The whispers of the 95th Civilization Unit, about the first interdimensional seed sprouting, still echoed in Lin Yi's ears, but his gaze was already firmly fixed on the incredible scene before him.
Before the morning dew had even dried, the stone tablet at the site of the former letter-burning station had been completely transformed overnight.
The golden wheat seed that he had buried with his own hands had already sprouted from the soil.
Even more bizarrely, from this point onward, clear concentric circles of patterns emerge on the scorched soil surface, as fine as tree rings, as if the earth has recorded condensed time here.
At the very center of the tree rings, a tender bud about three inches tall stands upright, its entire body exhibiting a strange, translucent texture, as if it were carved from glass.
Sunlight penetrates its stem, revealing wisps of light within, flowing slowly as if alive.
What made Lin Yi's heart tighten the most were those two newly sprouted tender leaves.
As the leaves unfurl, the light and shadow they refract are not the surrounding ruins, but the outlines of two blurry, swaying figures, struggling silently and then disappearing silently, in an endless cycle.
He did not rashly touch the strange "plant".
He took a deep breath, untied the rusty bell-shaped wheat ear from his waist, and carefully hung it on the top of the tender sprout.
Just as the wheat ears and tender shoots were less than a finger's width apart, a sudden change occurred!
Despite the absence of wind, the string of dry, rusty bells began to shake violently on its own, emitting three short, clear, and melodious tremolos.
"Ding! Ding! Ding!"
The sound wasn't loud, but it was like three heavy hammer blows, striking Lin Yi's heart hard.
His pupils suddenly contracted; he was all too familiar with this rhythm—the wartime emergency assembly bell, the highest alert level!
Almost at the same moment the bell rang, the broken whispers belonging to Ivan from the depths of the earth, for the first time carrying a clear directional information, exploded in his mind: "...the root...extends...to...ninety-four..."
Node number ninety-four!
Lin Yi's mind raced, and without the slightest hesitation, he immediately retrieved the "wall language" network monitoring data deeply embedded in the city's underground.
A vast stream of information flashed before his eyes, eventually settling on a real-time resonant frequency graph.
The chart shows that from the moment he buried the wheat seed last night, the inherent resonant frequency of the No. 94 ley line node at the bottom of the abandoned mine in the west of the city began to deviate drastically, and within just a few hours, it reached an astonishingly perfect synchronization with the faint light flow frequency of the wheat sprout in front of him!
What made his scalp tingle even more was that the data showed that an energy of unknown origin was extending wildly from node 94 into the deeper rock veins at a terrifying rate of three meters per day!
A bold and alarming deduction instantly took shape: this sprout is not a plant at all; it is the "anchor root system" projected onto the real dimension by the "Ninety-Fifth Civilization Unit"!
It is not absorbing nutrients, but actively building a physical channel connecting unknown dimensions!
There's no time to lose.
Lin Yi immediately turned back and returned to the ruins of the water pumping station.
This is his secret workshop, and also his base for interpreting "wall language".
Without pausing, he took out twelve pottery shards of varying sizes from a scratched iron box, each shard bearing the character "listen" branded with an ancient engraving knife.
He arranged the pottery shards one by one on the ground in the center of the ruins with a mysterious pattern, his hands flying so fast that they almost left afterimages.
This formation, named "Listening to the Spring," can simulate and amplify fluctuations at a specific frequency. It is a unique creation he pieced together from countless fragments and incomplete texts.
When he forcefully embedded the last shard of pottery into the ground, the entire formation suddenly lit up!
Not far away, the ancient mirror frame, entwined with withered vines, suddenly began to tremble violently. The previously blurry mirror surface instantly became clear, revealing a chilling phantom.
That was the wheat stalk in front of the burning station.
But reflected in the mirror, it reveals its true form, invisible to the naked eye—its underground root system is hundreds of times larger than its stem above ground, extending into a complex giant net. At the end of each slender root is a "spot of light" that emits a grayish-white glow. The shape of the spot of light is uncertain, sometimes contracting and sometimes expanding, much like sleeping hearts or cocoons that have not yet hatched.
Lin Yi instantly understood that these points of light were the dormant "memory units," and this malt was their mother and controller!
He slowly took out the oil lamp he always carried with him. The wick was not cotton thread, but a piece of dark black crystal.
He lit the oil lamp, and a cluster of black flame rose up. Instead of emitting light, it resembled a miniature black hole, swallowing the surrounding light.
