The changes in the city were more silent and more rapid than Lin Yi had anticipated.
What first alerted him was a middle-aged mother.
She lost her only son and visits the cemetery every day.
But on this day, she did not cry to the cold tombstone as usual. Instead, she murmured softly for a long time, as if sharing yesterday's dinner and the newly blooming flowers outside the window.
After saying that, she carefully took out a new green vine from her cloth bag and planted it behind the tombstone.
The gesture didn't seem like a memorial service; it was more like leaving a period that could continue in an unfinished conversation.
Immediately afterwards, a primary school playground administrator reported a strange incident.
The children no longer secretly passed notes filled with their secrets to their friends; instead, they imitated the adults and stuffed them into an inconspicuous crack at the edge of the playground.
Those childish handwritings concealed the anxiety of exams, the grievances of arguing with friends, and the vague longing for the future.
Lin Yi stood in front of the monitor screen, his heart sinking suddenly.
He understood.
Citizens are unconsciously imitating the behavioral patterns of "wall language".
The real function of Seed Liquid-01 is not to awaken memories; that's just a fancy facade.
At its core, it explores how humanity, accustomed to forgetting and escaping, can coexist with unresolved past events and all the unfinished things in life.
We are not talking to the dead, but reconciling with the deep-seated obsession within ourselves.
"Immediately dismantle all 'Night Listener' observation points!" Lin Yi's voice was cold and hard, brooking no argument. "All personnel must withdraw, retaining only the most basic automatic data recording. From now on, we are no longer observers, much less guides."
Once the order was given, the city's surveillance network quickly went silent.
For the first time, human expression flowed freely to the earth without the prying eyes of "officials".
However, the real storm was only just beginning to brew.
That night, the deep soil monitoring probe at the pumping station captured a bizarre image that was enough to overturn existing biological understanding.
At the tip of a tree root, slightly thicker than a hair, a pair of tiny, translucent ear-like structures appeared on its root crown.
The structure, exquisitely crafted like a work of art, was woven from semi-solidified plant-based gel and tough wood fibers. In the murky mud, it subtly adjusted its angle toward the sound source in response to the faint vibrations coming from the ground in the distance.
A chill instantly ran down Lin Yi's spine.
He immediately retrieved the voiceprint records of all locations in the city where the "wall whispers" had occurred over the past 72 hours and cross-analyzed them with the whispers of the earth veins deep within the pumping station.
The result sent a chill down his spine—all the previously believed responses to Ivan's "wall language," those vague whispers interpreted as resonant murmurs, had an acoustic model that bore a striking resemblance to the spectrum of human speech.
It's not responding; it's learning.
A deep learning approach based on the most primitive vibrational and emotional frequencies.
Lin Yi returned to the empty laboratory and silently threw the mountain of experimental notes into the incinerator one by one.
Flames rose, reflecting on his resolute face.
Theories about seed fluid composition, memory awakening, and earth vein communication all became jokes at this moment.
When the last notebook turned to ashes, he wrote only one line with a carbon pen on the single remaining page of white paper on the table:
It is not our echo, but our neglected other half.
The moment he wrote those words, on the other side of the city, where the twin monuments reflected in the water, Chu Yao's figure appeared for the last time and in its most complete form.
Moonlight pierced through her translucent body and spilled onto the water's surface.
In her hands, she held an invisible lamp that was invisible to the naked eye of mortals, yet shone like a star in Lin Yi's mind.
She didn't look at Lin Yi, but gazed at the calm water surface, gently and tenderly placing the lamp into the water.
The moment the lamp entered the water, there was no sound, only the silent spread of golden ripples.
Where the ripples passed, the true full picture of the city's underground memory network emerged from beneath the water's surface—a network more dazzling than a star map and more complex than a neural network.
Countless fiber-like roots crisscross, like nerves and blood vessels, permeating every corner of the city.
