Chapter 177: Stardust Alert

At the darkest moment before dawn, the plant network's interstellar link suddenly activated at triple power. It wasn't data transmission, but pure, unencrypted emotional pulses—fear, anger, perseverance—like three differently colored dyes splashed into a calm pool.

Kaiwen jumped from the chair at the monitoring station, the waveform on the terminal screen jerking wildly: "It's Li Xiaofeng's emergency signal! Modulated through his own bio‑electric signal, it bypassed Seran's standard communication protocol!"

Signal analysis took forty‑seven seconds. In those forty‑seven seconds, everyone at the temporary school woke up—not from sound, but from the intuition that "something has broken."

When Su Yu rushed to the monitoring station, the holographic projection had already assembled a blurry image: Li Xiaofeng standing inside a transparent Isolation pod, the background a pure white Seran council hall. His mouth was sealed by some force field, but his eyes stared fixedly at the camera, pupils darting left and right rapidly—Morse code.

Kaiwen's simultaneous translation: "Council‑vote‑passed… Conservative‑faction‑activates 'Purification‑Protocol'… Fleet‑has‑departed… Target‑Earth… Terminate 'Contamination‑Experiment'…"

The image suddenly cut off.

But in the final half‑second, they saw the conjugated soap‑bubble shape pierced by four silver beams, shrinking rapidly like a deflating balloon. There was also "Logic"—the Seran sphere already covered in emotional patterns, being forcibly dragged away by two standard Seran spheres, its surface patterns being stripped by laser.

Lao Zhao stood at the doorway of the monitoring station, still holding the spatula he intended to use for breakfast. He didn't rush in; he just stood there, the tip of the spatula trembling slightly.

When Han Qing passed by him, Lao Zhao suddenly asked, "Li Xiaofeng… still alive?"

"The signal was sent by him voluntarily," Han Qing's voice was steady, but the multicolored mark on his chest flickered rapidly like an overloaded circuit, "The Isolation pod has no life‑support system, only a consciousness transmission interface. They kept him alive to serve as an 'evidence sample'—to prove the process of emotional contamination."

Lao Zhao lowered his gaze to the spatula and stared for a long while. Then he turned and walked toward the kitchen, moving so slowly it seemed each step required relearning how to walk.

In the kitchen, the rice soaked last night still sat in the bowl. Lao Zhao began rinsing the rice; his hand was steady, not a single grain fell out. He lit the fire, boiled water, and during the pause before it boiled, he took out from the cupboard his son's favorite cured pork—the last piece, preserved for two years and reluctant to eat.

Su Yu followed in, about to say something.

"Don't speak," Lao Zhao cut her off, his voice eerily calm, "Let me finish this meal. The day Li Xiaofeng left, I cooked him porridge but forgot the salt. He said, 'Dad, it's bland,' I said, 'I'll add it next time.' Now I have to."

The water boiled, the rice went into the pot. The cured pork was sliced paper‑thin and sprinkled evenly in. When the aroma spread, Lao Zhao finally spoke again, his voice a little hoarse:

"When Chen Mo left, were you there?"

Su Yu nodded.

"What did he say at the end?"

"He said…" Su Yu closed her eyes, "'Tell Lao Zhao the rear wheel bearing on that motorcycle needs replacement; I have a spare in the third compartment of my toolbox.'"

Lao Zhao laughed, his eyes reddening, "Even now, still thinking about that busted bike."

He stirred the porridge and added, "But that's Chen Mo. Even if the sky falls, he first thinks how to fix what's in front of him."

An hour later, representatives from each community gathered urgently via the plant network.

The holographic conference split into a dozen panels: Lao Zhou of Iron Anvil Town still had coal ash on his face, clearly linked straight from in front of the forge; the elderly man at the reservoir had a newly reinforced dam behind him; the one‑eyed woman from the mine wore a helmet, the background a deep tunnel.

Han Qing displayed the monitored Seran fleet data: "Three 'Purification‑class' warships, equipped with 'Cognitive Formatting Weapons.' At Seran's standard speed, they're expected to reach Earth orbit in seven days. Their orders: eradicate all sources of emotional contamination—including the plant network, three thousand civilization seeds, thirty‑seven evolutionary blanks, and all humans 'deeply contaminated.'"

"How is deep contamination defined?" Lao Zhou asked.

"Emotional Frequency exceeds Seran's baseline by 30%," Han Qing pulled up a list showing everyone's names and readings, "Everyone present… is over the limit. Even newborns, because they were born in the plant‑network coverage area, exceed by 15%."

The venue fell deathly silent.

The elderly man at the reservoir suddenly laughed, "So now even having too much 'human flavor' is a crime?"

"For them, yes." Han Qing closed the list, "Seran conservatives believe emotion is a civilizational cancer. They saw the conjugated shift, 'Logic's' rebellion, and the 'cross‑civilization fusion' happening here, deeming it a highly dangerous spread of contamination. It must… be sterilized."

At that moment, Xiao Yu's heart‑shaped light imprint on her wrist suddenly glowed on its own.

It wasn't ordinary light, but a guiding beam aimed toward the healing forest's depths. The child stood up, bewildered, and followed the light. Su Yu and Han Qing exchanged a glance and followed.

The beam led to the forest's center—where moonlight trees once grew, now only a flat clearing remains. Yet on the clearing, three hundred tiny light specks rose from the soil, like rain falling upward.

