an audio cue—some aliens might lack visual organs and rely on ultrasound for orientation."

If I'm not mistaken, we could've activated the panel and rotated the lights by emitting a specific frequency sound—just like this."

Saying this, he unsealed his suit's faceplate, placed his hand over his mouth, and rapidly pressed his lips while emitting "ah" sounds.

"Muh-ah muh-ah muh-ah muh-ah."

"Is it like this?" Bai Ma Mu Bei imitated Li Cheng: "Weh-ee weh-ee weh-ee weh-ee."

Hui Yu, hearing the noise, joined in: "Boo-puh boo-puh boo-puh."

The three sounds intertwined and echoed through the vast abyss. Claudia slapped her forehead, faintly feeling a phantom pain she called "eggache."