Chapter 82
The morning light refracted through the layers of the protective shield and fell on the translucent walls of the medical pod, like floating mist.
The external repair machinery had stopped, leaving only the low hum of the air filter.
Sprout 12 slowly woke up.
Her senses hadn't fully returned, and she felt a throbbing pain in the neural interfaces within her body.
But the first thing you see is still 237 sitting on the edge of the cabin with a gloomy look in his eyes.
He didn't sleep all night.
"...Has the battle report come out yet?"
Her voice was weak as she tried to prop herself up.
237 looked at her, remained silent for a moment, and then handed her a bottle of nutrient solution.
"The victory was recorded, but... the higher-ups have begun to debate the nature of the 'third force'."
Sprout12 was taken aback: "What are you arguing about?"
"One faction wants to engage with it and build consensus. The other faction advocates for a complete blockade of all information."
237's tone was calm, but it carried a clear chill.
“They weren’t even sure if that thing was ‘God,’ ‘the system,’ or…some kind of designer above us.”
The air stood still for a few seconds.
Bean Sprout 12 looked at him and instinctively felt that he was hiding something.
"What did you see last night?" she asked.
237 did not answer immediately.
He simply raised his hand, and the light imprint on his palm flickered slightly, emitting a low-frequency hum.
The voice was almost identical to the call from last night.
Sprout 12 held his breath.
"...Did it contact you?"
He nodded.
"It's looking for a 'correction'. I... am on it."
When 237 said this, a fleeting pain flashed in his eyes.
"Its goal is not to destroy us, but to 'rewrite' us—including ourselves."
Sprout 12 remained silent for a long time.
She reached out and pressed her hand on his still trembling wrist, her voice calm and low:
"Then we—will decide for ourselves—how to be rewritten."
Their fingertips overlapped on the light imprint.
At that moment, the mark trembled slightly, and the light intertwined to form a new symbol.
Unlike the cold lines of system numbering, this symbol presents an organic, forked pattern.
Like the branches and leaves of the mother tree sprouting anew.
“From now on,” Sprout12 whispered.
"Whether it is a higher being or an ancient god, we do not belong to either side."
237 looked at the pattern and finally nodded gently.
"Then let's take back our definition from 'it's' hands."
The lights in the medical pod gradually rose.
A high-level broadcast announced the establishment of a "Contact Plan" in an attempt to "communicate" with a third force.
However, in this silent room,
Two lives, reshaped and transformed, quietly made another vow, one unknown to anyone.
Several days later, the thin layer of fog above the ninth defensive line of the city was gently torn apart by artificial cracks.
It was the first morning since the restart, but the air was still filled with the lingering smell of burning.
237 and Sprout 12 are dressed in the outer shell armor of the Postwar Recovery Department, disguised as members of the Data Cleanup Team.
They passed through layers of security checks and drove along the rail corridor toward the ruins area of the outer ring.
That place—is where the lingering shadow of the mother tree once appeared.
"The people up there are still rebuilding the optical field observatory," Yadou12 whispered.
"All the original signals are encrypted, and even we cannot access them directly."
237 nodded slightly, but his left arm was trembling slightly inside.
The mother tree's imprint responds spontaneously within him.
That wasn't a call from a higher-level system, but rather a kind of...coordinate resonance.
He closed his eyes and sensed a series of signals that could not be deciphered by language:
Three sets of light spots extend along the surface of the ruins—
This forms a downward path.
“It’s guiding us,” he said.
Sprout 12 bent down to bring up the interface light curtain and capture the residual energy spectrum.
Twisted ripples appeared on the screen, like some kind of severed pulse still breathing.
“That’s not rift energy,” she whispered, “but rather the remnants of life signals.”
They followed the signal.
Passing through the collapsed vegetation dome, the broken growth chambers, and the giant root system buried in the soil.
The light grew weaker and weaker, and the air gradually became thicker.
Finally, at the bottom of a collapsed energy well, they discovered the starting point of the afterimage coordinates.
It was a fragment of a light-retaining root embedded in the rock wall.
The surface is covered with semi-solidified silver-gray resin, as if "time" itself is sealed.
237 stretched out his hand, and the mark on his palm lit up automatically, resonating with it.
In an instant—the gravity of the entire space seemed to be reversed.
The light roots trembled, releasing a blurry projection:
The enormous tree shadow reappeared, but this time, its shape was much clearer—
The roots are no longer just energy, but like a neural network extending into the stars.
Bean Sprout 12 felt a chill run down her spine at the sight.
