The white porcelain porridge bowl left behind by that young man sits quietly on the rough stone surface of the platform.
The deep words on the bottom of the bowl are like a brand, or an unhealable wound: "You don't have to be liked, just don't go too far."
Lin Yi did not retrieve it, as if the bowl had become one with the stone platform, becoming a new, silent organ of this land.
Every morning, he would simply use a clean, soft cloth to gently wipe away the thin layer of dust that had accumulated on the bowl, his movements as gentle as if he were touching a sleeping baby.
Three days later, the appearance of a figure broke the silence of the ceremony.
She was a hunched old woman with a face deeply lined with wrinkles. The years had etched not kindness onto her face, but a stiffness and weariness that came from being repeatedly washed away.
She leaned on a well-worn wooden crutch and wandered around the edge of the platform every day, like a lost lone wolf, neither approaching nor venturing away.
Her gaze was always fixed on that white porcelain bowl, her cloudy eyes churning with a storm of emotions that no one could understand.
Finally, she moved her feet, one step after another, as if dragging a thousand-pound chain.
She stretched out her withered, trembling hand, almost touching the smooth glaze of the bowl, but at the last inch, she abruptly pulled it back, as if the bowl were not porcelain, but a red-hot iron.
"Buzz—"
Chu Yao, who was standing not far away, frowned slightly.
A surge of intense, chaotic brainwaves, filled with sharp regret, crashed against her senses like a mental storm.
In an instant, fragmented images flooded her mind: a dimly lit room, faces contorted with fear, and a young woman's cold voice—"Your thoughts have strayed from the collective; this is for your own good."
Chu Yao understood instantly.
This old woman was once a member of the most feared "ideological patrol" during the war.
Her job was to identify and root out those who made "inappropriate" remarks, and then personally send them to a dark and hopeless solitary confinement cell.
She was once the embodiment of truth and the iron fist of order, but now, even the simplest "I'm sorry" is stuck in her throat, rotting into an unspeakable poison.
Just then, a gentle breeze swept by.
The wind carried the scent of wheat fields, and a slender wheat leaf swirled and floated down with perfect precision into the old woman's worn-out clothes.
The old woman was startled and subconsciously pinched the leaf. On the emerald green veins, she saw a line of tiny, ant-like characters: "What you said has been said by others."
The old woman's body jolted violently, as if struck by an invisible lightning bolt.
Lin Yi took in all of this.
He did not disturb the struggling soul.
From that day on, he stopped cleaning the table and let the autumn wind blow the withered yellow leaves onto the table, layer upon layer, as if to bury that history completely.
On the morning of the fifth day, a night wind blew away the pile of fallen leaves, revealing the original appearance of the stone platform.
Surprisingly, a tender, pale yellow grass stubbornly sprouted from a narrow crack in the center of the stone platform, swaying gently in the morning light.
Lin Yi stood on high ground, his voice carrying clearly throughout the camp: "From today onwards, this place will have a new purpose." He pointed to the crack, "Everyone who doesn't speak can bury something here. Something that represents the words you most want to say, but can never say out loud."
His gaze swept across the crowd, finally settling on that tender blade of grass.
"Let silence also have the right to grow."
After saying that, he took out a neatly folded piece of paper from his pocket.
He didn't open it, but everyone could see that every corner of the paper was densely covered with the same sentence.
He stuffed the paper deep into the crack, then grabbed a handful of soil mixed with fallen leaves and gently covered it.
In the crowd, the old woman's breathing suddenly became heavy.
Deep underground, Ivan's intermittent whispers echoed in Lin Yi's mind like a distant reverberation: "The eighty-eighth... node... is... in those 'judged mouths'."
A mouth that has been judged!
Lin Yi suddenly felt enlightened!
He finally understood the crux of the problem.
These people are not inherently silent, nor are they unwilling to speak the truth. Rather, the truths they once spoke were sentenced to death many years ago by a larger, unquestionable "higher truth."
Their mouths have long been nailed with an invisible cross.
He immediately turned around and strode toward the old archives deep inside the camp.
There, piled up were thought-censorship records he had collected from various abandoned outposts during his time as a "scavenger."
What he retrieved was not the contents of the record, but the last page of those copies—the signature page.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, Lin Yi picked up a pair of scissors and carefully cut out, page by page, the signatures that once represented "accusation" and "confirmation".
He carefully placed each signature into a small bag made of kraft paper.
He walked up to the survivors with complex expressions and handed out paper bags to the “witnesses” whose names had been recorded and appeared on the indictment.
"Your name was once used to prove others wrong," Lin Yi said calmly but firmly. "From now on, it belongs only to you, to prove your own existence."
When the small paper bag containing the autograph was handed to the old woman, her entire arm was trembling violently.
