The silence lasted for three whole days.
For the past three days, the air around the world seemed to have frozen, and every breath felt as heavy as lead.
The global wave of awakening brought about by Long Wu's death was like a high fever; what it left behind for humanity after it subsided was endless weakness and confusion.
With heroes gone, what lies ahead?
On the morning of the third day, the piercing alarm shattered the tranquility of Lin Yi's command room.
Almost simultaneously, emergency reports came from the seven newly rebuilt cities of the Awakened Ones, which had just emerged from the ruins.
"Report! In Sector A-3, an eight-year-old boy has been found sleepwalking, with golden dragon flames erupting from his body, drawing ancient runes with his bare hands in the center of the street!"
"Report! In Sector C-5, a ten-year-old girl is in the same situation, with identical dragonfire patterns!"
"Urgent! In Sector E-2, two teenagers; in Sector F-1, three children... They... they are drawing the same array! My God, they are thousands of kilometers apart, yet they are moving as if they are in the same room, their movements perfectly synchronized!"
Holographic projections unfolded before Lin Yi, showing twelve young figures with their eyes closed and solemn expressions, golden dragon flames flowing across their bodies as if they were alive.
They didn't communicate with each other at all, and weren't even aware of each other's existence, yet they worked together with a tacit understanding that transcended the laws of physics to complete a huge and complex protective array.
Every node of that array perfectly coincided with the battlefield coordinates where Long Wu had fought valiantly.
Chu Yao's cold and urgent voice rang out, and her image appeared beside Lin Yi, her face more solemn than ever before: "Data analysis complete. Their mental fluctuations, energy frequencies, and even the burning spectrum of the dragon flames are highly similar to those of Long Wu in the last three minutes before his sacrifice. But this is not a simple copy, Lin Yi, this is something far more terrifying—'Resonance Awakening'!"
She took a deep breath and explained with difficulty, “Long Wu’s sacrifice is more than just an event; it’s like a spiritual totem, imprinted deep within the collective subconscious of awakened people worldwide. The Cleaners… they’ve captured this totem! They’re using this most sublime emotion to mass-reconstruct the ‘Guardian Template,’ attempting to turn us all into Long Wu’s shadows!”
Lin Yi clenched his fist suddenly, his knuckles turning white from the excessive force.
The air in the command room seemed to have been sucked out, leaving only a suffocating sense of oppression.
He closed his eyes, but the last conversation between Long Wu and him before his death involuntarily echoed in his mind.
The man who always had a wide grin and seemed carefree was unusually calm at that moment: "Boss, I'm not some chosen one, nor am I the protagonist of this story. But I'm willing... to burn myself out for those children who need a future."
This statement once ignited hope in humanity worldwide, awakening countless people from despair.
Today, these passionate words have become the sharpest and most insidious key in the hands of the enemy, used to unlock the hearts of everyone who reveres him, and then to distort, infiltrate, and possess them.
Denying Long Wu?
Lin Yi suddenly opened his eyes, his pupils bloodshot.
No, he can't.
To deny this emotion is to deny the awakening of everyone, and to extinguish the last spark of human civilization with one's own hands.
That would be a more complete failure than the physical destruction of the scavengers—a spiritual collapse.
He had to do something.
It's not about destroying the totem, but about separating the concept of "protection" from the image of the five dragons, so that it is no longer an idol to be worshipped, but a spiritual symbol that can be understood, embodied, and practiced in one's own way by anyone!
"Chu Yao, monitor the seventh node. I need some time." Lin Yi's voice was hoarse but extremely firm.
Before he finished speaking, his figure had already disappeared from the command room.
The next instant, he appeared in the deepest part of the Earth—a fissure in the Earth's core.
This is where Ivan rests.
Beneath their feet lay churning, roaring magma, and the air was thick with the scorching heat of sulfur and metal, enough to melt any steel in an instant.
Lin Yi walked as if on flat ground to the edge where the magma was churning most violently.
He extended his finger, a silvery-white light shining from its tip. Using his finger as a brush, he began to carve an extremely complex rune on the scorching rock wall.
With each stroke, the ocean of magma below roared in fury, as if it wanted to devour the mortal who dared to disturb the slumber of the ancient gods.
“Using the Well of Memory as a medium,” Lin Yi’s voice was not loud, but it clearly pierced through the roar of the magma and resounded throughout the entire core space, “I request that the complete life data of the Guardian ‘Long Wu’ be made available to all souls connected to the global network, allowing any soul to access it when needed.”
As the final stroke of the rune was completed, the entire rift in the Earth's core trembled.
An ancient, weary yet incredibly majestic voice echoed from the deepest part of the earth, carrying the heat of molten lava: "Lin Yi, you're playing with fire. Aren't you afraid they'll use this to create another 'god'? A 'god' more perfect, and more dangerous than Long Wu?"
Lin Yi shook his head, his gaze calmly fixed on the boiling lava beneath his feet, as if conversing with an old friend: "Ivan, what I fear is never the creation of gods. What I fear is letting one person bear the hopes of everyone. That weight will crush even the strongest soul, and it will also... become the most fatal weakness."
As soon as he finished speaking, the runes he had carved suddenly shone brightly, and an invisible wave instantly spread across the globe.
At the same time, Chu Yao's voice resounded in every corner of the global Awakened Network: "Urgent announcement, the 'Memory Sharing Ritual' is now being initiated. This is not an order, but an invitation."
Almost instantly, all the online Awakened Ones, whether they were patrolling, building, or resting, felt a gentle but irresistible stream of consciousness flooding into their minds.
There were no grand heroic epics, no dazzling scenes of victory.
