Chapter 158: Starry Sky Beneath the Eyes

The convoy sped through the pale world, like a few struggling ink dots on a gray canvas.

The tires rolled over the faded asphalt, making no sound—or rather, sound had lost its "texture": the engine's roar became a monotonous buzz, the wind noise turned into a constant hiss, even Han Qing's orders over the walkie-talkie sounded muffled, as if coming from underwater.

"How much time is left?" Su Yu asked, eyes fixed ahead. The scar on her chest had stopped bleeding, but it left a grayish scab, like a faded scar.

Kaiwen looked at the terminal; the screen was grayish, but the numbers were still changing: "Two hours seventeen minutes. But Chen Mo's side…" He paused, "The last set of data transmitted before the Geometry Sacrifice showed Chen Mo's right-eye transparency had reached 97%."

The right eye. Chen Mo's right eye.

Su Yu suddenly recalled a detail from seven years ago: Chen Mo's right-eye vision was 0.2 better than his left; he said it was because he always used his right eye to aim a slingshot as a child. Later, when repairing precision instruments, he also habitually used his right eye to align the calibration line.

"What about the left eye?" she asked.

"The left eye…" Kaiwen quickly pulled up the data, "Strange, the left eye's transparency is only 63%. That doesn't make sense—consciousness fading should be uniform."

Unless… it isn't uniform.

Su Yu shot upright: "He's using his last strength to control the fading! His right eye can barely see, so he's concentrating the remaining vision in his left eye—he wants to see something! Or… he wants us to see something!"

Lao Zhao pushed the speed to the limit. The engine of this modified pickup, cobbled together from three scrapped engines, was now emitting a sickly whine.

Li Xiaofeng sat in the passenger seat, holding a paper map—the most reliable navigation when electronic devices might be jammed. His finger moved across the map and stopped at a marked point: "Dad, three kilometers ahead is the old chemical plant area. Seven years ago there was heavy spore contamination there; now…"

"Now it's nothing at all." Lao Zhao cut him off, "No color, the spores are invisible. We can only bet that it truly 'faded.'"

He said this, pulling a cracked photo frame from his pocket and thrusting it into his son's hands: "Hold it."

"Dad?"

"If I…" Lao Zhao didn't finish, but Li Xiaofeng understood. The young man gripped the photo frame tightly; the plastic edges dug into his palm—this pain stood out starkly in the colorless world, like the only thing that was real.

"You'll be fine." Li Xiaofeng said softly, "Mom said you promised her you'd live to see your grandchild."

Lao Zhao's grip tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening: "So she has to stay alive to see it."

In the rearview mirror, a silver light flickered on the horizon—the inspector's ship, approaching at a steady pace. Not fast, but terrifyingly steady, like the steps of the grim reaper, neither hurried nor slow, knowing the prey cannot escape.

They had arrived at the chemical plant area.

There were none of the obstacles I'd imagined. The once‑wriggling purple fungal mats, throbbing spore sacs, and writhing tentacles—all had turned into gray‑white, stiff sculptures. Like a horror film frozen on pause, the terror remained, but the physical shock that color once brought was gone.

The convoy passed through smoothly.

But just as they were about to drive out of the plant area, Su Yu's chest scar suddenly flared with sharp pain.

It wasn't an old injury flaring up; it was resonance—far beyond a hundred paces, Chen Mo's left eye was "looking" at her.

"Stop!" she shouted.

Lao Zhao slammed the brakes. Everyone got out; Su Yu stumbled to a clearing and looked up. The sky was gray‑white, the clouds gray‑white, but within that grayness she "saw"—

Not with her eyes, but with the visual afterimage transmitted through her scar: Chen Mo's left eye was gazing at the starry sky. Not the present pale sky, but the stars of seven years ago, the last clear night before the disaster. The stars' positions, brightness, even their blinking frequency, were conveyed with astonishing precision via the resonance.

"He's marking coordinates!" Kaiwen realized, quickly working the terminal, "He's using stellar positioning to mark a spot—this is an age‑of‑sail technique! He feared electronic signals would be intercepted, so he used the most primitive method!"

The image continued to transmit.

The starfield rotated, the viewpoint descended toward the ground. Su Yu saw an aerial view of the southern ruins: collapsed buildings, twisted overpasses, and that glowing culture chamber. Chen Mo was inside, head tilted back, using his remaining left eye to look at the sky.

Then the viewpoint suddenly switched—becoming Chen Mo's "memory perspective."

