The awakening of that ancient will was not a roar that shook the earth, but a silent ripple that instantly swept through Lin Yi's limbs and bones.
He stopped abruptly and looked down at his chest.
There, beneath the fabric, a burning sensation throbbed through his skin, as if a branding iron, across time and space, was imprinted on his heart.
It was the very spot where my mother's piece of wall brick had once been buried.
The wasteland on the outskirts of the city beneath his feet began to tremble without warning.
The soil seemed to be torn apart from the inside by an invisible hand, and countless fine white mycelia broke out of the soil like living things. They intertwined and swirled, and with an almost pious attitude, slowly lifted a piece of dusty wall brick fragment in front of Lin Yi.
On the surface of the fragment, dust fell in wisps, and a line of extremely fine words made of light appeared, flickering like breath: "The car she was waiting for, you checked it for her."
Lin Yi stretched out his hand, his fingertips hovering above the fragment, feeling the warmth emanating from the depths of the earth.
These words were like a key, instantly unlocking his long-sealed memories.
The mother's incoherent ramblings before her death, the train station she never reached during the war, and the old man who "watered" the flowers for her and protected this strange sea of flowers... all the clues converge into a clear thread at this moment.
He silently stroked the rough brick surface. After a long while, he felt he owed the old man an explanation, or rather, a thank you.
He decided to turn back, even if it was only for a day, to see the person who was guarding his mother's last wish.
The night was as dark as ink, silently swallowing up the old alleys in the east of the city.
Lin Yi's figure blended into the shadows of the corner of the wall, his gaze fixed on a small courtyard not far away, lit by a single, dim lamp.
Grandma Chen sat alone in a rattan chair in the courtyard, her body hunched over, like a stone sculpture weathered by time.
In her hand, an old copper pocket watch was polished to a shine by being rubbed. The watch cover was open, and on the crystal dial, a drop of clear dew had condensed at some point.
That drop of dew, like a perfect convex lens, reflected an illusory scene—a wartime station bustling with people and filled with steam.
"Ninety years..." Her hoarse voice rang out in the quiet night, carrying a hint of dreamlike daze, "Counting from my husband's grandfather's generation, our family has guarded this road for seven generations. But I'm old, I can't walk anymore, who will take over my job?"
As soon as she finished speaking, strands of silvery-white fungi quietly surged from the cracks in the stone slabs at her feet, their light rising and weaving a dazzling scene in the air in front of her.
The image shows her in her youth, standing side by side with a handsome young man, as they smile and plant a seedling of a wallflower.
That smile was so radiant it seemed to illuminate the entire era.
The image lasted only three seconds before dissipating like smoke and dust.
The fading light was reflected in Granny Chen's cloudy eyes as she slowly lowered her head.
The drop of dew on the watch face finally succumbed to its own weight, sliding down the cold glass and shattering on the back of her hand.
“You all still remember… that’s so good…” she murmured, her voice almost inaudible, “But I want to say it, I want to tell him myself…”
In the shadows of the alley corner, Lin Yi's heart was gently pierced by that whisper.
He didn't show himself, but silently took the fragment of the wall brick from his backpack, tiptoed into the yard, and gently placed it on the long-unused stone mill in the yard.
Beneath the shards lay a piece of paper he had casually torn off.
Having done all this, he quietly retreated back into the darkness, just as he had come.
That night, the mycelium on the stone mill began to stir again.
Like living vines, they gently wrapped around the fragment, slowly and steadily dragging it across the ground, through the threshold, and all the way to Grandma Chen's bedside.
Finally, with a barely audible sound, the fragment was perfectly embedded in the wooden crevice of her bedside table, like a silent, guardian lampstand.
The next morning, Granny Chen woke up to a strange warmth.
She instinctively turned her head and saw the familiar fragment beside her pillow.
She stretched out her wrinkled fingers and gently touched the rough engravings on it.
