ebonymovies Chapter 99 You're really joking!
Chapter 99 You're really joking!
Chen Fei could even see him take out cigarettes, light them, and smoke one after another, with wisps of smoke drifting out of the tent.
In my past life, I also smoked. When I was under a lot of pressure, a cigarette could relieve my emotions a little.
It seems Marcus is under a lot of pressure.
Chen Fei felt secretly pleased.
10 o'clock sharp.
The satellite antenna transmitted the communication signal on time.
Chen Fei immediately seized the opportunity and turned the sound simulation to its maximum intensity.
The campsite was located 40 kilometers upstream along the river; it was a makeshift shelter built on the spot.
There were only three tents set up here, an off-road vehicle parked there, and a satellite communication device specifically for long-distance communication. The overall conditions were extremely rudimentary.
Morris's tent was larger than the others', which was his insistence.
The excuse he gave to others was high-sounding, saying that he needed more space to place various field analysis instruments, which sounded very professional and serious.
But Ella and Caller both knew perfectly well that it wasn't like that at all.
The real reason is simple and funny: this man has a lot of sleeping problems. He needs a lot of space to move around. If he lies on his side, his whole arm can stretch out a long way, and a small tent simply can't fit him.
Kaller was the first person to see the abnormal message.
When he walked up to Maurice with the tablet in his hand and handed it to him, Maurice was slowly sipping his hot coffee, feeling drowsy and not fully awake at all.
He glanced at the text on the screen, put down his coffee cup, and then quickly picked it up again to read it carefully. The sleepiness on his face instantly faded by more than half.
"Call Ella over here."
Not long after, Ella hurried to Morris's large tent.
As soon as she entered, she saw Kenneth already standing at the tent entrance, having arrived a full two minutes earlier than her.
Morris didn't kick him out, tacitly allowing him to stay in the tent. Kenneth didn't say anything more either, glanced at the contents of his phone, and quietly walked to the left wall and stood there without uttering a word.
Morris reached out and flipped the tablet over, placing it flat on the table with the screen facing up, clearly visible to everyone.
"Marcus was patrolling late last night and discovered that our monitoring equipment, which we set up around the perimeter, recorded a particularly bizarre and unusual sound," he said in a deep voice. "You all take a close look at this report."
Ai stretched out his hand, picked up the tablet, stood still, and quickly read through all the content. After finishing, without saying a word, he pushed the tablet directly in front of Kaler next to him.
Kaller reads things very slowly, scrutinizing each word with exceptional care.
After reading it completely, he didn't push the tablet back. Instead, he swiped the screen up with his thumb and read it all over again, afraid of missing any inconspicuous details.
"Did Marcus send that audio file along with it?" Ella asked first.
"It's been sent."
Morris turned the laptop in front of him and opened the audio file stored inside.
The next second, a strange sound instantly filled the entire enclosed tent.
The first explosion was the panicked howls of a herd of wildebeest, piercing and chaotic, lasting a full seven seconds. Interspersed between the howls were the deep, muffled roars of water buffalo, creating an oppressive atmosphere.
Then a strange, rhythmic vibrato suddenly rang out, eventually turning into a jumble of electrical noise that sent chills down one's spine.
Kenneth immediately spoke up and made a definitive statement, his tone extremely certain.
"It's just a problem with the equipment, nothing to worry about."
Kaller slowly put down the tablet in his hand, raised his eyelids, and glanced at him indifferently.
"It's 100% recording noise caused by equipment malfunction." Kenneth reiterated his point. "This kind of situation is too common in the wild. The grassland is already very humid, and the high humidity environment causes the microphone to amplify all the low-frequency noise in the surrounding area. Various noises are layered on top of each other, and the final result is this strange noise. Last month, we encountered the exact same situation on a mission in Botswana. In the end, we found that it was just that the microphone's moisture-proof layer had aged and broken, a purely hardware aging problem."
"That time in Botswana was just plain white noise." Kaller's voice was flat and even, without any inflection, as calm as when reporting the weather.
"To put it bluntly, they're all essentially the same thing."
"They're completely different in nature." Kaller didn't back down, calmly dissecting the differences. "White noise is a random and disordered superposition of sound waves, without any pattern. But the vibrato in this recording is ordered and controllable; you can all hear it. It's a sound produced by some living creature deliberately controlling the vibration of its throat. Cold, mechanical equipment simply cannot simulate the unique acoustic characteristics of a living creature's throat vocalization out of thin air."
Kenneth paused for two seconds, then gritted his teeth and continued to argue.
"Even if you're right, at most it's just that some wild animals passed by and their calls were recorded by the equipment. It's a small matter, is it really worth making such a fuss about?"
"Marcus explicitly stated that this strange sound came from inside the equipment," Kaller said, emphasizing each word. "It wasn't a sound recorded from the outdoor environment outside the tent."
"Marcus had been stationed alone in the wilderness for eight days, and his mental state was already at its limit. His judgment is completely unreliable, and I will not comment on it."
