Chapter 176: Curious Branches

When Xiao Yu woke up, the heart‑shaped light mark on her wrist was flashing as if breathing.

It wasn't visual breathing; it was a real, warm rhythm of inhalation and exhalation. With each flash she could "hear" the low murmurs of nearby things: the sheets said "You turned over seven times last night, the third because you dreamed of Uncle Chen Mo," the window said "This morning there is a southeast wind, bringing the sea's lingering gray‑white scent," even the air said "Uncle Han Qing's chest now bears another rainbow pattern."

She walked to the window and saw the Healing Forest's fruits ripening.

They didn't all ripen at once; like a relay, starting from the forest edge one after another turned from transparent to a soft milky hue. Their surfaces displayed minimalist patterns: some a drop of water, some a feather outline, some simply a question mark.

Lao Zhao was building an observation shed at the forest edge. He saw Xiao Yu, waved and said, "Girl, come over and look at this."

Xiao Yu ran over, and Lao Zhao handed her a freshly fallen fruit—shaped like a feather, its texture warm and soft as a newly hatched chick.

"According to Ai O's guide," Han Qing walked over from the other side, his chest's rainbow scar glinting in the morning light like living amber, "these fruits are 'crystallized emotional memories.' Each pattern corresponds to a 'core emotional moment' in one of the three thousand civilizations."

Xiao Yu pressed the fruit to her ear. There was no sound, but she "felt" a gust—not an ordinary wind, but the last wisp of "homeward flow" recorded by a gaseous civilization before its homeworld perished. That wisp contained the civilization's entire Definition of "freedom."

The heart‑shaped light mark suddenly heated up.

Xiao Yu's fingers moved uncontrollably in the air—not drawing, but "recreating" the wind's path. Her fingertips left a pale blue light trail that lingered, forming a character never seen before.

"That's 'Wind Speech.'" Han Qing said, staring at the character as the rainbow pattern in his pupils began to decode, "the script of the gaseous civilization. It means… 'Even if it dissipates, it once existed.'"

At breakfast, the makeshift school's kitchen was packed with people.

Su Yu was cooking porridge using the newly grown "Memory Rice" from the edge of the Healing Forest—each grain on the stalk bore fine texture like a miniature relief. Lao Zhao was frying eggs; the eggs came from a nearby farm, and the hens had eaten forest insects, so the shells bore faint rainbow speckles.

Li Xiaofeng sent back an encrypted video from the Seran homeworld, barely transmitted through the plant network's interstellar link. The picture was blurry, showing him standing in a massive pure‑white hall surrounded by hundreds of smooth Seran spheres. He spoke, but his voice was fragmented:

"…Lesson three… teach them 'boredom'… they don't understand… why there should be 'aimless time'… conjugate demonstrating… how to let problems… play by themselves…"

The scene suddenly switched, becoming the conjugate form—it now resembled a translucent soap bubble with countless tiny geometric shapes rotating inside. The bubble's surface reflected the surrounding Seran spheres, each reflection tinged with a faint hue.

"They're learning…" the conjugate's voice was relatively clear, "…how to let logic 'relax.' The first step is to acknowledge that some questions don't need immediate answers. For them, it's like teaching a machine to dream."

Lao Zhao stared at the screen, silent for a long while. Finally he scooped a spoonful of porridge, blew on it, and handed it to Xiao Yu: "Eat up. Your brother over there… is teaching the aliens how to act dumb. That's the world."

Xiao Yu took the porridge, and the light mark on her wrist reflected in the bowl, looking as if a tiny star had appeared at the bottom.

At ten a. m., something happened.

While gathering fruits in the forest, Xiao Yu inadvertently touched a question‑mark‑shaped fruit. The fruit burst—not a physical explosion, but an information explosion.

The "unresolved questions" of three thousand civilizations surged into her consciousness simultaneously:

The Vortex Civilization asked, "If gravity is the curvature of spacetime, can 'longing' also bend something?"

The Gaseous Civilization asked, "Chemical reactions have an end point; what about civilizations?"

The Possibility Civilization asked, "If all possibilities eventually collapse into reality, is 'possibility' itself merely a transitional state?"

Four hundred nightmare‑experienced civilizations also joined the questioning, their queries sharper:

"Why were we chosen to be formatted?"

"If we save our civilization, will it decay because it bears us?"

"Do we have the right to demand continued existence?"

The questions were too many, too heavy, like the universe's doubts all pressing on a child's mind.

Xiao Yu fell to her knees, her eyes unfocused. The heart‑shaped light mark on her wrist flickered wildly, trying to process the data, but overloaded—cracks appeared on its surface.

When Su Yu and Han Qing rushed over, Xiao Yu was muttering in seven different languages at once, each repeating a different question. Her body temperature spiked, and her skin sprouted text totems from three thousand distinct civilizations, spreading like tattoos.

"She's… becoming a conduit for the questions!" Han Qing tried to link Xiao Yu with his rainbow network, but was immediately repelled—the torrent of information was too strong.

Kevin sent an alert from the monitoring station: "Plant network load spiking! All three thousand civilization seeds have awakened, outputting their three‑thousand‑year confusion back through Xiao Yu's consciousness!"

