Okay, here we go... I'm in.
This time, I will not just listen.
The midnight sun, or whatever you call that damn thing, pulsates once again.
The transparent ears of wheat, that damned guide, trembled like a trapped insect, pointing straight at the forbidden zone.
That's right.
It's time.
In my lab, the makeshift equipment I cobbled together emitted a low hum.
My eyes scanned the various readings rapidly.
The light frequency of "The Path of Returning Light".
It's like a ghost, a phantom.
However, data shows that there is a 0.3-second delay.
This is a passive source, not an active source.
The source is inside the restricted area.
Ivan's whispers echoed intermittently in the digital recording.
"...The wellhead...has been sealed for ninety-five years...it needs nine heart lamps...to reignite..." The Well of Memory...has been sealed for nearly a century.
Nine heart lamps... lit in reverse.
Therefore, someone must carry the flame to the core, to that "well".
Someone has to... start it.
That person is me.
I grabbed my gear and set off.
The forbidden zone at midnight... is like a desolate, silent graveyard, burying forgotten secrets.
Tonight, it will reveal some secrets.
I reactivated the triangular array of three lights—the same lights that had brought the withered vines back to life.
I took a deep breath when I turned them on.
A crackling sound filled the air.
The silver veins beneath the penalty area began to hum.
As they began to react and the ground beneath my feet started to tremble, a surge of adrenaline rushed through me.
The moment everything was ignited was a spectacular sight.
I saw a new seal, a circular engraving, like a broken bell, a seal on an ancient well.
I tapped it with that rusty ear of wheat.
A clear "tapping" sound—tap; a soft "echoing" sound—buzz.
This is a lock, not a barrier.
This is a lock.
What about the key?
I found "The Night Listener's Handbook".
Its pages were curled at the edges, and it was almost falling apart.
The seven chimes, each with a subtle variation, were engraved on that tattered piece of paper.
The first six tones are useless.
Silence.
Every attempt was like a hammer striking my hope.
But when it comes to the seventh tone... "Homecoming Tune".
A memory flashed through my mind.
A grandmother hummed softly.
The seal creaked, and then with a loud bang, it began to peel away from the ground.
“…Those who return…do not go through the door…go through the crack of the clock…” Ivan’s whisper was cold and urgent.
"The returning person...does not enter through the door...but through the crack in the clock."
I stepped into the crack.
The passage... is very strange.
Like a spiral made up of frozen memories.
It is a frozen fragment of light and shadow.
Ninety-fifth Squad... I caught a glimpse of a few figures, but I couldn't stop.
The man carving words.
The woman who was tightly holding the lamp.
I focused on the footprints inside.
I stretched out that transparent ear of wheat, letting it absorb the faint light, and my footprints illuminated the path ahead.
I've reached the end.
That black lake.
A void.
A lamp that is about to go out.
The core of the well.
The Well of Memories.
The black lake water swallowed the last ray of light.
There is a broken pillar in the center of the lake.
The light was almost out, its pulse like the heartbeat of a dying person.
I tried to move forward... but the lake reacted.
That image... my mother, her eyes, her smile, still the face from my childhood dreams, but this time she uttered the sharp words, "Don't come."
An emotional force tried to push me back.
It almost broke me, but my mission was clear.
I reached into my backpack and took out something I had carried with me for years, something I had prepared for this moment: the blue porcelain teacup.
That was my mother's favorite.
It is not used to attack enemies, but to express love.
If the system doesn't accept it... at least she'll know I love her and respect her.
I placed it on the lake surface.
It did not sink.
The image changed. She smiled. A bridge of light appeared from the darkness.
Ivan's whisper.
This time... it was filled with something I couldn't understand.
He was as broken as the world, but he was a person: "Obsession...can be overcome...not because of forgetting...but because of remembering..."
I stepped onto the bridge. "I'm not here to take anything... I'm here to light a lamp."
I took the first step.
A spark flickered from the lamp.
The black lake water churned.
The well trembled.
The void began to crack and creak.
I kept myself calm.
The lamp's heartbeat quickened, turning into a drumbeat, and the surrounding chaos erupted into a primal force.
I am ready.
Lin Yi's fingertips brushed over the smooth, translucent wheat ear in his palm.
Since returning from the top of the clock tower, every midnight, this peculiar creation would tremble slightly as if it were alive, its tip pointing steadfastly into the darkest depths of the Zero Zone, like an invisible pointer calibrating the direction of his destiny.
