The west relay post stood half a day along a red-mud road. Scout Neri led them there after reporting that the keeper had shut off the lower signal to conserve power. Han had sent Yan, Qinghe, and Sella to inspect; Bai stayed behind to copy the station records.
Keeper Olan met them by the lamp. A cable ran from the post into the western hillside. It had been warm for three weeks.
“I was ordered to leave it connected,” Olan said. “No one gave me a repair diagram.”
Sella tested the reserve indicator. It showed the same false reading as the furnace station: a steady drain hidden behind a charge that wasn’t there.
Olan showed them how the lamp flickered every fourth minute. The timing matched the furnace’s hum.
“Could be the same network,” Gu said. He was not there; his old diagrams were in Yan’s pack. Yan looked at the line under the earth and remembered the unlisted branch turning west. They had a clue, not a map.
A faint scrape came from the stone culvert. Yan followed the sound to a loose panel. Fresh footprints marked the dirt beyond it, and a dropped tool lay near the opening.
