Without a moment's hesitation, Lin Yi turned and rushed out of the monitoring room. The cold air filled his lungs, instantly clearing his muddled mind.
What he needs is not more sophisticated equipment, but a more primal resonance.
Inside the abandoned pumping station, it was dark and damp, and the air was filled with a strange smell of rust mixed with stale moisture.
Lin Yi carefully placed the irregular fragment removed from the dual-phase isolation chamber onto the concrete floor in the center of the pumping station.
Its rough edges gleamed coldly in the dim light, like a silent tombstone.
Then he took out twelve old oil lamps.
These lamps were retrieved from the archives of the city's memory; each one had witnessed the joys and sorrows of a family.
He arranged them in a perfect circular array, centered on the fragments, like the markings on a clock.
He lit the first lamp.
The flames flickered, their orange glow dispelling a small patch of darkness and seemingly igniting the fuse of time.
He did not immediately light the second lamp, but waited quietly, mimicking the rhythm of the Night's Watch patrol in the old days, lighting the next lamp only after a fixed time interval.
The only living thing in the pumping station, a golden wheat seedling growing tenaciously from the concrete ground, seemed to have no reaction to light or heat.
But Lin Yi's gaze was fixed on the bud at its top.
Time passed second by second, and the light array became more and more complete as each lamp was lit.
When the seventh lamp was lit, Lin Yi's ears caught a slight change.
The faint, heart-beat-like "drip" sound originating from inside the ear bud seemed to have increased in frequency.
He held his breath and continued his ritual.
The ninth lamp, the tenth lamp... until the twelfth lamp was lit, forming a complete and warm halo.
Just then, the first oil lamp that had been lit was about to run out of oil, and the flame began to flicker violently, sometimes bright and sometimes dim.
A sudden change has occurred!
The ears of wheat at the top of the seedlings trembled very slightly in the dying embers of the fire!
The internal beeping sound also became rapid at that moment, as if urging or fearing.
A glint flashed in Lin Yi's eyes.
He guessed right!
This strange plant is not merely a passive container for memories; it is "imitating" a certain behavior in its own way, an ancient posture originating from the collective unconscious of humanity—guarding.
It is also waiting, waiting for a light that will never go out.
Three in the morning, the quietest time in the city.
Chu Yao's figure appeared without warning at the edge of the lantern array, like a dream emerging from the mist.
Her hair was damp with the cool dew, and her usually languid voice trembled slightly.
“Lin Yi,” she said, pointing to the wheat seedling, her voice very low, “it wants to speak, but it seems… very scared, afraid of frightening us.”
Lin Yi followed her fingertip and his pupils suddenly contracted.
At the base of the wheat seedling ear, a ring of extremely fine lines had appeared out of nowhere.
The patterns combined resemble tightly closed human lips.
Silence lingered in the air, the flickering lights casting long and short shadows of the two figures.
After a long while, Lin Yi slowly got up and took out something from his tool bag—the broken shell of the oil lamp that had once hung under the eaves of the dilapidated building and belonged to the blind old woman.
He didn't add oil to the lamp casing; instead, he gently placed it on a shard of pottery he had picked up, and then pushed it into the center of the lamp array, right next to the fragment of the isolation chamber.
The miracle occurred the instant the metal edge of the lamp housing came into contact with the ceramic shard.
The empty lamp casing glowed without a flame, its entire surface radiating a warm and soft halo.
The light was not dazzling, yet it seemed to possess a warmth that could penetrate everything.
At the same time, the wheat seedlings and ears of wheat emitted a low hum, which resonated perfectly with the halo.
It found the "light" it had been waiting for.
The next day, Lin Yi did not go to the water pump station again.
He locked himself in the data center and retrieved nearly a month's worth of nighttime power fluctuation data for the entire city.
The lines of cold data, however, formed a completely different picture in his eyes.
He made a startling discovery: whenever the power grid in a certain area of the city experienced an unusually stable trough—which usually corresponded to reports of large-scale collective insomnia or nightmares—the black liquid seeping from the roots of that wheat seedling would flow backward a short distance through the intricate underground pipe network.
He understood instantly.
Those unspeakable pains, which cannot even be resolved by dreams, are spontaneously seeking an outlet through the city's "blood vessels"—water supply and sewage pipes.
