Chapter 42: Following the Vine to Find the Melon (Begging for recommendations, collections, and tips)

Half a month later, having returned to Tucson unexpectedly, Sun Cheng appeared even more cautious than before.

"University of Arizona? Don't let me down..."

Quietly lurking near the campus of the 【University of Arizona】 under the cover of night, Sun Cheng checked the distribution of surveillance cameras around the school while calmly searching for a location convenient for him to infiltrate.

Before returning to Tucson, he had spent two full days in Carson City, the capital of Nevada.

During those two days, Sun Cheng was busy searching everywhere for clues about the 【AllSpark】 and hacked into the internet multiple times.

He not only searched all recorded meteorite disaster records in United States history but also painstakingly looked for various news related to "hauntings" and "robots" online.

But to Sun Cheng's disappointment, he failed to find any commotion caused by the 【AllSpark】 from the internet.

However, he did not come up completely empty-handed regarding suspicious leads; while investigating the incident of falling meteorites, Sun Cheng found one suspicious clue.

As one of the countries that has suffered the most meteorite strikes on Earth, the United States has preserved rich records regarding meteorite landings in various states, many of which have professional investigation reports attached to even small craters, yet the investigation into one named 【Barringer Crater】 was vague, which immediately aroused Sun Cheng's suspicion.

Patiently following this suspicious point to continue his investigation, he felt more and more that there was something strange about it.

According to Sun Cheng's investigation, 【Barringer Crater】 is also often called 【Arizona Meteor Crater】; it is located in a desert in Arizona and is a huge meteorite crater 1.2 kilometers in diameter and 180 meters deep, suspected to have been formed by a huge meteorite hitting Earth ten thousand years ago.

There are many introductions about it online; for example, some geological experts believe the mass of the meteorite that hit that desert in Arizona was estimated to be several million tons, its impact speed entering Earth's atmosphere was between 10–20 km/s, and it released about 10 million tons of TNT equivalent upon impact, with power comparable to a high-yield hydrogen bomb.

Logically, a meteorite impact of this scale is a once-in-a-millennium event.

Even if 【Barringer Crater】 was caused ten thousand years ago, there is no reason for the United States government to have sent a large number of experts to study small meteorites that fell within its borders in the last hundred years, but not study it.

But the result of Sun Cheng's careful investigation was that he only found that more than ninety years ago, in 1912 AD, the 【University of Arizona】 had once self-funded an expedition team to investigate 【Barringer Crater】.

Besides that, what did the expedition team find? Who were the members? Did they find any meteorite fragments, etc.?

Nothing about these could be found online!

This was interesting!

It is the largest meteorite crater in the United States, yet no detailed investigation report can be produced, and there is not even any news of the United States government sending more experts to investigate it in the last few decades!

Moreover, this 【Barringer Crater】 is located within Arizona; based on Sun Cheng's understanding of the treacherous Starscream, he would never have established his base in the suburbs of Tucson, Arizona, in the United States after arriving on Earth without any reason.

Unable to find more information online, Sun Cheng could only risk sneaking back into Tucson to infiltrate the 【University of Arizona】 to see if he could find more analysis reports on 【Barringer Crater】.

This was undoubtedly a very risky move!

Yes, after the attack on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in the suburbs of Tucson and the theft of four nuclear warheads, although the United States government kept it quiet, it had never relaxed its investigation into the whole matter.

He couldn't be sure of anything else, but Sun Cheng had already felt extreme irritability before even getting close to Tucson, and an indescribable sense of unease kept warning him.

Once he snuck into the city, seeing the National Guard's armed Infantry Fighting Vehicles and helicopters frequently appearing on the streets and alleys, and police patrols were even more commonplace.

Therefore, Sun Cheng was cautious to the extreme, fearing even the slightest slip-up.

After the 【Spy Template】 quickly captured the information of all nearby surveillance equipment, Sun Cheng looked around, and when he discovered a large tree not far outside the school wall, his eyes lit up.

Quietly sneaking to the bottom of the tree, Sun Cheng jumped up onto a branch, and then with the help of the branch, he jumped again, and when he landed, he had already entered the campus of the 【University of Arizona】.

