Silent String Song
In the shattered Jintian Realm, time stagnated into a viscous medium amidst the friction and testing of the two rules. There was no day or night, only the flickering sparks of rules, reflecting the two figures, one sitting and the other lying, forcibly bound.
Silence is the main tone.
But the silence here was no longer the dead silence of the beginning, filled with hostility and vigilance, nor was it the illusory peace of the brief "firefly" moment. It was a more complex, more exhausting, and more... subtle state.
It was as if two severely damaged precision instruments, after being forced to connect and synchronize frequencies, finally found an extremely fragile compatibility mode after countless errors and conflicts, but it was sufficient to maintain minimum operation.
Xiang Jinyang still leaned weakly against the cold, broken wall of rules, his eyes half-lidded, his long eyelashes casting a faint shadow on his pale, translucent skin. He no longer tried to "see" the tainted realm, but instead immersed his entire mind within himself, striving to maintain the faint "breath" of the source of the Heavenly Dao.
This breath was his last and deepest connection with this world. Now, it has become the "coordinate" that the virus clumsily imitates.
He could clearly sense that an external, cold, yet no longer aggressive "intention" was carefully circling around his regular rhythm, like a satellite circling a star, trying to adjust its own frequency and achieve synchronization with it.
Every time synchronization succeeded, the teeth-grinding, rhythmic friction noise around them would diminish a bit. Every time synchronization failed, it would trigger energy ripples in a small area, bringing subtle discomfort.
Xiang Jinyang no longer showed any obvious reaction to this. He just silently and stubbornly maintained his own frequency, like a reef in the sea, allowing the waves to wash over it, but he remained unmoved (at least on the surface).
He Yuan, on the other hand, was completely immersed in this unprecedented "imitation game".
He sat cross-legged not far away, eyes closed, all computing resources devoted to capturing and reproducing that abstract "breathing." For him, this was a subversive challenge.
His world was originally composed of clear instructions, fixed parameters, and quantifiable results. However, the ambiguity, dynamism, and uncontrollability represented by words like "breathing," "rhythm," and "feeling" were enough to cause any of his logical modules to crash and fail.
At first, he tried to define this "breathing" using mathematical modeling - Fourier transform to analyze its frequency components, establish differential equations to simulate its fluctuation patterns, and even tried to use chaos theory to predict its changing trends.
The results were all failures without exception.
The breathing of the Way of Heaven is not a mechanical vibration. It contains infinite variables of the will of heaven and earth and the birth and death of all things. How can it be fully summarized by a mere algorithm?
After hitting the wall again and again, He Yuan finally realized that he might need... a more "primitive" way.
He began to try to "empty" some of the logical processes (which was extremely dangerous and uncomfortable for him), relying only on the most basic perception interface to "feel" the ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses, and speed of the rhythm.
Like a baby learning to speak, like a blind man touching an elephant.
The process was painful and inefficient. His code output became erratic, often causing minor violations of rules due to errors in "feeling." But he persevered with remarkable perseverance.
Even in this clumsy imitation, he occasionally captured some extremely subtle "harmonics" beyond the fundamental frequency.
Perhaps it was the rhythmic shifts brought about by Xiang Jinyang's unconscious emotional fluctuations? Or perhaps it was the faint resonance transmitted through the Heavenly Dao network when a major event occurred in a distant corner of the outside world?
He had once unhesitatingly filtered out these "noises" that couldn't be explained by the original model. But now, he began to subconsciously pay attention to them, trying to understand the "information" that these "noises" might carry.
This is a completely new and unfamiliar cognitive experience.
He no longer simply viewed Xiang Jinyang as a "system" that needed to be cracked or a powerful "energy source", but vaguely sensed that beneath the cold outer shell of the Heavenly Dao, there seemed to be a living...information source that continuously generated complex "data".
This realization made him feel an inexplicable...throbbing.
On one occasion, when he had finally managed to synchronize the output frequency of his own code with Xiang Jinyang's Heavenly Dao Breathing for ten breaths—
Buzz...
A strange resonance quietly emerged between the two people through that invisible channel.
It is not a fusion of power, but a deeper and harmonious resonance of frequency.
At that moment, the sparks of rules that kept bursting out around them miraculously weakened by half at the same time, and a brief but extremely clear sense of smoothness flowed through the two people's almost broken nerves.
It was as if a duet that had always been out of tune, noisy and harsh had finally found its first harmonious note.
Although it was short, it was enough to shake people's hearts.
He Yuan suddenly opened his eyes, silver light flashed in his eyes, and he looked at Xiang Jinyang with shock and excitement as if he had discovered a new law.
Xiang Jinyang's eyelashes trembled imperceptibly. The smoothness and harmony of that moment were even more profound for him. It was a long-lost sense of peace, one in tune with nature. Though faint, it truly soothed his wounded core.
