Chapter 141: The Beginning of the Net

Su Yu woke in the morning light; the pain from her chest scar had faded, replaced by a strange sense of fullness—as if parched soil had soaked up spring rain, or an empty house had lit a stove. She sat up and looked at the "Listening Speech" flower on the windowsill. The little white flower turned slightly toward her in the morning light, and the dew on its petals shimmered with seven colors.

In True Knowledge Vision, the energy thread linking the camp's plants was still there, faint but steady. What surprised her more was that the thread wasn't a one-way outflow from her; it flowed both ways—her energy went to the plants, and the plants fed back a gentler, more basic energy—not Stardust, but pure vitality, like the earth's own breath.

"You're helping me recover." she whispered to the flower.

The petals swayed lightly, as if nodding.

At breakfast, Aili stared at Su Yu's face for a while: "Your complexion has improved a lot. Did you sleep well last night?"

"It's not just that I slept well." Su Yu sipped her porridge, "The 'Listening Speech' flower... it's helping me."

"Plant healing?" Aili mused, "In theory, if plants can transform spores, perhaps they could also regulate the human body. But we need data to support that—"

"It's not treatment, it's companionship." Su Yu corrected, "Like someone holding your hand without speaking, yet you feel much better."

Aili blinked, then laughed: "In the apocalypse, we're actually studying the psychological support effect of plants."

"Maybe this is the most important support." Su Yu looked toward the cafeteria window; Xiao Yu was watering her Hope Grass, her little face earnest as if performing a ritual.

In the morning, Su Yu gathered the core team to share her discovery.

"The plant network is bidirectional," she demonstrated in front of the Stardust Cradle—reaching out to touch the "Listening Speech" flower, True Knowledge Vision projected a simple diagram of the energy flow: "I output resonance, they return vitality. More importantly, the plants within the network also support each other. That day of the storm, you saw that the interconnected plants had a lower lodging rate."

Kaiwen recorded the data: "This means…… we could treat the network as a distributed energy system—not relying solely on you to guide it?"

"Yes," Su Yu nodded, "and the network has potential for self‑expansion. Last night I sensed distant plants 'inquiring'—those not yet connected but growing in relatively clean areas."

Li Xiaofeng's eyes lit up: "If wild plants could join the network, Starfire's coverage could expand exponentially! We wouldn't need to plant them one by one—they're already there."

"But we need a bridge," Han Qing said pragmatically, "how do we connect distant wild plants?"

"Use already‑networked plants as relays," Su Yu pointed to the farmland, "for example, sunflowers have well‑developed roots and a wide spread. If a networked sunflower could link with a wild plant ten meters away, that plant could then link farther out…"

"Viral spread," Kaiwen pushed up his glasses, "but we need an initial infection source—a sufficiently strong connection node."

Everyone looked at the "Listening Speech" flower.

This plant, grown from an unknown seed, stood quietly beside the Stardust Cradle, its white flower in the sunlight like a miniature moon.

"It's too special," Aili worried, "we don't know what it is, nor whether overuse would…"

"So let's start with a small‑scale test," Su Yu had already planned, "beginning at the camp's edge, pick a plant that already has a partner relationship, try to have it connect to the nearest wild plant. Monitor the whole process; shut down immediately if anything abnormal occurs."

The test subject was Shitou's sunflower "Little Sun". This sunflower had performed well in the storm; now it stands chest‑high, its flower head formed, though not yet fully open.

Shitou was nervous: "Will Little Sun feel pain?"

"No," Su Yu crouched, meeting the boy's eye level, "just like when you make a new friend and shake hands. If it feels uncomfortable, it will let me know."

"Little Sun can't speak…"

"But it can express itself." Su Yu had Shitou place his hand on the sunflower's stem, "Feel it—if it trembles, its leaves curl, or its flower head droops, tell me."

The test began.

Su Yu guided the network through the "Listening Speech" flower, sending a gentle resonance energy into "Little Sun". In True Knowledge Vision, the sunflower's energy field resembled water brushed by a breeze, rippling outward. The ripples reached a clump of wild grass three meters away—grass that had sprouted from cracks in the rubble after the storm, unnamed but tenaciously alive.

