Ten Thousand Meters Under

Li Ming, holding a wine glass, stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, fireworks bloomed, illuminating the colossal silhouette of the "Shenzhou-1" ultra-deep well drilling platform. This was China's first well exceeding ten thousand meters, marking a milestone in China's deep-earth exploration technology. As the project's chief engineer, Li Ming should have felt proud, but an inexplicable unease churned within him.

At the celebration banquet, leaders took turns giving speeches, praising the team's hard work and outstanding achievements. Li Ming applauded mechanically, his mind repeatedly flashing back to that night a few days ago, when he saw the abnormal fluctuations in the data center.

It was a set of sensor data from ten thousand meters beneath the well, brief and intense, like some kind of... heartbeat.

Li Ming initially thought it was an equipment malfunction, but after repeated checks, he ruled out that possibility. The data was real and valid, and, moreover, the fluctuation pattern was strikingly similar to a human heartbeat.

He reported this discovery to the project leader, Director Wang, who simply said lightly: "The deep-earth environment is complex, some abnormal data is normal, don't make a fuss. The most important thing now is to ensure the project passes inspection smoothly."

Li Ming tried to argue, but Director Wang interrupted him: "Xiao Li, you're still young, there are some things you don't understand yet. This well is not just a scientific project, it's also the national image, it's a political achievement, understand?"

Li Ming fell silent. He understood, of course he understood. In this era, sometimes science had to give way to politics.

In the banquet hall, the sound of music, laughter, and clinking glasses intertwined, creating a lively atmosphere. But Li Ming felt a chill, as if he were at the bottom of a ten-thousand-meter well, surrounded by darkness and pressure.

He walked to the balcony, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag. In the night sky, the fireworks continued, brilliant and dazzling. But Li Ming felt that those fireworks were like huge question marks, hanging above the curtain of night.

Suddenly, his phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number. Li Ming hesitated for a moment, then answered the call.

"Hello?"

On the other end of the phone, a low and hoarse voice said: "Engineer Li, you saw it, didn't you?"

"What?" Li Ming's heart sank.

"Ten thousand meters under, there's something."

"You... who are you?"

"Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is, do you believe your own eyes, or do you believe those high-sounding words?"

The phone hung up. Li Ming stood there blankly, the cigarette butt burning down to his fingers, but he didn't feel a thing.

He looked at the deep well again. The huge derrick was like a needle piercing deep into the earth, extracting something, and injecting something.

Li Ming suddenly remembered that at the beginning of the project, an old expert had proposed a "hollow earth" hypothesis, suggesting that another civilization might exist inside the earth. At the time, this hypothesis was ridiculed by everyone and dismissed with contempt.

Now, Li Ming couldn't laugh.

He turned back to the banquet hall, walked up to Director Wang, and raised his glass: "Director Wang, I'd like to toast you."

Director Wang smiled and clinked glasses with him: "Xiao Li, work hard, your future is limitless!"

Li Ming drained his glass in one gulp, and then, in front of everyone, he smashed the glass hard on the ground.

"Director Wang, I quit."

The entire room gasped.

Li Ming walked out of the banquet hall without looking back, leaving behind a stunned Director Wang and a floor covered in broken glass.

He went to the drilling platform and pressed a button. The huge drill bit began to rotate slowly, emitting a low rumble, as if some kind of response was coming from deep underground.

Li Ming looked at the bottomless wellhead, a strange smile appearing on his face.

"Since you won't let me go down, then I'll let it come up."

A few days later, the news reported: "Shenzhou-1" deep well suffered a serious accident, the drill bit went out of control, an unknown explosion occurred underground, and the project was forced to be suspended.

And Li Ming disappeared from public view.

Some said he went crazy. Others said he was secretly taken away.

Only a very few people knew that at the bottom of the "Shenzhou-1" deep well, a stone slab engraved with strange symbols had been found.

On the stone slab, in a language never seen before by humans, a sentence was written:

"You're disturbing me."