The water vapor was thick, like a thin veil covering the wetland.
Xiaoman carried the old kettle, her steps lighter than yesterday.
She walked straight toward the wall-whispering flower, a strange sense of anticipation welling up inside her.
As she got closer, her breath caught in her throat.
Overnight, the land she had watered the day before underwent an astonishing transformation.
Centered on the wallflower, the intermittent silver lines on the surrounding weeds have completely merged into one, winding and outlining a clear path, as if someone had walked under the moonlight, leaving behind a series of shimmering footprints.
This is definitely not naturally formed!
Xiaoman's heart suddenly raced, pounding against her chest.
She slowly squatted down, her fingertips trembling as she touched one of the silvery blades of grass.
It feels cool yet supple to the touch, with a damp, vibrant quality.
The instant her palm completely touched the blade of grass, something unexpected happened!
Beneath the soil, countless mycelia, finer than a strand of hair, seemed to be awakened by an invisible force. They broke through the soil and quickly intertwined and converged in her warm palm, eventually piecing together three clear silver words: "Follow it."
The handwriting shone brightly in his palm, carrying an unquestionable sense of command.
A chill ran from my tailbone straight up to the top of my head; any timid child would probably have screamed and run away long ago.
But Xiaoman did not.
Instead of fear, a bright flame ignited in her eyes.
She remembered the blurry figure on the wall, and the man named Lin Yi that Granny Chen had mentioned.
All of this is related to him.
This might be some kind of guidance he left behind.
Without the slightest hesitation, she placed the kettle steadily to the side, then deftly took off her cloth shoes and socks.
A cool morning breeze brushed against her smooth ankles. She took a deep breath and firmly stepped onto the silver-patterned path with her bare feet.
The moment the soles of my feet touched the silver patterns, a warm current surged from the Yongquan acupoint on the sole of my foot, instantly flowing throughout my limbs and bones.
The feeling wasn't like stepping on cold grass, but rather like stepping into a warm stream.
At the same time, she seemed to hear a very faint, very subtle buzzing in her ears, like the heartbeat from the depths of the earth, or like countless creatures singing softly at her feet.
She took the second step, then the third.
The warm current beneath her feet followed her like a shadow, and the silver path of light slowly unfolded before her, as if it were alive.
She soon discovered the peculiarity of this road—it was not static.
When she pauses slightly due to the unknown ahead, the light patterns under her feet dim, and the path ahead becomes blurred, as if it might disappear into the grass at any moment.
But once she grits her teeth and takes the next step without hesitation, the silver lines immediately light up again and extend forward by more than a foot, illuminating a new direction for her.
"Light waits for no one, but it recognizes those who walk with sincerity." Grandma Chen's words echoed in her mind like a resounding bell.
Xiaoman felt a warmth in her chest, completely dispelling the last trace of hesitation in her heart.
She no longer looked back at the road she had come from, her gaze fixed intently ahead, taking one step after another, her steps becoming more and more steady and resolute.
The path of light seemed to sense her determination, winding and stretching beneath her feet like a living vine, deftly bypassing jagged rocks, passing through dense reeds, and leading her deeper into the wetlands.
Suddenly, the path of light came to an abrupt end in front of her.
A ditch more than half a meter wide appeared ahead, like a scar on the earth, cutting the wetland apart.
The ditch wasn't deep, but the bottom was filled with slippery black mud.
The light path extended to the edge of the ditch and then broke off, leaving only a few faint silver stars on the opposite bank, appearing and disappearing in the morning mist.
She crouched down and cautiously peered inside.
In the damp mud at the bottom of the ditch, the glowing mycelium had been completely torn off, and the silver light at the break was so faint that it seemed to be about to go out at any moment.
what to do?
Should we jump over it?
No, she had a vague feeling that if she forced her way across, the road might really be "cut off".
If it's broken... then it needs to be reconnected.
A thought flashed through my mind like lightning.
She remembered her mother mending clothes late at night under the lamp, a thin cotton thread that could perfectly mend torn fabric.
She immediately opened her small schoolbag and rummaged around next to her pencil case. Soon, she pulled out a piece of white cotton rope that she had left over from practicing knot tying.
She lay prone by the ditch, leaning forward, and carefully wrapped one end of the cotton rope around the broken end of the mycelium on this side, circle by circle.
The mycelium seemed to possess a spirit, immediately clinging tightly to the cotton rope.
Then, she picked up a small stone, tied the other end of the cotton rope to it, and threw it with all her might toward the other side of the river.
