Eastlake Town is renowned for its remarkable trees and mysterious mountain formations. It's common to see a sudden rise of a mountain peak between two flat villages, shaped so geometrically as if nature's force carved such exquisite traces. The rocks on the mountains are just one marvel; the lush greenery on the slopes is arranged not by depth but rather in a scattered manner, creating a harmonious blend of heights. These mountains, from afar, resemble a huge green stone, and stepping into them often makes one forget they are in the mundane world.

Local records indicate that people here settled by the water, making a living from fishing, using boats for transportation, and staying indoors when it gets extremely foggy. The men in the town are taciturn, and there isn't much interaction among the women. The whole Eastlake Town is enveloped in a layer of mist, causing people's speech to be dampened, and the last syllable of every sentence tends to elongate with a rising tone. There used to be a huge lake here, so vast it seemed to have no boundaries, larger than the sea, as if it could encompass the sky itself. When mist rose from the lake, the scene would be a vast expanse of whiteness, akin to rolling clouds, if one ignored the sounds of clothes being beaten on the shore.

And that lake lies right in the center of the town, albeit not as large as the legends suggest. From above, it looks like a bowl with water halfway drunk.

The water in the lake is very cold. Rumour has it that a high-tech company hides data here, using the lake's water to cool down machines to prevent overheating and maintain continuous operation. But no one knows where this machine is. Only during quiet nights can people often hear strange sounds—rumbling, hissing, clanking. In the quiet of the town at night, with no one on the streets, the appearance of such sounds can only be attributed to some machine. People can imagine what it looks like, like a black giant beast, its head boiling hot after a day's work, swaggering through the town's concrete streets when no one's around, slowly walking to the lakeside, burying its head in the water. As the lake water overflows due to this massive head, it floods the entire street. The beast feels its body getting hot, so it wants to immerse its body in the lake too. The water rises higher and higher, overflowing even more, almost threatening to engulf the entire town. When dawn approaches, the beast slowly retreats, and the water flows back.

Indeed, it's hard to imagine that in a town like Eastlake, remote and rarely mentioned (the last time it appeared in the news was during a severe ice disaster over a decade ago, as its poor infrastructure and high humidity made it the worst-hit area, and the premier visited to offer condolences), there would be a high-tech company hiding data here, under the town's lake.
Those data are everyone's secrets, the rules governing everything, and when laid out, they represent the entire world, like a road spread out before us, with people walking from one end to the other.
This gives the feeling that Eastlake Town hides some unknown secrets, just like this machine, submerged in the lake in the dead of night, unseen by anyone, yet everyone knows it because the lake leaves traces during the day. And those unknown secrets, in fact, everyone knows them.