Without further hesitation, he immediately retrieved all the frequency fluctuation records of the silver light band on the "Path of Returning Light".
The data flowed rapidly across the light screen, eventually settling on a glaring number—0.3 seconds.
The resonant frequency of the light band is delayed by a full 0.3 seconds from the rhythm of the malt flower nucleus in his body.
This number struck him like a thunderbolt, shattering all the fog in his mind.
The delay means that the source is not actively transmitting energy, but is passively responding to its approach!
It is like a sleeping giant, only unconsciously murmuring in its sleep to the calls of the outside world.
Just then, Ivan's broken whispers echoed again, clearer than ever before: "...The wellhead... has been sealed for ninety-five years... requires nine heart lamps... to reignite..." The wellhead!
Backfire!
Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He understood, he understood completely.
The predecessors of Unit 95 did not fail; they merely completed the first step—sending the spark of memory into the "well" deep within the Earth's core.
But to truly awaken this well of memory and bring the truth, sealed for ninety-five years, to light again, someone must carry the flame of the "Returning Lamp" and personally venture into the fissure in the Earth's core to complete an unprecedented reverse ignition!
He was the chosen lamplighter.
Lin Yi's figure reappeared on the outskirts of the Zero Zone, the wind howling like the wailing of countless dead souls.
He pinpointed the spot where the withered vines had revived last time, where a faint trace of life still lingered.
Without the slightest hesitation, he took out three simple brass oil lamps from his bag and arranged them into a stable triangular structure according to some mysterious orientation.
This is not an ordinary formation, but a minimized "Heart Lamp Formation" that he simulated based on the "Heart Lamp" resonance principle.
When he lit the three oil lamps one by one with a flint, and the wicks ignited three orange flames the size of beans, a strange change occurred!
The silent earth beneath their feet seemed to be infused with a soul, and countless silver veins hidden underground were instantly activated, flowing at a speed more than ten times faster than before!
As the light converged, it washed away the dust and humus on the ground, revealing a huge, never-before-seen circular engraving.
The crisscrossing engravings, weathered by time, give the overall shape the appearance of a giant seal forcibly pieced together from the fragments of a shattered ancient bell!
Lin Yi's heart stirred, and he took out the rusty ear of wheat—it came from the clock tower and was the key to unlocking everything.
He flicked his finger and gently tapped the edge of the seal with the tip of a wheat stalk.
clang--!
A clear and melodious bell rang out, completely at odds with its rusty exterior.
Even more strangely, the sound of the bell did not dissipate into the air, but instantly seeped into the ground. Immediately afterwards, a deep and distant echo came from the depths of the earth, as if another unseen ear of wheat was responding from the depths of the underworld.
At this moment, Lin Yi completely understood the truth.
This seal is not an insurmountable barrier at all, but a lock!
A rhythm lock that can only be awakened with a specific rhythm!
In order to crack this ultimate code, Lin Yi searched through almost all the wartime documents he could find. Finally, he found a clue in a tattered copy of the "Night Listener's Wartime Emergency Communication Manual".
According to the manual, in order to transmit precise instructions on the chaotic battlefield, the assembly bell has seven distinct variations, corresponding to "assembly", "charge", "hold firm", "feint attack", "retreat", "cover the rear" and... "return home".
He took a deep breath, raised the rusty wheat ear again, infused his fingertips with mental energy, and began to simulate it one by one.
The first note, the "assembly tune," received no response from the earth.
The second tone, "charge tune," remained deathly still.
...The sixth tone, "Duanhou Diao," the seal remained unmoved, as if mocking his futile efforts.
Lin Yi's heart sank to the bottom. Had he made the wrong deduction?
No, impossible!
He closed his eyes, and the images of those who went before him in Unit 95, and his mother's final smile, floated into his mind.
They weren't going to their deaths; they wanted to go home.
He suddenly opened his eyes and, with all his might, struck the seventh and final melody—the Homecoming Tune!
Clang... clang... clang... It was a slow, drawn-out melody, carrying endless longing and weariness.
As the last syllable fell, the massive ancient bell seal suddenly burst forth with an unprecedentedly dazzling light!
All the engravings were glowing, and the ancient runes lit up one by one. Accompanied by a tooth-grinding mechanical whirring sound, a narrow slit, just wide enough for one person to pass through, slowly opened up in the very center of the seal.
Deep and dark, like the entrance to hell.