At the moment of contact, the wild grass twitched slightly—not fear, but… surprise? Then its leaves turned faintly toward "Little Sun", as if recognizing it.

The connection was established.

An extremely fine, nearly invisible energy thread formed between them—not a one‑way output from "Little Sun" to the grass, but bidirectional—the grass fed back a more primitive, coarse vitality, like unpolished ore.

"How is it?" Kaiwen stared at the detector.

"The connection is stable," Su Yu said, closing her eyes to focus, "the grass is asking…… 'Who are you?'"

"Do plants ask questions?" Wang Hu doubted.

"It's not language, it's intent." Su Yu explained, "It sensed a different energy pattern, felt curious, was probing. 'Little Sun' replied: 'Friend'."

Shitou suddenly spoke: "Little Sun says… the wild grass is very lonely. It's been growing there a long time, with only the wind to talk to."

Everyone looked at the little boy. Shitou blushed but insisted, "It's true. Little Sun told me."

"I believe you," Su Yu whispered. In True Knowledge Vision she "saw" the scene Shitou described—not an image, but a feeling: the wild grass growing in the rubble's shadow, facing the gray sky day and night, only occasional breezes bringing distant scents. Lonely, yet persevering.

"Tell Little Sun," she said to Shitou, "ask the grass if it wants to join a larger family—more friends, to watch the sunrise together and share rain."

Shitou closed his eyes, gripping the sunflower's stem with his small hand. A few seconds later he opened his eyes and smiled: "The grass says… good."

The connection strengthened. The energy threads became clearer and more stable. Even more remarkably, through this link Su Yu sensed a faint tremor from far away—an "inquiry" from other plants contacted by the grass's roots, curious about what had happened.

The network was expanding on its own.

"One connection can trigger a chain reaction," Kaiwen quickly calculated, "if each connection point can radiate five meters, theoretically thirty hops could cover the entire camp perimeter…"

"But we need to go slow," Aili warned, "unknown risks. These wild plants might carry unknown spore variants, or have other issues."

"So next," Han Qing said, "we'll run a full check on the connected wild plants. Safety first."

The test results were astonishing.

The connected wild grass showed no spore contamination; instead, a weak purification zone formed around its roots—spore residue concentration in the soil dropped by 15%. Kaiwen sampled and analyzed, discovering the grass's roots secrete a new enzyme similar to, but not identical with, the forget‑me‑not's transforming enzyme.

"It's imitating 'Little Sun'," Kaiwen concluded, "or rather, learning. The plant network isn't just energy sharing—it's knowledge transmission."

"Knowledge?" Makusi frowned, "Do plants have knowledge?"

"Survival knowledge," Su Yu said, "how to purify soil, how to resist disease, how to draw nutrients from barren ground. This knowledge is stored in their genes, in their growth memories; the network lets those memories be shared."

Li Xiaofeng suddenly recalled something: "The image of ancient seed‑sowers transforming—turning into points of light that merge into the forest. Perhaps that's not poetic description but truth: his knowledge and experience became ecological memory, passed down by the plants."

"So what we've awakened…" Su Yu looked at the "Listening Speech" flower, "might not just be the network, but the planet's own ecological system—its 'immune system' and 'memory bank'."

That thought silenced everyone. If true, humanity's role wouldn't be saviors, but… awakeners. It would be like pressing an alarm button to wake a sleeping giant.

In the afternoon, Su Yu rested alone beside the Stardust Cradle. She leaned against its base, closed her eyes, and let her consciousness sink into the plant network.

The feeling had changed. Before she was guiding, like a captain steering a ship; now she was aboard, but the vessel had its own course—the network was growing on its own, slowly but firmly outward. Each new connection was like lighting a small lamp on a dark map.

She "saw" the camp panorama: the core was the "Listening Speech" flower and the Stardust plants, like a sun; then came over twenty partner plants, like planets; next, the wild grass linked via "Little Sun", like satellites; farther out, faint, twinkling points of light appeared—those the network sensed but had not yet connected to, other life.