All the Healing Forest's fruits lit up simultaneously, like three thousand lamps suddenly ignited.

Su Yu knelt before Xiao Yu, not forcibly breaking the link, but performing the simplest act—she embraced the child.

Not a physical hug, but using all her Emotional Frequency as a tuner, she built a dam between the flood of questions and the child.

"One at a time," she whispered into Xiao Yu's ear, her voice infused with the frequency of "Order," "We'll answer them one by one. No rush."

She began answering. Not with intellect, but with experience, using all the "imperfect answers" she'd gathered over seven years:

To "Why were we chosen to be formatted?" she said, "Because you are too beautiful. So beautiful that civilizations fearing beauty feel threatened."

To "If we save our civilization, will it decay?" she said, "We're learning. Learning how to keep moving while bearing burdens. Chen Mo taught us, it's okay to walk slowly as long as you're still walking."

To "Can longing bend something?" she said, "Yes. After Chen Mo left, my world became bent—bent toward the memories of him. But bending gives the world an arc, and with an arc comes… the shape of an embrace."

Each answer was imperfect, even a bit clumsy. Yet every answer carried warmth, carrying her human, limited, but genuine experience.

The text totems on Xiao Yu's body began to fade slowly. Not disappearing, but like ink soaking into rice paper, merging into her flesh, becoming part of her.

The cracks in the heart‑shaped light mark started to heal. With each healed fissure, the mark grew warmer and softer.

Three hours later, the storm subsided.

Xiao Yu fell asleep in Su Yu's arms, breathing steadily. The light mark on her wrist pulsed steadily, like a second heart. Faint traces of text still lingered on her, almost invisible in the sunlight, but Han Qing's rainbow network could detect them—those questions hadn't vanished, only been "tamed," like books returned to a library, quietly awaiting another read.

All the Healing Forest's fruits fell, covering the ground with a milky, soft path. Each fruit emitted a faint frequency, and together those frequencies formed a slow, soothing "lullaby."

The three thousand civilization seeds fell back into slumber, but this sleep was different—their confusion had been heard, had been answered, even imperfectly. Their dreams began to shift: no longer replaying the moment of formatting, but showing new scenes.

In the Vortex Civilization's dream, rivers from Earth appeared—though not gravity waves, the curves of the water felt familiar.

In the Gaseous Civilization's dream, the forest's photosynthetic chemical reaction appeared—simple, yet bearing the notion of "growth."

In the Possibility Civilization's dream, a seed's entire journey from germination to bloom unfolded—each stage a collapse of "possibility" into "reality," yet each new stage opened fresh possibilities.

Han Qing detected the changes, speaking softly, "They're learning… how to 'dream anew.' Ai O's guide says this is the third step of civilization healing."

Su Yu lifted the sleeping Xiao Yu and walked toward the makeshift school. Her steps were light, but each footfall made the milky fruits on the forest path glow faintly, as if expressing thanks.

Evening came, and Xiao Yu woke.

She didn't open her eyes right away, but first "listened"—the wrist light mark let her sense the state of everything within three meters: Su Yu heating porridge in the kitchen, her heartbeat a bit fast; Han Qing repairing a pipe organ's tube, his fingers steady; Lao Zhao smoking outside, the smoke's trail bearing the arc of longing for his son.

She opened her eyes, looking at the wrist light mark. At its center, beside the two characters for "curiosity," a line of minuscule text had appeared:

"Bearer."

The child sat up and walked to the window. The Healing Forest glowed warmly in the sunset, and the fallen fruits began to decompose, merging into the soil—having fulfilled the purpose of the "crystallized emotional memories," they now returned those memories to the earth.

Xiao Yu suddenly realized something: at dawn tomorrow, new plants would sprout on this land. Not a species from any known civilization, but a wholly new life form born from the fusion of three thousand civilizations' emotional memories with Earth's ecology.

She turned her head, and said to Su Yu who walked into the room:

"Tomorrow a kind of blue flower will bloom. Its petals bear the pattern of the vortex civilization, but its center holds honey that Earth's bees can collect. The bees will like it."

Su Yu stared for a moment, then laughed. She walked over to Xiao Yu's side, and together they looked out the window at the forest:

"Is this the ability of your 'Curious Heart'?"

Xiao Yu nodded, then shook her head: "Not entirely. It's more like... translation. Translating their dreams into our spring."

In the distance, the assessment ship on the geosynchronous orbit sent the final report of the day to the mother star of Selan:

"Earth's juvenile individual and the three-thousand civilization seeds completed their first deep Resonance. Resonance product: a prototype of an inter-civilization ecosystem."

"Suggest re-evaluating the civilization level classification standard. Perhaps there exists a new category, 'Resonance-type civilization'."

"Also: They will bloom a new flower tomorrow. We apply to collect samples."

When night fell, the light mark on Xiao Yu's wrist was like a small lamp that would not disturb dreams, glowing gently.

And in the depths of the forest she could not see, the first sprout of the "Vortex Blue" had quietly broken through the soil.