The tremors beneath my feet were steady and continuous, like the deep, powerful breath of a sleeping giant.
Lin Yi's heart almost merged with this pulsation.
He immediately accessed the optical fiber control system and elevated his privileges to the highest level.
Lines of data refreshed rapidly before my eyes like a waterfall, the cold characters painting a vibrant picture.
Over the past seven days, the total length of light paths spontaneously activated by the "lightless stations" scattered throughout the city has exceeded three times the total length of light paths of all the officially planned silent stations!
This set of data hit Lin Yi like a heavy hammer, slamming into his understanding.
The official light paths are the result of meticulous design, with each one representing enormous energy consumption and maintenance costs.
These "nameless paths," however, are like vines that have grown wildly from the soil of urban memory, spreading silently and making the official system seem like an isolated island.
An even more surprising discovery was made at the end of the data stream.
The analysis module highlighted a conclusion in bright red: over 90% of the newly formed light paths showed signs of natural generation of miniature wall-talking plants.
They no longer need to be transplanted from the malt ruins by human hands, just as dandelion seeds have found the wind and taken root in every forgotten corner of the city.
Lin Yi abruptly shut down the data interface and took out the rusty wheat stalk from his pocket.
It was once a token of the "Night Listener," the only keepsake his mother left him.
He crouched down and gently tapped three times on a paving stone at the starting point of the "Nameless Path" with the rough, broken edge of the stone.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Like a pebble thrown into the center of a lake, an invisible command spread instantly.
The next second, the entire city seemed to be lit up at the same time!
Starting from his feet, along the invisible network of light paths, all the newly sprouted, wild wall-whispering plants, whether in the gaps of tall buildings or in the dark arches of bridges, had their silver veins shimmer three times at the same moment!
The light pierced through the walls and crossed the streets, like a silent thunderstorm unfolding simultaneously beneath and on the surface of the city.
This is the highest-level communication code from the Night Listener era—"All members confirm!"
Lin Yi's breath hitched, and his eyes burned.
He once thought that with the passing of his mother's generation, the Night Listeners had long since become dust of history, and the list recording the identities of all members had been burned.
But he was wrong.
“The list is long gone…” he murmured to himself, his voice trembling with a hint of awe, “but the road always remembers who has walked it.”
Just as Lin Yi was awestruck by the magnificent sight, an even more ancient ceremony was taking place at the Changqing Nursing Home in the south of the city.
Grandma Chen ignored the rumors about the city's strange phenomena. She stubbornly gathered a few old friends and launched a "nameless memorial."
There are no memorial tablets, and no one's name is mentioned during the memorial service.
They simply placed a small oil lamp made from an old tin can on each south-facing windowsill.
Under the lamp were a pair of old cloth shoes with worn-out soles, a broken porcelain bowl with a chipped rim, and a smooth, unmarked brass buckle.
A young caregiver asked, puzzled, "Grandma, who are these things... meant to commemorate?"
With her cloudy eyes gazing out the window, Granny Chen slowly said, "No one remembers the names of the owners of these things. But they must have fed stray dogs on the street, held the neighbor's children, and walked long distances in the dark. We are commemorating these things, not their names."
As night fell and the small oil lamps were lit one by one, a strange change occurred.
On the exterior wall of the nursing home, the originally dull silver veins suddenly shone brightly, the light even outshining the streetlights!
Dozens of previously unrecorded, slender light paths "grew" from the wall, shooting out like a spider web in all directions of the city.
Without exception, the endpoints of the light paths are all unmarked graves not shown on the map.
The alarm in the central monitoring room was triggered instantly, but the scene that appeared sent chills down the spines of all the staff on duty.
Real-time brainwave monitoring showed that at the very moment the light path burst, seven elderly people who were sleeping in the hospital simultaneously uttered clear babbling in their sleep.
Their lip movements and tones were perfectly synchronized, as if they were responding to some distant call.
"I'm back."
When the news reached Lin Yi through encrypted channels, he was still reeling from the aftershocks of the "confirmation by all members."
Grandma Chen's "Nameless Sacrifice" was like a lightning bolt, cleaving through the fog in his mind.
He realized that memories not only need to be awakened, but also need a "certificate," an anchor point in the real world.
He immediately launched an operation called "Return of Relics".
A citywide announcement: Any citizen can bring any unclaimed old items that bear the marks of time to the nearest "Nameless Path" lampstand.
The patrol team will infer the possible life trajectory of the owner based on the signs of use on the items, and try to light up their way home.
The first item received during the operation was an iron ladle that had been charred and severely deformed in the fires of war.
It comes from the ruins of a wartime kitchen that has long been demolished.
The patrol team members, like the most professional forensic experts, carefully examined the burn marks and deformed curves of the spoon.