Ivan's whisper rang out at just the right moment, carrying a sigh of relief: "...The one who returns...does not go through the door...go through the clock face..." Lin Yi did not hesitate for a moment and walked alone into the clock face.
The scene before him changed instantly; he was no longer in a cold rock formation, but in a spiraling passage that wound downwards.
The walls of this passage are not made of rock, but of countless solidified fragments of light and shadow, each shimmering with a faint light, like stars sealed in amber.
He tentatively took a step forward.
The fragments of light and shadow beneath their feet suddenly illuminated, and a fleeting memory appeared: a man in the uniform of Unit 95 was kneeling on the ground, desperately carving the last word into the stone wall with his fingernails; one step further, a haggard-looking woman was huddled in a corner, tightly clutching a dying oil lamp, her body trembling slightly; another step, a father used his last strength to push a young child into a narrow hole in the wall, then turned to face the boundless darkness... These were all the imprints left by the members of Unit 95 in the final moments of their lives.
Lin Yi's eyes welled up slightly, but he didn't linger or get caught up in it.
He simply pressed the transparent ear of wheat against his chest, letting it greedily absorb the faint streams of light emanating from these afterimages, like a sponge.
Inside the wheat ear, the faint light of the originally blurry footprint became clearer and more solid as it absorbed more light.
After walking for an unknown amount of time, the spiral passage finally came to an end.
The sight before them was enough to suffocate any person of strong will.
This is a vast, boundless void, without heaven or earth, without direction.
In the center of the void, a deathly black lake floats, its water neither reflecting light nor flowing, as if it could devour all light and hope.
In the center of the lake, a huge stone pillar that has long since broken stands alone.
At the top of the stone pillar, half of an oil lamp remains, so rusted that it is almost unrecognizable.
At the wick of the oil lamp, a faint light, so weak it could go out at any moment, was stubbornly pulsating, its frequency like the heartbeat of a dying person.
The Well of Memories!
This is the essence of the Well of Memories!
And that tiny glimmer of light from the lamp wick is the source of all the memories of light over the past ninety-five years!
Lin Yi suppressed his shock and prepared to approach.
But just as he lifted his foot, ripples suddenly appeared on the calm black lake surface, and an incredibly clear image was projected in front of him.
The image shows his mother lying on her sickbed, her life rapidly slipping away.
She looked in his direction, her lips moving silently. Lin Yi understood her lip movements—"Don't come."
An invisible yet irresistible force instantly froze him in his tracks.
He understood that this well not only stored memories, but also wove an invisible net that would draw upon the deepest, most irreplaceable obsessions of intruders to block all outsiders.
Lin Yi's breath hitched, but he slowly took out an object wrapped in silk from his inner pocket.
It was a blue porcelain teacup with a few delicate malt flowers painted on its surface; it was my mother's favorite item.
He had carried it with him all these years, but had never used it.
He didn't try to break the illusion with brute force; he simply bent down and gently, tenderly, placed the blue porcelain teacup into the black lake.
The teacup did not sink; it floated lightly on the water's surface, with gentle ripples spreading out from it.
The image projected onto the lake distorted and shifted, the painful scenes of his dying moments receding like the tide, replaced by a scene of his mother in her youth, standing beside a golden field of wheat, facing the sunlight, giving him a radiant smile.
The next second, the lifeless lake split open from the middle, and a bridge made of pure light silently extended out, leading straight to the broken stone pillar in the center of the lake.
This time, Ivan's voice rang out again, but for the first time, it carried a complex and unfathomable emotional fluctuation: "...Obsession...can be overcome...not because of forgetting...but because of remembering..." Lin Yi stepped onto the bridge of light, the light beneath his feet warm and solid.
He gazed at the faint light atop the stone pillar and murmured to himself, as if speaking to his mother, or perhaps declaring to this space that had been silent for ninety-five years: "I'm not here to take anything away... I'm here to light a lamp." As soon as he finished speaking, he took his first step onto the bridge of light.
The instant his feet touched the bridge of light, the wick of the broken oil lamp on the stone pillar in the center of the lake, which had been as faint as a candle flame, suddenly jumped and its light suddenly shone brightly for a moment!
Immediately afterwards, the entire silent black lake began to churn violently without warning, no longer projecting any illusions, but transforming into countless raging black whirlpools. An ancient, chaotic and boundless aura rose up from the depths of the lake, as if an ancient beast had been awakened and was slowly opening its eyes that had been sealed for nearly a century.
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