In the morning light of the Possibility Nursery, the first leaf of the World Tree sapling unfurled. Flowing between its veins was no longer code, but the word "Welcome" written in star patterns and double helices. Lin Yue lightly touched the leaf with her fingertips, and the words suddenly transformed into fireflies, fluttering towards transparent bubbles suspended at the edge of the nursery. Each bubble contained a "regrettable moment" from a certain universe, now dyed a gentle amber by the firefly's light.
"Look at this." Old Zhang held up a magnifying glass-like device. It was a "possibility observer" made from the fragments of the unfinished oath in Chapter 18. The lens reflected Xia Zichen from a certain universe, standing amidst the ruins of the Mirror War, clutching half a fragment of the Scythe of Entropy. "He's waiting for reinforcements that will never arrive."
Xia Zichen took the observation device, and the fragments suddenly felt hot in his palm. "But now reinforcements are here." He injected the power of the star pattern into the bubble, and the weeds on the ruins instantly sprouted, growing into a vine bridge connecting the two time and space. His mirrored self looked up toward the nursery, the fatigue in his eyes replaced by surprise. The flower at the end of the vine was exactly the twin variety of Lin Yue's seeds.
Ah Fu's oracle-inscribed sword suddenly resonated, and the fruit on the vines tethered to the hilt cracked, dropping a scroll of oracle-written "Grammar of the Wind"—the laws of propagation recorded by the first Guardians. "Every time the wind blows the dandelions, it's a random seeding of possibility." He pointed to the air currents swirling above the nursery. Those winds, composed of "uncertainty," were carrying the seeds to different rifts in space and time. "But the Administration always wanted the wind to blow in only one direction."
The black cat suddenly leaped from the treetops and swatted at a falling bubble with its paw. Inside the bubble was the unsent letter from Chapter 27, the recipient's address blurred by tears. When the wind blew the letter apart, instead of words, a flock of glowing butterflies fell out, each with the words "It's not too late now" written on its wings. The butterflies flew through a rift in time and space, landing on the shoulder of Old Zhang in another universe, who was hesitating over whether to deliver the letter to the mailbox.
The silver heart had now transformed into the sun of the nursery, the DNA strands on its surface evolving into a flowing rainbow river, watering every potential seedling. Lin Yue saw that the fruit on one of the seedlings contained the answer to the unsolved puzzle from Chapter 4—but the answer wasn't a number, but a rusty key, the shape of the keyhole perfectly matching the slit in the bronze door.
"This is a recursive gift." Xia Zichen took the key and discovered that the silhouettes of the four of them were engraved beneath the rust. "We thought we were breaking the cycle, but we were actually weaving a more complex web—but this web is used to catch the wind."
Suddenly, the space-time membrane at the edge of the nursery rippled, and countless "observation points" from mirror universes began to converge toward the center. Lin Yue's beam swept across the brightest of these, revealing another version of herself, clad in the robes of an Administration, clutching not chains but a bag filled with seeds. "She chose a different path in Chapter 5," Lao Zhang's observation device showed. The Administration in that universe was disbanding, replaced by the "Alliance of Sowers of Possibility."
The vines of the Oracle Sword suddenly pointed deep into the nursery, where a lighthouse made of mirror fragments had appeared. Its summit burned not with flames but with the gears of the Time Merchant's pocket watch. Every time the lighthouse rotated, an arrow of light shot into the cosmic membrane, burning a hole in it that read "Exploration Allowed."
"Look at the arrangement of these holes." Ah Fu used the tip of his sword to trace the trajectory of the light arrow, forming the star map at the end of the first guardian's diary. "This is the route to the 'Undefined Star Region' - a place where even the Administration doesn't dare to set foot."
Xia Zichen inserted the key into the lighthouse's base, and the rust instantly peeled away, revealing the glowing characters "Curiosity." The lighthouse shone brightly, and all the mirror fragments simultaneously turned toward the undefined star region, forming a temporary portal in the void. From within the portal came not the hum of data streams, but the cry of a baby—the first breath of a "new possibility" never before recorded.
"It's time for us to set off." Lin Yue put the last seed into the pocket of wind. The surface of the seed was engraved with the mixed emblem of four people. "The nursery needs gardeners, but it needs explorers even more." She looked at Lao Zhang's observation instrument and saw that her selves in different universes were all raising their compasses at this moment, with the pointers pointing to the direction of the portal.
The black cat suddenly leaped into the portal, and when it turned back, its eyes reflected the starlight of the undefined star field, which unexpectedly overlapped with the glow of the fireflies by the stream in Chapter 1. Old Zhang took off his pocket watch, and new words were growing on the inside of the watch cover: "When you begin to seek a road without a map, the universe will unfold its folds for you."
Ah Fu wielded the Oracle Sword, and the vines on its blade transformed into cables, connecting the lighthouse to the portal. Xia Zichen walked in front, his Star-Patterned Sword carving a course through the void, each sword mark blooming like a dandelion-like point of light. Lin Yue glanced back at the nursery one last time. The World Tree sapling had grown tall enough to touch the silver sun. Countless mechanical elves nestled in its canopy, their gears playing a melody composed of "perhaps" and "possibilities."
The moment they passed through the portal, the four heard a tsunami-like sound emanating from the nursery—the sound of all liberated possibilities simultaneously breaking through the ground. In the darkness of the undefined star region, the crests on their palms lit up, illuminating the first unfamiliar planet suspended in the void. The planet's surface was covered in a crystalline "unknown," and within the cracks in the crystals, faint green sprouts could be seen growing.
"What should this planet be called?" Lao Zhang's black cat tapped the crystal with its claws. What seeped out of the cracks was not magma, but a sweet mist.
"Let's call it 'Questioning Star'." Xia Zichen squatted down and gently touched the bud with the Star Pattern Sword. "Here, every question mark can grow into a tree of answers."
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