Lin Yi, carrying his faded old backpack, walked out of the alleyway of the old residential area in the east of the city.
He didn't pause for a moment, nor did he look back at the attic where he had lived for eighteen years.
Behind him lay his past, while ahead lay a future he knew nothing about.
As he walked past the seventh square paving stone at the alley entrance, he felt a slight, almost imperceptible tremor beneath his feet.
This feeling was completely different from the tingling sensation of the light threads touching him before. It was deeper and heavier, like the pulse of the soil itself, silently confirming his weight, his pace, and even his determination to leave.
He subconsciously slowed down by half a beat, synchronizing his steps with the frequency of the trembling.
In an instant, a miracle occurred.
Throughout the long, narrow alley, the moss in every corner and crack of the bricks was simultaneously tinged with a very faint iridescent light.
The light rippled outwards like waves from the footprint he had just left, gently sweeping across the entire alley. Three seconds later, it vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.
Lin Yi's mind was clear.
He knew this was not a warm farewell, but a cold registration.
From this moment on, his identity and his existence were officially recorded by the network of the land with which he coexisted.
He is no longer just Lin Yi, but a marked, unique variable in this vast life system.
To test whether he was still under some kind of invisible "tracking," he deliberately avoided the familiar bus stop and instead turned onto a side street he had never been on before.
This road is even more remote, with old factories that have long since ceased production on both sides, their red brick walls covered with traces of time's erosion.
He walked silently to the middle of the road, when a cast iron drain cover in front of him suddenly clicked open by an inch without any external force.
Beneath the dim crevices, instead of the expected filth and darkness, there were clusters and clumps of intertwined white mycelium.
They swayed slowly in the dim light, their shape resembling a hand waving at him.
Lin Yi stopped in his tracks.
He didn't panic; instead, he slowly squatted down.
He extended his fingertip and gently touched the strange mycelium.
The texture is not wet and sticky, but rather a warm and supple feel beyond imagination.
A peculiar tremor traveled from his fingertips to his palm. The rhythm of the tremor was slow and melodious, exactly the same as the lullaby his mother sang to him when he was a child, a lullaby that had long since faded from his memory.
His heart skipped a beat, his throat went dry, and he whispered in a voice only he could hear, "You remember the path she taught me?"
The mycelial network seemed to understand.
The thinnest strand at the very tip gently and carefully wrapped around his fingertip, making a circle, like a silent embrace.
Immediately, they swiftly retreated into the depths of darkness, and the cast iron cover closed silently and seamlessly.
This is not an answer, it is acceptance.
Lin Yi stood up, and the last bit of doubt about the unknown in his heart vanished.
Meanwhile, in the old district of the eastern part of the city.
As dawn broke, Granny Chen, as usual, carried a full bucket of water to water the potted flowers she had planted at the beginning of the pebble path.
When she reached the corner, she froze.
The Wall Whisper Flower, which was transformed from Lin Yi's old shoe, now had its petals tightly closed, and its originally upright stem tilted slightly, firmly pointing towards the east of the city—the direction Lin Yi had left in.
Grandma Chen, her eyes clouded, said nothing. She simply placed the heavy bucket of water gently in front of the wall flower, then turned and went home.
That night, strange things happened again.
The bucket of water, which had been perfectly still, began to evaporate at a visible rate on a windless night.
The air was filled with mist, and the moonlight created a dreamlike atmosphere.
The water level in the bucket dropped rapidly by more than half, while the remaining water droplets seemed to come alive, sliding down the smooth bucket wall one by one, gathering and flowing on the dry ground, eventually forming a miniature, winding path.
The path started with a bucket, and ended precisely at the site of Lin Yi's long-abandoned attic.
The next morning, this is the scene that Granny Chen saw when she stepped out of her house.
She silently picked up the almost empty bucket, looked at the "map" formed by water stains on the ground, and said softly with a touch of distant emotion in her cloudy eyes, "You go your way, and let the road go its own way."
As night fell, Lin Yi found an abandoned post office as a temporary shelter.
The roof of the post office had collapsed, and the broken hole framed a section of the deep night sky. The bright moonlight shone down without obstruction, casting a bright silver spot on the ground.
