Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.
Standing outside the director's office, Chen Yunhai took a deep breath, straightened his collar, and lightly knocked on the door.
Soon, after hearing a "Come in" from inside, he pushed the door open and entered, respectfully asking,
"You wanted to see me?"
"Yes, there's something," Lu Zhou said. He set down his pen, smiled at Chen Yunhai standing in the doorway, then rose and gestured toward the sofa. "No need to be so formal. Please, have a seat."
After sitting down on the sofa, Chen Yunhai nodded his thanks to the secretary who poured him tea, then sat upright and began examining the draft papers piled across the coffee table.
They were covered in incomprehensible equations and symbols, with curves beside the calculations so precise they looked as though they had been drawn with drafting tools.
After staring at them for quite some time without making any sense of them, Chen Yunhai was about to give up when Lu Zhou walked over carrying a cup of coffee and sat opposite him.
"Just a personal hobby. Please don't mind it," Lu Zhou said as he swept the draft papers aside. Then he took out a stack of documents still warm from the printer and gently pushed them across the table. "About two hours ago, we cracked a signal sent from Mars to Earth. I believe you'll be very interested."
The moment he heard that, Chen Yunhai's expression turned serious. He picked up the document from the coffee table and quickly scanned it.
When he saw those three glaring characters, his reaction was almost identical to Lu Zhou's. He froze briefly, then frowned.
"SOS...?"
Lu Zhou nodded.
"Yes. Given what's currently happening on Mars, the problem probably isn't with our decryption work. New Virginia may genuinely have