Chapter 2
◆One: Midnight at Dawn
There was no light at the moment the countdown ended.
Only a single, flickering pulse slowly circulated through the atmosphere.
Humanity waited for twenty-four hours—
Youwang has not given any response.
In the 25th hour,
A sound wave rose from the ground.
All connected implants lost control, projecting the same message:
"Reboot complete. Consciousness circularized."
That was the first clause of the "Dawn Again Agreement".
This means that individual thinking is no longer linear, but rather circular.
Memories can intertwine, and emotions can flow in both directions.
At that very moment, a boy woke up.
He breathed on the roof of the ruins.
His eyes reflected the light, like cracks in the sky.
The monitor remotely recorded that his brainwave frequency was consistent with that of the main nucleus of the psychiatric network.
Code name: Z 01/Zhuang Jing.
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◆Part Two: The School of the Remnants
The remaining humans in the consensus domain are rebuilding;
Schools have become the most stable institutions.
The "Legacy Academy" teaches children to communicate using gestures.
The language has not yet been fully unbanned by the trusted system.
The boy (people called him Sora) was an orphan.
He often manages to answer questions that the teacher hasn't actually asked.
The teacher asked, "How did you know what I wanted to ask?"
He simply replied, "I heard the wire."
That thread wasn't sound, but the swirling of thought.
He can "see" other people's trust levels—
They all oscillate between zero and zero, like an undefined decimal point.
One night, he heard a woman's voice coming from behind the wall in the backyard.
"Do you remember how you defined trust when you created the Ghost Web?"
He turned around.
The woman in black stood in the light.
Her left eye gleamed with the cold light of an old-fashioned interface.
The boy was stunned: "Who are you?"
"Xiao Yuke".
"...Observers of the Dawn Protocol."
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◆Part Three: Reunion
Two hundred years ago,
Xiao Yuke's body perished in the collapse of the dream layer.
However, working memory is backed up by the NetEase web;
She drifted on the old layers of the data ocean.
Like a footnote that has not yet been cited.
She gazed into the boy's eyes:
"He lives inside you."
He stared blankly, head bowed.
Two rhythms resonated within his heart—one fast and one slow.
A slow voice said:
"Ke, you are the last person to see my version."
That wasn't his own voice.
It's Zhuang Jing.
Xiao Yuke, trembling, said, "I thought... you had been formatted."
"I left a line of unencrypted code: 'If trust is zero, I will restart.'"
I didn't expect you to still be listening.
He smiled, but his face still held the expression of a young boy.
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◆Four: The Origin of Trust
Xiao Yuke led him to the southern data wasteland.
The first servant of the Dawn Protocol is buried there.
In the heart of the wasteland stands a collapsed record tower.
Seven characters are engraved on it:
"Trust = the act of naming".
She said it was a note left by Ye Jingyi.
She believes that trust is not an emotion, but a language—
When you name someone, you have already trusted in that other's existence.
Zhuang Jing remained silent.
He heard the net humming underground.
--Z 01 Please confirm: Should the trust formula be rebuilt?
He replied, "No. I want to find out who the original namer was."
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◆Five: Zero-Degree Dialogue
Night fell again.
They set up a data projection in front of the abandoned tower.
Ancient historical footage appeared on the screen—
The sound wave sample from the first human vocalization.
<—Mother—>
Xiao Yuke held her breath.
The formula for generating a random web is:
Trust = Naming × Memory
"Based on the equation, the unit of trust is the 'weight of the name'."
Zhuang Jing seemed to be deep in thought.
"If all names were deleted, the world would be free of trust."
He turned to Xiao Yuke:
Would you like me to give you a new name?
She nodded.
He closed his eyes.
The vibrations of ancient vowels resonated in my ears.
Dreams and reality overlap once again.
"My name is Li Ke."
The continuation of dawn.
The net instantly unleashed a chain of data waves.
Trust index = 0.0001.
After two centuries of zero, humanity has finally seen a slight change.
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◆Six: The Call of the Naming Person
Changes are monitored across the entire domain.
The Silent Council urgently ordered a lockdown.
They fear that a resurgence of "trust" could cause dreams to once again overwhelm the world.
But it was too late.
Every child born after a "white noise day"
I began to hear thousands of unnamed voices in my mind.
That was the echo of a deleted dream.
GhostNet announced:
"Naming activity detected. Reboot phase 1 begins."
The entire sky turned into data snow.
People looked up and saw their names fall from the clouds and melt away.
Xiao Yuke grasped the boy's hand: "Do you know what this means?"
"We are being asked once again—to define trust."
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◆Seven: The Return of Language
The broadcast tower in the United Floating City has been relit.
Within 72 hours, all equipment on the ground was forcibly connected.
A sound (a mixture of Zhuang Jing's voice, the boy's voice, and the Ghostly Net's voice) played through the clouds:
If the world falls silent because of disbelief
Let's break the silence with naming.
"I call you—human."
I call this planet home.
I call this reboot—the Era of Li Ke.
Each voice message slightly increases the trust level.
0.0001→0.3→1.0.
At midnight, the first dream was born again.
That was a child's dream of being called by his full name.
The Ghost Web records: "Trust reconstruction 1% complete."
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◆Eight: Epilogue - The Naming Person Returns to His Place
Seven days after the restart.
Xiao Yuke (Li Ke) left her handprint in front of the data tower.
She understood that the power of naming would gradually spread.
And awaken more dreamers who have been sealed away.
Zhuang Jing said to her:
Trust is not about believing in anyone.
Instead, it allows the other person to exist within your language.
She smiled: "Then do you still believe in yourself?"
I named myself "Question".
She was stunned.
He turned and walked into the shimmering net of light—
To return one's name to the world.
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End of Chapter Two: The Naming Person
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