As dawn broke, a sliver of light pierced the darkness, landing precisely on the overturned celadon bowl on the windowsill.
This is the fourth day.
Lin Yi's heart skipped a beat for no apparent reason. He took a deep breath and slowly approached.
He didn't immediately turn the bowl over, but instead tilted his head to the side, as if performing some kind of solemn ceremony.
Last night's anticipation has now transformed into an almost breathless tension.
Finally, he reached out, his fingertips touching the cool bottom of the bowl, and gently lifted it.
His pupils suddenly contracted.
There was something under the bowl.
A small handful of glistening, translucent new rice, carefully arranged in an arc, lay quietly on the cold windowsill.
That arc, like a crescent moon, or a half-finished sentence, is full of mystery, as if it were something left unsaid.
This is not a prank.
The rice grains are plump and have the aroma of freshly harvested grain; they are definitely not old rice.
This was a signal, a silent language he had never encountered before.
Lin Yi didn't touch the rice. He just stared at it quietly for a few seconds, and then made a decision.
He picked up the bowl, along with the bundle of fresh rice, and carefully moved it to the ground in front of his house, still turning it upside down.
He didn't know why he was doing it; it was an intuition, a tentative adherence to unknown rules.
Night fell again.
Lin Yi turned off the light and sat in the darkness, his eyes fixed on the outline of the bowl by the door.
Time ticked by, and just when he thought nothing would happen tonight, a sudden change occurred!
A thread, thinner than a spider's web yet radiating a soft silver light, quietly peeked out from the mottled wall next door.
The filament of light seemed to possess a life of its own; it deftly swung in the air, precisely finding the celadon bowl by the door, and then gently wrapped around the rim of the bowl.
One lap, two laps, three laps.
The light filament tightened, as if tying an invisible slipknot on the rim of a bowl, then flashed with silver light and retracted into the wall, disappearing without a trace.
Lin Yi's breath caught in his throat. He understood. He understood completely.
This is my neighbor next door, whom I've never met, using the mycelium of the wall-flowering plant to "keep accounts."
That handful of rice is a silent greeting; and those three rings of light are a signature confirming receipt.
This is an ancient and tacit way of communicating, requiring no words, yet clearer than any spoken language.
Meanwhile, at the site of an abandoned textile factory in the city, Granny Chen, one of the "waterers," is patrolling in the morning mist, leaning on her cane.
She spotted the forgotten corner immediately; next to the overturned blue plastic bucket, three overturned bowls had appeared out of nowhere.
One was a coarse pottery bowl, one was a white porcelain bowl, and the other was the same style as Lin Yi's celadon bowl.
They are made of different materials, but all of them are spotless.
Despite her cloudy complexion, Granny Chen didn't make a sound. She simply squatted down and took a closer look.
Countless tiny silver mycelia were diligently burrowing into the narrow gap between the bowl and the ground, while several crystal-clear dewdrops had already condensed on the inner wall of the bowl's bottom.
She suddenly remembered what the young man named Lin Yi had said to her not long ago: "Only when the container is empty can it hold others."
I see.
She didn't lift any of the bowls.
She simply took out a chipped enamel mug from her cloth bag and, imitating the other bowls, gently turned it upside down next to her.
The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight shone on the ruins, countless silver mycelia had completely connected beneath the bucket, three bowls, and an enamel cup, forming a huge, irregular net.
The silver light flowed slowly through the net, flickering and changing, like the steady and powerful pulse of a sleeping giant.
That day, Lin Yi returned home from get off work and habitually looked towards the door.
His bowl was still there, but there was something extra in it.
It was a small piece of grass stem.
The silver veins on the grass stem were clearly visible; it was the mutant wild grass he had brought back from the ruins and tucked between the pages of a book.
His heart skipped a beat, and he immediately took the grass stems back into the house and retrieved the magnifying glass his mother had left behind.
Under magnification of several dozen times, several extremely fine scratches were clearly visible on the smooth back of the grass stem.
He recognized the pattern of the engravings; it was a unique technique that Granny Chen used to mark things when repairing old items.
