The bustling atmosphere at the Echo Cafeteria exceeded everyone's expectations.
It is no longer just a place to get food, but has become the heart of the entire Panshi Town, beating day and night.
The gaunt old man who once stubbornly knelt before the hero's monument and regarded Lin Yi as a heretic has now become a regular at the cafeteria.
Every day, he would lean on his cane and shakily squeeze into the crowd. He would argue with the head chef of the canteen until they were red in the face and spittle flew everywhere for a spoonful of extra stewed meat. His lively spirit was a hundred times more real than when he recited his eulogy.
Hope is returning in the simplest and most unrefined way.
However, beneath this seemingly vibrant scene, a sinister shadow is quietly spreading.
Lin Yi keenly noticed that the young people in the town, especially those teenagers who had lost their brothers or fathers in the war, began to subconsciously avoid certain words.
They can excitedly discuss the structure of the new walls, and argue endlessly about the irrigation water for the wheat watchtower, but the moment someone mentions "war" and "sacrifice," the air freezes instantly.
It wasn't hatred, nor was it numbness; it was a resistance mixed with fear.
It's as if the word "sacrifice" itself is a curse that chooses its victims, and once it's uttered, you're next.
“They no longer yearn for a savior,” Chu Yao’s fingertips lightly traced the rim of the iron bowl filled with hot soup, her gaze piercing through the noisy crowd in the cafeteria, landing precisely on a few silent teenagers. “But they have begun to fear being ‘asked to sacrifice.’ It’s like the other side of a template, an equally distorted reflection. In the past, people longed for heroes to descend from the sky and save everything; now, they fear being pushed onto a pedestal, becoming the next sacrifice to be offered up.”
Her voice was soft, yet it was like a needle piercing through the facade of prosperity.
Late that night, the cold wind howled, whipping up the sand and gravel on the ground, sounding like the wailing of ghosts.
A slender boy, using the moonlight, reached the smoothest wall of the Echo Cafeteria.
He pulled a sharp metal fragment from his pocket, which he had pried off the wreckage of the Scavenger.
His hands were trembling, but a stubborn flame burned in his eyes.
"Sizzle—"
Amidst the harsh scraping sound, a line of large, crooked characters was carved into the wall: "I don't want to be a hero."
After finishing carving, the boy seemed to have exhausted all his strength, and staggered away into the darkness.
The next morning, this line became the center of the storm.
Even more bizarrely, overnight, the handwriting seemed to have been deepened and thickened by an invisible hand, and there was even a faint smell of burnt blackness seeping out from the indentations of the strokes.
The wind and sand seemed to come alive, carrying this silent cry along the texture of the wall to other walls, like black scars.
The crowd was in uproar, filled with anger, confusion, and heartache.
Some people want to smooth things over, while others are shouting to find that "ungrateful coward."
All eyes were on Lin Yi, awaiting his thunderous wrath.
Lin Yi simply stared at the wall quietly for a long time.
He neither deleted it nor criticized it.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, he picked up a similar piece of metal, walked to the side of the inscription, and carefully carved three characters.
"I don't want to either."
The entire cafeteria fell into a deathly silence. You could hear a pin drop.
If the boy's words were a rebellious cry, then Lin Yi's three words were nothing short of a cataclysmic earthquake in the spiritual world.
He is the guardian deity of Rocky Town, the man who ended the scourge of the Cleaners, and the greatest hero in everyone's hearts.
And for the first time in public, he admitted that he was "unwilling to sacrifice".
"Come here, everyone." Lin Yi's voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears.
He gathered the boy who had carved the words, as well as all the young people whose eyes were darting away, and made them stand in front of the wall.
“What you’re afraid of isn’t death.” Lin Yi’s gaze swept over their faces, which were filled with fear and confusion. “What you’re afraid of is being ‘forced to be great.’ You’re afraid that your name will be engraved on a cold stone tablet, and no one will remember that you were once afraid of the dark, afraid of pain, afraid of hunger. You’re afraid that your death will become a light, insignificant symbol used to educate the next generation.”
His words were like a scalpel, precisely dissecting the deepest festering sores in the hearts of the teenagers.
“Listen,” Lin Yi’s voice became deep and powerful, “True sacrifice is never an order, but a choice.”
He turned and walked into the cafeteria, restarting the long-dormant "Ordinary Heroes Archives" light screen.
But this time, there were no grand battle scenes on the screen, no heroic and passionate charges.
Lin Yi only chose to play their recording of "24 hours before the battle".
A slightly childish female voice rang out. It was Chen Xiaoyu's last words, recorded on her communicator the night before the decisive battle on the Burning Wounds Battlefield: "Mom, I signed up for the vanguard team... Don't cry, I'm actually... quite afraid of pain, really. But I'm even more afraid that there's no one to protect us anymore..."
