As dawn broke, the morning light, like the finest gold dust, sprinkled on the stone steps outside the shelter's canteen.
The broken bowl that had once held countless prayers and despair lay there quietly, the deep inscription on the bottom of the bowl—"I finally... no longer need to be the answer"—sounding like a long sigh in the cold light.
A few specks of starlight from last night's crystallized wheat blossoms still lingered in the bowl, not yet completely dampened by the dew.
Lin Yi stopped in front of the stone steps and slowly squatted down.
His movements showed no trace of magical power, just like any ordinary early riser.
He stretched out his finger, his fingertip gently tracing the rough engraving, starting with the word "I" and sliding towards the meaningful ellipsis.
He didn't speak, but his focused expression conveyed a more solemnity than any words.
A moment later, he picked up the broken bowl, turned around, and walked back into the steaming kitchen.
In the iron pot, freshly cooked rice porridge was bubbling away, its rich aroma of rice mingling with the unique sweetness of wheat—a flavor most comforting in times of chaos.
Lin Yi personally picked up the long-handled ladle and scooped up a spoonful of boiling porridge, filling the broken bowl perfectly.
The first person to get food was a little girl with pigtails. She timidly handed over her wooden bowl.
Lin Yi shook his head, handed over the broken bowl that held special significance in his hand, and said gently, "You're the first hero to get food today, use this."
The little girl was stunned. She looked at Lin Yi with her big eyes, then at the bowl with the words engraved on it.
She might not understand the heavy history behind this bowl, but she could feel the unique solemnity with which Lin Yi handed it to her.
She carefully took the warm, broken bowl. The chipped rim of the bowl pressed against her small palm, but she grinned and smiled, her eyes shining like the most sparkling dewdrops on the tips of grass blades in the morning.
In the wind not far away, Chu Yao's figure could be seen faintly.
Her breathing fluctuated slightly, revealing her inner turmoil.
This was the first time she had seen so directly how a "symbol" that had once been elevated to a divine status and almost embodied a belief was so casually "ordinary."
It is no longer a sacred object that needs to be worshipped, but a bowl that can be used to hold porridge and warm hands.
That weighty "answer" was melted into the most ordinary daily meals.
From that day on, Lin Yi developed a new habit.
Every morning, as the first rays of sunlight pierce the horizon, he would take a simple bamboo broom and sweep the fallen leaves that had accumulated overnight in the wheat field outside the shelter.
He did not use any magic, nor did he employ his authority, which was capable of overturning time and space.
He bent over and swept the ground inch by inch, the bamboo broom making a "shush-shush" sound as it swept across the sandy soil, a sound that was both rhythmic and peaceful.
Occasionally, a diligent student would try to help and take the broom from his hand, but Lin Yi would always smile and shake his head in refusal.
“The person sweeping the floor knows best which leaves will clog the drain.” He would stop and point with the broom handle to several shallow ditches blocked by fallen leaves and mud, explaining to the passing students, “Look, this place is blocked. After the next rain, the water will overflow onto the field ridges and wash away the newly sprouted wheat seedlings.”
He wasn't giving an order; he was simply stating a fact.
At first, the students just watched curiously, but gradually, some of them began to bend down and use their hands to clear the blockages.
No one asked them to do it, and no one praised them, but when the drain was cleared and the clear water flowed merrily again, everyone had a genuine smile on their face.
Deep underground, Ivan's long-silent mental whisper, like the pulsation of the earth's veins, quietly surfaced in Lin Yi's consciousness: "The eighty-third node... begins with 'meaningless labor'."
Change seeps in silently.
However, with the old beliefs collapsing and the new order not yet fully established, the vacuum in between is where confusion and pain are most likely to arise.
One late night, in front of the old stele forest, came the sound of an uncontrollable breakdown and sobbing.
He was a young man who was one of the most fervent believers of the "Scavenger Remnants," firmly believing that the only value of life was to become a hero admired by thousands and remembered by history.
For this, he spared no effort, even exposing his back to his comrades in battle, just to seize the glory of beheading the enemy.
Now, the statues of heroes have been toppled, and even Lin Yi himself is sweeping the floor and distributing porridge; everything he pursued has vanished into thin air.
He no longer knew why he lived; the meaning of his existence had been completely emptied, leaving only endless confusion and panic.
Lin Yi appeared beside him at some point, without approaching or offering any words of comfort, but simply sat down silently beside him.
The night wind blew through the stele forest, making a sobbing sound, as if echoing the young man's lament.
After crying for a long time until his voice was hoarse, the young man finally noticed Lin Yi beside him.
He expected to receive a lecture or a few cheap words of comfort.
But Lin Yi didn't say anything. He just took out a dark, murky object from his pocket and handed it over.
It was a compressed biscuit that had been baked until it was charred black, as hard as a rock.
“I’ve been eating this for three years.” Lin Yi’s voice was very calm, as if he were talking about someone else’s story. “Back then, I didn’t think about how to save the world every day, but whether someone would be willing to share half a bowl of hot soup with me tomorrow.”
The young man looked up and met Lin Yi's eyes.