What was presented to them were fragments of stream of consciousness edited together by Long Wu throughout his life.
In the scene, when the young Long Wu faced his first invasion by a strange beast, he was so frightened that he hid under the table, trembling and almost wetting his pants.
In his youth, after a failed mission, he looked at the bodies of his comrades and screamed in anguish, wanting to escape all of this and live the life of an ordinary person.
Even after becoming a guardian, he would complain about the arduous training and drink alone late at night because of his uncertainty about the future.
He was not a born hero; he had experienced fear, hesitation, cowardice, and even considered giving up countless times.
But each time, the image eventually freezes.
The image freezes on the complex smile on his face as he sees half a cookie handed to him by a child he rescued from the rubble.
The image freezes on his eyes, glistening with tears, as he watches an elderly couple embrace tightly in a shelter.
The image that appears in his mind before each choice to stay and each choice to charge into battle again is frozen in time—the faces of those "worth protecting".
The stream of consciousness ended with Lin Yi's calm yet powerful voice, as if whispering in everyone's ear:
"He is not a perfect god; he is just an ordinary person who is afraid and suffers. Because of this, each of us can become him."
The ceremony has ended.
The world fell into a long silence.
That night, the twelve "Fire Bearers" awoke from their dreams almost simultaneously in different corners of the world.
The golden flames in their eyes had not yet died out, but they were no longer raging and violent; instead, they had transformed into a calm, burning lake.
In Zone A-3, the eight-year-old boy stood up, walked to the dusty wall, and with his small fingers, wrote stroke by stroke: "I don't want to become Uncle Long Wu. I want to be the first person to save me from the monster."
In Sector C-5, the ten-year-old girl lit the torch in her hand, and golden dragon flames roared to life.
But instead of keeping it for herself, she went to the other ten terrified children and shared her flame with each of them.
Though the flame is small, it is enough to illuminate each other.
She said softly, "Protecting shouldn't be something that only one person has to do."
In the command center, Lin Yi watched these scenes through the monitor screen, and a barely perceptible smile finally appeared on his tightly pursed lips.
He nodded slightly.
However, at that very moment!
"Warning! Energy surge at the seventh node! The Scavengers' attack pattern has changed!" Chu Yao's voice was shrill, almost distorted, filled with horror and disbelief. "They...they've given up on awakening the 'Guardian,' Lin Yi. They're using the memories we just released to reverse the process. They're going to create 'Traitors'!"
On the screen, a new stream of data spread out like a venomous snake.
The Cleaner extracted all of Long Wu's painful, hesitant, and escape-seeking memories, amplified them infinitely, and twisted them into the desperate thoughts that "protecting is painful" and "sacrifice is foolish," which were then precisely injected into the hearts of the most vulnerable and wavering awakened individuals.
They want to tell the world: Look, even your heroes once considered deserting!
Protecting this path was a mistake from the very beginning!
Lin Yi's expression froze instantly, as if frozen solid.
"Chu Yao," he practically spat out the words, "let the Well of Memories release the last image I sealed away."
Chu Yao was suddenly stunned: "But once that video is released, your reputation..."
"Execute the order!" Lin Yi's voice left no room for argument.
He slowly turned around, his back to the screen, and muttered to himself, as if confessing to his fallen comrades, or perhaps declaring to the world:
"True protection also includes...bearing guilt that the world cannot understand."
The next second, a previously unreleased video was forcibly pushed into the consciousness of everyone in the world.
The scene depicts Long Wu's final moments before his departure. The location is Lin Yi's command center.
In the scene, Lin Yi's expression was as cold as ice. He looked at Long Wu and said, word by word, "This mission is a nine-out-of-ten chance of death. No, it's a ten-out-of-ten chance of death. But you are the only one who can detonate the singularity and buy us time. I need you to go."
Long Wu remained silent for a long time. Finally, he revealed his signature carefree smile and gave Lin Yi a crooked military salute: "Roger that, boss."
That's the end of the video.
It was Lin Yi, the supreme commander of all mankind, who personally ordered Long Wu to go to his death.
In an instant, the global online surge of emotions nearly overwhelmed the servers.
Anger, confusion, doubt... countless negative emotions were directed at Lin Yi.
Just then, a boy who had been deeply infected by the "traitor" program, whose eyes were shining brightly with golden light and who was about to lose control, suddenly stared intently at the screen.
The rage and resentment on his face froze in an instant, then, like a glacier collapsing, transformed into endless grief.
"Wow--"
He suddenly knelt down and let out a heart-wrenching cry.
Golden dragon flames surged wildly across his body, seemingly intent on burning him completely.
He didn't look at the cold-blooded Lin Yi in the image, but instead roared with all his might in the direction where Long Wu had sacrificed himself:
"I don't hate you! I don't hate the Commander!!"
"It was me... I wanted to be a hero too!!"
In an instant, the roaring, all-destroying golden dragon flames seemed to be suddenly grabbed by an invisible hand and raged back into his body!
All the violence, pollution, and distortion were purified and refined in that cry from the depths of the soul.
In the end, all the flames surged back to his heart, where they did not extinguish but instead coalesced into a tiny, pure, and immaculate spark, the size of a fingernail, suspended silently.
It was neither contaminated nor out of control.
It simply sat there, burning quietly, waiting for a will that truly belonged to it to awaken it.
Lin Yi slowly closed his eyes, feeling the new spiritual fluctuations emanating from the spark.
That was a prototype, the embryo of a new power.
But what he didn't know was that at the very moment that first seed was quietly planted amidst despair and enlightenment, another, more expansive and mysterious soil had already begun its slow and irreversible transformation under the imperceptible ripples of time.
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