The owner of that voice stood quietly in the shadows not far away, his crisp uniform outlining a cold, hard silhouette in the dim light.
He didn't make a move, nor did he show the slightest hostility. He simply stared intently at the streaks of light that appeared out of nowhere and flowed on their own in the city with an almost dissecting gaze.
Lin Yi's heart was as calm as still water.
In the instant he merged with the will of the well, he felt not a surge of power, but an unprecedented extension.
His consciousness was no longer confined to this body, but transformed into the pulse of the city, each heartbeat resonating with countless memories.
The chief executive of the regulatory agency, the man who considered him a major threat, finally revealed a mixture of shock and bewilderment in his presence for the first time.
The iron-fisted order he believed in and relied on appeared so fragile and vulnerable in the face of this gentle yet firm light.
In the end, the man remained silent, giving Lin Yi a deep look with an indescribable complexity in his eyes, as if he were looking at a monster or an incomprehensible future.
He turned and disappeared into the darkness without hesitation, even more silent than when he arrived.
The threat was gone, but Lin Yi's attention was no longer on him.
He closed his eyes and felt the changes in the city.
He no longer needed to bother lighting the light path; whenever someone confided a memory to the lamp wick in any quiet lamp station in any corner of the city, the earth's veins deep within the city would tremble slightly.
Immediately afterwards, countless faint wisps of light emerged from beneath the narrator's feet, scattering like dandelion seeds, automatically searching for locations related to this memory, connecting to form naturally formed paths.
Beneath his feet, the malt seed that once carried all hope was silently sinking deep into the earth, intertwining with the roots of those ancient wall-language plants, and eventually merging into one.
Ivan's ethereal, intermittent voice echoed in his mind, tinged with a sigh of relief: "...The well...no longer relies on...the Watchers...it...it has begun...to breathe on its own..."
To verify this astonishing change, Lin Yi conducted a daring test.
He completely severed his connection with the well, left the city as an ordinary person, and went to the wilderness.
For three whole days, he felt like he was sitting on pins and needles.
Three days later, he returned to the city, and the first thing he did was to retrieve the operating data of the optical path.
The result completely stunned him—during the seventy-two hours he was away, the Lighttrace network that covered the entire city remained as stable as ever, without the slightest error.
The only anomaly is that every midnight, the entire optical network experiences an extremely brief fluctuation that is almost impossible for instruments to detect, lasting exactly 0.3 seconds.
Lin Yi's fingertips instantly turned icy cold.
0.3 seconds—that rhythm is etched into his memory.
That was the pause between each stroke and lift of the knife when my mother was carving inscriptions on the wall.
It was her unique, loving breath.
This tiny ripple is the well signaling to him, in a mother's way, that she is safe.
Even more surprising discoveries followed.
He noticed a strange change in the brightness distribution of the light paths: the light paths above the thirty-seven sites that recorded the city's glorious history and tragic sacrifices were slowly darkening.
Conversely, in newly developed residential areas, bustling schools, and the most vibrant vegetable markets in the early morning—places brimming with life—the light rays are becoming increasingly thick and bright, as bright as day.
Are memories shifting? No, it's the source of those memories that's changing!
He immediately accessed the city's surveillance footage.
The scenes in the video brought tears to his eyes.
On their way home from school, a group of children were carefully sticking their homemade solar-powered lights into the dirt by the roadside. A girl with pigtails said in a childish voice, "We're lighting the way home for my grandparents in heaven so they won't get lost." In a corner of the old town, a young couple tied a glowing fluorescent ribbon to a mottled wall, with the words "We met here, we remember you" written in chalk next to it.
Lin Yi stood in front of the control panel for a long time, his heart burning with emotion.
He finally understood.
The so-called "return journey" has quietly undergone an iteration.
It no longer solemnly commemorates those great sacrifices, but gently continues the most vivid and warmest memories of every ordinary person's daily life.
While monuments to heroes are eternal, it is the everyday life of cooking and cleaning that keeps the wellspring of memory flowing.
To prevent these newly formed, fragile memories from becoming overly reliant on real-world light sources, and also to verify his hypothesis, Lin Yi made an even bolder decision—he was going to conduct a "night without lights" experiment.
The order was issued that all the lights at the city's designated "silent stations" be turned off for seven days.
On the first day of the experiment, the city was plunged into unprecedented darkness, and the light trace network was reduced by 90%, almost disappearing.
On the second and third days, the situation worsened, and a sense of panic and unease began to spread throughout the city.
On the fourth night, a miracle occurred.
As the bright moon rises high in the sky, its cool moonlight bathes the earth, and those nearly extinguished wisps of light reappear under the moonlight!
