Ye Mo lay prone on the edge of the ventilation duct's iron grille, his chin pressed against the cold metal, his right hand still tightly gripping the scorching Vibranium fragment. The screen in the lower compartment was still flashing, data streaming down like a waterfall, a black chip plugged into the interface, gleaming eerily. The system notification in his head had just finished saying "The tracking path is about to enter its final stage," and he knew he couldn't handle this alone.
"If I go any further down, I'm afraid I'll turn into a three-hundred-year-old ginseng spirit underground." He muttered, took a breath, and smoke rose from the Steel Bone joint of his left arm again, like a burnt wire. He shook his hand, barely managed to prop himself up, and his knees buckled, almost causing him to fall into the hole. He quickly braced himself against the pipe wall with his elbow.
He knew this wasn't the time to play the hero. The clues were closer, but this place was incredibly strange; the magnetic field was as chaotic as a ball of yarn that had been scratched by a cat. With his half-crippled perception, he'd be lucky to even figure out the direction, let alone cover everything. Dream on.
He pulled a piece of Vibranium the size of a fingernail from his pocket—a scrap he'd shaved off from Malekith's weapon last time, which Tony had casually tossed to him as a spare beacon. He gritted his teeth, slammed the fragment to the ground, and rapidly tapped it three times short, two times long, then three more times—their hastily agreed-upon Morse code, "Assemble, emergency."
The tremor traveled along the rock strata, and less than ten seconds later, a muffled sound came from above the crack overhead. Then, a golden light pierced the darkness, and Thor descended from the sky on lightning, causing rocks to shatter upon landing.
"You've backed yourself into a corner again?" Thor said as he dusted off the trash, his tone as familiar as if he were complaining about a neighbor always piling up the garbage in front of the door.
"Isn't this to give you a chance to perform?" Ye Mo grimaced, his eyes squinting in pain. "If you hadn't come soon, I would have started writing my will, the first line of which would be, ' Tony, don't use my hoodie as experimental fabric.'"
Emma Frost's voice came from behind the other rock wall. "Shut up, your heart is pounding like it's going to explode." Before she even showed herself, a gentle mental fluctuation probed over, sweeping around Ye Mo, "Three points of your Steel Bone are loose, nerve signals are delayed, Regeneration ability is cooling down—you really dare to stubbornly hold on."
"If I don't support myself, who will?" Ye Mo climbed out of the tube, unsteady on his feet. Thor reached out and pulled him up. "The system finally gave me navigation, but only along one line. Within 300 meters, particle activity increases. The problem is that this thing diffuses fractally, scattered here and there. If I try to find it all by myself, by the time I find it, it'll be too late."
Emma Frost landed, her white trench coat hem covered in rock dust. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then activated her Mental Scan: "I can sense a sealed cavity underground, at least five weak energy resonance points, but the shallow layers are heavily shielded, making them impossible to see clearly."
Thor looked up at the rift valley above. "I circled the orbit twice. There were trace amounts of floating particles in the high-altitude airflow, but the concentration was too low for the radar to detect."
"Then let's divide the work." Ye Mo wiped his face, took out a marker and some waterproof labels from his backpack, "I'll guard this side of the surface, and I'll shoot wherever the system's blue line points. I'll make a mark every hundred meters, and also transmit the real-time data back to the relay point via Vibranium Resonance."
As he spoke, he stuck a label on the rock face, drew an arrow with a marker, broke off a small piece of metal from the guide tube, embedded it into a nearby crack, and tapped it gently.
"Buzz--"
The low-frequency vibration spread out, Emma Frost's fingertips twitched slightly. "Received. The frequency is stable; it can be used as a signal node."
"And you?" Thor asked.
"I'll go down." Emma Frost opened her eyes. "I'll sink about three hundred meters into the earth's crust, specifically scanning those enclosed areas surrounded by rock. Telepathy has limited penetrating power, but its range is wide enough; as long as the particles aren't completely still, it can detect fluctuations."
Thor nodded. "I'm going back to the ship to continue high-altitude patrol. We just spotted an unusual halo at 17 degrees North latitude; it might be a swarm of floating particles. I'll go keep an eye on it."
"Okay." Ye Mo divided the last piece of Vibranium fragment into three pieces, handing one to each person. "These are synchronization beacons. The activation code is 'three short and two long', and the subsequent numbers represent the directional offset. For example, 'three short and two long + one' is East Zone 1, + two is South Zone 2, understand?"
"Simpler than S.H.I.E.L.D.. codes." Emma Frost took the fragment and tucked it into the seam of her glove.
"And what about you? You're injured like this and you can still walk?" Thor frowned.
