Chapter 170: Three Heartbeats

Returning to the shore for the seventh hour, the plant network began to "talk in its sleep".

It was not human language, nor Selan's data stream, but a sound somewhere between melody and grammar. It whispered at the edge of each connector's consciousness, like a radio broadcast from the next room—unintelligible yet beautiful.

The first to show abnormality was Xiao Yu's seven-colour sunflower.

That plant, already half a person tall, suddenly bloomed three flowers at once—one with petals in a spiral geometric pattern, one with a stamen like a miniature nebula, and the third had no physical form, merely a swirl of light mist. The three flowers emitted three different frequencies, corresponding to three awakening alien consciousnesses.

"They are… introducing themselves." Xiao Yu crouched before the flowerpot, eyes wide, "The spiral flower says they come from the 'Seventh Arm of the Vortex Galaxy,' where people paint with gravitational waves. The nebula flower says their civilization lives on gas planets, thinking through combinations of chemical reactions. The light‑mist flower is strangest—it says, 'We are a possibility, not yet decided what to become.'"

Thirty‑seven blank bodies surrounded the sunflower, their shape‑shifting paused—not stopped evolution, but "receiving a signal." No. 007's sphere surface showed a spiral pattern, No. 008's arms oozed nebula‑like gas, and No. 009 turned semi‑transparent, as if trying to merge into the light mist.

Old Zhao was repairing the micro‑scratches on the submarine hull caused by deep‑sea pressure. He used only a traditional hammer and gasket; the clinking sounds were especially clear on the quiet shore. Li Xiaofeng handed him tools nearby, but his gaze kept drifting to that strange sunflower.

"Dad," Li Xiaofeng whispered, "do we really have to raise three thousand alien civilizations in the backyard?"

Old Zhao hammered the last blow, stood up, wiped his sweat: "When your mother was pregnant with you, I asked a similar question—'Should we really raise a child?'"

He looked at his son: "Your mother said, 'It's not about raising, but inviting a small life into this world to have a look.'"

Old Zhao put down his tools, walked to the sunflower, and his rough fingers lightly touched the petal of the spiral flower. The petal's temperature was lower than body heat, yet it carried an odd "weight," like touching a miniature star.

"They are also invited," he said, "the only difference is… the invitation arrived three thousand years late."

Han Qing sat on the roof of the makeshift school, his seven‑coloured heart beating with a complex rhythm—not a heartbeat, but a faint resonance of three thousand frequencies. His rainbow vessels had extended to his fingertips, each fingertip connected to a node of the plant network.

"Network load has reached 37%." He reported with eyes closed, "But the load curve is growing non‑linearly. The three awakened consciousnesses occupy only 0.1%; the remaining 2,997 sleeping 'civilization seeds' are the burden—they constantly consume emotional energy to maintain minimal activity."

Su Yu stood before the pipe organ; its keys rose and fell on their own, no one playing. It wasn't her playing—it was the three alien consciousnesses "auditioning."

"They are trying to understand the concept of 'music.'" Lin Shouzhuo flipped through the supplementary pages of the Aeo Notes, fingers trembling, "The Vortex Civilization transmits information via gravitational waves, so their music is the distortion of space itself. The Gas Civilization uses chemical‑bond vibrations, so their music is a dance at the molecular level. And that 'Possibility Civilization'… it is creating a form of music that has never existed before."

The organ sound suddenly turned harsh.

Not out of tune, but three completely different music theories clashing: a lovely Vortex melody was abruptly cut by the sharp blast of chemical bonds, then flowed into a passage that was neither harmonious nor grating, yet simply "not right."

Cracks appeared in the wooden body of the pipe organ.

One of the seventeen crystal cores—belonging to Wang Mei, the drilling‑platform engineer—suddenly went dark. Not damaged, just energy depleted. Her memory of "a flashlight beam like a lighthouse" was borrowed by an alien consciousness to grasp the concept of "light," and then… used up.

Su Yu rushed forward and pressed the keys, forcing the performance to stop.

"You can't borrow like that!" she shouted at the air, "These are human memories! Not teaching material!"

The three alien consciousnesses fell silent at once.

Then they responded in a rough but clearly mimicking Su Yu's tone:

"Sorry." (Vortex Civilization)

"We're hungry." (Gas Civilization)

"What is 'sorry'?" (Possibility Civilization)

That night, the plant network suffered its first "indigestion."

Connectors began to have strange dreams: Old Zhou of Iron Anvil Town dreamed he was a swirling nebula, composing poetry with hydrogen and helium atoms; the old man by the reservoir dreamed he was a surfer on gravitational waves; the one‑eyed woman of the mine dreamed she was… an undecided mathematical formula, choosing whether to become a circle or a triangle.

The worst case was Han Qing.

His seven‑coloured heart beat faster and faster, his rainbow vessels spreading uncontrollably like mad vines. Kaiwen's monitoring showed his body simultaneously simulating three thousand different vital signs—some organs at the standard mammalian 37°C, some tissues as dense as gas clouds, some nerve signals transmitting like gravitational‑wave ripples.