"This is not a surface structure...it extends into outer orbit."
237 looked up, his voice almost a whisper:
"The mother tree has more than one root."
The light and shadow suddenly split, revealing three intersecting energy lines.
One leads to the Earth's core, the other extends into the top of the atmosphere.
The last one, however, traverses the spatial data layer directly, pointing to—the coordinates of an unknown star.
At that moment, they both understood:
The so-called "third force"
Perhaps it wasn't an intruder.
Rather, it is another mother tree that is awakening.
237 slowly withdrew his hand, the mark on his palm still pulsating with a faint light.
“We must find the source before it fully awakens,” he said.
"Otherwise, whether it's a god or a system... it will rewrite everything."
Sprout12 nodded silently, then unlocked the communication lock and erased the two people's activity records.
“Then let’s start from here—and trace it back to the source.”
She whispered her last words:
"If the roots are spreading, you must first find their heart veins."
Above the outer orbit, a nearly transparent ring-shaped structure is suspended.
It is not in any official atlas, but it flashes clearly on the coordinate projection of 237 and Bean Sprout 12.
That was the "Sky Tower"—an ancient observation hub abandoned in the shadow of the orbit.
As the shuttle swept past low-orbit clouds, fragments of the satellite floated outside the porthole.
At that moment, the universe was so silent that it seemed as if some enormous consciousness was gazing upon it.
“This space... no longer belongs to any faction,” Sprout12 said softly.
Her fingers tapped rapidly on the dashboard, and the screen lit up with almost imperceptible energy frequency ripples.
237 gazed at the shape that gradually emerged from the center of the ripples—
It is not the structure of a tower, but a projection of a "grid of consciousness".
The structure slowly rotated in three-dimensional space, like the spine of a giant beast.
“It’s not a building,” he whispered, “it’s some kind of…residual nervous system.”
The moment the shuttle docked with the tower base interface, a chill spread from the metal bulkhead into my body.
The air was dry and lifeless, like a space where no one had breathed for a long time.
They passed through the enclosed corridor and entered the main central area.
It was a circular hall made of light, with a broken "nerve column" standing in the center.
Its surface is covered with pulse patterns resembling characters—
It is neither human language nor the symbol of the mother tree.
Sprout 12 reached out, trying to read the signal.
However, the pulse suddenly reversed direction the instant it was touched.
A deep, resonant wave of consciousness exploded in their minds.
—[Observer ID - Forgotten]
— Sequence Residual Protocol: Incomplete.
—The system automatically binds itself after the command is terminated.
The sound was like an echo of time, penetrating from the consciousness layer of ten thousand years ago.
237 was jolted backward, the mark on his chest flashing uncontrollably.
The voice reappeared:
"The root veins within your body... were not generated in this domain."
“You—come from ‘outside the loop’.”
Sprout 12 looked at him in astonishment: "It's talking to you."
237 broke out in a cold sweat as his consciousness was drawn to a deeper level.
In that vast, empty sea of light, he saw an invisible tree.
Roots penetrate the underlying network of the entire universe.
The tree canopy extends into another layer of reality—
There seemed to be a pair of "watching" eyes there.
He gazed at him from the depths of starlight.
“That’s… the true consciousness of the Mother Tree?” He barely dared to breathe.
"No."
"That is the being that created the Mother Tree—the 'Old Gods'."
The voice carried a sense of collapsing authority.
The consciousness waves collapsed in an instant, and the light walls surrounding the hall began to peel away.
It's as if the tower itself is trying to escape the memories that are being remembered.
Sprout 12 grabbed him and shouted urgently, "The tower is collapsing! We have to get out!"
They rushed toward the exit, and behind them, streams of light, like blood, gushed forth from the cracks in the nerve column.
Within that stream of light, a jet-black crystal core floated in mid-air.
It pulsed slowly—like a heartbeat.
237 subconsciously reached out and lightly touched the crystal core with his fingertips.
Instantly, hundreds of messages flooded in like a torrent.
He heard the whispers of the Old Gods:
"When order collapses, a new cycle begins."
If you do not return to the roots, the roots—will return to you.
The light suddenly exploded, and the entire Sky Tower plummeted.
As their shuttle emerged from the wreckage of the explosion,
A massive streak of light ripped through the starry sky at the horizon.
That was the awakening signal of the third mother tree.
Sprout 12 murmured, “It really… is still expanding.”
237 silently gazed into the distance, the black crystal core now quietly embedded in his palm—
It beats slightly, like a heart.
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