The city's heartbeat was visualized on Lin Yi's monitor as a series of wildly pounding peaks.
His fingertips were icy cold, and his pupils reflected the data stream. An absurd yet incredibly real conclusion took shape in his mind: the frequency of resin secretion from this mysterious plant called "Wheat Seedling" was completely synchronized with the collective emotional fluctuations of the entire city at night.
Whenever major negative news is released, or social anxiety events ferment online, the curve on the screen will rise sharply, like a near-death struggle on an electrocardiogram, and the resin secretion of the plant at the water pump station will also surge accordingly.
This is no coincidence.
Lin Yi immediately changed direction and focused his attention on the "sounds" of the city.
He bypassed conventional databases and directly hacked into the city's public area surveillance audio system, filtering and screening massive amounts of sound wave data mixed with traffic, wind noise, and crowd noise.
What he was looking for was not sound, but the gaps in sound—that heavy silence born of repression against a backdrop of noise.
Using spectrum analysis, he compared audio data from late nights and sparsely populated areas, and soon made a surprising discovery.
Mai Miao showed almost no reaction to screams, cries, or arguments, but she was extremely sensitive to the heavy breathing of a person in complete silence, or the long silence after hesitating to speak.
"So that's how it is..." Lin Yi muttered to himself, a layer of cold sweat seeping out of his back.
He had always thought the wheat seedlings were absorbing some unknown nutrient from the soil, but now it seems he was completely wrong.
It wasn't eating at all, it was "swallowing"!
Swallow the pain and despair that city dwellers have kept buried deep in their hearts, never uttering a word!
On a full moon night, the cool glow of the moonlight shone through the skylight of the pumping station and fell on a patch of water.
Chu Yao's figure slowly materialized in the moonlight. Barefoot, she silently walked to the wheat seedling that already appeared somewhat eerie.
Her fingertips, as light as butterfly wings, glide across a thick leaf.
"Puff, puff, puff..."
The dewdrops that had condensed on the leaves seemed to be detonated by an invisible force, bursting one by one at the same moment.
The moment each drop of water shatters is like a miniature projector, projecting a brief yet incredibly clear image into the air: a man in a suit in his office late at night, repeatedly tearing up and rewriting his resignation letter, finally burning it to ashes; a couple at opposite ends of a dining table, a divorce agreement between them, the woman silently burning their wedding photo, the firelight illuminating her expressionless face; a frail girl on a bench in a hospital corridor, clutching a medical record showing a worsening condition, then smiling as she tucks it into the deepest part of her bag, as if nothing had happened.
Countless fragmented, forcibly forgotten moments flash by within the small pumping station.
Chu Yao lowered her eyes, her voice so soft it sounded like a sigh: "It remembers all the choices that were never spoken."
Lin Yi's deduction was confirmed, but he felt not excitement, but a deeper chill.
This plant is becoming a container for all the unbearable weight of the city.
He acted decisively, and a bold plan took shape in his mind—"silent irrigation."
He ordered a halt to all physical irrigation of the wheat seedlings.
Instead, a special volunteer recruitment program was launched.
Volunteers need no qualifications; they only need to come to this pottery jar every day and sit quietly for ten minutes.
There is only one rule: remain silent and, deep in your heart, recall an "unexpressed emotion" from your life.
On the first day of the plan, a gray-haired veteran arrived.
The wrinkles on his face were like ravines, marks left by time and war.
He was one of the survivors who took refuge in a shelter during the border conflict many years ago.
He sat down in front of the pottery jar as instructed, slowly closed his eyes, and tears glistened in the corners of his cloudy eyes.
He didn't make a sound, but his lips moved silently.
Lin Yi managed to catch a few incoherent syllables through the high-sensitivity microphone; it was a whisper, barely suppressed by all his might, uttered: "...I'm sorry...that...comrade I couldn't hold on to..."
Before the words were even finished, a sudden change occurred!
"Click!"
