I Have A Dual World Seal

Meet up, gear up, then head out as a team!

The four of them, bundled in down jackets and goggles, braving the minus‑dozens‑degrees wind, set off in a small snowcat.

Soon they reached the edge of a glacier cliff in a small valley.

"No way the snowcat can get down there!"

"I don’t see anything unusual."

"Are we going down?"

"We’d have to go back for more gear, we can’t get down there like this."

"How about we just radio back and say we didn’t find anything abnormal? Geological activity my ass—look at the snow around here, not even shaken loose. Where’s the geological activity supposed to be?"

Another person nodded in agreement. "Kunlun Station is so close to here, and the detectors haven’t picked up a thing. Maybe the satellite glitched?"

Only the team leader shook his head and asked in a low voice, "When have we ever gotten a mission from home with such a clear, specific target?"

"Huh?"

All of them were stunned for a second, then it clicked.

They did exchange messages with the folks back home pretty often, but it was usually about experiments. Even when there were task requirements, the specifics were mostly left to them to figure out on site.

A sudden exploration assignment like this, with the location nailed down, really was a first.

"What did the satellite up there see?"

Someone asked, torn between shock and doubt. "It’s not something dangerous, is it?"

"Shouldn’t be. The notice didn’t say anything about safety precautions."

"Huh, that makes it even weirder."

"Even routine geological activity can be dangerous, right?"

"Doesn’t matter, let’s go down and have a look. Old Liu and I will stay here and get ready, you two run back and grab the gear."

"Got it!"

...

It took a full three hours before the four of them finally got down into the little valley.

The captain opened his tablet, checked it against the theodolite in his hand, and headed north.

"Have to admit, satellite accuracy these days is getting really impressive." The captain walked and shook his head as he spoke. "They used to lock in an area several kilometers wide. Now the search zone they give us is only a few hundred square meters."

"Yeah, but what kind of geological activity only affects a few hundred square meters?"

Trailing behind the captain, a young researcher couldn’t help griping, "Underground water geyser?"

That was a real cold joke. There was groundwater under the Antarctic ice sheets, sure, but it definitely didn’t reach the highest point of Ice Dome A.

"Let’s spread out and search. Turn on all the detectors, see what the subsurface structure looks like."

"Okay."

They might be complaining, but once work started, they did what needed doing.

The four turned on their detectors, fanned out as they walked, while also scanning the ground around them.

"Snow snow snow, ice ice ice..."

"Anything else? Oh, yeah, there is—footprints."

"Hahaha!"

"Hey, right, I heard the resupply is already on the way, and ran into a blizzard."

"Mm, heard it was a big one, but the supplies weren’t damaged, so the transport’s fine."

"We got lucky."

"If that’s the case, those few portions of fish‑flavored shredded pork we left to freeze into ice bricks—can we thaw them out?"

"We can, we can. Let’s have them tonight."

"Captain, I want minced pork with eggplant."

"Eat, eat, eat! I’ll throw in the smelly tofu Old Cai left behind when he left."

"I’ll pass on that."

Chatting as they worked, they quickly covered most of the area defined in the mission.

"Told you there’d be nothing. We just wasted an afternoon out here, and I missed at least three experiments."

"I heard this exploration request came from the meteorological department—they asked us to help out."

"When we get back, we at least need to bleed Professor Cai for a good meal. That’s not too much to ask, is it?"

"Absolutely not. Count me in."

"What about Quan Ju De? Doesn’t matter if it’s tasty, what matters is it’s expensive."

"Hahaha... huh?"

One of them suddenly exclaimed in surprise and stopped walking.

"What is it?" The other three all turned back.

Liu Lifeng glanced at his detector, then at the spot ahead, hurried a few steps forward, crouched down, shifted the detector to his left hand, and used his right to brush away the snow on the ground in front of him.

Then, right before his eyes, a pitch‑black hole appeared.

"There’s a hole in the ground."

Holding his detector, Liu Lifeng sounded a bit incredulous. "It’s deep. The detector can’t see the bottom."

"What?"

The other three rushed over to Liu Lifeng’s side and saw the hole in the ground too.

The hole was a good twenty centimeters in diameter, an irregular circle, big enough to fit a human fist.

Captain Wang Haoyang pointed the infrared geological detector at the opening; all he could see on the instrument’s display was a long, hollow shaft.

But the exact depth was unknown, because their handheld detector could only probe a short distance below the surface.

"What the hell, how is there a hole here?"

"And the shaft is really straight." Wang Haoyang stared hard at the detector in his hand. "Doesn’t look naturally formed."

"Huh? So someone did this?"

"Someone secretly drilled here?"

The person beside him said in astonishment, "But that makes no sense. Why would anyone do that?"

All four of them couldn’t help looking around.

"Whoo—whoo—whoo—"

A cold wind howled around them, but when they looked in every direction, there wasn’t a single human shadow to be seen.

"Um, could this be the geological activity the remote‑sensing satellite picked up?" Liu Lifeng asked.

"What did the satellite actually detect? And how is this ’geological activity’?"

"Doesn’t matter. Li Tingxuan, head back and tell everyone to bring full gear here. We’ll first figure out how deep this hole goes."

"Yes, sir!"

"The three of us will keep searching the area and see if there’s anything else."

"Got it!"

...

Turns out, the only anomaly in the whole search zone was this impossible‑to‑explain hole.

Not long after, Li Tingxuan arrived with the rest of the team and more powerful equipment.

Everyone clustered around the hole, watching as Captain Wang Haoyang operated the gear and started the survey.

Seeing the straight shaft appear on the display screen, everyone was stunned.

"How long?"

"We’re past a hundred meters!"

"Two hundred meters!"

"Five hundred meters!"

"What the hell? How did this hole form?"

"From the rippled shape of the walls, it looks like it formed by evaporation and then condensation."

"Evaporation? Condensation?"

"Eight hundred meters! Still no bends, and the shaft is perfectly straight, no tilt at all."

"This is... seriously freaky..."

"One thousand meters!"

"One thousand five hundred... two thousand... three thousand... four thousand..."

"Reading finished. Four thousand seven hundred fifty‑two point three three meters. Holy crap!"

"What the hell is this..."

"You call this geological activity? This is obviously Aliens at work, come on..."