Her voice trembled, choked with sobs, yet it moved hearts more deeply than any grand pronouncement.
Immediately following was Zhao Tiezhu's rough roar.
That wasn't a roar at the enemy, but a fight with comrades over the last piece of meat at the last meal before battle: "Don't you dare try to take it from me! I'm going to be the first one charging in tomorrow, risking my life. I deserve a good meal tonight!"
Laughter, chatter, the clatter of chopsticks against bowls... those vibrant, everyday sounds played on a loop in the quiet cafeteria.
Heroes are no longer gods high in the sky, but ordinary people who are afraid, hungry, and quarrelsome.
In the cafeteria, many people silently lowered their heads, their shoulders trembling slightly.
On the third day, below those two lines of text, a new line of delicate handwriting appeared on the cafeteria wall, written by a young girl: "Then... can I choose too? Whether I choose not to rush forward or choose to rush forward, are both... are they both heroic?"
Lin Yi looked at the words and nodded heavily. His voice echoed throughout the square: "Choosing whether to charge forward is a human right, the right of every individual to live. Choosing to charge forward makes one a hero, a hero who transcends the instinct for survival. But no one can choose for you, and no one has the right to criticize you for choosing to live."
As soon as he finished speaking, a cold wind rose out of nowhere and swirled above the cafeteria.
An almost imperceptible whisper, as if coalescing from nothingness, carrying resentment and unwillingness, rang in everyone's ears.
That was the scavenger's last remaining will, making its final and most vicious struggle.
"You...you are belittling sacrifice! You are insulting greatness! Long Wu...Long Wu burned with all his might! He had no choice, he only had responsibility!"
This voice targets the weakest point in people's hearts, attempting to destroy everything Lin Yi has just built with an irrefutable, supreme heroic totem.
Faced with this question from the dead, Lin Yi did not refute it.
He simply turned around, and with a few of the strongest townspeople carrying tools, silently walked towards the scorched earth outside the town, known as the "Burning Battlefield."
Half a day later, they returned.
They were carrying a huge, charred rock covered with cracks.
That was the last place where Long Wu stood, a battlefield foundation stone most thoroughly scorched by the flames of his life.
Lin Yi placed the scorched stone steadily in the very center of the Echo Dining Hall.
He picked up the carving knife and, under the watchful eyes of countless people, carved a line of words on the charred rock surface.
It wasn't some impassioned last words, nor some earth-shattering declaration.
The line of text read—
Long Wu's last words: "I'm starving, who the hell brought me food?"
This is the most authentic echo of the soul that Lin Yi captured from the deepest part of the Well of Memory, from the moment Long Wu's life finally dissipated.
A "last will and testament" filled with weariness and longing, which was never made public to anyone.
The entire room fell into a long, suffocating silence.
Then, someone burst out laughing.
The laughter seemed contagious; one, two, ten, a hundred… until finally, the entire square erupted in a deafening, exhilarating burst of laughter.
There was no mockery in that laughter, only a warm and comforting feeling of relief.
A seven or eight-year-old child pointed at the charred rock and shouted loudly to his mother beside him, "Mom, look! Uncle Long Wu looks just like my dad! My dad always shouts that when he comes home after finishing work!"
The child's innocent voice became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
"No...no!!"
The chilling whispers hovering in the air, amidst the deafening laughter filled with the warmth of everyday life, emitted a piercing shriek.
Its illusory form, formed from resentment and "sublime templates," trembled violently under the impact of this most real and simple torrent of emotion, like a thin piece of ice thrown into boiling water, instantly covered with cracks, and with a "crack," it shattered completely and vanished without a trace.
The wind stopped. The sunlight became warm again.
The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight shone on the roof of the Echo Canteen, the townspeople responsible for cleaning discovered a piece of paper, slightly damp with dew, pressed under a tile.
The handwriting on the paper was crooked and slanted, like that of a child who had just learned to write, yet it exuded a strange power.
"So...sacrifice doesn't have to be so painful."
The note had no signature, only a charred mark of a wheat ear burned with a match head.
That was the pattern that Long Wu hated most when he was alive, the one carved on compressed military rations. He always complained that it was hard to chew.
Now, however, it has taken on a completely new form, becoming a totem of his true will, lying quietly in the morning light, like a satisfied sigh.
The dark clouds that had lingered over Panshi Town for so long finally dissipated completely.
The air was filled with the smell of freshly turned earth and a sense of life stirring within it.
People's spiritual world was filled like never before, but another, older, purer desire began to quietly grow in everyone's belly and in everyone's heart.
It was a longing for a bountiful harvest, a longing for celebration, a longing for a feast where everyone could open their bellies and laugh heartily.
A completely new kind of hunger is brewing.
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