With a crisp sound, the main stem of the wheat seedling that had been growing quietly suddenly stretched upwards by half an inch!
Then, something even more horrifying happened.
Its roots, buried deep in the pottery jar, seemed to be injected with some kind of violent power, instantly piercing through the thick bottom of the pottery jar, and with an unstoppable momentum, they plunged hard into the cement ground below!
Where the concrete floor was penetrated, streaks of black liquid slowly seeped out, like the blood of the earth.
A peculiar smell filled the air, like rust mixed with aged ink, carrying a sense of decay and heavy history.
Lin Yi endured the discomfort and quickly took a sample.
The test results sent chills down his spine—the black liquid contained high concentrations of memory protein fragments, and some of its chemical structures bore a striking resemblance to the cerebrospinal fluid samples of wartime trauma survivors in his database!
A terrifying thought struck him: the roots of the wheat seedlings were not connecting with the soil, but with fragments of past memories buried deep underground in the city!
An invisible neural network, composed of the regrets, sorrows, and unspoken words of countless people, is being awakened by this plant!
At that moment, the whispers of the ley lines transmitted by Ivan through the encrypted line became more urgent than ever before, like the gasps of a dying man: "It's looking for... a well! Quick! It's looking for a well!"
well?
Lin Yi was startled and immediately rushed to the control panel, pulling up the old version of the city's planning map.
He quickly investigated all underground facilities marked "abandoned" or "discontinued," eventually narrowing down the targets to three locations.
Those were abandoned air-raid shelters built during a special period decades ago, and in folk legends they are called "Wells of Memory".
He personally led the team and chose the deepest and most remote spot for exploration.
The air-raid shelter was cold and damp, and the beam of a flashlight moved across the mottled walls.
Lin Yi stopped at the deepest part of the air-raid shelter.
There is a row of blurry engravings on the wall.
He leaned closer and his heart skipped a beat—the handwriting on the scratches was exactly the same as the letter he had found in the crevice of the dilapidated house!
With trembling hands, he carefully applied a drop of resin, freshly collected from the wheat seedlings, from the sample tube he carried with him to the row of indentations.
A miracle happened.
The moment the resin touched the grooves, the entire cold wall seemed to come alive, and began to seep out fine water droplets.
The water droplets gathered more and more, eventually coalescing into a line of words that were clearly displayed before them:
"We didn't die, but we can't go back."
That evening, the entire pumping station area suddenly lost power.
The moment the backup power came on, the monitoring footage showed everyone gasping in shock.
In the video, the roots of wheat seedlings that were originally rooted in the cement ground are now wriggling violently underground, causing cracks to appear in the ground.
The earthenware jar that had held it for so long shattered into pieces amidst a series of sharp cracking sounds.
The entire wheat seedling seemed to have its own will, slowly and steadily leaning towards the direction of the air-raid shelter.
Lin Yi rushed to the scene, squatted down without hesitation, and placed his palm on the ever-widening crack in the ground.
In an instant, an indescribable torrent of information surged into his mind like a flood bursting its banks!
Those were fragments of countless memories—a mother waving goodbye while crying in front of the platform, a boy who hid his love letter in a tree hole and never took it out, an old woman who lit a lonely lamp every night for her son who would never return… Countless suppressed, forgotten “silences” belonging to this city, at this moment, poured into his consciousness through that crack!
Lin Yi suddenly opened his eyes, his pupils flashing with shock and understanding. He whispered to the horrified crowd around him, "It doesn't want to go back... it wants to bring them out!"
Before he finished speaking, the ground beneath his hands cracked open again with a loud "boom"!
A wisp of white steam, carrying a rich wheat aroma, slowly rose from the bottomless crack, twisting and swirling in the cool moonlight.
In the mist, Chu Yao's figure appeared and disappeared, and her body began to tremble slightly and imperceptibly with the rising steam.
Her gaze pierced through the thin mist, fixed on the crack, as if awaiting an ancient promise about to break through the earth's core.
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