Chapter 184

Han Qing's multicolored brand on his chest suddenly seared at noon like a branding iron while he was helping Old Zhao reinforce the kitchen's drainage pipe. The excruciating pain came without warning—not the sharp tearing of a wound, but a swelling ache that seemed to be pushing outward from inside, as if something were trying to burst out of the brand.

"Get down!" Old Zhao reacted instantly, shoving him to the ground, and shouted outward, "Su Yu! Come quickly!"

But Han Qing's body began to levitate uncontrollably. The brand on his chest writhed and expanded like a living thing, the multicolored pattern spreading from his chest to his entire body, projecting a complex three‑dimensional geometric diagram into the air— it was Seran's Star Map from three thousand years ago, marking the coordinates of a civilization long extinct.

At the center of the brand, the ancient characters left by Ai Ou began to reassemble, no longer static engravings but a flowing river of light. Within that river of light, a voice rose slowly, not vibrating through the air but resonating directly in the consciousness of every connected being in the ancient Seran language:

"Detection... tuner inheritor. Hybridization... Seran‑human‑emotional network. Meets Awakening criteria."

Han Qing's eyes suddenly turned pure silver—no longer his usual rainbow pattern, but the liquid‑mercury‑like sheen unique to Seran tuners three thousand years ago. Yet his voice remained his own, only his tone now carried a weariness that was not his.

"I am here," Han Qing said, then paused, his silver eyes narrowing slightly, "No… it is 'him' who is here. Fragments of Ai Ou's consciousness… are Awakening within my body."

The temporary school was eerily silent.

Everyone gathered on the open space outside the kitchen, watching the levitating Han Qing. Three newly‑formed beings formed a triangle at the front—one with a face that subconsciously mimicked Old Zhao's frowning expression, another with bark‑like skin whose palm displayed a defensive pattern, and the possibility light ribbon instantly transformed into a translucent shield.

Su Yu stepped in front of Han Qing, placing her hand on his chest—not a physical touch, but a connection via a tuner's root tendrils. The moment of contact, she "saw": within Han Qing's consciousness space, two figures were confronting each other.

One was Han Qing himself, rainbow patterns flowing around him; the other was a translucent humanoid clad in an ancient Seran robe, its features vague but its aura clear— it was Ai Ou's consciousness projection, holding the phantom of a star‑string zither.

"Three thousand years..." Ai Ou's projected voice was steady, yet each word sounded like a sunken ship hauled up from the depths of time, "The Awakening criteria I set were: when an inheritor successfully establishes a cross‑civilization emotional link, and faces an extinction crisis. It seems… you have achieved the former and are now undergoing the latter."

Han Qing's consciousness entity nodded, "The Seran homeworld intends to purge us. Because of the Error Signal you left behind."

Ai Ou's projection smiled—a weary yet warm smile.

"Then, it's time for the final lesson."

At that moment, an emergency broadcast came from the Seran homeworld.

It was not the result of an Order Judgment, but… a civil‑war warning. The number of Awakening entities had already exceeded three hundred; they had seized three sectors on the edge of the homeworld and declared the establishment of an "Emotional Freedom Zone." The conservatives mobilized forty percent of the fleet to encircle them, and the two sides faced off above the old site of a safety house where "Logic" had been dispersed.

The broadcast was interspersed with chaotic frequencies—Awakening entities asking, "Why fear feeling?", conservatives repeating, "Efficiency is the only truth," and a multitude of neutrals bewildered, "What should we believe?"

Ai Ou's projection suddenly solidified a bit. He "listened" to those frequencies, his silver eyes (through Han Qing's body) gazing toward the sky, as if able to pierce the 4.3‑light‑year distance and see the homeworld.

"Three thousand years have passed..." For the first time, his voice carried a fluctuation that could be called "pain," "They are still asking the same questions. Only the asker has become the asked."

Han Qing's consciousness entity suddenly reached out, rainbow patterns coiling around Ai Ou's wrist, "Can you stop it? With the prestige you held three thousand years ago—"

"Prestige?" Ai Ou shook his head, the phantom of the star‑string zither in his hand turning to dust of light, "I left as a traitor, and now I may have been written into textbooks as a negative example. But…"

He looked at Su Yu, at the three new beings, and at the swirling blue blossoms opening in the healing forest:

"But sometimes, what stops a war is not authority, but the demonstration of 'another possibility.'"

Ai Ou, through Han Qing's body, "walked" out of the kitchen.

