The footprints made of light spots on the soles of my feet completely disappeared, and the last trace of warmth disappeared beneath the cold stone slab.
Lin Yi stood quietly in the center of the Malt Ruins, yet he could clearly sense an unprecedented pulse, as if the entire city's memory network was undergoing a silent but massive system calibration with him as the origin.
He was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, causing an invisible tremor throughout the entire body of water.
He took the transparent ear of wheat out of his pocket. The chaotic, piercing buzzing sound that had once been inside had disappeared, replaced by an extremely stable and steady low-frequency rhythm, like the heart of a sleeping beast, regular and powerful.
Lin Yi instantly realized that this was not the system saying goodbye to him, but rather confirming his "exit capability" in this way.
He was no longer the key piece that had to be stuck on the chessboard, but had gained the right to leave the table at any time.
This qualification felt so heavy that it made him feel suffocated.
That night, at midnight, the anomaly occurred again.
The nine lampstands scattered throughout the city, which had been activated by the flower petals, did not reignite as expected. Instead, drops of pale silver dew seeped from their cold centers.
As soon as these dewdrops appeared, they were drawn by the filaments of light that had already settled around the lampstands, and like living spirits, they silently slid down along the intersection of the seven main city streets.
Lin Yi immediately retrieved the most recent surveillance footage.
In the image, every drop of silver dew that lands is instantly and greedily absorbed by the network of mycelium that has been lurking beneath the ground.
The next second, the silver veins of the "wall-talking plants" climbing on the nearby wall suddenly lit up, faintly but precisely indicating the transmission of energy.
A crazy idea popped into my head.
He quickly accessed the city's weather database, his hands moving like blurs across the keyboard, and retrieved all the environmental data for the last day before his mother disappeared.
When the wind direction data comparison results popped up, Lin Yi's breathing suddenly stopped—the wind tonight, whether in direction, speed, or humidity, was exactly the same as that day!
At that moment, he finally understood that the memories this living city possessed were far more profound and obsessive than he had imagined.
It not only remembers the people and events that happened, but it even begins to imitate the environment of that specific time and space, like a lonely watcher, imitating an endless "waiting".
Whom are we waiting for?
Lin Yi decided to take the initiative and test whether this vast "memory network" had the ability to autonomously choose its successor.
He arrived at West Alley, the edge of that completely sealed-off area.
He picked up an ordinary stone slab from the ground, pressed a clear fingerprint onto it with his fingertip, and then silently placed it an inch inside the cordon without marking it. He then turned and left.
Three days later, he returned here again.
The sight before him made his pupils shrink sharply.
The stone fragment was already wrapped in a thick layer of white mycelium, forming an irregular cocoon.
Even more bizarrely, the surface of the mycelium was not smooth, but rather, through differences in density, a blurry human figure slowly emerged—it was clearly the appearance of Granny Chen when she was young, with a stubbornness in her eyes that had long since been worn away by the years.
What terrified him most was that the mycelium enveloping the stone was slowly and steadily pushing it toward the alleyway at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
That posture resembled a solemn and silent "handover".
The next morning, just as dawn was breaking, Granny Chen appeared at the alley entrance right on time.
She seemed to have known all along what was waiting for her, and there was no surprise on her face.
She didn't look at Lin Yi, but walked straight to the stone slab that was being moved by the mycelium. Without saying a word, she took out a pair of equally old cloth shoes from her worn-out cloth bag and gently placed them next to the stone slab.
She bent down and whispered to the clump of mycelium, her voice so soft it was almost carried away by the morning breeze: "You go your way, and I'll guard my narrow bridge."
After saying that, she hunched over, turned and left without looking back.
That night, Lin Yi saw through the drone that the pair of cloth shoes were wrapped in countless light threads that appeared out of nowhere, slowly rising into the air, then disintegrating into countless light points, and finally converging into a soft light that poured into a nearby lampstand that had always been empty.
The next morning, all the wallflowers in the entire West Alley area seemed to receive a silent command, and they all turned around, no longer facing the sunlight, but facing the city center, like the most devout believers, and bowed their petals deeply.
A transfer of power was completed in a way that transcends human comprehension.
Lin Yi stood on the highest platform of the ruins, taking in the entire scene.
He took out the fragment of the wall brick left by his mother from his pocket. The rough texture and cold temperature calmed his chaotic thoughts slightly.
He gently stroked the deep scratch on the brick with his fingertips; it was the last mark his mother left behind.
Suddenly, another strange event occurred!
A stream of light, thinner than a spider's silk, seeped out of the crack in the engraving without warning, like a living serpent, rapidly spreading along his fingertips and climbing up his wrist.
The light stream paused precisely for three seconds at his wrist artery, as if performing a final scan and confirmation, before silently and slowly retreating back into the brickwork, as if it had never appeared at all.
Lin Yi's heart skipped a beat. This wasn't a response; it was confirmation!
At that moment, he clearly sensed that his identity within the city's memory network had undergone a fundamental change.
The system no longer identifies him as a core node or the intruder with the key.
It confirmed his identity—or rather, confirmed the final identity of the relic belonging to his mother that he possessed.
He is the "source relic" himself.
It was late at night, and the air was bitterly cold.
Lin Yi walked alone to the old train station on the outskirts of the city, which had been abandoned for many years.
This is where he received his mother's last phone call; every corner is permeated with the deepest pain from his memories.
As his foot stepped onto the first stone slab of the platform, the dust beneath his feet suddenly and unexpectedly began to shimmer.
The light spread rapidly, outlining a short, secluded path never recorded on any map before him, winding its way to an abandoned waiting room with its doors and windows tightly shut not far away.
His heart pounded as he walked step by step along the path of light, each step feeling like he was stepping on his own violently beating heart.
He reached out and pushed open the heavy, rusty door.
"Squeak—"
Inside the door, there was no smell of decay as expected, only a deathly silence.
On the wall directly opposite him, the thick layer of dust, as if manipulated by an invisible hand, began to arrange and combine automatically, eventually revealing a line of crooked, illegible text:
"Your mother didn't get to wait for the car, but I waited for you."
The moment the writing appeared, the path beneath Lin Yi's feet, formed by faint light, collapsed with a roar, turning into ashes and dissipating into the air.
The entire waiting room returned to darkness, as if everything that had just happened was an illusion.
Only a thin strand of silver thread remained, quietly emerging from the collapsed light path. Like a snake, it gently wrapped around his shoelaces, and then, with an almost irresistible force, it gently tugged at them.
The force wasn't strong, but it carried an undeniable authority, as if someone were reaching out in the darkness, gently yet stubbornly leading him home.
Lin Yi lowered his head and looked at the silver thread that emitted a faint glow in the darkness. Its other end extended into the deeper darkness of the waiting room, as if connecting to an unknown destiny.
He didn't struggle; he simply let the force pull him along and took his first step.
That pulling force didn't point in any specific direction, but rather seemed to be adjusting his frequency, making him achieve a strange synchronization with the invisible pulse around him.
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