Seven years ago, he stood in this ruin, notebook in hand. He was drawing a map, marking five points: Iron Anvil Town, the reservoir, the mine, the drilling platform… and a fifth point.

That point was neither on land nor at sea.

It was underground.

"The Aeon Dormant Ground…" Su Yu murmured, "The fifth settlement is… an underground refuge left by the ancient seeders! Three years ago it was discovered by the people from the drilling platform, but they volunteered to become test subjects in exchange for the chance to learn Se Lan technology from the researchers!"

The image suddenly blurred.

Chen Mo's left-eye transparency shot up to 85%. The transmission began to break up, like an old TV with poor signal. But before it cut out completely, the final frame came through—

It was Chen Mo's right hand, etching characters onto the inner glass wall of the culture chamber. Not truly writing, but using the faint glow of his fingertips to "burn" the words onto the glass's moisture. The strokes were faint, but in Su Yu's resonance vision they were crystal clear:

"Don't come save me."

"Go underground. Aeon left behind… the true 'seed'."

Everyone saw this footage—Su Yu shared it with each of them through the residual link of the plant network.

Han Qing slammed his fist onto the truck's hood: "What the hell?! We've come all this way, and he tells us not to rescue him?!"

"Because saving him would be useless." Kaiwen's voice trembled as he pulled up a dataset, "I just analyzed Chen Mo's real‑time bodily data—although the transmission cut off, the last few seconds showed… his consciousness structure had completely split into three parts that can't be recombined. Even if we got there, all we'd recover would be an empty shell."

Lao Zhao stared, stunned: "Then… then all these seven years… our efforts…"

"It's not useless." Su Yu said softly, head bowed, her gray‑white hair falling over her face, "He split himself not to be 'revived,' but to buy time—seven years for the plant network to grow, for us to unite, for the Geometry Society to develop feeling, for the researchers to grow doubtful."

She lifted her head; her face was dry—tears are transparent in the colorless world too. But her eyes shone terrifyingly bright, like two stars about to go out, burning their last light.

"He never intended to 'come back.'" Su Yu said, "From the start he knew the split was irreversible. Everything he did… was merely to pave the way for us."

In the distance, the inspector ship's silver light drew nearer.

The sky began to shed a gray‑white "snow"—not real snow, but some fine nanoscopic particles; where they touched, even the sense of touch faded: the feel of wind on skin grew faint, the sensation of airflow while breathing grew faint, the throb of the heartbeat grew faint.

The inspector was formatting the world's basic perception.

"Turn around." Su Yu said, her voice calm to the point of being frightening, "Not south anymore. We're heading to the Aeon Dormant Ground."

Han Qing wanted to say something, but seeing Su Yu's gaze, he merely nodded: "Coordinates?"

Kaiwen quickly calculated: "The stellar coordinates Chen Mo gave… lie to the northwest, eighty kilometers away. But that zone is a radiation‑contaminated area, designated a permanent no‑go zone seven years ago."

"That's why Aeon chose that spot for its dormant ground." Su Yu returned to the vehicle, buckled her seat belt, "The most dangerous place is the safest."

The convoy turned around and charged back the way it had come.

As they crested a rise, Su Yu looked back one last time toward the south.

A hundred paces out, above the ruins, the spot where Chen Mo's culture chamber sat suddenly flickered with a faint light.

Not silver, not gold.

It was pure white—but in the colorless world, that "white" became the only visible light. The point flashed three times, then… went out.

Su Yu closed her eyes.

The last trace of warmth in the scar on her chest vanished.

But a voice suddenly came over the walkie-talkie—not Chen Mo's, but a pre-set, delayed transmission left by Ji He:

"Chen Mo's final message has been decrypted."

"He said: 'Tell Su Yu, the last thing my right eye saw was her smile from seven years ago; the last thing my left eye saw was the world she will build.'"

"'These two images… are exactly the same.'"

The convoy charged into the radiation zone.

Behind them, the inspector's ship hovered slowly over the southern ruins; the hatch opened, and a pure silver humanoid descended before the incubation chamber.

Inside the incubation chamber, Chen Mo's body had become completely transparent, like a human-shaped crystal; only the pupil of his left eye still held a tiny speck of golden light.

The inspector reached out a hand.

The speck of light floated up and landed in its palm.

It stared at the speck of light, motionless for a full ten seconds—to the Selan, this was a 'lengthy' pause.

Then it clenched its fist and turned around.

"Abnormal specimen 'Chen Mo' has been fully recovered."

"Now, pursue the contamination source 'Su Yu'. Execute final formatting."

The gray-white snowflakes in the sky fell more densely.