"The bending angle of the spoon handle was not caused by an external force, but by stirring the pot with force in a specific posture for a long time," the captain analyzed. "The person holding the spoon should be short, a little hunchbacked, right-handed, and very strong."
Based on this deduced "spoon-holder model," they attempted to activate light paths on several old roads around the ruins.
When the path of light extended to the site of a relief station that had long been razed to the ground, a miracle occurred.
In mid-air, light and shadow converged, and a blurry image gradually became clear.
An elderly woman with a hunched back was struggling to stir a non-existent pot of steaming porridge.
Her face was blurry, but the motion of stirring the porridge perfectly matched the deformed curve of the soup spoon.
The image only lasted for a dozen seconds before disappearing.
The next morning, an elderly man passing by saw the "Return of Relics" sign erected by the patrol team and the photo of the soup spoon. He suddenly stopped and burst into tears.
He pointed to the empty space in the air and sobbed uncontrollably: "This is my mother... She used to cook porridge at the relief station... I never told anyone that she worked so hard that her back became hunched."
The “Path to the Return of Relics” completely ignited the entire city.
Countless old objects carrying nameless stories—umbrellas with a broken corner, broken wooden canes, rusty old school badges—were sent to the lampstand.
The city’s network of light paths is expanding at an unprecedented rate, and the flood of memories is almost overwhelming reality.
Lin Yi was well aware of the dangers of disorder.
He quickly designed a "light flow self-cleaning" mechanism for the light path network: any unnamed light path that has been lit up will automatically dissipate if it does not receive new emotional connections from the real world (such as recognition by relatives or remembrance by passersby) for seven consecutive days, and the energy it contains will return to the light path network to supply the generation of new paths.
He had expected this "cruel" rule to spark protests from citizens.
However, he underestimated the city once again.
Citizens spontaneously organized a "path-guarding team" to take turns standing guard under each lamppost every day.
They told the possible stories, even if they were just guesses, about the unclaimed relics.
A boy, under a lamp, whispered about an old fountain pen with a broken nib: "Perhaps... its owner was a student who really wanted to finish his homework that night, but there was no food left at home..."
That night, the already dim path of light suddenly extended, crossing half of the city, and finally pointing to an old classroom in an abandoned primary school.
In the dim light on the dusty blackboard, a few childish words slowly emerged: "Mom, I'm hungry."
Lin Yi stood once again on the malt ruins.
He saw that the illusory light spots floating atop the newly grown wall plants had completely changed their shape.
It is no longer a specific, towering figure like a mother or a hero, but countless blurry figures holding hands, merging into a long river moving forward.
They varied in height; some leaned on canes, some held infants, some led dogs that were also silhouettes, and some huddled together as if resisting the eternal cold.
He took out the crystal-clear, transparent ear of wheat and gently touched the ground.
This time, the footsteps coming from within the wheat ears were no longer distinguished by primary or secondary sounds; it was no longer the mother's steady steps leading a cacophony of chaotic footsteps.
All the footsteps merged into an unstoppable tide, surging forward in perfect unison, like the pulse of a united people.
Night fell.
At all thirty-seven "nameless paths" throughout the city, the eerie blue flames of the lampstands were stretched out invisibly at the same moment, and then condensed into a tiny point of light at the top.
The light detached from the flame and slowly rose into the air like a firefly.
Thousands of points of light rose from every corner of the city, eventually converging at an altitude of 10,000 meters to form a silent, galaxy of light that stretches across the sky.
Lin Yi looked up, his pupils reflecting the magnificent river of light.
He saw that within the river of light, countless tiny footprints and points of light were rapidly arranging and combining, eventually forming a giant character that stretched across the sky.
The writing only existed for a brief three seconds before dissipating back into the river of light and returning to silence.
Those were the last words my mother left on the wall all those years ago.
"Don't forget us."
The last word is no longer "I" representing individual expectations, but "we" formed by the collective footprints of countless nameless individuals.
Lin Yi gripped the rusty, broken stem of the wheat ear tightly in his hand; the cold metal now carried a hint of warmth.
He gazed at the brilliant starry sky, and at the river of light flowing with countless souls, and whispered:
“Now, you are not following the path I am leading... you have walked into the light on your own.”
The river of light gradually faded away, and the night sky returned to tranquility.
But beneath Lin Yi's feet, the steady breathing originating from the depths of the earth showed a very faint disturbance the instant the river of light disappeared, as if the giant, in his sleep, was disturbed by a noise that shouldn't exist, causing his heart to skip a beat.
At the same time, in the real-time data stream projected onto his retina, at the highest point representing the data surge from the thirty-seven lighthouses, an unprecedented and almost negligible abnormal signal flashed by.
That's a data marker that should absolutely not appear in existing theoretical models.
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