Chapter 152: Echoes of the Deep Well

The entrance to the Mine Community wasn't a door; it was a downward‑sloping tunnel mouth reinforced with rusted iron rails and sleepers. Three wisps of black smoke rose from the ventilation shaft, but vanished at a height of ten meters above the ground—as if something had wiped them away.

"Air composition is normal, no increase in spore concentration." Kevin stared at the detector, brows furrowed, "but the biological signal…… is chaotic. There's a life response down the well, but the fluctuation pattern is like having a nightmare."

Han Qing had already equipped the descent gear: "I'll lead the team down. Su Engineer, you stay above and keep the network connection——"

"I'm coming with you." Su Yu interrupted him, taking the miner's helmet Old Zhou had lent from the vehicle and fastening it on her head, "The Void is attacking memory. Those miners underground have the strongest occupational memories—how to set supports, how to listen to strata, how to find their way in the dark. If those are eaten……"

She didn't finish, but everyone understood: losing their occupational memory for a miner is tantamount to suicide underground.

Old Zhao inspected the safety rope, then suddenly said, "I've worked in a mine. Twenty‑seven years ago, in Shanxi." He looked at his son, "Xiao Feng, you stay above and handle communications relay."

Li Xiaofeng opened his mouth to argue, but seeing his father's gaze—that firm "listen to me this time"—he finally nodded: "We'll check in every ten minutes. If we go over time……"

"Just follow Plan B." Old Zhao patted his son's shoulder, this time explaining, "Plan B is to blast the entrance shut so nothing from below can come up. Your mother taught me: some doors, once closed, should never be opened again."

The well is deeper than imagined.

After descending fifty meters, the temperature began to rise. Fine droplets seeped from the rock face, looking like black tears under the beam of the headlamp. Old Zhao led the way, his breathing steady—the muscle memory from twenty‑seven years ago awakened, knowing exactly where to step, where to grab, and his body found the rhythm on its own.

"Stop." Su Yu suddenly said.

She hung in mid‑air, hand pressed against the rock wall. The sensation of the stone came through, but what was transmitted wasn't just touch—it was emotion. Fear, despair, and a hint of…… unwillingness.

"They're singing down there." Su Yu closed her eyes, "Not actually singing, but their minds are replaying the same melody over and over."

Han Qing also placed his hand on the wall, having served as a soldier and learned psychological resistance techniques in interrogation: "It's the tune of The Internationale. Taught to miners in pre‑disaster training, they would silently hum it repeatedly when in danger underground to stay awake."

They continued descending.

At a depth of eighty meters, they saw the first miner.

He sat on a pile of coal slag, head bowed, both hands gripping an old water kettle, lips moving but no sound. When the headlamp swept over him, he slowly lifted his head—his eyes were empty, not the emptiness of blindness, but the hollowness after consciousness had been drained.

"Old Sun?" Han Qing recognized him; seven years ago, during the mine area defense battle, this miner had smashed three contamination entities with a pickaxe.

Old Sun gave no reaction. He merely kept going through the motion of drinking, but the kettle was empty.

"His short‑term memory has been eaten." Su Yu crouched, holding her hand just above Old Sun's forehead. She dared not make direct contact—the Void might still linger in his consciousness and could erode her through the touch.

Through the plant network she sensed, the image was fragmented but clear: deep in the well, more than thirty miners formed a circle, using flashlight beams to project onto the rock face like a movie. The projected content was each of their memories—a child's birth, a wife cooking, their first descent into the mine, Chen Mo teaching them to calculate safe blasting with explosives……

And each second that the memory‑light played, the edges began to blur and dissipate. Something intangible was gnawing at those images, devouring them with evident pleasure.

"They're actively sacrificing their memories." Su Yu's voice trembled, "Using memory as bait to hold the Void, buying time to send a distress signal to the outside."

Han Qing slammed his fist into the rock wall: "Stupid! What's left of a person when memory is gone?"

"Someone." Old Zhao suddenly said, pointing at Old Sun's hand gripping the water kettle—the thumb was lightly tapping the kettle's surface. The rhythm: three short, three long, three short.

SOS.