One of those points of light shone especially bright, in the direction of… the Mine Community.

Su Yu focused her consciousness and "inquired" toward that direction—not language, but pure presence: I am here; are you too?

A few seconds later came the reply—faint but clear. Not a plant, but… a person? No, it was a blend of human and plant sensation—the people in Zhao Tieshan Community who had already formed plant‑partner bonds.

Lin Xiu's jasmine? Or Xiao Yue's forget-me-nots?

She "asked" again, this time with the characteristic frequency of the "listening-speech" flower.

The response grew stronger. She recognized it—it was Xiao Yue. The girl who had once been on the brink of death was now fully recovered, responsible for tending all the forget-me-nots in the community. She was watering a flower, feeling a distant call, and instinctively reached out to touch the petals.

Through the flowers, through the soil, through those invisible root networks, an energy connection was established between the two communities.

It was not communication, but something more fundamental than communication: knowing each other existed, knowing each other was safe, knowing that on this wasteland, more than one place was holding on.

Su Yu opened her eyes, tears sliding down.

"Commander Zhao," she said over the communicator, voice choking, "How are the forget-me-nots over there…?"

Zhao Tieshan's voice came through, sounding confused: "Doing fine, what's up?"

"Nothing," Su Yu wiped her tears, "I just wanted to tell you, we saw it. We saw you there, we saw the flowers blooming."

A brief silence. Then Zhao Tieshan laughed, that laugh coming through the airwaves, rough but warm:

"We saw you too."

In the evening, Su Yu told the team the test results and her experience of the long-distance connection.

"Two communities have established an energy connection through the plant network." Kaiwen marked it on the star map, "Fifteen kilometers apart, with a heavily polluted zone in between, but the connection detours around the pollution, traveling along relatively clean soil and plant roots."

"What does that mean?" Han Qing asked.

"It means the Starfire network might not need continuous physical coverage." Kaiwen pulled up a model, "We can establish 'node communities,' each with its own plant-network core, then through natural links between networks create a hopscotch coverage. That would greatly speed up progress!"

"But Se Lan's requirement is 10% land-area 'coverage,'" Li Xiaofeng reminded, "Does hopscotch count as coverage?"

"Where the network exists, that is coverage." Su Yu said, "And this coverage is more… organic. Not something we imposed, but an order the ecosystem chose to rebuild itself."

Just then, the three-year countdown on the stardust plant's leaves flickered.

It wasn't a malfunction; it was receiving new information. A line of text appeared:

【Se Lan Observation Station Update: Detected a new ecological network formation pattern. Evaluating whether it conforms to the "Starfire Network" definition.】

【During the evaluation, the countdown is paused. Estimated evaluation time: 72 hours.】

The countdown numbers froze at 【32 months 11 days 07 hours】.

The meeting room fell dead silent.

"They've noticed…" Kaiwen murmured.

"And they didn't outright deny it." Su Yu stared at the line, '"Evaluating whether it conforms to the definition"—that shows our approach exceeds their preset template.'

"What if the evaluation says it doesn't conform?" Wang Hu asked.

"Then we'll use these seventy-two hours to make them understand why it does conform." Su Yu stood up, eyes firm, "Expand the test range. Connect more communities, make the network clearer, impossible to ignore."

"That's too risky," Han Qing objected, "If Se Lan sees this as a provocation—"

"They've already given an evaluation period, not direct punishment." Su Yu said, "That shows they're also learning, adjusting their model. All we need to do is… provide more data."

She looked out the window. The sunset painted the sky orange-red. The "listening-speech" flowers glowed faintly in the twilight, as if waiting for the night's stars.

"Three years ago, Se Lan believed efficiency was supreme." Su Yu whispered, "Now we're showing them there's another kind of efficiency, called 'the resilience of life.'"

"And there's another kind of network," Xiao Yu stood in the doorway holding her hope grass, "called 'We are all friends.'"

The little girl walked in, placed the hope grass on the table. The leaves unfurled in the sunset, the white blossoms nodding.

Everyone looked at that grass, at Su Yu, at each other.

Seventy-two hours.

To let Se Lan see, the web of life has already begun to be woven.