The city wind swept through the abandoned ceramics factory area, stirring up dust and debris, and echoing with a mournful sound.
Lin Yi's steps did not falter at all, and he headed straight for the core of that forgotten land—the Seventh Silent Light Station, a pipeline entrance that was used as an underground hospital during wartime.
He easily pulled open the rusty iron fence, and a smell mixed with dirt, rust, and old disinfectant wafted out.
He didn't light the oil lamp, but by the sparse moonlight overhead, he squatted down and gently, as if placing a rare treasure, touched the malt wrapped with blue porcelain shards to an inconspicuous crack in the ground.
Miracles bloom in silence.
Without flames or any warning, a soft ripple of light emanated from the soil, centered on the roots of the malt, as if the earth, which had been dormant for half a century, had finally heard the long-lost frequency of awakening.
The light was not dazzling, but it carried a warmth that penetrated the heart, making this cold underground entrance seem like a place where a miracle had occurred.
Lin Yi took out the old brass pocket watch from his pocket; it was his father's only keepsake.
He placed the pocket watch on an abandoned lamp stand next to the entrance.
The watch cover popped open, and the hands, which had long since stopped, began to slowly turn in the still air, eventually trembling as they pointed to a mark—the third quarter of the hour of Zi (11:45 AM).
It was at the very moment that my mother carved that phrase into the wall with her life.
An indescribable emotion welled up inside me; it wasn't sadness, but a resonance that transcended life and death.
He gazed at the ever-expanding glimmer of light and whispered in a voice only he could hear: "I understand... It's not that I'm maintaining your light with my memories, but that you... are living anew with my longing."
The next morning, an unusual report from the community patrol team was delivered to his desk.
The report stated that last night, three primary school students spontaneously placed three hand-painted paper lanterns at the old bus stop for route 27, which had long since ceased operation.
The children said this was where their grandmother used to wait for the bus most often, and they wanted to show it to her.
Lin Yi immediately retrieved the surveillance footage from the vicinity of the platform.
In the midnight footage, the three simple paper lanterns lay quietly on the cold cement platform, unlit.
However, under the lens with ultra-high sensitivity, three extremely faint filaments of light, almost imperceptible to the naked eye, are rising from above the lantern, like ethereal spider silk, precisely connecting to an old residential building in the distance.
A bold deduction exploded in his mind: the system of the Path of Return to Light had evolved.
It no longer relies solely on the "ignition" of a physical light source as a ritual, but has become acutely aware of the pure "intention" within human emotions.
To verify this revolutionary hypothesis, Lin Yi drove to an abandoned post office in another corner of the city that afternoon.
He posted a plain white notice on the weathered door, with the simplest handwriting: "Who do you want to send this to?"
There were no lights, no ceremony, only a question that carried the weight of possibility.
That night, he stood guard in the distance.
As midnight fell, an astonishing scene unfolded.
Beneath that blank notice, a clearly visible beam of light appeared out of thin air. It had no source, but a clear direction, resolutely traversing the sleeping streets and extending all the way to the edge of the city—the South City Cemetery.
Lin Yi's heart clenched.
He understood a new pattern: the light trail was no longer just looking for "those who are remembered," but extended to all "heartfelt voices that yearn to be heard."
Whether it's a child's longing for their grandmother or someone's lament to the spirits in the grave, as long as the intention is strong enough, light will pave the way.
He immediately launched a project codenamed "Nameless Echo".
He quietly set up seven "silent mailboxes" in the city's seven main residential areas.
These mailboxes are plain in appearance, without any lights or markings, and do not require the sender to register their identity. Their only purpose is to allow people to send letters that can never be sent.
On the third night, a sanitation worker responsible for night cleaning hesitated as he walked to one of the mailboxes.
He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, which had become wrinkled from repeated handling, and stuffed it into the mail slot.
The note contained only one sentence: "My dear, while I was sweeping the streets today, I smelled the roasted chestnuts from your favorite stall."
The moment the note slipped into the mailbox, something incredible happened.
A single, glistening drop of dew unexpectedly condensed on the cold, metallic edge of the mailbox.
That was not water vapor, but a droplet made entirely of light.