"He still has a sliver of consciousness calling for help." Old Zhao took his own water kettle, unscrewed it, and brought it to Old Sun's lips—not to actually feed him, but to show whatever might still be watching the Void: look, this person is replenishing water, still has survival value, so don't eat him first.

In Old Sun's hollow eyes, a flicker of extremely faint light flashed.

They continued downward.

On a work platform at a depth of one hundred twenty meters, they saw that "Void." It wasn't a solid entity, but a twisted mass of light and shadow, like oil on water, flowing between the rock face and the miners. As it flowed past a miner, that miner would forget one thing——

"What… what's my name again?"

"How old is my son?"

"How deep should the support pillars be driven?"

Su Yu stood at the edge of the platform, her chest scar began to heat up. But this time the sensation was different—a sharp sting, as if something were being sucked out of the scar. She lowered her gaze; the light of the scar was fading.

"Chen Mo?" she whispered.

The answer wasn't sound, but a feeling: a warm force welled up from deep within her scar, flowing along her arm to her fingertips. That force was very familiar—it was the temperature of Chen Mo's hand when he had held hers seven years ago and said, "Don't be afraid."

She understood.

Chen Mo was using his last intact fragment of consciousness to "charge" her.

Su Yu walked toward that twisted mass of light and shadow.

She didn't attack; instead she sat down, sitting among the miners whose memories were being devoured. She closed her eyes and began to "play" her own memories——

Not ordinary memories, but the most precious and painful ones tied to Chen Mo: his grease‑smudged smile when they first met; the moment he shoved her into the shelter as disaster struck; the fine lines at the corners of his eyes when he said, "Light doesn't need to be much"; the shape of his lips as he turned back for the last time before his sacrifice: "Wait for me."

For each memory fragment, she infused it with double the emotional intensity.

The Void was drawn in.

It flowed away from the miners and surged toward Su Yu—like a starving wolf lunging for fresher meat. But Su Yu's memories carried a "thorn": the core of each memory was the belief Chen Mo had left her—"People are not a collection of memories; they are the subjects who choose what to make of their memories."

The more fiercely the Void gnawed, the more clearly that belief turned back on it.

An old miner suddenly stood up.

He walked toward the Void, not to flee but to face it head‑on: "My name is Wang Jianguo! My son is Wang XiaoChuan! He should be starting college this year! Eat me if you want—but old man, I tell you—no matter how much you eat, you'll never become human!"

A second miner stood up.

A third.

They began stating their names, their families, and the proudest things they'd done in their lives. This wasn't defense; it was a declaration: Our memories aren't food, they're tombstones, each engraved with "I came, I lived, I was loved."

The Void began to twist, contract, and emit a silent scream.

When the rescue team brought all the miners back to the surface, the sky had already grown dark.

Li Xiaofeng waited at the entrance; when he saw his father emerge, he rushed forward and embraced Old Zhao—the first voluntary hug in seven years. Old Zhao staggered a moment, then returned the embrace firmly, patting his son's back twice, as if saying, "It's okay."

The person in charge of the Mine Community was a one‑eyed woman; after counting heads, she walked up to Su Yu and dropped to one knee—the miners' most solemn gesture of respect.

"The Mine Community volunteers to join the Symbiotic Alliance." Her voice was hoarse but loud, "There's only one condition: teach us how to completely kill that Void. We want to carve the names of our fallen brothers into every tunnel shaft, so those who come after will know—some things must starve rather than be allowed to eat."

Su Yu nodded. The light of her chest scar had faded to nearly invisible, but the warmth remained.

Jihe's communication cut in at this moment, voice unusually urgent: "Su Yu, Chen Mo's body has become transparent up to the neck. But more seriously—I've traced the source signal of the Void. It does indeed come from Serlan's homeworld, but it's not an official order."

"It's a private experiment by an individual Serlan."

"And that Serlan has just sent a communication request. It says—it wants to talk with us about 'the value of memory.'"

In the distance, toward the Southern Ruins, the night sky suddenly blazed with a silver‑white pillar of light that shot straight up into the clouds.

That wasn't Chen Mo's light.

That light was icy, precise, and devoid of warmth.

Like a scalpel, it cut through the night, preparing to dissect all the remaining warmth in this world.