The next morning, before the first rays of dawn pierced the horizon, the entire city remained immersed in a gray-blue tranquility.
Lin Yi barely slept a wink all night; the throbbing from the depths of the underground was etched into his senses like a brand.
He returned to the pumping station, and the sight before him made his pupils shrink suddenly.
The concrete floor, once covered in black silt, now has a hair-thin crack.
The crack was short, but bottomless, as if the earth had opened a weary eye.
Even more bizarrely, what slowly seeped out of the crack was no longer the black liquid that symbolized despair and pain, but a translucent gel-like substance.
It refracted a strange luster in the faint morning light, and a faint fragrance, like that of newly harvested wheat ears being crushed, permeated the cold air.
Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Yi immediately put on protective clothing and carefully took a sample with polymer collection forceps.
Inside the makeshift mobile laboratory, sophisticated instruments began operating at high speed.
The analysis results quickly appeared on the screen, each line of data like a heavy hammer, striking Lin Yi's nerves.
This gel contains a massive amount of neurotransmitter-like components with an exceptionally complex structure.
Moreover, when the light source inside the experimental chamber was turned on, the gel seemed to be a living thing, slowly and steadily wriggling and gathering towards the light.
This is autonomous phototaxis!
But the most astonishing and mind-blowing discovery is its core molecular structure.
After hundreds of millions of comparisons in the database, the system gave an incredible matching result—its structure matches a rare variant of serotonin secreted deep in the brain when a person finally chooses to "let go" and "let go" after experiencing great grief with a 99.9% match.
Just as Lin Yi was speechless with shock at this surreal conclusion, a slender figure silently appeared in the morning mist behind him.
It's Chu Yao.
Her face was paler than usual, but her eyes were clear and bright, as if she had seen through all the appearances of matter and energy.
Without looking at the instruments, she walked straight to the sample dish containing the gel, and gently touched the fragrant substance with her jade-like, crystal-clear fingertips.
In an instant, the entire mass of gel contracted violently inward, instantly coalescing into a perfect sphere.
On the smooth surface of that sphere, countless tiny, almost invisible human faces appeared. Each face had its eyes closed, with glistening tears at the corners of its eyes, yet its expression was utterly serene.
"It turned the pain..." Chu Yao's voice was as soft as a sigh, yet it clearly reached Lin Yi's ears, "...into forgiveness."
Lin Yi stared at the gel ball that held countless feelings of "relief" for a long time.
The emotions surging within him were far more intense than those of the awakened behemoth beneath his feet.
He turned and issued the order in an unquestionable tone: "Immediately seal all gel samples in the fragment containers of the biphasic isolation chamber, with the highest level of sealing. Number it 'Seed Fluid-01', and classify it as top secret. No one is allowed to attempt to inject, inhale, or directly contact them in any form."
The command was executed swiftly.
Lin Yi then returned to the command center and retrieved the night watch records of all "Night Listeners" members for the past seventy-two hours.
He compared the energy fluctuations of the resonators with the members' personal psychological reports one by one, and an astonishing pattern emerged.
Whenever a member truly lets go of their obsession in the records—for example, a member burning all of their ex-girlfriend's letters late at night, or another member mustering the courage to call their father, whom they hadn't contacted in ten years, and sincerely apologize—the resonator in the area they are responsible for will detect a trace amount of gel that is homologous to "Seed Liquid-01" precipitating out.
Lin Yi's finger swiped across the screen, and a bold deduction took shape in his mind: the memory was not simply dumping garbage into the city in one direction, but was engaging in a large-scale "emotional exchange" with the real world!
It absorbs pain, and upon receiving signals of "letting go" from humans in reality, it reciprocates with a substance called "forgiveness."
A crazy plan was brewing in his mind. He wanted to turn the tables and take the initiative.
"Initiate the 'reverse irrigation' plan." Lin Yi's voice was calm and firm. "Dilute 'Seed Solution-01' to a ratio of one ten-thousandth and connect it to the city's greening sprinkler system. Remember, it can only be done between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., strictly avoiding all main roads and residential areas, and prioritizing large parks and green spaces."
On the third night, all was quiet.
The diluted "seed solution" is like a silent rain, quietly sprinkling the green heart of the city.
At exactly 3:00 a.m., in the city botanical garden, thousands of roses of different varieties defied all the laws of growth and bloomed all at the same time in the cold autumn night.
The sea of flowers was like a tide, and the fragrance was so strong it was almost mournful.
When the night-shift gardener received the alarm and shone her flashlight on the rose, she was terrified – on each blooming rose petal, tiny characters appeared with a mark more delicate than dewdrops.