Within each speck, a vague humanoid silhouette appeared.

"Three hundred… conductors?" Lin Shouzhuo followed as well, his voice trembling, "Their consciousness remnants… are being awakened?"

The specks began to assemble, not merging into a single whole but arranging in the air into a circular pattern—the string layout of Ai O's star harp. Then all specks vibrated simultaneously, emitting a soundless "memory playback" that projected directly into consciousness:

Three thousand years ago on Seran's homeworld, the same council hall, the same vote.

Ai O stood on the stage, facing hundreds of smooth Seran spheres, his voice calm and firm: "You want to delete emotion because you fear the chaos it brings. But chaos is the price of growth. Without chaos, no new things are born."

A conservative Seran retorted, "Ninety percent of new things are inefficient, erroneous, even harmful. Emotion makes us waste resources on meaningless art, music, poetry."

"Meaningless?" Ai O laughed, lifted the star harp, and played a simple chord. "That chord kept a desperate civilization alive three more days. In those three days they painted the homeworld's final sunset. That painting now rests in the cradle—not as data, but as proof of 'why it's worth remembering.'"

The memory cut off.

Three of the three hundred specks drifted before Xiao Yu, merging into her heart‑shaped light imprint. Beside the word "Curiosity" on the imprint, three new terms appeared:

"Perseverance."

"Transformation."

"Legacy."

Back at the temporary school, the meeting continued.

But the atmosphere had changed.

Lao Zhou was the first to speak: "Iron Anvil Town has seventy‑three combat‑ready people. We just retrofitted a batch of gear with Seran technology—not for war, but for mining. Yet if needed, the pickaxes can smash warships."

The elderly man at the reservoir said, "We've been building the dam for seven years; we know best how to 'withstand pressure.' Give us the data, let us calculate the warship's shield frequency; perhaps we can use dam resonance to interfere with it."

The one‑eyed woman from the mine said, "The underground tunnel network stretches for hundreds of kilometers. If the worst comes, we can hide—hide until those iron clods can't find us."

One after another, not grandiose boasts but a simple list of "what we can do."

Su Yu listened quietly, the multicolored roots on her chest slowly growing, linking to each speaker's Emotional Frequency. She could feel: fear remains, but beneath the fear lies a deeper "not wanting to lose."

She didn't want to lose the newly built school, didn't want to lose the forest that blooms blue vortex flowers, didn't want to lose the young couple finally brave enough to confess, didn't want to lose the world left behind by the one who, even after leaving, reminds you when a bearing needs replacement.

Finally she stood, her voice low but clear:

"We won't fight them. We… will teach them."

Everyone was stunned.

"What do we teach them?" Lao Zhao asked.

"Teach them what Chen Mo taught us." Su Yu looked out the window, dawn tearing the night, "'Light doesn't need to be abundant; a little is enough.' Teach them that our bits of 'chaos,' our bits of 'inefficiency,' our bits of 'error,' added together become… civilization itself."

She turned to Han Qing: "Does Ai O's guide have a section on 'how to deal with the homeworld's cleansing'?"

Han Qing closed his eyes, the mark on his chest heating up. Seconds later he opened them, the rainbow pattern projecting an ancient line of script into the air:

"When a student seeks to kill the teacher, the teacher's most powerful resistance is: to keep teaching."

The plan was set at dawn.

It's not a battle plan, it's a "teaching plan".

Han Qing and Kaiwen handle the technical side: using the technology Sera has already given, plus the ancient Sera technology from the Aeo legacy, we construct an "Emotional Resonance Amplification Array" on the plant network foundation. The aim is not attack, but to let them "feel" everything happening on Earth when the Sera fleet arrives—the healing dreams of three thousand civilizations, how the vortex blue flower's pollen leaves a star map on bees' wings, and how much unspoken paternal love is in the pot of porridge Old Zhao cooked.

Su Yu handles the tuner part: within seven days, she will deeply fuse the consciousness remnants of three hundred tuners with the pipe organ, creating a "Civilization Lullaby 2.0"—not stored in a device, but performed live, so the entire Solar System can "hear" it.

Xiao Yu and the thirty-seven blank bodies handle the "translation": converting Earth's Emotional Frequency into a "data form" that Sera can understand—not cold data, but data imbued with warmth, context, and "why".

Old Zhao handles… logistics.

"I just do this." He said matter-of-factly, "I'll repair your tools, cook meals, make sure the machines don't run out of fire. Chen Mo said, to win the battle, we must first ensure the people repairing vehicles don't go hungry."

When dawn fully arrived, everyone knew what they had to do.

No tragedy, only a strange calm—like a gardener seeing a storm approach, not fleeing, but checking whether each plant's support is sturdy.

Kaiwen's terminal suddenly sounded a new alert. He glanced at it, stunned: "The Sera fleet… has accelerated. They used a hyperspace jump. Estimated arrival time… three days later."

He raised his head and added: "Moreover, they've shut down all communication channels. Not even a standard navigation warning was sent. This means…"

"It means they don't intend to negotiate." Han Qing interjected, "Direct execution."

Su Yu walked to the window, looking at the healing forest where the vortex blue flowers were blooming in the morning light. The first batch of bees had awakened, their wings dusted with seven-colored pollen.

She whispered, as if speaking to herself, and also as if speaking to the fleet about to arrive.

"Then let's see."

"See how many springs are waking up inside the 'Error Signal' you want to delete."