He spread a thin blanket out of his backpack and was about to lie down when another unexpected event occurred.
Without warning, countless tiny buds of light seeped from the cracks in the broken bricks and stones on the ground beside him.
These light buds grew and intertwined at an astonishing speed, forming in the blink of an eye a ring of low, waist-high light walls that perfectly surrounded him and his blanket at the very center.
Lin Yi didn't move, not even his breathing changed.
He simply watched calmly, letting the wall of light surround him.
After the light wall took shape, the flowing silver veins on it became extremely slow, and the light softened, like the steady breathing of a loyal guard on night watch.
He closed his eyes, a barely perceptible smile playing on his lips.
He understood that this was not protection, but companionship.
That vast, invisible system has evolved to the point where it can autonomously determine "where light is needed," even if he does not actively summon it.
The next morning, he continued on his journey.
His eyes were drawn to a long-abandoned vegetable garden as he passed by.
Beneath a patch of withered vines, a wild wallflower grows alone.
Its petals were shriveled and curled up due to lack of water, and the silver veins on the flower stem that it relied on for survival were dimmed to the point of almost going out, as if it would die completely at any moment.
Lin Yi originally intended to take a detour, as he did not have the extra resources to save every life along the way.
But the moment he lifted his foot, the soil beneath his feet suddenly trembled violently, a tremor unlike any he had ever felt before. It was no longer a confirmation or acceptance, but an urgent, undeniable urging.
He frowned, but ultimately yielded to this will.
He crouched down, took out his last half-bottle of drinking water from his backpack, unscrewed the cap, and slowly poured it onto the roots of the wallflower.
The moment the water fell, an astonishing scene unfolded.
From the surrounding soil, countless hidden mycelia, like sharks smelling blood, surged wildly from all directions, instantly entwining the slender flower stem.
Immediately afterwards, the originally dim silver veins on the flower stem suddenly lit up, the light even more dazzling than any other flower Lin Yi had ever seen!
The withered petals unfolded at a speed visible to the naked eye, becoming full and glossy.
What shocked him even more was that, inside the fully bloomed petals, the interplay of light and shadow revealed a dynamic, three-dimensional image: a young Lin Yi squatting on the ground, carefully burying an unknown seed in the soil.
That was the first time in his life he had ever tried planting.
In one corner of the picture, his young mother is watching him quietly with a gentle smile.
Lin Yi was completely stunned.
He finally understood that this massive system recorded far more than just paths and identities.
What it remembers is the moment when I first wanted to leave something behind in this world.
That night, Lin Yi camped out in a quiet mountain wilderness.
He took out the last blank sheet of paper from the old tin box his mother had left him.
He wanted to write something down to record everything that had overturned his understanding over the past two days.
He picked up his pen, the tip hovering over the paper, and wrote the three words "Today I..." but could not continue.
A thousand words are stuck in my chest, but I don't know where to begin.
In the end, he gave up.
He carefully folded the blank letter into a small paper boat and gently placed it into the babbling brook beside him.
The paper boat drifted along with the current, swaying and rocking, for three zhang (approximately 10 meters) in distance.
Suddenly, it seemed to be held up by an invisible hand, stopping its drift, and then slowly and gently enveloped by a network of mycelium emerging from the bottom of the water, sinking into the depths of the riverbed.
At dawn the next day, as the first rays of sunlight pierced the darkness, Lin Yi was utterly shocked by the scene before him.
The veins on the leaves of the wild grass along the entire riverbank suddenly lit up with silvery light.
These light patterns converged into a stream, forming a dazzling light path that meandered for dozens of miles across the vast land, following the direction of the stream's flow.
The shape of that light path was exactly the same as the trajectory of the paper boat that drifted last night.
It was as if the earth itself had written the letter he could never finish writing.
And the letter is titled "Living".
Lin Yi stood up, dusted himself off, and slung his backpack over his shoulder.
He was no longer confused or hesitant. He took a step forward and firmly embarked on the road paved with light.
The path of light guided him across the fields and over the hills.
As he continued forward, the path of light ended in a forgotten edge of the city.
A very faint, unique scent, a mixture of rust and dust, began to permeate the air.
There, it seemed, was some ancient and immense will, disturbed from its slumber, slowly opening its eyes.
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