It slid down slowly, following the trajectory of the letter, and dripped onto the ground, leaving a faint but clear, barely half-step-long footprint of light.
Ivan's whisper, seemingly from another dimension, rang in his ear at just the right moment: "...before the thought was uttered...the light had already moved..."
Lin Yi felt a shiver run down his spine.
Longing doesn't even need to be spoken; simply writing it down is enough to drive this force.
The system's perception accuracy has exceeded his expectations.
To test the limits of this self-evolving system, he decided to conduct a dangerous experiment.
He drove to the outskirts of Zone Zero, the area where the city's memory was most chaotic and its energy most turbulent.
He deliberately cut off the power supply to three nearby core lights via remote command.
Based on past experience, without the core energy source, the connected optical path network will collapse and dissipate within hours.
However, the data he retrieved 24 hours later completely stunned him.
Instead of collapsing, the optical path network reorganized itself in a way he had never seen before.
Beneath the surface, those silver veins, like blood vessels, cleverly utilize the faint lights emanating from nearby residential buildings at night, through countless refractions and guidance, to form a new, more complex and resilient network of light filaments.
He immediately checked the detailed sensor data and discovered an astonishing fact: whenever a resident reminisced about the past by the window, or even just silently gazed at an old object, the silver veins of the wall-talking plants within a ten-meter radius would faintly flicker, like human breathing.
In his work log, with trembling hands, he wrote his final conclusion: "Light has learned to breathe human emotions."
Late that night, Lin Yi fell into a long-lost dream.
He dreamed that he returned to the ruins of the letter-burning station, and his mother was standing in the middle of the ruins.
She carried that familiar oil lamp in her hand; though it had no flame, it emitted a light brighter than the sun.
His mother's lips were opening and closing, but he couldn't hear any sound, yet he understood her lip reading.
She said, "Forget about the lights, go and see those... people who are afraid to turn on the lights."
Lin Yi suddenly woke up from his dream, his back soaked with cold sweat.
He instantly understood what his mother meant.
His previous actions, whether it was lighting lamps or setting up mailboxes, were all for those who "have the ability and the willingness to remember."
But in this city, there are still a large number of marginalized groups forgotten in the corners—the lonely elderly, the homeless, and even the deceased who have no relatives to remember them.
Their memories, their stories, have never been connected to the path of returning to the light.
The following day, Lin Yi, in his capacity as a community psychological counselor, launched an initiative called "Dark Light Survey".
He organized a group of volunteers and began visiting the most remote corners of the city, especially the homes of elderly people living alone.
He forbade volunteers from mentioning anything about memory, light, or the path to home, only asking them to casually ask the elderly, "Have you dreamed about anyone lately?"
On the seventh day, all the census data was compiled into Lin Yi's computer.
Two messages, like two needles, pierced his vision.
In the Chengdong Nursing Home, seven elderly people who do not know each other have dreamed of the same golden wheat field over the past week.
In the West Side Asylum, a withdrawn girl suffering from aphasia would stretch out her finger at the empty wall every night, as if tracing the outline of someone whose name she could not speak.
They are the most silent memories in this city; their longing is so faint that it cannot even form a ray of light in reality, and can only linger in dreams and silent depictions.
That evening, Lin Yi, carrying only the smallest oil lamp, went to the outside of the nursing home in the east of the city.
Without disturbing anyone, he found the direction that the seven old people's rooms all faced, and gently lit the tiny lamp on an inconspicuous windowsill.
In the surveillance footage late at night, a thin, hair-like path of light slowly appeared in the air outside the window.
It had no clear destination; it simply cautiously and timidly wrapped itself around the dimly lit window frame three times before disappearing into the night like a startled firefly.
Ivan's whisper reached his ears again, this time tinged with a sigh: "...They...didn't get lost...it's just that no one dared to...start this...for them..."
Lin Yi stood in the night wind, clutching the withered wheat stalk wrapped with blue porcelain shards in his pocket. The keepsake from his mother seemed to sense his determination and was slightly warm.
He gazed in the direction where the light had faded, and said softly but with unwavering determination, "I'll start this end."
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