Chapter 151: Dam and the Wooden Boat

The convoy had left Iron Anvil Town for less than half an hour when the emergency communication cut in.

It wasn't voice, but a string of urgent Morse code—a method only old-school signalmen from before the disaster would use. Han Qing sat up straight in the passenger seat, his fingers tapping rapidly on his knee to decode, his face growing darker.

"Reservoir Refuge." He turned to Su Yu, "The dam shows unknown erosion, the water level rising two centimeters per minute; if the dam breaks……the five small settlements downstream will be wiped out."

"Distance?" Su Yu asked, her eyes not leaving the road ahead.

"Twenty kilometers; going around would take four extra hours." Old Zhao leaned forward from the back seat, spreading out a map, "But if we go straight through the Old City District——"

"The Old City District is a heavily spore-contaminated zone." Aili interjected, she was checking the infection medicine stock in the medical kit, "Last time the reconnaissance team went in, six people entered, three came out, two went mad."

Silence fell in the car for three seconds.

Then Su Yu said: "Go ahead."

"Su Engineer——" Han Qing wanted to say something.

"Chen Mo once said, the road is made by walking, not by calculating." Su Yu's voice was calm, but she gripped the steering wheel tightly, "And the people at the reservoir……Chen Mo taught them how to repair the dam."

Han Qing staggered for a moment. A memory fragment from seven years ago surfaced: in the spring of the second year after the disaster, the reservoir dam first showed a crack; it was Chen Mo who, with thirty volunteers, used scrap car frames and fast-setting concrete to patch it up. At that time, Chen Mo stood guard on the dam for three days and three nights; when he came down, his feet were so swollen he couldn't get his shoes on.

"Go straight." Han Qing pressed the communication button, "Everyone, check your gas masks, replace the spore filters with new ones. Old Zhao, turn your 'Emotion Stabilizer' up to maximum—we're going to force our way through the Old City."

The Old City District resembled a giant's graveyard.

Collapsed skyscrapers leaned against each other, forming eerie triangular gaps. The streets were covered in a sticky purple fungal mat, on which fist-sized spore pods bulged regularly; as the convoy passed, those pods began to throb faintly.

Li Xiaofeng sat in the second vehicle, looking outside through the window. He suddenly said, "Dad, didn't there used to be a movie theater here?"

Old Zhao's hand on the steering wheel twitched: "How do you know?"

"I… I think I remember." Li Xiaofeng frowned, straining to catch the image flashing in his mind, "Red neon lights, the smell of popcorn at the entrance, you took me to see an animated film……Mom was there too."

Old Zhao didn't speak. But his eye sockets reddened—his son's memory recovery came in fits and starts; each fragment surfacing felt like a light cut on the heart, not fatal but painfully real.

Just then, Su Yu's chest scar suddenly burned hot.

It wasn't a warning, but some kind of……resonance. She slammed the brakes, looking through the windshield at a half-collapsed apartment building to the right. On a balcony on the third floor, a pot of withered cactus suddenly began to grow—not normal growth, but a frenzy, sprouting new branches, flowering, and bearing fruit within five seconds, then all the fruits exploded simultaneously, releasing golden spores.

Those spores formed a line of flashing characters in the air:

"Hurry up."

The handwriting was Chen Mo's.

As the convoy burst out of the Old City District, everyone let out a breath of relief.

But Su Yu's face grew even graver—because the plant network conveyed a new perception: the cactus's frenzied growth wasn't Chen Mo urging us on; rather, his consciousness fragments were being forcibly extracted. Each flash of those golden spores increased the transparency of Chen Mo's body in the Southern Wasteland by a notch.

"He's using his own accelerated collapse as a price to point the way for us." Su Yu whispered, saying this only for Han Qing to hear.

Han Qing's Adam's apple rolled once; this tough captain finally said, "Then we must not let him down even more."

When the reservoir came into view, the situation was worse than imagined.

The dam wasn't physically damaged—no cracks, no leaks, even the concrete surface looked intact. Yet the water level was indeed rising, and in a strange way: the water surface seemed lifted from below by an invisible hand, forming a perfect arc-shaped bulge. The highest point of the bulge was less than a meter from the dam's crest.

A dozen or so refuge residents stood on the dam, trying to raise it with sandbags, but the sandbags thrown down were bounced back by an invisible force, falling back to the shore.