He aimed the black crystal flame at the malt phantom in the vine-framed mirror.
In an instant, the shadow of the flames cast on the stone wall became distorted!
The shadow was no longer a dilapidated stone house, but had transformed into a magnificent archway entirely entwined with a complex network of roots!
The interior was deep and dark, with faint, heavy, and rhythmic footsteps, one after another, as if something was walking towards them from a distant time and space.
"How long will it take?" Lin Yi asked in a low voice, staring at the black flames.
Before the words were finished, the cluster of black crystal flames suddenly contracted, transforming into a beam of light thinner than a hair, which "whooshed" into the illusory stem of the malt in the mirror.
In the real world, the tender leaves of wheat at the burning post station suddenly trembled and abruptly turned over.
The originally smooth back of the leaf suddenly revealed countless fine, spiderweb-like patterns.
Lin Yi stared intently, his mind reeling – it was a complete map of the city's underground network!
The nodes of 37 important archaeological sites throughout the city were clearly marked, and among them, seven nodes were shimmering with a unique light, with two ancient characters marked next to them: Ke Qi.
The answer is self-evident.
A glint flashed in Lin Yi's eyes, and he made a decision without hesitation.
He named the project "Roots".
Forcing it to happen carries too much risk; it's still unknown whether what's behind that "door" is friend or foe.
What he needs to do is not to break down the door, but to guide it and take control of opening it!
He put away the pottery shards and immediately rushed to the first "activatable" node marked on the map—the underground storage room of the old post office.
The cellar was cold and damp. In the deepest corner, he rearranged twelve pottery shards, but this time the formation was different. It was called "Night Listener," and it resonated with the frequency of malt at an extremely slow night watch rhythm.
After setting up the formation, he sat cross-legged beside it and meditated all night, merging his mind and spirit with the formation.
The next morning, as dawn broke.
Suddenly, a few drops of ink-like liquid seeped out from the cracks in the cellar bricks. They slowly gathered and finally solidified in the center of the array of pottery shards into a black crystal the size of a fingernail and shaped like a postmark. On the surface of the crystal, two words were clearly engraved: "Read".
Lin Yi picked up the crystal and gently placed it on the main ceramic shard in the center of the array.
The moment the crystal touched the ceramic shard, it melted silently, like ice and snow meeting fire, and seeped into the ground.
Meanwhile, several kilometers away at the site of the former burning station, one of the leaves of the translucent malt stalk trembled slightly, almost imperceptibly.
Over the next five days, Lin Yi followed the same method, visiting the boiler room of the old textile factory, the base of the abandoned water tower, the library covered with vines, the broken bridge piers across the river, and the sixth point—the long-abandoned epidemic prevention station.
Each time, he set up the "Night Listener" formation, and each time, he would receive a unique crystal token with the words "read" engraved on it in the early hours of the next day.
On the seventh night, he arrived at the last marker node—the basement of the clock tower of the old school in the city center.
This place was once a wartime shelter, and the air still carries an atmosphere of dust and sorrow.
He skillfully set up the formation, completing the final night's guidance.
As the first rays of dawn pierced through the narrow ventilation window of the basement, and Lin Yi slowly withdrew the last shard of pottery, a sudden change occurred!
From the depths of the city's underground, a distant and contented sigh seemed to echo.
In front of the burning station, the stalk of wheat suddenly emitted a clear and extremely melodious sound, a sound that could pierce through metal and split rocks!
Immediately afterwards, its stem grew rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye, reaching half a meter in an instant, its entire body shimmering with light and dazzling brilliance.
At the top of the stem, a flower bud that was not originally there condenses and takes shape with each breath, and then quickly closes.
The flower bud was entirely a cold, silvery-white color, with a metallic texture and a shape like an inverted bell, hanging quietly in the air.
Deep underground, Ivan's intermittent whispers, now clearer and more complete than ever before, echoed in his mind one last time before receding completely.
“Ninety-fourth node... Root system closed... Door... about to open.”
Lin Yi rushed back to the burning station. He stood in front of the silvery-white wheat stalk that had changed drastically, his gaze fixed on the bell-shaped flower bud at the top.
Everything around fell silent.
The wind stopped, the chirping of insects disappeared, and even the movement of air seemed to freeze.
The whole world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for a certain moment to arrive.
All was silent except for that silvery-white flower bud, which stood quietly in the deep night, silently counting down to midnight.
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