The 【University of Arizona】 is the first comprehensive research university in Arizona; this public university receives nearly 700 million US dollars in research funding from the National Science Foundation every year, and the school's astronomy, geology, geography, and civil engineering disciplines have been very strong since its founding, which is one of the reasons why Sun Cheng suspected that the expedition team sent by the 【University of Arizona】 more than ninety years ago must have discovered something when they arrived at 【Barringer Crater】.

The nightlife of American college students is clearly very rich; although it was already night, students could still be seen coming and going in groups of three or five on campus, forcing Sun Cheng, who did not want to be exposed and attract the National Guard guarding the nearby streets, to carefully avoid them.

After fumbling around the campus for a while, he finally found the school library.

Unexpectedly, he discovered that the library door only had a Normal Mode lock hanging on it, but this thing couldn't stop his intrusion at all; after his finger deformed slightly and was inserted into the keyhole, the lock was opened the next moment, and after entering and closing the door again, Sun Cheng walked directly toward the administrator's counter.

After all, it is the library of a world-famous university; the 【University of Arizona】 library is quite large, said to store a total of 2.9472 million books and over thirty million e-books, so it is quite difficult to find what he is looking for in such a vast sea of books.

There were two computers on the administrator's counter; after turning them on, Sun Cheng could instantly hack into the campus intranet, but he didn't do that, instead connecting directly to the library's e-book database to start searching for the information he needed.

This search took more than half an hour, and to his disappointment, Sun Cheng only found two names, "Neville Octavian Brewster" and "Wallace Wilson Clement," in the school history stored in the e-book database.

According to the University of Arizona's school history, they were both professors at the school, with one working in the geology department and one responsible for geophysics and seismology.

The school history mentioned that they initiated a research project in 1912, then both resigned the following year, after which their whereabouts became unknown.

No matter how Sun Cheng searched, he could not find any more news about them.

Unwilling to give up, Sun Cheng thought for a moment, and after locking onto the location where the school history and 【University of Arizona】 geological survey materials were stored via computer, he turned off the computer and first manually searched through the books one by one in the room on the fourth floor of the library where school history was kept for more than two hours, only managing to trace that "Wallace Wilson Clement" had a son named "Benjamin Roddick Clement."

He then went to the bookshelf where geological materials were kept and began to search through them book by book carefully.

Finally, hard work pays off; in an autobiography donated to the school by an alumnus titled 【Interesting Earth】, Sun Cheng found some things that interested him very much.

"... A classmate from Coconino County mentioned to me that there is an Indian holy site in Flagstaff, said to be a bottomless, several-kilometer-wide hole, rumored to be the place where the divine descended. I mentioned this while chatting with Professor Brewster, and he expressed great interest, telling me it might be an unprecedented discovery. Yes, we call it a meteorite crater; if it is truly as the Indian legends say, it is highly likely to be the largest meteorite crater in American history..."

"In July 1912, Professor Brewster's application was approved, and he received 1200 dollars in funding, which was enough for him to go to Flagstaff during the vacation. He invited me, but I wanted to buy a car, so I planned to work during the summer vacation; Professor Brewster was a bit disappointed about this, but he expressed understanding..."

"I didn't see Professor Brewster after school started. I asked around and learned that he was still in Flagstaff and had applied for another 2000 dollars from the school, and at the same time, he pulled Professor Clement into the expedition team; that rigid professor is gone, which might be good news..."

"Christmas is coming soon. Professor Brewster wrote to tell me he is very happy; the report he and Professor Clement submitted to the North American Geological Society caused a huge sensation. Many people came from Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, and they visited our discovery in Flagstaff together, especially that fascinating meteorite he mentioned repeatedly. He said a gentleman from the Brotherhood of Philadelphia named 'Vince Mihos Lawson' proposed applying to the United States government to transport it away and hide it for research..."

"Professor Brewster decided to resign. He asked me if I wanted to go with him to study that meteorite, but my father hoped I would return home to inherit his fertilizer factory, so I refused him, which made him very sad. We kept writing to each other for the next few years, but it only lasted five or six years; when I asked him about his work location for the last time, he told me Black Canyon, and I never received another reply from him..."

PS:

This chapter makes up for yesterday's. My fever hadn't subsided yesterday, and after finishing the chapter, the medicine I took kicked in, so I went to bed.

Thanks to readers 'Night Black Ink' and 'drtgrt' for their tips.