The pebble traced a beautiful arc and landed precisely beside those few faint silver stars.
She found a long branch and painstakingly maneuvered the end of the cotton rope over so that it touched the broken end of the mycelium on the opposite bank.
The miracle happened the instant the mycelium was connected to both ends of the cotton rope!
A dazzling silver light, like an electric current, suddenly shot across the ordinary white cotton rope, instantly illuminating the entire broken ditch!
The silver light spread to the opposite bank, and the broken path of light was reborn in an instant, even more dazzling than before.
Looking at this incredible scene before her, Xiaoman's flushed face broke into a bright smile. She murmured to herself, "So even light can go out, and someone has to come and catch it."
In the distance, under an old willow tree, Granny Chen took in all of this.
A complex light flickered in her cloudy eyes, a mixture of relief and sadness, but she did not go forward to disturb the child.
She silently turned around and staggered back to her little house.
Inside the house, she pulled out an old ledger with a cowhide cover from the bottom of a locked old wooden box.
This wasn't a real ledger, but rather a private record she secretly kept of Lin Yi's life, documenting when he planted his first flower, when he rescued his first injured bird, and when he sat by the wetland for an entire afternoon.
She originally intended to seal these memories away forever, keeping them as her only keepsake.
At that moment, with trembling hands, she opened the ledger and solemnly wrote a line on the blank page of the last page with a pen whose handwriting was already unsteady: "Light is not passed down, but walked out."
After she finished writing, she stared at the line of words for a long time, as if she had used up all her strength.
Finally, she slowly closed the notebook, walked back into the courtyard, and quietly stuffed it under the reed basket that Xiaoman had sat on yesterday and would surely sit on again today.
When Xiaoman returned along the original path of the light, the sun was already high in the sky.
She immediately spotted a corner of the leather notebook peeking out from under the reed basket.
She picked it up with a puzzled look, turned the page, and when she saw the last line of text, she felt as if she had been struck by lightning.
Light doesn't come down; it comes out.
She pondered the sentence repeatedly, and then recalled her experience of connecting the light path with cotton rope. A completely new and enormous world suddenly opened up before her eyes.
She understood.
She understood completely!
She silently closed the notebook, without asking Granny Chen, and simply refilled the kettle with water. She then took a small shovel and a large roll of sturdy hemp rope from the corner of the wall.
The next morning, the mist over the wetlands had not yet dissipated, but the place was no longer peaceful.
Behind Xiaoman followed a group of chattering children, who were her best playmates.
Like a little teacher, she solemnly led them to the path of light, teaching them how to identify mycelium, how to protect the fragile root system with a small shovel and damp soil, and how to gently spray water from the kettle to awaken the dormant silver veins.
When they encountered a wider chasm, she would take out a hemp rope and teach everyone to work together to gradually extend the "light" across.
The children's laughter and exclamations echoed across the wetlands.
Thanks to their combined efforts, the silver path of light was no longer a solitary line, but gradually converged and intertwined like countless tributaries, forming a shimmering stream.
That night, Granny Chen had a long dream.
She dreamt that Lin Yi was standing in the thick fog of the wetlands, his blurry figure gradually merging with the image on the wall flower.
He slowly turned around, his face devoid of any features, only a gentle and peaceful light emanating from him.
She heard herself ask him in her dream, "Did you...see everything?"
From within the ball of light, a voice, extremely faint yet incredibly clear, rang out: "I saw them, they were walking."
Grandma Chen suddenly woke up from her dream, her heart pounding.
She put on her coat, got up, opened the window, and looked out into the yard.
Under the moonlight, beside the empty wicker chair in her courtyard, a tiny wall-whispering flower had stubbornly broken through the soil at some unknown time.
What shocked her even more was that the newly sprouted flower stem was actually transformed from half of a hemp rope that appeared out of nowhere. On the flower stem, the silver veins were clear and stable, just like a newly paved road waiting for people to step on.
The wonders of this wetland could no longer be hidden.
The children's laughter during the day and the dazzling path of light at night, like a galaxy, quickly became the hottest topic among the neighbors.
More and more people find themselves walking to the edge of the wetlands at dusk, pointing at the shimmering wonder with expressions of amazement and curiosity.
This corner, which holds private memories, is transforming into a public spectacle at an unprecedented pace.
The discussion gradually shifted from the "glowing grass" to the source of that light—the Wall Whisper Flower, and its name, which is closely associated with the flower.
A shared idea began to quietly ferment and coalesce in the community.
Faced with this sudden "light" that belongs to everyone, what should they, or rather, we, do?
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