And the wheat seedlings are that final convergence point.
Lin Yi remained calm and did not report this shocking discovery.
Based on the data, he identified seven memory nodes where the pain was most concentrated.
He then used the glass from empty picture frames and the ashes from burning old letters to press down seven palm-sized passive resonators.
These devices have only one function: to receive, not amplify, signals.
He secretly placed them in hidden locations at those seven nodes.
On the third night, one of the resonators located in the old town suddenly caught fire without any wind.
The flames were not red, but rather a strange, eerie blue, like an open ghost eye.
The fire did not spread, but only burned a crooked scorch mark on the surface of the resonator.
When Lin Yi arrived, the flames had already died down, but the words on the paper were still chillingly clear: "Don't say my name."
He immediately sealed off the scene and retrieved the burned resonator, but did not report it to anyone.
Back at the base, he solemnly wrote a line in his notebook: "They refuse to be represented, but they need to be witnessed."
The following day, Lin Yi gathered all the volunteers who had participated in the "Silent Irrigation" project.
Looking at the people whose eyes were filled with confusion and expectation, he announced in a deep voice: "From today onwards, we will form a new group, codenamed 'Night Listeners'."
He paused, looking around at everyone: "But our task is not to listen to any specific voice. On the contrary, what we need to do is 'sit into a wall.' To become a buffer between those repressed memories and pains and the world when they are about to surge out."
Deep underground, Ivan's intermittent whispers from the ley lines carried, for the first time, a barely audible echo: "...The lamp...is not lit...but my heart is already burning..."
This vague statement, however, was like a bolt of lightning, cleaving through the fog in Lin Yi's mind.
He concluded definitively that the key to awakening the memory did not lie in any technology or energy, but in something he called "common pain density".
That night, he designed a brand-new ceremony – “Silent Vigil”.
Twelve "Night Listeners" volunteers sat around the array of lights at the water pump station, each holding an empty photo frame.
They faced the ground, silent, still, and without thought, like twelve statues immersed in their own world.
This is an extreme form of torment.
There were no instructions, no goals, only a long and oppressive silence.
The first round, the second round... When the ritual reached its seventh round late at night, another anomaly occurred.
The roots of that wheat seedling seemed to receive some silent command and suddenly contracted inward!
The black liquid that had seeped into the cracks of the cement floor was drawn back by it at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Not a drop was wasted!
Immediately afterwards, the golden patterns on the surface of the ear of grain began to rapidly turn into an ominous dark red, like congealed blood.
Energy in the air is frantically drawn toward this point, forming an invisible vortex.
Midnight.
"Smack."
A soft sound, like a flower bud blooming.
The dark red tassel finally cracked open with a tiny fissure.
A thin, yet incredibly bright beam of light shot out from it and landed precisely on the ground in front of Lin Yi's feet.
Half of a woman's face slowly emerged from the pillar of light.
The face was young and beautiful, yet it carried an unyielding sorrow—it was exactly how that blind old woman looked when she was young.
Her lips moved as if she were trying her best to say something, but no sound came out.
Everyone was stunned by what they saw.
Lin Yi slowly knelt down and gently placed his palm on the cold pillar of light.
He didn't try to interpret or soothe, but simply spoke in a low, almost murmured voice:
"I won't speak for you, I'll wait with you."
The moment the words were spoken, the beam of light suddenly contracted, abruptly retreating back into the ear bud, and the gap closed.
The entire pumping station fell into absolute silence.
A second later, a voice came from deep underground.
It was a very clear swallowing sound.
Glug.
Like a giant beast drinking from a deep pool, the sound was dull, yet clear enough to shake the bones of everyone present.
It was as if someone had just drunk up all the silence that had accumulated in this city for a century.
Ivan's whisper, this time, was no longer fleeting, but sank deeper into the earth, carrying a sense of a definitive conclusion:
"Memory Node No. 90...begins to swallow echoes."
The sound disappeared.
The entire pumping station, and even the deeper strata beneath our feet, fell into an unprecedented stillness.
It wasn't emptiness, but a heaviness that came after being completely drained, as if some enormous creature had turned over underground, preparing to awaken.
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