The Terracotta Warrior on Mars

A mass of humanoid remains lay buried beneath the surface of Mars—found on humanity's first landing there. Soon after, the astronauts lost contact one by one.

Yet the return capsule made it back to Earth. Inside there were no answers, only a warning that drove people to despair: "Do not land on Mars.

Humanity is dead!!" Chapter 1 Three years had passed since the accident. Beyond the first news reports, the public knew next to nothing about it.

What had the astronauts gone through on Mars? What had they seen? Or heard? On that point, theories ran wild.

Some said mechanical failure, some said alien abduction, others said a natural disaster, and so on. Of course, most of those guesses were never going to be verified.

The official word came in scraps: of the three landing team members, two had been declared dead. The only one whose fate remained unknown was my uncle, Walter Xu.

That said, with no offworld base on Mars yet, the odds of anyone surviving there alone were close to zero. Pretty much everyone assumed the whole team had died.

Only my father was the exception. More than once, he'd told me my uncle wasn't dead—that for certain reasons, he just couldn't come back yet.

But every time I tried to dig deeper, he'd brush me off with the same line: the time wasn't right. My father and my uncle weren't just brothers.

They had served together, worked together, and both held posts at NASA. Their work there was classified, and as an outsider, I had no business asking too many questions.

I had no idea what my father meant by "the right time." Not until seven days earlier, when my father handed me a NASA document summoning me to travel with the next Mars landing team as a mission specialist.

Only then did I get the chance to glimpse the part no one was meant to see.

But I never could have imagined that the truth was far more horrifying than anything I'd pictured—horrifying enough to drive a person to despair… In this day and age, crewed spaceflight was routine enough to be possible—but a Mars mission was another matter entirely.

I was a fresh college graduate with no professional training. For me to get a chance like this was strange, to say the least. But the order came from the top, and this was Mars.

Thinking I might learn something about my uncle, I accepted. Besides, I trusted my father would never put me in harm's way.

After I signed the nondisclosure agreement, my father brought me to NASA.

All the way in, staff turned to look at me, and there was something strange in their eyes that I couldn't put into words. Curiosity—and fear?

When I met their eyes, they looked away. My father walked with his head down and led me to a sealed room. The room was huge, like a small museum.

My father explained, "Everything connected to the Mars accident—everything we could recover—is stored here." The sight of the return capsule in front of me pulled my mind back three years.

Humanity's first landing on Mars, that historic moment, had been broadcast live around the world.

But not long after touchdown, a massive storm swept in, and in a fissure the storm had smashed open, the astronauts found a mass of humanoid skeletons!

Not one skeleton, but a whole field of them. What did that mean? That humans had once landed on Mars in large numbers? Or that aliens existed on Mars?

But the instant the skeletons were discovered, the live feed cut out. The three astronauts lost all contact with Earth.

A week later, the empty return capsule came back to Earth, its onboard transmitter broadcasting that warning across every frequency: Chapter 2 "Do not land on Mars.

Humanity is dead!!" My thoughts snapped back, and I couldn't help asking, "Dad, is Uncle Walter really still alive?" "Have you ever wondered why the government called on you?" My father answered with a question of his own. "There are plenty of excellent astronauts here." I thought about it and said hesitantly, "Because I'm… irreplaceable in some way?" "Because your uncle, Walter Xu, asked for you by name." My father paused and looked at me. "He wants you, Peter Xu, to go to Mars." Hearing that, I was stunned.

My uncle asked for me by name? Forget the whole world—out of more than three hundred million people in this country alone, he picked me?

I swallowed. "What's so special about me?" "I don't know." My father shook his head. "He left a message in the return capsule's log saying he'd found a hibernation device that could keep him going for three years." "In three years, he wants you to come to Mars and find him, or humanity will be destroyed." Didn't that contradict the warning…?

Besides, with current technology, a hibernation device could keep someone under for seven days at most. A device that could hold someone for three years—did that really exist?

I thought hard, then said after a moment, "That's all he left? Nothing else?" "Nothing.

He must have been short on time, with no chance to explain more." My father's voice was low. "Over the past three years, we've launched unmanned spacecraft to explore Mars again and again." "But every time, not long after landing, we lost the signal." I understood the position the higherups were in.

They couldn't give up on landing on Mars over one message, not without hard evidence. Not to mention, even if we gave up, other countries wouldn't.

Seeing me go quiet, my father looked pained. "If you want out, it's not too late.

They fully respect your personal choice." I thought about it for a long time, then said, trying to sound casual: "No, I'm going.

What if I actually end up saving humanity!" At that, my father said nothing more, only patted me on the shoulder: "Oh, right—did you go for your treatment this month?" "I went," I said.

The year my uncle had his accident, when the return capsule came down on Earth, I'd rushed to the site and been in a car crash halfway there.

I'd survived, barely, but I got headaches all the time and needed regular treatment. "As long as you went." My father nodded, satisfied. "You've really grown up.

If you've decided to go to Mars, I support your choice." "Get some good rest today.

Training starts tomorrow." Before landing on Mars, I had to go through three months of sequestered training.

On the planned threeperson team, the other two professional astronauts would handle the technical operations, but I still needed to master the basics.

I said goodbye to my father and went back to my dorm. Maybe because I was so exhausted, I drifted off quickly. Before long, a white light appeared before my eyes.

