Chen Hao was awakened by a slight tremor.

He opened his eyes. The ceiling light was blindingly bright, and warm air was billowing out from the vent in the corner of the wall. He touched his forehead; the fever patch was already dry, as if it had just undergone a small-scale evaporation experiment.

"You're awake." Nana's voice came from the side, flat and monotone, but the gray light in her electronic eyes faded, and a faint blue light returned.

"How long have I been asleep?" He propped himself up, his arms feeling weak, like sugarcane that had just been squeezed dry.

"Three hours and twenty-seven minutes."

"Oh." He scratched his head. "Is it snowing outside again? Or is it an earthquake performance this time?"

"The snow has stopped." She pointed out the window. "The plants are moving."

Chen Hao was taken aback. "Move? What do you mean by 'move'? A group of people going to a disco?"

“They form words,” she said. “Thank you.”

He blinked, thinking he was still hallucinating from his fever. "Who are you thanking?"

“All the vines outside, along with the lichen and mutated flower clusters, were pieced together.” She brought up the projection on her wrist. On the screen, on a silvery-white wasteland, deep blue vines slowly twisted, outlining two symbols from the interstellar common language, so neatly arranged that they didn’t seem like natural products. Even more outrageous, several flowering stems swayed in the wind, and as the petals opened and closed, they formed two faces—one round and smiling, the other expressionless but with gentle eyes.

"This...is me?" Chen Hao pointed at the chubby face.

"The facial recognition matching accuracy is 89%," she said. "The remaining eleven percent is due to fat displacement error."

"Pretty meticulous." He grinned, then frowned. "But why are they thanking us? I didn't give them any year-end bonuses."

“Maybe it’s because you didn’t burn them,” she said. “And you didn’t trample the little vines either. Last month you even threw the seedlings that fell into the pit back into the soil—though you said you were too lazy to go the long way around.”

Chen Hao was stunned. "You mean...they remember?"

“Plants don’t have brains.” She stood up and walked towards the door. “But some symbiotic ecosystems do have collective memory. It’s recorded in databases, but nobody believed it before.”

They walked out of the base's side gate one after the other.

A chill swept over him, but it was no longer biting. Chen Hao wrapped his coat tighter, his feet crunching on the frosty ground. The mutated jungle in the distance, which had once frantically attacked humans, was now eerily quiet. The vines receded to both sides like flowing water, splitting in the middle to create a smooth passage leading to a glowing point underground.

“There’s something down there,” he said.

“A platinum-iridium ore core.” She scanned it. “98.6% purity, with an energy density far exceeding that of conventional samples.”

"Wait a minute." Chen Hao tugged at her sleeve. "The last time this kind of ore appeared, it turned my veins blue. Are you going to pull some kind of 'fate binding' again this time?"

“The possibility exists.” She paused, “but the risk factor is less than 3%.”

“Even below 3% is a risk!” he raised his voice. “I’m not a tool, nor am I the energy source for your planet!”

Before he finished speaking, the ground suddenly trembled slightly.

A beam of light rose from the end of the passage, blinding everyone. Two crystal-clear, rhomboid crystals burst from the ground, hovered for a moment, and then shot towards the two men's chests.

Chen Hao felt a chill on his front, followed by a warm, rhythmic thumping in his chest, as if a hot water bottle had been placed against it. He looked down and saw a pale silver crystal embedded beneath his skin, gleaming slightly.

"You got it too?" He looked at Nana.

She nodded, her fingertips lightly touching her chest. "It has entered the core energy connection area and is merging with the main circuit."

Does it hurt?

“It doesn’t hurt.” She looked up. “In fact, it repaired the three micro-short circuits caused by the chili sauce.”

"Huh?" Chen Hao chuckled. "So now even robots need chili oil to cure diseases?"

She didn't smile, but the electronic eye flashed, as if there was a small bug in the program.

The monitor popped up automatically, displaying a side-by-side comparison of the two people's vital signs: heart rate synchronization rate of 97.3%, respiratory rate of the same, and brain wave waveform overlap of 91.2%.

"What's this?" he stared at the screen. "Two-player mode unlocked?"

“To be more precise,” she looked at him, “our physical dependence is 98.7%. We cannot be separated unless one of us dies.”

"Even wedding rings aren't this extreme," he muttered. "The gift from the plant is way too hardcore."