The instant their fingertips touched, a warm, trembling sensation, like the gentlest electric current, traveled from her fingertips all the way to her heart, as if someone were gently patting her back with the softest touch.
She was stunned.
He got up, leaned on his cane, and walked step by step to the pebble path in the courtyard.
The sight before her made her stop in her tracks once again.
In the courtyard, the silver veins of the wall-flowers she guarded day and night flowed extremely slowly, yet more enduringly and powerfully than ever before.
The rhythm of the flowing light was perfectly in sync with the rhythm of her breathing as she patrolled the path for decades.
She slowly crouched down, reached out a trembling hand, and gently stroked the stem of one of the flowers. In a tentative tone, she asked in a low voice, "You...aren't you imitating me? Are you...speaking for me?"
As she finished speaking, the mycelium at her feet slowly wriggled on the ground, gathering silver light to spell out four clear characters: "You speak, we listen."
Grandma Chen's eyes instantly welled up with tears.
She guarded the road her whole life, spoke words no one could understand for half her life, and at the end of her life, she received the gentlest response in the world.
In the alley corner, Lin Yi quietly watched this scene, a barely perceptible smile curving his lips.
He didn't linger; he turned and quietly left.
On his way home, he passed by a newly opened community teahouse.
The antique-style facade caught his attention. He glanced at it casually, but his gaze was immediately drawn to a huge hand-drawn map hanging on the wall.
The map depicted the complex route from the east of the city to the suburbs, with names marked in elegant handwriting, along with the sections under their protection and the year of their reign.
At the very top of the map are three striking characters: "Unnamed Path".
It turns out that Granny Chen wasn't the only guardian.
As he was about to leave, his gaze inadvertently fell on the bottom of the map.
There, in a completely different handwriting, as if it had just been added, a line of small characters reads: "Grandma Chen—guarding the road for forty-seven years, still walking."
Lin Yi paused for a moment, then took out a plum candy wrapped in oil paper from his backpack. It was his only remaining snack.
He stepped forward and gently pressed the small plum candy under the glass frame of the map, right next to Granny Chen's name.
It was just a trivial little action, yet it was as if he had stamped his name on some ancient contract.
That evening, after the teahouse closed, the surveillance camera silently recorded a strange scene.
Below the map, next to Granny Chen's name, a wisp of light, thinner than a hair, quietly emerged from the wall. Like a wise tentacle, it gently wrapped around the plum candy three times. Then, the candy, like melting ice, silently seeped into the wall and disappeared.
The next morning, the teahouse owner was surprised to find that the map on the wall had changed.
Next to Granny Chen's name, there is now a pattern of a miniature wall flower formed by the convergence of light.
Upon closer inspection, one can also discover an almost invisible line of light words emerging on the inner side of the petals: "We remember what she said."
Meanwhile, on the mountain road outside the city, Lin Yi was stepping into the vast twilight.
He drifted further and further away from the city, and the road beneath his feet became increasingly desolate.
Just when he thought he was cut off from that magical mycelial network, he suddenly felt a warmth under his feet.
He looked down and saw a thin wisp of silver light emerging from a crack in the stone at his feet. It flashed and wrapped around his slightly loose shoelaces, then with an incredibly nimble movement, gently pulled and tied a beautiful knot.
After doing all this, the light filament seemed to be shy, and instantly shrank back into the crack in the ground, disappearing without a trace.
Lin Yi stood there, stunned, feeling as if an invisible friend had followed him all the way and even thoughtfully tied his shoelaces for his journey.
He smiled and continued walking.
The road ahead no longer seems so lonely.
The wind began to grow fierce, carrying the scent of wild plants and trees from the mountains, whistling past his ears.
He had reached an unnamed mountain pass, where the rugged mountain road came to an abrupt end.
The road is blocked.
He stopped and looked up.
Ahead lay countless huge, angular boulders, piled up haphazardly, forming a natural barrier that completely blocked the way.
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