"He is becoming… a temporary 'civilization incubator.'" Kaiwen's voice tightened, "But the human body isn't designed for this. If it continues, his physiological structure will collapse."

Su Yu ran to the roof and grabbed Han Qing's already semi‑transparent hand: "Sever the connection! Now!"

Han Qing opened his eyes. His pupils reflected three thousand points of light, like a miniature starry sky.

"Can't cut it." His voice was a thousand‑fold overlay, but the bottom layer was still Han Qing, "They've just woken, still fragile. If we cut them off, the 2,997 will instantly dissipate, and the three awakened will… go mad. Because they have tasted the flavor of 'existence.'"

He strained to lift his other hand, pointing at his own chest: "But you're right, the human body can't hold out. So…"

The rainbow vessels suddenly contracted, all gathering at the heart's position.

That seven‑coloured heart slowly but firmly floated out of the chest cavity.

Not a bloody scene, but a gentle separation—after the heart left the body, Han Qing's chest showed no wound, only a faint rainbow‑colored mark. Meanwhile the floating heart began to beat on its own, each beat splitting off a new tiny seven‑coloured light point.

The light points drifted toward the plant network, like seeds scattered onto the earth.

"I have transplanted them…." Han Qing whispered weakly, "Using my 'humanity' as a culture medium, I helped them build temporary 'bodies.' But I can only hold on… seventy‑two hours."

He collapsed into Su Yu's arms, his face as pale as paper, yet the corners of his mouth turned up:

"Now it's your turn, tuner. Teach them… how not to become weeds in someone else's garden."

Su Yu cradled the hovering heart—it was warm like fresh‑baked bread, beating like a baby's deep sleep—and walked to the pipe organ.

She did not play the organ; instead she began to speak, using the plainest language to tell the tiniest human stories:

"This is a story about a screw." she said, "Seven years ago, Chen Mo was fixing a motorcycle and found a missing screw. He searched the whole shed, finally locating it in a mouse hole—the mouse had taken it to line its nest. He didn't get angry, just said, 'Looks like it also wanted a home.'"

"This is a story about a storm drain." Xiao Yu, at three years old, rescued a beetle that had fallen into a drain. Its wings were wet and couldn't fly. She made a leaf boat for it and watched it drift down the drain. Afterwards she kept going back to that drain mouth, though she never saw that beetle again.

"This is a story about a weld mark…"

One after another, there was no grand narrative, only trivial, insignificant, yet undeniably "alive" moments.

The three alien consciousnesses listened quietly.

Then they began to respond:

The Vortex Civilization used gravitational waves to "draw" the trajectory of a screw's rotation—precise to the atomic level, but ending with a gentle arc, like a smile.

The Gas Civilization combined chemical bonds to form the molecular structure of the beetle's wing—intentionally leaving one "wrong" bond position, like a scar on the wing.

The Possibility Civilization… created nothing. It merely let the plant network suddenly fill with a certain emotion: not any human emotion, but a brand‑new feeling, poised between understanding and confusion, a gentle tenderness.

At dawn, the observation‑station tower lowered a silver Light Sphere.

It was the Team Leader. Its mirrored face was already cracked all over, like a shattered mirror hastily glued back together. But the light shining through the cracks was no longer a data stream—it was… an expression. Extremely subtle, yet unmistakably a mix of "curiosity" and "worry."

"The mother star has sent three 'egg‑hatching advisors.'" Its voice remained synthesized, but now with inflection, "They are the Selan Civilization's foremost experts in 'civilization development models.' But they… lack an emotion module."

The Light Sphere split open, and three standard Selan Spheres emerged—smooth, perfect, featureless.

They floated to the pipe organ, and one emitted a cold electronic tone:

"According to calculation, Earth civilization's current load exceeds the safety threshold by 487%. Recommendation: immediately offload 2,500 low‑value civilization seeds, retaining 500 high‑potential samples."

Su Yu lifted her head, her hand pressing against the floating heart——that heart was cradling the sleeping Han Qing, beating steadily.

"No." She said it simply.

"Reason?"

"Because," Su Yu pointed to Xiao Yu, who was teaching 007 how to build a ship for the beetle, "that child was once also judged as 'low-value'—in the early days of the disaster, medical resources were scarce, and someone suggested abandoning all children under ten. But Chen Mo said: 'The measure of civilization is not what we can do, but what we choose not to do.'"

The three Selan advisors fell silent. On their smooth surfaces, for the first time appeared……an extremely subtle, hesitation-like fluctuation.

One of them turned toward the team leader:

"Request temporary installation of the 'Confusion Module.' We cannot comprehend this logic."

The crack on the team leader's mirror‑like surface, for the first time, curved into an arc that could be called a 'smile':

"Approved. Welcome to……the human classroom."

In the distance, the boundary line of the gray‑white tide retreated a millimeter in the morning light.

Like the world, it let out a sigh of relief.