In the internet, the brightest and most vibrant nodes are not energy hubs, but rather places where people sit quietly, confide, plant vines, or slip notes.
"Now, it's their turn to listen to us."
Chu Yao's whisper was like a sigh in the wind, or a declaration that her mission was accomplished.
The moment her words fell, her figure slowly dissipated like morning mist, completely merging into the water and light that had awakened because of her.
Almost at the same moment, Ivan's whispered words echoed in Lin Yi's mind.
But this time, it wasn't imitation or repetition; for the first time, a question form appeared:
"...Did you...hear...that...you...?"
The voice was no longer incoherent, but carried a hint of nascent curiosity and probing.
Lin Yi was shocked and immediately activated the remaining basic data records to investigate all newly emerging resonance points throughout the city.
He quickly identified three locations: one in an abandoned hospital courtyard, one in a corner of an old residential area, and one in a wasteland on the outskirts of the city.
In all three locations, a few unplanted wheat seedlings had just sprouted, and their root systems, in underground scans, invariably exhibited a circular, inwardly curled shape, strikingly similar to the human cochlea.
Lin Yi did not send anyone to study it, nor did he try to dig it up.
He drove there alone and gently buried a shard of pottery next to each wheat seedling.
That was a token used in the past "Night Listener" project, with only a simple, ancient character "listen" engraved on it.
He didn't interfere, but simply offered the most silent affirmation.
Seven days later, a miracle occurred.
At the roots of the wheat seedlings where pottery shards were buried, several drops of clear liquid seeped out simultaneously.
The analysis report arrived on Lin Yi's terminal half an hour later, with a conclusion of only one sentence: the sample composition is completely consistent with human tears.
That night, an elderly man who had always refused to participate in any official memorial ceremonies and was a loner walked alone to the site of his old home, which had long been designated as a dangerous building, late at night.
He looked at the mottled wall and said in an almost dreamlike voice, "My dear wife, people from the community came to ask me again today, asking where you went... I said you went for a walk and will be back soon."
After he finished speaking, he laughed self-deprecatingly and turned to leave.
Just as he turned around, from inside the wall came a faint, almost imperceptible sound, like a sigh—
"Um."
Immediately afterward, out of the corner of the old man's eye, he saw that the wheat seedling that Lin Yi had marked at the base of the wall was slowly bending down, its soft leaves gently, with a hint of longing, touching the back of his foot.
It was like a silent comfort.
The old man froze.
He slowly squatted down, reaching out his trembling hand, but dared not touch the wheat seedling.
His turbid tears finally broke free, and like a child, he cried all night long at that small, listening life.
Lin Yi stood quietly in the shadows of the trees in the distance.
He didn't step forward, didn't record anything, but simply etched this scene into his memory.
The next morning, just as dawn was breaking.
Lin Yi took a simple ceramic jar and personally transplanted the old man's tear-soaked, bent wheat seedling, along with a handful of soil, completely from its roots.
Instead of sending it to the laboratory, he took it directly to the city's busiest intersection and placed it in the most prominent position in the central flower bed.
He carefully carved lines on the rough clay pottery jar, stroke by stroke:
No answer is needed here, just to be heard.
That evening, as the city lights came on, the traffic flowed like a river.
The fountain in the flower bed started on time, and countless tiny water droplets reflected millions of silent and hurried faces under the colorful lights.
People passing by might glance at the strange pottery jar, but no one knows that deep beneath their feet, a new era is being proclaimed.
Ivan's whisper rang out again, this time clear and firm, carrying a force like that of breaking through the earth:
“City Unit 92…will be reborn in the first true self-listening.”
Lin Yi stood atop the skyscraper, looking down at the city below, a city made of light and memory.
He knew that the most crucial moment had arrived.
He has laid out the final move; the rest is no longer his concern.
From this moment on, his battlefield was no longer that dark pumping station, but the entire city and every soul in the city that longed to be heard.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com