Ivan's whisper, seemingly from the depths of the earth—"the eaves that are about to crumble"—acted like an invisible fuse, instantly igniting the long-forgotten map of the old city in Lin Yi's mind.
That forgotten area is the scar that was deliberately avoided when the new city was built on the wasteland.
The air in the old town was filled with a smell of decay and stubbornness.
The alley was so narrow that only one person could pass sideways, and the walls on both sides leaned against each other like dominoes, as if in a silent struggle.
Lin Yi's combat boots trod on the slippery bluestone slabs, each step seeming to question the memories of this land.
Based on the municipal archives' records of dilapidated buildings, he quickly identified his target—a two-story building that had been used as a temporary shelter during the war.
The building, resembling a hunched old man, stands out starkly amidst the surrounding dilapidated structures.
The walls were covered with spiderweb-like cracks, and the main beams were clearly tilted, as if they would lose their last support at any moment.
The surrounding houses were long gone, their doors and windows boarded up, but only this building's chimney was emitting a faint wisp of smoke.
The demolition team's bulldozer was parked at the alley entrance, and several workers were helplessly facing a small, thin figure at the building entrance.
It was a blind old woman, leaning on a smooth bamboo cane, standing quietly in front of her house, like a statue that refused to move.
Despite repeated orders from the government to relocate all residents, she stood by with the final words, "Let the bulldozers come in first, then I'll breathe my last."
Lin Yi waved to signal the demolition team to stop, and walked over alone.
He didn't reveal his identity, but calmly asked, "Grandma, it's going to rain, aren't you going inside?"
The old woman's ears twitched slightly, and she turned her face in his direction. Her cloudy eyes had no focus, yet they seemed to be able to see through people's hearts.
“The rain won’t break it, but the bulldozers will.” Her voice was hoarse, but unusually firm.
"May I come in and ask for a bowl of water?" Lin Yi's tone was gentle, without the slightest hint of pressure.
The old woman was silent for a moment, then stepped aside to make way for a gap.
"Come in, but don't brush against the wall. The dust that falls from it is more precious than your life."
Lin Yi squeezed through the door, and a strange warmth rushed towards him.
In stark contrast to the dilapidated exterior, the interior was spotless.
The floor was polished to a shine, and a pot of white porridge was simmering on the stove, steaming gently.
The most eye-catching thing is the wall, which is covered with picture frames of all sizes, but the frames are empty, with only pieces of yellowed backing paper inside.
“They all say this house will collapse tomorrow.” The old woman groped her way back to the stove and stirred the porridge with a wooden spoon. “But it has lasted for forty years, outliving my unfortunate son by a full twenty years.”
One sentence struck Lin Yi's heart like a heavy hammer.
Looking at the empty photo frames, he instantly understood that they didn't hold photographs, but rather memories that could never be seen.
Meanwhile, Chu Yao, who was in the command vehicle, sensed the energy field inside the room through a miniature detector.
Her brows furrowed, and she whispered to Lin Yi on the other end of the communicator, "Strange... the old woman's brainwave frequency and the structural stress frequency of the entire dilapidated wall are resonating slightly. It's as if... her will is supporting this wall, and the wall's remnants are responding to her life."
Lin Yi's heart skipped a beat.
He immediately connected to the database and retrieved the building's in-depth records.
A long-forgotten code name emerged—"Silent Sanctuary".
During the war, this place did not shelter the wounded, but rather a group of people who, for various reasons, dared not speak out or go home.
Hidden in the wall's crevices are letters they wrote but could never send.
Hundreds of letters, hundreds of souls oppressed by war.
The demolition team leader approached, impatiently urging, "Consultant Lin, we can't delay any longer! What if it collapses and injures someone? Who will be responsible?"
"I'll take responsibility." Lin Yi's voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable authority.
He stepped out of the hut, stood in front of the bulldozer, and announced, "Stop the demolition immediately. From now on, this is no longer a dangerous building, but a 'critical site'."
"The critical site?" Everyone was stunned.
“Yes.” Lin Yi’s gaze swept over the dilapidated building. “No repairs, no demolition. Just build a temporary support frame on the outside to keep it in a ‘near-collapse’ state.”
After saying that, ignoring the astonished looks of the crowd, he personally took an old-fashioned windproof oil lamp from the car and hung it under the most dangerous eaves.
He lit the lamp wick, and the orange glow swayed in the twilight, illuminating the mottled wall.
“Before it truly collapses,” Lin Yi said softly, looking at the tiny lamp, “let it keep burning.”
This decision quickly sparked huge controversy among the public.
Some people ridiculed this as meaningless sentimentality and a show of public safety.
Faced with an overwhelming barrage of questions, Lin Yi did not utter a single word in defense.