An elderly man with white hair came forward. He wore mud-stained work pants, his right hand missing three fingers—those had been severed by a machine seven years ago during an emergency pump repair.

"Captain Han." The old man's voice hoarse, "The dam……the dam won't let us repair it."

Su Yu walked to the dam's edge, squatted, and pressed her hand against the concrete. The sensation was icy cold, but a second later it turned into a sting—not physical pain, but an emotional sting. She "saw": inside the dam, countless tiny "voids" were gnawing at the emotional residue within the concrete.

The reason this dam has stood for seven years isn't just sturdy materials; it's also because of the builders' faith, the Guardians' resolve, and Chen Mo's oath back then—"The dam stands as long as we do"—these emotional energies seeped into the concrete, becoming the dam's "soul." Now, the "voids" are devouring that soul.

"What do you usually do on the dam?" Su Yu turned to ask the old man.

The old man blinked: "Patch things up, inspect cracks, sometimes……in the evenings we sit here and chat."

"Talk about what?"

"Talk about pre-disaster times, about lost loved ones, about wanting to fish once the water clears, about……" the old man's voice dropped, "about how Engineer Chen taught us back then, laying brick by brick."

Su Yu rose to her feet, her chest scar beginning to glow. She wasn't trying to fight the "voids," but to feed them—but not with Chen Mo's memory fragments, rather with fresh, newly generated emotional energy.

She looked at the residents still struggling to toss sandbags onto the dam: "Everyone, stop now. Sit in a circle, holding hands."

The people were puzzled, but they did as instructed.

Su Yu sat in the center of the circle, closed her eyes. She guided the plant network to extend outward—not a physical extension, but a frequency extension. Then she began to speak, her voice soft, but transmitted through the network to each person's ears:

"Think back to when you first came to the reservoir."

"Think about who you've saved here, or who saved you."

"Think about the three days Chen Mo spent repairing the dam, every encouraging word he said."

"Think about why you've held out here for seven years—not just to stay alive, but to live like a 'human'."

The dam began to vibrate.

It wasn't a vibration heralding collapse, but a kind of……awakening tremor. Faint golden patterns appeared on the concrete surface—the emotional energy that had seeped in over seven years, awakened by Su Yu's resonance. These patterns spread like veins through the dam's interior; wherever they reached, the "voids" were repelled, filled, and transformed.

The old man suddenly stood up, walked to the dam's edge, and with his right hand—now only two fingers—lightly tapped the concrete: "Old partner, hold on. We agreed to watch the reservoir raise fish."

The arc-shaped bulge on the water surface began to descend.

One inch, two inches, half a meter.

When the water level returned to normal, everyone on the dam collapsed to the ground, not from exhaustion but from the emptiness after emotional release.

The old man walked up to Su Yu, said nothing, and gave a deep bow. Then he pulled from his pocket a small object wrapped in waterproof cloth—a handcrafted wooden boat, palm-sized, with its cabin engraved: "For Uncle Chen Mo's boat."

"My granddaughter made it." The old man said, his hand trembling, "She said that when Chen Uncle wakes up, she'd take him boating on the reservoir. But last winter……she didn't make it through."

Su Yu took the small wooden boat. Its hull was warm, carrying the residual body heat of the child—that was the proof the old man had kept close to his chest all along.

"The Reservoir Refuge voluntarily joins the Symbiosis Alliance." The old man straightened his back, his voice regaining strength, "But we have conditions: first, help us plant water-purifying vegetation in the reservoir; second, when Chen Mo awakens, bring him to see the dam—and this boat."

He paused, then added: "Third, tell those 'voids' that our human dam……they can't gnaw at it even if starved to death."

A geometric voice came through the communicator, this time with a rare undulation: "The plant network in the reservoir zone is now linked. Coverage 9.1%. At the same time……Chen Mo's bodily transparency has reached his chest. There are still 62 hours until total collapse."

Su Yu clenched the small wooden boat, gazing southward.

At the horizon, the cloud layer split open a slit; the sunset's light poured down like bleeding. In that blood-colored glow, she faintly saw the direction of the third community—the Mining Settlement—where a plume of distress smoke rose.

It's not one thread, it's three threads.

This is the most urgent signal they agreed upon: "The intangible thing has arrived outside the door."