The world's response came faster and was more bizarre than Lin Yi had imagined.
The first day was calm and peaceful.
He only moved around in that small space in the attic, flipping through the old books his mother had left behind about the concept of a network of urban memories, cooking a simple bowl of clear soup noodles, and trimming the few stubborn weeds growing on the windowsill.
The silver veins have disappeared, and they look no different from ordinary weeds.
The same thing happened the next day.
He seemed determined to completely isolate himself from the outside world, using stillness to test the limits of this world.
On the third day, he didn't even cook; he just ate some dry rations.
The whole world seemed to fall into an eerie silence, even the sound of the wind became cautious.
On the morning of the fourth day, just as dawn was breaking, a very faint sound of sand rolling and rubbing woke Lin Yi from his light sleep.
The sound didn't seem like the wind; it sounded more like something was actively paving a road.
He walked to the window, his pupils suddenly contracting.
The winding pebble path downstairs has actually sprouted a brand new side road out of thin air!
The gray-white pebbles seemed to have been carefully arranged by an invisible hand, silently bypassing the doors and windows of other residents, and extending with perfect precision to the foot of his old building.
At the end of the path, we stopped in front of a tightly closed, long-abandoned square drain.
The path constructed of light threads was now faintly glowing, like an arrow poised to be released, its destination the cold iron plate.
It is waiting, waiting for a response.
Without hesitation, Lin Yi walked down from the attic and pushed open the door that had not been opened for three days.
The cold morning breeze brushed against his cheeks. He crouched down, his gaze fixed on the end of the path.
At the point where the light rays converge, a crystal-clear drop of dew slowly seeps out, suspended in mid-air without falling.
He instinctively extended his palm.
Dewdrops fall, bringing a cool touch.
However, when he saw his reflection in the dew, his heart sank.
The reflection was neither the sky nor his own face, but rather the silhouette of him as he peeled an apple against the light, alone by the attic window at dusk yesterday.
Even the curve of the knife blade slicing through the fruit peel is clearly visible.
They are watching. They have been watching.
He took a deep breath and took out a piece of broken wall brick from his pocket.
That is the only remaining memory on the site of my mother's old house, where the faint glow of the flowers that once bloomed on the wall still lingers.
Instead of throwing the fragment into the bottomless drain, he bent down and, with an almost solemn gesture, gently placed it on the edge of the drain's metal plate.
This was a test, and also an exchange.
I'm giving you my most precious memory. How will you treat it?
That night, Lin Yi didn't sleep a wink.
He saw countless mycelia, finer than a hair, like a living silver tide, quietly gushing out from the gaps in the drain.
Instead of projecting and burning the fragments of wall bricks as they would with discarded tools, they gently enveloped them with an indescribable tenderness and then dragged them into the deep underground network of light paths.
He couldn't see what was happening underground, but he could clearly sense that the fragment hadn't been broken down. Instead, it had been embedded in the core of the network directly beneath the main node, as if it had laid an eternal foundation for an invisible, magnificent structure.
The next day, something amazing happened.
The texture of the entire pebble path has changed.
The early risers whispered among themselves, their faces filled with confusion and curiosity.
"Why does this road feel so solid to walk on today?" "Yes, it doesn't hurt my feet anymore, it's soft, like...like stepping on the shoulder of an old friend."
At the same time, at the ruins park on the other side of the city.
As usual, Granny Chen, leaning on her cane, came to visit the wall flowers that were transformed from "upside-down tools".
She keenly noticed that today, in this strange cluster of flowers, all the petals drooped limply, and although the silver veins on the petals were still flowing, they moved as slowly as solidified honey.
A strange feeling of heartache welled up inside me.
She crouched down shakily, stretched out her wrinkled hand, and gently touched one of the plants.
The moment her fingertips touched the petals, a drop of dew slowly seeped from the center of the flower and landed precisely in her palm.