In those deep eyes, there was no pity, no condescension, only a calm that had been tempered by the endless sands of time.
In that sandstorm, the young man seemed to see mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and a lonely figure struggling to move forward in the ruins of the apocalypse.
He suddenly understood something, his throat tightened, and he could no longer utter a word.
The next day, Lin Yi took the young man to the kitchen.
There wasn't a single word of encouragement, nor any special consideration.
He was assigned the most basic tasks: washing vegetables, then chopping vegetables, and finally tending the stove.
He had never done these things before; the potatoes were washed until they were pitted and uneven, and the radishes were cut crookedly.
He felt a pang of shame and was about to hide the plate of badly chopped radishes when the uncle in charge of cooking grabbed them, poured them into the pot without even looking at them, and patted him on the shoulder casually: "Good, good! If you stew them long enough, even a god wouldn't be able to tell if they're square or round, as long as they taste the same!"
The young man was stunned.
He stood guard in front of the stove, his eyes watering from the smoke of the firewood, yet he stubbornly stared at the bubbling pot.
When the pot lid was finally lifted, the rich aroma of meat mixed with the sweetness of vegetables wafted out, and everyone in the kitchen cheered.
The cook smiled and handed him a bowl, a full bowl of freshly cooked stewed meat, and shouted to the people around him, "Look closely, this kid deserves half the credit for today's meal!"
The young man stood there, stunned, holding the bowl of steaming hot stew.
Looking at the kind, pure smiles from those around him, and at the abundant dishes made possible by the radishes he had cut, an unprecedented warmth welled up from the bottom of his heart.
He suddenly squatted down, buried his face in his knees, and cried, crying even harder than he had in front of the Stele Forest, but this time, his tears were scalding hot and full of power.
Chu Yao's mental power once again captured this intense brainwave ripple. She clearly "saw" that something called "a sense of value" was undergoing a fundamental transformation in this young man—from "being granted" to "being involved."
Just as order within the shelter was being rebuilt in a subtle and gradual way, a warning from underground arrived without warning.
For an entire day, Ivan's whispers of the ley lines completely ceased.
This was unprecedented, and a sense of vigilance rose in Lin Yi's heart.
Until the early hours of the next day, the earth trembled slightly three times in a very regular manner.
Immediately afterwards, Ivan's thoughts, tinged with obvious seriousness and confusion, came through with difficulty: "An echo from the bottom of the well...something is amiss."
well?
The shelter's water source comes from a purification array; there is no well at all.
Lin Yi immediately understood that this was just a metaphor.
The real source of the anomaly lies deeper.
He immediately noticed an extremely slight anomaly in the temperature of a certain patch of land deep within the wheat field.
That night, the moonlight was as white as frost, and Lin Yi walked alone towards the wheat field.
He didn't tear through space, nor did he use any probing magic. Instead, like the most experienced old farmer, he squatted down, placed his palm on the ground, and felt the subtle temperature differences.
Then, he bent down and pressed his ear tightly against the cold soil, quietly listening to the "echoes" coming from the depths of the earth.
Finally, he stopped in the ground beneath a patch of earth covered with withered, decaying roots.
He dug through the loose soil with his bare hands, and his fingertips soon touched a cold, hard object.
It was a small, completely black pebble, no bigger than a thumbnail.
However, the moment Lin Yi dug it out completely, the pebble seemed unable to withstand the contact with "existence" and silently turned into a handful of black powder finer than ashes at his fingertips, scattering with the wind.
The sensation was as if it touched nothingness itself, as if the pebble was formed from the very concept of "denying existence".
Lin Yi stared expressionlessly at the black dust on his fingertips, then returned to the kitchen and sprinkled it into the still-burning stove.
call--
The flames in the stove suddenly intensified, leaping half a foot high, and their color changed from a warm orange-red to an eerie dark blue in an instant before returning to normal.
That night, everyone who had participated in the "Begging Festival" and drunk the "Porridge of Answers" had the same dream.
In their dream, they stood on a vast, empty plain. The sky offered neither divine miracles nor punitive thunder, nor a pillar of light to crown heroes.
At the edge of their field of vision, there was only a blurry figure, with his back to them, sweeping the floor.
They instinctively wanted to kneel and pray, but found that their bodies were unable to move.
A thought unexpectedly surfaced from the deepest recesses of her mind: "Where should I go to help out today?"
When they awoke from their dreams, each of them was horrified to find a withered, yellowed wheat leaf lying quietly beside their pillow.
Lin Yi stood at the highest point of the shelter, overlooking the camp immersed in the night and dreams. The night wind blew against the hem of his clothes, bringing a hint of earthy scent.
He stretched out his hand, and there lay a similar wheat leaf in his palm.
He muttered to himself, as if asking a question or confirming something.
"Unit 83... has begun?"
His gaze swept across the camp and landed on the vast wheat field that shimmered in the moonlight.
The wind seemed to have stopped, and an indescribable sense of stagnation filled the air, as if even the wheat's breathing had become heavy.
Deep within that golden ocean that nurtures everyone, some unknown change seems to be quietly brewing.
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