I knew I was dreaming again. The same dream I'd been having over and over for three years. Everything around me was a blank white.

A searing pain came from deep inside my head, washing over me like the tide. Gradually, the white light faded and the scene came into focus.

On the majestic throne sat the First Emperor in a great robe embroidered with the dark bird, looking down at the ministers kneeling below. "Xu Fu.

Yinghuo guarded the Heart, and a star fell upon Dong Commandery and turned to stone.

The carving on it reads, 'The First Emperor dies and the land is divided.' You say it is false?" The old man kneeling half a step in front of me pushed himself up and said respectfully: Chapter 3 "Your Majesty, those seven characters were manmade, pressed into mud and carved.

And the stone from Yinghuo already bore writing of its own." The First Emperor looked intrigued. "Oh?

What did it say?" Xu Fu prostrated himself and said, his voice trembling, "If man enters Yinghuo, heaven, earth, and man shall all die." Judging by where I knelt, the eyes I was seeing through had to belong to one of Xu Fu's disciples.

I say "seeing through" because I could only watch. I couldn't control the body.

What they called Yinghuo guarding the Heart was an astronomical phenomenon: Mars lingering at the Heart, in the constellation Scorpius.

In ancient times, it signaled the emperor's death, a bad omen. What Xu Fu had just said was even more chilling. Heaven, earth, and man all dying meant nothing would be left.

The First Emperor said nothing. The great hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

After a long time, the First Emperor smiled and changed the subject: "And my elixir of immortality—how goes the search?" Xu Fu said in a low voice, "Your Majesty, the fallen star came from Yinghuo.

The day it fell, it split in two.

One half landed in Dong Commandery, the other in the imperial mausoleum now under construction." "Your servant cut the meteorite open and found a Taisui inside—a living lump of flesh.

Added to the elixir, it will surely yield the pill of immortality!" The First Emperor's interest was piqued. "A Taisui from beyond the heavens.

Is there anything unusual about it?" "It is a miracle, with life stored within." At a wave of Xu Fu's hand, two soldiers carried up a ball of flesh the size of a water vat.

Seeing it, the First Emperor strode down from the throne. First he examined it closely, then reached out and touched it, and said suspiciously: "Strange.

Why do I sense something alive inside?" Xu Fu said quickly, "Your Majesty, this is a blessing from beyond the heavens, a gift from the immortals.

Of course it teems with life." The words had barely left his mouth when the First Emperor drew the Son of Heaven's sword and brought it down! Splash—!

Sticky fluid gushed out at once. Something stirred inside the ball of flesh, as if it were squirming. The soldiers rushed in at once and closed ranks around the First Emperor.

From my angle, I couldn't see a thing. In that moment, everyone facing the ball of flesh, the First Emperor included, went white with shock, every face frozen in disbelief!

As if whatever was inside held some great horror. Then came a sharp crack. That thing finally, slowly, came out… "Hhh…" I gasped for air and jolted awake.

In three years, I'd had this strange dream more times than I could count, but every time I woke up at the crucial moment.

To this day, I had never once seen what was inside that ball of flesh. Was it because my uncle had his accident on Mars that I kept dreaming about Mars?

I splashed cold water on my face, and once I was clearheaded, went off to training. For the time that followed, I stuck strictly to the program and trained by the book every day.

Apart from the very beginning, when a middleaged cleaning woman with bad eyes mistook me for my uncle, the rest of the staff treated me much better than before.

At least they didn't give me strange looks openly anymore. I'd thought this calm, orderly routine would last until the day the rocket launched.

But the unexpected always arrives a step early. Two months into our training, NASA's Hephaestus IX probe crashed mysteriously after entering the Martian atmosphere.

The cause of the crash was unknown, but internal causes had been ruled out. Before the crash, all of Hephaestus IX's readings had been optimal. A malfunction was impossible.

Experts concluded it had most likely been attacked. Still, the mission hadn't come away completely emptyhanded.

Chapter 4 Before it crashed, Hephaestus IX had captured a batch of photos of Olympus Mons, the highest peak on Mars, and successfully transmitted them back to Earth.

All three of us astronauts, me included, were called to an emergency meeting. "Hephaestus IX transmitted thirtyeight photos in total." My father sat at the table, working the big screen.

Soon all thirtyeight photos appeared on the screen at once. After just a couple of glances, the other male astronaut on the team, Kyle Kincaid, asked, puzzled: "Dr.

Xu, we had satellites capture plenty of images of Olympus Mons before we ever landed on Mars." "These photos don't look like anything special." Then the female astronaut on the team, Stephanie Reyes, pointed at the screen and said: "No, look—photos twelve and thirtyfour.

Right here at the summit.

It looks like there's a person!" My father pulled up those two photos on their own: "To be precise, a humanoid figure." It was true—they'd been taken from too far away.

Even enlarged, the "humanoid figure" was still blurry. There was no way to say it was a person. I stared for ages until my eyes ached and still couldn't make it out.

Seeing how unhurried my father was, I said, "With current technology, enhancing sections of these photos shouldn't be a problem, right?" "Of course.

We've already finished." My father paused, his expression unusually complicated. "That humanoid figure is something none of us could have imagined." The three of us looked at him in surprise and asked in unison: "What is it?" My father pressed the remote, and as he spoke in a faintly trembling voice, the two enhanced photos flashed onto the screen: "A terracotta warrior