The atmosphere inside the tent instantly turned cold, falling into an awkward and oppressive silence.
Ella stood quietly in the right corner of the tent the whole time, without interrupting or arguing.
She took out her earphones, reopened the recording file, put them on, and listened to it a second time, completely and attentively.
This time she was extra careful, and she even extracted the strange noise that sounded like human whispers and played it on repeat, dissecting the sound details bit by bit.
After a moment, she took off her headphones and slowly spoke.
"Listen carefully to this short passage. Does anyone else feel the same way I do? This is not random noise without any logic at all."
Kenneth pursed his lips, turned his head away, and pretended to be stupid, not responding at all.
Morris raised his chin and spoke calmly.
"Go on."
"True random noise has no rhythm whatsoever," Ella analyzed seriously. "But this is different. The rhythm looks irregular, but it hides a fixed cyclical pattern. It's like some kind of creature with its own consciousness, constantly repeating the sounds it makes."
She paused halfway through her sentence, gently shook her head, and said, "Never mind, I will only analyze the acoustic characteristics. I will not make wild guesses or draw any unfounded conclusions."
"You have no conclusion, but I have corresponding clues," Kaller said slowly, instantly drawing everyone's attention.
Everyone present turned their heads in unison, their eyes all falling on Kaler.
Kaller slowly took out his phone from his pocket, opened the pre-saved data file, and handed the screen directly to Morris.
"This is the environmental sound data I've continuously recorded at all the monitoring points in the field over the past three weeks. I've marked and statistically analyzed it all. There were eleven instances where the time periods of each of our team's tracking devices malfunctioned and when these strange sounds appeared overlapped."
Morris didn't reach for the phone; instead, he stared intently at Kaller, his expression unusually serious.
"Eleven overlaps can't possibly be a mere coincidence," Kaller said with absolute certainty. "Furthermore, I've discovered a crucial commonality: all the unusual sounds originated within a three-kilometer radius of our team's advance route, an absurdly high degree of overlap."
"So you mean," Kenneth slowly frowned, his tone full of disbelief, "that something unknown is lurking in this grassland, actively interfering with our electronic devices."
"I only objectively list the measured data, which can only prove that this record has extremely high analytical value." Kaller did not make any definitive statements and maintained rigor throughout.
"You're really joking," Kenneth said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "What could possibly interfere with radio equipment? Are you trying to tell me that there are mutated beasts on the African savanna that can launch electromagnetic attacks? Who would believe that nonsense?"
Faced with the other party's deliberate provocation, Kaller simply chose to remain silent and offer no explanation.
He put his phone back in his pocket, then put his hands back in his pockets, looking like he was too lazy to argue and was just giving up.
The cramped tent fell silent again, the oppressive atmosphere making it hard to breathe.
Morris reached for the coffee cup on the table, but felt its icy coldness the moment his fingertips touched it, so he silently put it back.
He turned to look at Ella, who had remained silent the whole time, and asked her a question.
"Ella, what do you think about this?"
Ella lowered her head and pondered for a few seconds before slowly revealing her thoughts.
"I don't deny Kaller's measured data; these records do have reference value. But as things stand, there is a serious lack of valid evidence to support any conclusions. The source of the strange sounds cannot be found, and the mechanism by which the equipment was interfered with is completely unknown. If I were to include this in the official report, the only thing I could mark it as 'unknown source.'"
"Origin unknown." Kenneth repeated it deliberately, as if savoring the phrase, a cold smile creeping onto his lips. "Fine, then write 'origin unknown' for everything. And then what? Are we really going to halt the entire field advance and order everyone to retreat based on a strange sound whose source we can't trace? That's absurd."
"I never said I wanted to halt the project," Ella retorted coldly.
"So what are you trying to say after all this roundabout analysis?" Kenneth pressed on, his attitude domineering and stubborn.
Ella gave him a cold glance, too lazy to waste her breath on someone so stubborn, and simply kept quiet.
Morris slammed his hand heavily on the table, forcefully interrupting the endless argument.
"Alright, everyone stop arguing and follow my instructions. I'll compile and summarize the anomaly report Marcus submitted and then submit it to higher-ups. I'll take all the monitoring data that Kaller has and conduct an in-depth review. Ella, compile and package that abnormal audio clip and send it to the headquarters acoustics team immediately. Have them do a full spectrum analysis and thoroughly investigate the sound composition. Kenneth, you immediately check the three field monitoring devices on the east side. If it's a hardware malfunction, you must give me accurate results before dark."
He paused briefly to add the most crucial personnel arrangements.
"Marcus will remain in place alone for three days. Once the three days are up, we will gather everyone together, combine all the clues to assess the risks, and then decide on the next course of action."
Once the order was given, no one raised any further objections.
As everyone got up and left the tent, Kale was the last to leave.
He walked to the tent entrance, then suddenly stopped.