Just then, the surrounding vines swayed gently again. A few slender branches slowly wrapped around their ankles, with a very light touch, as if testing the temperature. There was no sense of oppression, nor any intention of attack.

"What else do they want to do?" Chen Hao asked nervously. "Don't let them do anything like soul resonance again. I just got over my fever and can't take another one."

Nana crouched down and reached out to touch a vine.

Data streams rolled across her screen: changes in hormone secretion, electrical impulse feedback, abnormally increased photosynthetic rates...

“They are responding to us,” she said. “Since you extracted the antifreeze from frozen fruit, we have never destroyed vegetation on a large scale. You use chili powder to drive away snow rats and prevent them from starting fires; you recycle scrap metal to make supports and reduce digging; and even after that storm, you helped straighten the roots of fallen giant ferns.”

"That's because they're blocking the way!" he argued. "If I don't clear them, I won't be able to get back inside!"

“But what they perceive is ‘help’.” She stood up. “To them, you are not just a survivor, but a participant.”

Chen Hao remained silent for a while, then looked down at the gently entwined greenery at his feet.

"So...they really understand? They know we didn't intend to destroy this place?"

“Maybe they don’t understand the language,” she said, “but they can sense the intention behind the behavior.”

The wind suddenly picked up, rustling the vines and leaves. The entire grove of plants seemed to have agreed beforehand, swaying their branches in unison, like a silent applause.

He laughed, a slightly silly laugh, "So being a good person can actually gain you a fan base in the wild."

Nana glanced at him and said, "I suggest you don't talk like you're receiving an award."

"I was just being sentimental," he said, patting his stomach. "Speaking of which, can this thing on my chest be used as a heater? If the air conditioner breaks down again, we won't have to huddle together for warmth again, will we?"

“Theoretically, it can output heat energy,” she said, “but it requires bidirectional activation.”

"Two-way?" He raised an eyebrow. "How do we activate it? Do we need to pour in another bottle of hot sauce?"

“It can be triggered if the heartbeats are synchronized for more than five minutes,” she said calmly. “No external stimulation is required.”

"Huh?" He stared wide-eyed. "You mean as long as we're together and thinking about a bright future, we can generate electricity and provide heating?"

"Pretty much," she nodded. "More environmentally friendly than burning fossil fuels."

"Isn't this just a living couple's heater?" He shook his head. "No wonder the plants held a ceremony for us. It turns out we've already been incorporated into the ecosystem KpI."

They stood in the center of the open space, surrounded by lush greenery, with soft soil beneath their feet and tender new shoots quietly breaking through the frozen ground.

Chen Hao stretched his arms and felt the crystal inside his body pulsating gently with his breath, as if he had gained a second heart. He tried to take a step forward and found that the vines immediately parted to make way for him without any obstruction.

"Do they let us pass?" he asked.

“The passage isn’t closed yet,” she said. “There might be something else down there.”

"Going further down?" He took a half step back. "I've already sacrificed my body once. If I do it again, I'm afraid all I'll get back are my bones."

“This time, you don’t need to sacrifice yourself.” She took a step forward. “You just need to believe.”

He stared at her retreating figure and sighed, "You always say that, and then I start bleeding blue blood."

But she didn't turn around; she just reached out her hand.

He hesitated for three seconds before placing his hand on it.

The two slowly moved forward along the glowing passage. The ground became increasingly soft, and the air was filled with a damp, earthy smell and a faint, sweet fragrance. The deeper they went, the stronger the crystal resonance became, and the heat in their chests almost soothed their muscle aches.

Until a huge sphere, half-buried underground, appeared ahead—it was silvery-white, its surface covered with honeycomb-like holes, and its interior was filled with liquid starlight-like substances.

“This is…” he murmured.

“The original mineral source,” she said. “The energy matrix of the entire region.”

As soon as the words were spoken, a ring of patterns suddenly lit up on the surface of the sphere, perfectly matching the golden vines that had appeared on Nana's shell. Immediately afterward, a deep hum spread out, like the earth speaking.

Chen Hao felt a burning sensation in his palm.

Nana's fingers tightened slightly.

He looked down and saw a faint light appearing where the two were clasped together, traveling upwards along the blood vessels and eventually flowing into the crystal in his chest.

A flash of light, and it stabilized.

Their breathing slowed down in the same second.

Their steps stopped at the same instant.

Even the frequency of their eyelash trembling began to converge.