She used all her strength to open the paper bag, and a yellowed piece of paper slipped into her palm.
Above is a delicate yet sharp signature, belonging to her in her youth.
Every stroke of the pen exudes an unquestionable arrogance and unwavering conviction.
That night, the moonlight was as white as frost.
The old woman, leaning on her cane, came to the platform to blame me again.
This time, she did not hesitate at all.
She took out a rusty sewing needle from her inner pocket; the tip was dull and the body was bent from years of wear.
That was the needle she used to sew the pages of the book herself to make the denunciation document look more formal.
She pressed the rusty needle forcefully and deeply into the crack, burying it where Lin Yi had buried his "I'm sorry".
Lin Yi silently memorized that location from the shadows.
The next day, he gathered several young and strong students and announced that he would rebuild the foundation of the Zewotai.
"It's carrying too much weight, it needs to be reinforced," he said.
During the repair process, he specifically instructed his students to leave a small hole, about the thickness of a finger, at the original crack where the old woman had buried the rusty needle, and to insert a hollow reed tube from above. The upper half of the reed tube protruded from the table, resembling a strange breathing tube.
The moment the reed tube was inserted, Chu Yao's body trembled slightly.
She sensed an unprecedented spiritual fluctuation that was quietly spreading and resonating among the crowd.
That was not a personal confession, but a grander and heavier "resonance of confession"—not for the mistakes one has made, but for the guilt one feels for having silenced others.
Immediately afterwards, Lin Yi did something even more thorough.
He led his men to move all the files related to ideological review from the old archives room, including "certificates of ideological compliance," "oaths of loyalty," and "self-criticism reports," to the open space in the center of the camp, piling them into a small mountain.
“Some papers only feel lighter when they’re burned.” He didn’t talk about liberation or make any impassioned speeches; he just said this and then threw the torch up himself.
Flames shot into the sky, illuminating everyone's faces in a flickering light.
The paper curled, turned black, and turned to ashes in the raging fire, and the words that had once bound countless souls crackled and howled.
Suddenly, a figure rushed towards the fire like a madman!
It's that old woman!
Ignoring the scorching heat, she desperately pried at the edge of the fire with her cane, finally managing to snatch a page of the list that was half-burnt.
She clutched the half-page fragment tightly, collapsed to the ground, trembling all over, and let out a beast-like hiss: "I recognize... I recognize these names! They... they thought they were wrong until their deaths! They were the ones who were wrong!"
Lin Yi quickly stepped forward, not to snatch the paper from her hand, but to gently help her up and let her sit down on a nearby stone.
He silently took a handful of still-warm ashes from the fire, mixed them into the soil of a ceramic pot, and then, in front of everyone, planted a few new grains of wheat in the pot.
“You’re not the ones who are wrong.” His voice cut through the crackling flames and reached everyone clearly. “It’s the era that treated ‘speaking differently’ as a sin.”
A miracle occurred seven days later.
Inside the hollow reed tube at the scaffold, a wheat seedling actually sprouted.
But the appearance of these wheat seedlings was extremely strange. The stems were not emerald green, but rather a deathly lead gray. The ears of wheat at the top did not have plump grains, but were twisted and tangled, forming the shape of fine chains!
A child was the first to spot it and exclaimed in surprise.
The crowd gathered again, pointing and commenting on the ominous "chain wheat" plant.
Just then, the old woman shakily pushed through the crowd and walked to the front of the stage.
She reached out her still trembling hand, without the slightest fear, and gently and tenderly stroked the cold, chain-like ears of wheat.
It was as if a dam that had been building up for a lifetime had suddenly burst open at this moment.
Two streams of hot tears rolled down her cloudy eyes. Choking back sobs, she spoke those words, decades overdue, as she faced the empty space ahead: "I...I want to...say sorry to them."
The moment the words fell, the gray chained wheat stalk suddenly trembled and then broke apart inch by inch. Before everyone's eyes, it turned into a handful of extremely fine gray dust, which was completely blown away by the wind and disappeared without a trace.
Deep underground, Ivan's voice echoed with a muffled boom, like a rusty iron door that had been rusted for millions of years finally being pried open a crack.
“The eighty-eighth node… spat out its first mouthful of aged ash.”
Lin Yi stared at the empty reed tube and muttered to himself, "Unit 88... Finally, someone dares to admit they're wrong."
Night fell, and the campsite fell silent.
The old woman lay on her simple bed, her eyes wide open in the darkness.
She didn't sleep, nor could she fall asleep.
She carefully wrapped the half-page fragment of the list, its edges charred, which she had salvaged from the fire, in an old cloth and hid it tightly under her coarse cloth pillow.
The surviving names on the scraps of paper were like red-hot needles, piercing through her pillow and searing her head night after night, leaving her tossing and turning in the boundless darkness, unable to find peace.
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