The seam along the side of the Metal Box opened on its own on the morning of the fifteenth day. Li Yuan was standing beside the workbench performing a routine scan when a set of abnormal readings suddenly appeared on his Data Pad: the seam had widened from an immeasurable gap to roughly the thickness of a hair. He did not touch the box immediately. He simply stood where he was and watched, saving a complete record of the fluctuating waveforms on his Data Pad. The seam widened very slowly, like two metal plates glued together gradually separating along their original joint after prolonged heating. By noon, the gap had become visible to the naked eye. An extremely fine thread of warm golden light seeped through it, forming a faint line in the air beside the shelf.
Xu Wuyi approached the workbench that afternoon. He held his palm near the seam, and his perception penetrated its outer layer, reaching the tip of the branching groove inside. The information conveyed through that contact was clearer than last time—the outermost end of the branching groove had reached the seam completely. Its tip was no longer waiting there but continuing to extend forward, as though it had passed through the seam and entered the space outside. During the contact, he sensed the direction the branch took after emerging through the seam. It pointed toward the Coordinate Anchor Marker beyond the Northern Boundary Line, with a distinct energy gradient connecting it to the translucent surface Jiang had discovered at the anchor.
He withdrew his hand from the seam and turned toward the console. When Zero One's projection lit up beside him, he said, "Sync the Metal Box seam's real-time monitoring data to my terminal. Also notify Jiang. Have him visit the anchor again tomorrow