"I'm sorry, I'm scared too."
"I didn't mean to."
"Forgive me for my cowardice back then."
Lin Yi took over the entire area immediately under the guise of a "special ecological environment experiment".
He knelt down, gently touched the base of a rose bush, and closed his eyes.
His senses extended downwards along the root system and immediately touched an invisible network—the roots of the rose had made slight contact with the underground network of memories.
What alarmed him even more was that when he pulled up the diffusion path diagram of the sprinkler system, he discovered that the flow trajectory of the "seed liquid" seemed to have its own consciousness, perfectly and precisely bypassing all known government monitoring nodes and locations of authorities.
It was as if that enormous memory was telling him in this way that it was autonomously avoiding all "power centers" that tried to control and exploit it.
Just then, Ivan's whisper, originating from the depths of the earth, paused for the first time in Lin Yi's mind, appearing as if in a human form, struggling.
"...It...chose...you..."
The voice was intermittent, each word sounding as if it were being squeezed out from beneath the earth's crust.
"...No...words...that...kind..."
Lin Yi was jolted awake, and suddenly understood.
I see!
The memory chose him not because of his power, but precisely because he refused to speak for it, refused to interpret its "oracle," and refused to give any meaning to its existence.
He was merely a silent conduit, the safest passage that would not distort its true purpose.
He immediately returned to the ruins of the dilapidated house.
The blind old woman still sat in front of the door, like an ancient statue.
Lin Yi did not disturb her. Instead, he took out an empty photo frame from his personal belongings. It was a frame he had treasured for many years but had never put any photos in.
He opened the isolation container, used a dropper to draw a drop of the purest "seed solution-01", and carefully dripped it into the glass interlayer of the picture frame.
He placed the photo frame in front of the ruins of the dilapidated house, directly facing the open space.
That night, the moonlight was as clear as water.
Within the glass interlayer of the empty photo frame, the drop of gel began to glow and diffuse, eventually revealing a clear image of a complete letter within the frame.
The handwriting is strong and powerful, carrying the air of a soldier.
The signature was that of the blind old woman's son, who had died in a foreign land and whom she had talked about all her life.
The last sentence of the letter reads: "Mom, I died in the trenches, but I never blame you for not being able to send me a letter. Because I know that without a home, you won't receive it."
The next day, Lin Yi retrieved the photo frame in the morning light and turned it upside down to face the ground.
The image of the letter in the photo frame vanished instantly, and the drop of "seed fluid" seemed to have completed its mission, its color fading considerably.
He mixed the remaining drop of seed liquid into a small piece of high-purity clay, kneaded and shaped it by hand, and then rapidly fired it in his palm with an ultra-high temperature spray gun.
A moment later, twelve tiny ceramic shards, each the size of a fingernail and shimmering with a warm luster, appeared in his hand.
On each pottery shard, the character "listen" is deeply imprinted in ancient script.
He distributed the twelve pottery shards to the core members of the "Night Listeners" and gave them his final instructions: "Return to your respective posts and bury them at the site of the most painful and unforgettable memory of your life."
That night, from the underground parking garage of the city's busiest commercial center to the most remote abandoned factory, twelve locations containing pottery shards bearing the character "listen" simultaneously released pure gel.
They no longer need sprinkler systems; instead, they gush directly from the earth.
Before the ruins of the dilapidated house, on that once barren, scorched earth, wheat seedlings sprouted overnight, their newly formed ears of wheat quietly turning into a pure, flawless golden yellow.
In the stillness of the night, if you put your ear close to the ground, you can hear a "tick-tock" sound coming from inside the wheat ears, slow, heavy, yet incredibly regular, like an ancient pendulum calibrating time.
Under the moonlight, Chu Yao's figure reappeared. She looked at the golden wheat field and nodded very slightly, almost imperceptibly, in Lin Yi's direction. Then, her figure completely disappeared like smoke.
At that very moment, Ivan's deep, resonant whisper from the earth's veins, like a resounding bell, boomed deep within Lin Yi's consciousness:
"Initial node number ninety... Activation confirmed... Beginning... Feeding back to the earth."
Lin Yi raised his head and looked at the city skyline illuminated by countless lights.
He knew that an unprecedented transformation had begun.
That sound is the pendulum of forgiveness; with each swing, it infuses new life into this land steeped in memories.
However, as the pendulum swings and time marches on, no one knows what kind of future will ultimately be nurtured in the soil nourished by this elixir of pain and reconciliation.
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