When Granny Chen's cloudy eyes saw the reflection in the dew, they were instantly filled with astonishment and understanding.
The reflection showed Lin Yi sitting alone in the attic for three consecutive days with the doors and windows tightly shut.
Lonely, still, like an isolated island forgotten by the world.
"Sigh," she sighed softly to the flowers, in a voice only she could hear, "you miss him, don't you?"
On the ground beneath her feet, the dormant mycelium seemed to understand her whisper, slowly wriggling and piecing together a few blurry characters on the soil.
The light was dim, yet the words were crystal clear:
We are only complete because he is here.
At that moment, Lin Yi was cooking noodles in the attic.
He discovered a new anomaly.
The flames on the stove were flickering uncontrollably, as if an invisible current was disturbing them.
But the doors and windows were tightly shut, and there wasn't a breath of wind in the attic.
His gaze slowly moved upwards and landed on the potted weed on the windowsill.
Although the silver stripes on the grass blades have disappeared, each leaf is now swaying slightly at an extremely slow frequency that is almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
That rhythm... Lin Yi's heart skipped a beat.
He held his breath.
One second, two seconds, three seconds.
The blades of grass on the windowsill also stopped moving, remaining completely still.
He slowly exhaled.
The blades of grass, too, resumed their slight swaying in perfect sync.
Lin Yi's pupils dilated as a startling conclusion exploded in his mind: this seemingly ordinary weed was no longer a simple plant.
It became a "living interface" between him and the entire city's memory network.
It neither reveals its light nor makes a sound, yet it is constantly "listening" to his vital signs, even keeping in sync with his breathing.
He took a clean, empty bowl, filled it with water, and solemnly placed it on the windowsill, right next to the pot of weeds.
As night fell, ripples appeared in the clear water in the bowl, but not from the wind.
Strands of silvery mycelium silently emerged from the soil in the flowerpot, like living vines, climbing upwards along the smooth bowl wall, eventually intertwining and converging above the water's surface.
The shimmering lights wove together a dynamic, silent image on the water's surface.
The picture shows the curled apple peel that he casually discarded the day before while peeling an apple.
The fruit peel fell to the floor and was blown to the corner by a breeze that slipped in through the crack in the door.
Just then, an almost invisible wisp of fungus emerged from the crack in the floor, carefully wrapping around the piece of fruit peel as if it were the most precious treasure, and slowly dragging it into the dark depths of the crack.
It's like storing a very important relic.
Lin Yi was completely stunned, a complex emotion that was hard to describe swept over him.
They... even the things I casually discarded became souvenirs.
The next morning, the sun rose.
Lin Yi opened the door and, after several days, finally went out again.
The moment his feet stepped onto the pebbly path, something unexpected happened!
The entire path, along with all its branches extending to every corner of the city, was suddenly illuminated by a blinding silver light.
The light filaments, like the bloodlines of a resurrected dragon, pulsated seven times in a powerful and energetic rhythm!
That was in the old days, when the Night Listeners used a signal to mark the highest-level communications—"Perpetuality".
It represents something that never stops and exists forever.
The light illuminated his calm face.
He didn't stop, but walked along the path step by step, whispering in an almost murmuring voice, "I'm not back, I just haven't gone far."
The moment the words fell, the dazzling light that had illuminated the entire city seemed to receive the gentlest comfort, receding like a tide into the ground, and the cobblestone path returned to its simple and unadorned state.
However, that night, when the city's security center monitors were reviewing the footage, they discovered a detail that sent chills down his spine.
From the moment Lin Yi stepped out, the synchronized flow frequency of the silver veins on the leaves of all the wall-talking plants captured by surveillance cameras throughout the city underwent a silent adjustment.
The new frequency is exactly the same as Lin Yi's walking frequency during the day.
The entire city is like a huge, silent student, diligently learning how to breathe at its own pace.
This city is silently etching its presence into every corner of daily life.
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