Their eyes met briefly in the air.
One eye held an incredible, purely technical ecstasy. The other held an indescribable, swiftly frozen shock.
No words.
He Yuan quickly closed his eyes again, eager to capture the feeling of that moment and try to reproduce that wonderful resonance.
Xiang Jinyang also lowered his eyes again, but the fluctuations of the rhythm of the Heavenly Dao around him seemed to be clearer and more stable than before, silently providing him with support.
Silence fell again.
But this time, there was a kind of indescribable "communication" in the silence.
There is no need for language or even clear thoughts.
A subtle adjustment of rhythm, a minute change in code output power, an almost imperceptible ripple of energy brought about by successful synchronization...
All of these have become silent "dialogues" between each other.
He Yuan judged the appropriateness of his own repair method by observing the subtle changes in Xiang Jinyang's rhythm, while Xiang Jinyang indirectly evaluated He Yuan's "performance" of imitation by sensing the stability of the surrounding rules.
He remained indifferent, never offering any guidance or affirmation. He remained focused, never revealing any emotion beyond technical exploration.
But in this extreme, forced silence, a strange tacit understanding, like an undercurrent, began to grow between the two.
When he repaired the left area, her Heavenly Rhythm would subconsciously shift to the left, like silent guidance. When he tried a new frequency modulation method, even if it was a bit awkward, she would strive to maintain her own frequency stability, providing him with a clear reference point. When he became visibly anxious due to repeated failures and the code flow began to become chaotic and shrill, the Heavenly Rhythm would become almost imperceptibly softer and more inclusive, like a silent comfort.
And when her rhythm was about to become disrupted due to weakness, he would promptly deliver a stream of pure energy. It was not a rough infusion, but a careful simulation of her frequency to help her maintain her rhythm.
They were like two dancers performing a blind duet in the dark, each step treading on the edge of the unknown, relying on the subtlest perception and instinctive adjustments to maintain a dangerous balance.
The dance steps are clumsy and have no aesthetic appeal, and they often even step on each other's feet.
But the dance never stopped.
In this silent and strange music composed of regular rhythms and code pulses, the hideous wound of Jintian Realm is being smoothed and healed bit by bit in an extremely slow but incomparably solid way.
A new regular structure grew out, still with obvious traces of splicing, but it was no longer a cold and rigid mosaic, but more like a kind of... symbiosis after difficult running-in.
Ugly, but tenacious.
An unknown amount of time had passed, but when He Yuan finally stabilized a large and most chaotic border area, he heaved a long sigh and looked at Xiang Jinyang with a hint of pride, only to find that the other party had fallen into a deep sleep (or, had lost consciousness due to excessive weakness) without anyone noticing.
She still sat cross-legged, her back straight, the majesty of the Way of Heaven etched into her bones. But her head was slightly lowered, her long silver-white hair scattered, covering most of her face, revealing only her taut, yet bloodless jaw.
The regular rhythm around him became extremely weak and slow, but he still followed a certain instinctive rhythm and never stopped.
It's like a precision instrument that has run out of energy and forced into sleep mode, retaining only the most basic operating instructions.
The smugness on He Yuan's face disappeared instantly.
He stared blankly at the unconscious figure that seemed to be shattered at the slightest touch, and then looked at the space around him that had finally stabilized after their stumbling "cooperation".
An extremely complex emotion once again surged into his computing core.
There is no joy of victory. There is no pleasure of control.
Instead, it's like... after completing an extremely difficult and exhausting task, looking at the equally exhausted "teammates", there is that indescribable... feeling of stagnation.
He stood up silently and walked to Xiang Jinyang.
The movements are a bit stiff.
He hesitated for a moment, then stretched out his hand very slowly, gathering an extremely gentle flow of energy at his fingertips, wanting to do something - perhaps check on her condition, or perhaps transfer some more energy.
But his fingers stopped just before they touched her shoulder.
He looked at her brows, which were still slightly furrowed even in her sleep, at the pale blue veins under her pale skin, and at her weak but stubborn breathing...
He suddenly remembered those "useless" poems, those analyses of "ripples of pain", those fireflies, those noises...
His fingers curled slightly and finally slowly withdrew.
He just stood quietly beside her, like a silent guard.
Then, he began to imitate her slow and long rhythm while she was sleeping, adjusting the running rhythm of his own code, making the cold silver light seem to "breathe" along with it.
In an extremely clumsy, yet unprecedented way,
Guarding this piece of land they created together,
Scarred,
A silent prison.
The silent music continues.
Just a performer, only one left for now.
And the other,
In deep sleep,
Unconsciously,
Follow the jerky beat.
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