In the "watering people" community, this symbol represents two meanings: "read" and "responded".
Lin Yi carefully placed the grass stem back into the small flowerpot on the windowsill, placing it together with the mother plant.
That night, he was awakened by the intense silver light shining from the windowsill.
The silver veins of the entire weed in the flowerpot suddenly shone brightly, as bright as day.
The leaves slowly turned in the light, casting a small, clear shadow on the opposite wall.
In the shadows, Granny Chen sat by the dry well at the ruins, holding a cane in her hand, intently and meticulously drawing the outline of an overturned bowl on the damp mud with the tip of her cane.
A few days later, Granny Chen gathered the few remaining "waterers" in the city and met them at the stone table at the ruins.
She didn't say anything, but simply asked everyone to bring an empty bowl and place it upside down on the table.
Although everyone had doubts, they all did as instructed.
On the stone table, seven or eight bowls of different shapes lay upside down, like a silent pantomime.
Grandma Chen only said one word: "Wait."
They sat quietly, letting time flow by.
An hour later, a bizarre scene unfolded.
Silvery mycelial dew began to slowly seep from the bottom of all the bowls.
The dew accumulated and eventually dripped onto the stone table.
Each drop of dew that falls creates a small stream of light on the tabletop.
The interplay and shifting of light ultimately created seven different dynamic images.
The images show Lin Yi's lonely figure as he buys vegetables at the market; his focused profile as he repairs shoes at a roadside stall; and his lonely silhouette as he sits alone in the attic late at night, visible through the window... Each image is of him.
Finally, all the light streams converged into a line of words, burning silently on the stone table: "He is not here, he is here."
He is not among them, but he truly exists in this network.
The group looked at each other in silence, but their eyes revealed a complex and touched expression.
Silently, they turned their bowls over one by one, drew water from the dry well, filled them, and then respectfully poured the water into the soil beneath their feet, which was connected to the mycelial network.
One late night, Lin Yi was startled by a rustling sound outside the window.
He peeked out and saw a child, about seven or eight years old, squatting next to the wall-flowering plant in his neighbor's yard.
The child was holding a piece of chalk and was struggling to draw a large, upside-down bowl on the rough cement floor.
After finishing the drawing, he carefully took out a fruit candy wrapped in a candy wrapper from his worn-out trouser pocket, gently placed it in the center of the "bowl" drawn in chalk, and then said in a childish voice, "For the newcomer."
As soon as he finished speaking, several beams of light emerged from the wall and gently wrapped around the chalk drawing.
As the light retracted, the entire painting, along with the candy, seemed to sink into the cement floor as if it had been submerged in water, and disappeared completely.
A moment later, a miniature flower made of light appeared on the spot, with two words clearly flashing inside the petals: "Thank you".
Lin Yi slowly retreated back into the house, his heart feeling as if it had been gently struck by something.
He opened the drawer and took out the last yellowed letter from the rusty tin box his mother had left behind.
He picked up a pen and solemnly wrote a line on the paper.
"Today I have a neighbor."
He folded the letter and tucked it into the soil of the small flowerpot on the windowsill.
The next day, miracles spread throughout the city.
On the counters of breakfast stalls in the east of the city, on the benches at bus stops in the west of the city, on the stone steps at the corners of the old city's deep alleys... in many places, empty bowls, placed upside down by people, have quietly appeared.
The city's surveillance cameras captured an incredible scene at night: countless silver streaks of light weaved through the darkness, like a silent procession, wrapping around each inverted bowl one by one, as if confirming each newly added node.
On Lin Yi's windowsill, in that celadon bowl, a miniature wall-whisper flower made of mycelium appeared for the first time.
There were no words on the petals; they simply nodded gently and slowly in the morning breeze toward Lin Yi.
It's as if it's saying: I received it.
As dawn broke, Lin Yi pushed open the door.
The familiar aroma of soy milk filled the air; the city had changed its backdrop for him without his knowledge.
He walked towards the alley entrance, towards that familiar morning, and for the first time, a near-absurd premonition arose in his heart—today, he would hear some completely different voices.
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