"I can walk." Ye Mo stretched his shoulders, the Steel Bone making a few crisp sounds. "The system says it's stable, as long as I don't force the use of high-energy-consuming skills. Besides, if I don't move, who will receive and integrate the data you transmit? Are you expecting Tony to log in remotely? He's probably still arguing with JARVIS about the breakfast menu."
Thor chuckled. "Not really, but he did almost tear the lab apart yesterday because of a problem with the coffee machine's internet connection."
The three of them were silent for a second, and the atmosphere eased a bit.
"Then proceed as planned." Emma Frost took a step back, her body gradually glowing white, her consciousness sinking, as if she were being sucked into the earth, slowly disappearing into the rock strata.
Thor leaped into the air, lightning crackling beneath his feet, and soared upwards, disappearing into the end of the rift in the blink of an eye.
Ye Mo stood still, his left hand bracing against the rock wall, his right hand clutching the Vibranium fragment, and looked up at the sky. The thick clouds pressed down, making it hard to breathe. He looked down at the system notification: 12 degrees south of southeast, distance reduced to 280 meters, energy signal strength increased by 41%.
"Pretty accurate," he muttered to himself, and strode forward.
Every 100 meters, he would stop and tap the embedded Vibranium node to send the coordinates. At first, the signal was relatively smooth, and the transmitted vibrations received slight feedback, indicating that Emma Frost had received it. But when he reached the 250-meter mark, the rock layer suddenly became dense, and the tapping sound seemed to be swallowed up and could not be transmitted.
He crouched down, placed his hands on the ground, and tried to sense the resonance feedback. After waiting for more than ten seconds, nothing happened.
"Damn it, the magnetic field is acting up again." He cursed, pulled out a marker, drew a big "X" on the ground, and wrote "Signal interrupted, rerouted 5 degrees south of east."
Just as I was about to get up, a notification sounded in my head, "Low-frequency pulse feedback detected, source: directly below, regular intervals, encoding pattern matched."
Ye Mo was taken aback. " Emma Frost?"
"Three short, two long... plus three... plus seven..." he chanted rhythmically, his eyes lighting up. "She's reporting coordinates! Zone 3, point 7, particle aggregation probability over 68%!"
He immediately pulled out a simple topographic map from his backpack—a rough outline generated from a previous scan, marking several suspicious depressions. He circled the corresponding locations with a pen and found that the place was exactly below the slope to his south, less than four hundred meters away.
"Alright, your sisters are awesome." He put away the blueprints, adjusted his direction, and headed south-southeast.
Meanwhile, in the air.
The sniper, piloted by Thor, was gliding slowly over the Arctic. A temporary amplifier mounted on its underside continuously converted radar scan results into pulsed light signals, flashing towards the ground every thirty seconds. He stared at the main screen, his brow furrowed.
"Signal attenuation is severe... Will Ye Mo be able to receive it?"
He pressed the communication button, the sound distorted and intermittent, "... particle cluster... altitude...3,000... continuous... drifting... suggestion... surface... respondence..."
Before he could finish speaking, the channel was filled with static.
He turned off the microphone, muttered an Asgard slang term, and then packaged all the data, changing it to be emitted continuously at a light pulse frequency.
On the ground, Ye Mo was struggling to climb a steep slope. The screws in his right leg's Steel Bone had come loose, and every step he took felt like dragging a broken weight. He stopped to catch his breath and caught a glimpse of three regular red flashes on a distant mountain ridge, followed by two long and one short flashes.
He squinted and counted. "Three short, two long... plus five... plus two..."
Upon checking the blueprints, he immediately understood: Thor had reported finding a cluster of floating particles at the second observation point in the fifth zone, which was settling towards the surface.
"Good heavens, everything's moving, both in the sky and on the ground." He gritted his teeth and stood up. "These particles are really good at playing hide-and-seek."
He noted down the new information, preparing to transmit it back to the relay node, only to find that the Vibranium fragment he had just buried was unresponsive—the magnetic field interference was too strong, and the resonance chain had broken.
"Fine, I'll just have to remember it myself." He tore off a page from his notebook, scribbled down two sets of coordinates, and stuffed them into his inner pocket.
The wind suddenly picked up, whipping up sand and gravel that stung his face. He raised his hand to shield his eyes and saw a collapsed pit at the bottom of the slope ahead, with a faint, dark golden light shining through the cracks in its edges, as if something underground was breathing.
System update notification: 10 degrees south of southeast, distance shortened to 230 meters, energy density continues to rise, local gravitational deflection phenomenon exists in the target area.
Ye Mo stared at the pit, then slowly grinned. "Looks like we're not far off."
He held onto the rock face and walked step by step toward the depression, his right hand still pressed against the Vibranium fragment, waiting for the next signal.