He simply issued a notice: the Critical Site is open to visitors from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. every night, but with one condition—each visitor must carry a 20-kilogram sandbag into the site and place it at the designated load-bearing simulation point according to the markings on the ground.
This strange rule acts like a filter, weeding out all the onlookers.
Those who come are all people who have a special feeling for this land.
On the seventh night, an old man with faltering steps arrived.
He silently carried the sandbags into the house and carefully put them down.
Then, instead of leaving, he walked to a wall, knelt down, and stretched out his wrinkled hand, gently touching the cold wall as if caressing a lover's face.
A moment later, he pried open a crack with his fingernail and pulled out a thin, yellowed letter from the wall.
In the dim light of the oil lamp, the old man trembled as he unfolded the letter and read it aloud with all his might: "My dear, I didn't die on the battlefield, but I can't go home. Forget me, and live well..."
As soon as he finished speaking, the fragile letter seemed to have completed its final mission, spontaneously combusting in his hand.
A wisp of smoke rose, and the ashes, like black butterflies, fluttered into the lamplight under the eaves and vanished instantly.
At that moment, Ivan's consciousness, buried deep underground, trembled slightly again, and a whisper resounded directly in Lin Yi's mind: "The eighty-ninth node... has found its fulcrum, suspended on that wick."
Lin Yi suddenly understood.
He finally understood that the people of this city had already learned how to face the broken things in the wasteland; they could clear the ruins and rebuild their homes.
But their deepest fear is facing the process of “breaking”—the long, agonizing experience of watching something precious slowly crumble while being powerless to stop it.
His approach was to make everyone confront this process directly.
The next day, Lin Yi posted a new recruitment notice, seeking volunteers to take turns guarding the dilapidated house.
The task is not to repair or reinforce, but to record.
Every hour, record the slightest extension of the cracks in the wall, the oil level in the lamp, and the duration of each visitor's stay.
He reserved the coldest and loneliest hours of the night for himself.
On a snowy night, Lin Yi sat alone in his room, leaning against the wall where countless letters were hidden.
There was no fire inside, so he could only use his own body heat to protect the wick of the recording lamp on the table, preventing it from freezing in the cold.
The cold air seeped in through the cracks, like countless icy needles piercing into the bone marrow.
He sat quietly, as if he had become part of the building, feeling its every barely audible groan.
After an unknown amount of time, a sudden gust of wind swept in without warning, and the entire building creaked under the weight.
The volunteers standing guard on the perimeter gasped in surprise—a tile from the outermost corner of the roof was lifted by the strong wind, spun around, and crashed to the ground, shattering into pieces!
The oil lamp under the eaves was being forced to sway violently by the strong winds blowing in, its flame flickering as if it might go out at any moment.
"Quick! Go in and reinforce it! The lights are going out!" someone shouted anxiously, and was about to rush in.
"Stop right there!" Lin Yi appeared in the doorway, leaning firmly against the doorframe with one hand. His voice was crystal clear in the wind and snow, "Let it sway. If it's destined to go out, we should at least see with our own eyes how it goes out."
Everyone was stunned by him, frozen in place, staring intently at the bean-shaped lamplight dancing wildly in the wind.
Time seemed to freeze at that moment, each second feeling like an eternity.
Finally, as the wind subsided, the flame of the lamp miraculously stood upright again after one last violent tremor and resumed a steady burn.
The wind stopped, the snow ceased, and the sky began to lighten.
Chu Yao stepped forward, pointed to the spot where a tile had fallen off the eaves, and her voice was filled with disbelief and amazement.
"Lin Yi, look."
Following her gaze, everyone saw a tender green wheat seedling stubbornly pushing its way out of the dusty cracks revealed after the tiles had fallen off.
The shape of those wheat seedlings was exactly the same as the "gray ear" variety they had discovered by the well years ago.
Chu Yao sighed softly, "It took root in the place where it was about to collapse."
The next day, Lin Yi did not allow anyone to touch the wheat seedling.
He personally retrieved an old-fashioned earthenware jar and carefully transplanted the wheat seedlings, along with the small handful of soil they depended on for survival, into the jar. Then he placed the jar steadily next to the public water pumping station not far away, a place that the residents of the old town had to pass by every day to fetch water.
With a small knife, he carefully carved a line of words on the rough surface of the earthenware jar:
"This house has not collapsed, this seedling has not died, this lamp is still burning—reconstruction is not about going back to the past, but about letting things that are about to break live one more night."
That evening, when the residents came to the pumping station again to fetch water, many of them remained silent for a long time when they saw the pot of newly sprouted wheat seedlings and the words written there.
In the dead of night, all was quiet.
From the bottom of the ancient well where gray grains had been found, a very faint yet seemingly penetrating sound suddenly came from the earth.
"Click".
Like a seed breaking through its shell.
Ivan let out his last whisper from the depths of the earth, completely merging into the pulse of this land.
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