They no longer rely on the silent light stations, but are projected directly from the windows of residential buildings, converging into streams that flow over the streets.
They are the longings of individual families, the whispers in bedtime stories, and the calls to loved ones in dreams; they spontaneously become new lights.
On the fifth night, the changes became even more dramatic.
The city's public lighting system seemed to sense the intense emotional fluctuations permeating the air. The streetlights began to adjust their brightness automatically, and in areas where people's longing was most concentrated, they would instantly brighten, with beams of light intertwining to form temporary light paths, guiding those lost memories.
Ivan's voice rang out again, this time filled with awe and relief: "...Light...it has learned...to borrow from the human world...fireworks..."
Lin Yi knew that his era was coming to an end.
He was no longer the sole, indispensable lamplighter.
He came to the wheat field on the edge of the city and buried the rusty ear of wheat, which symbolized his identity as a watchman, deep into the soil.
He erected a blank stone tablet by the field, with only a line of small characters carved on it in the oldest wall language: "A resting place for guides."
After doing all this, he returned to the community as an ordinary community mentor.
He formed a young "memory patrol team" and instead of teaching them how to ignite the light path, he taught them how to listen and how to feel.
He taught them to identify the emotions represented by the colors of different filaments, and to determine the most pressing needs of the memory.
A vibrant young student once asked him, puzzled, "Teacher, the world is so big, how do we know who needs to be remembered?"
Lin Yi smiled, pointed to his heart, and answered softly, "When you're walking down the street and suddenly think of someone without warning—whether it's a family member, a friend, or a stranger you've only met once—don't doubt it. That's light knocking on your door, telling you that someone needs you."
It was another quiet night. Lin Yi was on patrol when Ivan's voice suddenly rang in his mind, so faint that it seemed as if it might dissipate in the wind at any moment.
"...The Watchers...should...take a break..."
"...The well...has its own...heartbeat..."
"...People...have their own...eyes..."
Lin Yi's heart tightened, and he rushed towards the city center like a madman, towards the ancient well.
When he arrived at the well, everything had returned to calm.
The lake surface was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the starry sky.
The flame that had burned eternally for thousands of years atop the massive stone pillar standing in the center of the well was slowly and gently dying out.
The last wisp of flame flickered, turning into a dazzling ember, detaching from the stone pillar and hovering in the air.
Lin Yi subconsciously stretched out his hands.
The ember, as if it had a life of its own, floated lightly into his palm.
The scorching heat vanished instantly, leaving behind a completely transparent pebble. Inside the pebble, it seemed as if a faint heart was pulsating steadily, beat by beat.
Ivan's last whisper seemed to ring right next to his ear, carrying an endless weariness and relief.
"...Next time...you hear the earth's veins...booming again..."
"...That is...I was listening to you...lead the way..."
As soon as he finished speaking, the pebble in Lin Yi's palm suddenly sank, piercing through his hand and falling straight into the well water below, instantly disappearing into the ground without a sound.
Seven days later.
Lin Yi carried a shopping basket and strolled leisurely through the morning market, enjoying the long-lost tranquility.
A familiar stall owner, an older woman, called out to him warmly and mysteriously handed him a handful of freshly picked malt: "Teacher Lin, here you go! My son dreamt last night about an auntie in an old gown, and he insisted that I give this to you personally today, no matter what."
Lin Yi took the handful of fresh malt, and a warm feeling welled up in his heart.
He was about to express his gratitude when his gaze was drawn to the roots of the malt.
There, a small blue porcelain shard, about the size of half a fingernail, was wrapped around it. The glaze was antique, and the edges were cracked irregularly.
That evening, a new wall-flowering plant sprouted from the soil under his window.
Unlike before, the silver veins that flow through it are no longer fragmented memories, but new and complete nursery rhymes.
One of the tunes was the one my mother used to hum most often when she was alive.
Lin Yi stood by the window, gazing at the myriad lights that spontaneously lit up throughout the city. They resembled a galaxy on the ground, gentle yet resolute.
He murmured softly, as if speaking to himself, yet also as if addressing the entire world:
"It turns out I wasn't the one lighting the lamp... it was the light that finally learned to find people on its own."
He looked down and gazed once more at the malt wrapped with blue porcelain shards in his hand.
The porcelain shard was cold to the touch, a stark contrast to the warm air around him.
Just as he was about to insert the malt into the vase, the broken piece of porcelain suddenly vibrated almost imperceptibly, and a strange chill ran from his palm straight to his brain.
He paused, his gaze fixed intently on the porcelain shard.
Instead of going home, he gripped the handful of malt, turned around, pushed open the door, and strode off in the exact opposite direction from home—towards the abandoned old ceramics factory area on the very edge of the city.
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