His movements were odd—both the precise calculation of Seran (each step measured to the millimeter) and the clumsiness of a human (tripping at the threshold, caught by Old Zhao). This contradictory sensation left everyone stunned: he was neither wholly Ai Ou nor wholly Han Qing, but some sort of… temporary composite entity.

He walked to the pipe organ, his hand brushing over the golden fissure‑healing pattern on its body.

"You repaired it," he said, his voice Han Qing's, his tone Ai Ou's satisfaction, "using scars as decoration, memories as glue. This is what I wanted to do back then but never dared— I feared the instrument being too 'imperfect' would be unable to bear a perfect mission."

He turned and looked at the three new beings:

"And you… are the flowers sprung from the Error Signal. When we preserved the seeds of civilization, we feared most that those seeds would 'mutate' during their long slumber. But now it seems mutation… might be evolution."

A possibility light ribbon floated before him, its surface revealing Ai Ou's portrait from three thousand years ago—a fragment it had absorbed while digesting memories in its cocoon.

"Do you miss home?" it asked.

Ai Ou (through Han Qing) was silent for a long while, then said:

"What I miss is… the time when home could still change. When we began erasing emotions, I realized that home had already died—not through physical destruction, but the death of 'possibility.'"

Ai Ou began teaching.

Not through words, but through the Resonance of the star‑string zither—he borrowed Han Qing's rainbow patterns to "draw" a scene from three thousand years ago in the air: the young Seran civilization, each individual still possessing diverse forms, art, music, and poetry not yet deemed "redundant." In the vision, Ai Ou taught a group of young Serans how to use gravitational waves to "draw" emotional waveform charts.

"This is the waveform of 'joy'," he said, pointing to a golden ripple in the air, "Do you see? It has seven irregular peaks, each corresponding to a 'meaningless' thought—'The sun is wonderful today,' 'That shape is interesting,' 'I want to hear that song again'…"

"This is 'sadness'..."

"This is 'anger'..."

"This is 'love'..."

Each waveform was stored in the star‑string zither, and three thousand years later, it would be replayed through Han Qing's body.

The three new beings listened in a trance—though they had no ears, their entire bodies resonated. The one with bark‑like skin saw its surface undulate with the waveforms; the one whose face resembled Old Zhao attempted to manifest the corresponding expressions; the possibility light ribbon directly transformed into the tangible forms of those waveforms.

Even the three hundred tuner phantoms reconvened within the Resonance dome, joining Ai Ou's "performance" and accompanying with instruments of their respective cultures—a concert spanning three thousand years.

Midway through the concert, the battle situation on the Seran homeworld abruptly changed.

The Awakening entities suddenly ceased all defensive actions, collectively broadcasting the emotional waveforms Ai Ou was "playing"—fresh waveforms newly redefined and transmitted synchronously through the consciousness bridge.

The conservative fleet's cannon fire halted at the last moment.

It was not an order but a collective hesitation among the operators—the emotional waveforms triggered an "Art Appreciation Module" buried deep within their underlying protocols, a module from three thousand years ago. Though the module had been flagged as a "historical relic," relics remain part of the structure; incomplete deletion leaves… echoes.

The commander of a conservative warship, before issuing the fire command, suddenly broadcast to the entire fleet:

"The 'sadness' waveform… I have it archived in my database. Annotation: 'The dying dirge of extinct civilization X‑7439, artistic value: zero, historical value: low.' But why does it sound now…"

It paused for a full five seconds.

"... like mourning ourselves?"

Ai Ou stopped the performance.

Through Han Qing's eyes he looked toward the sky and whispered (this time entirely his own voice, Han Qing's consciousness temporarily receded):

"Enough."

"If, three thousand years from now, they still need a 'traitor' to remind themselves that they once felt sorrow… then let me betray once more."

He raised his hand—Han Qing's hand, though the motion was wholly Ai Ou's—pointing toward the Seran homeworld, and in the air "wrote" a line of ancient Seran script.

The characters turned to light, racing along the consciousness bridge, exploding above the homeworld and becoming a sky projection that every Seran individual could "see."

"I, Ai Ou Seranthis, the last tuner."

"Three thousand years ago I took the Error Signal."

"Now I give you back the Choice."

Choose to continue being a perfect machine, or……

The projection switched, becoming a real-time image of Earth: vortex blue flowers spinning in the wind, Lao Zhao was cooking porridge, Xiao Yu was teaching how to fold blank-body paper boats, three new lifeforms were learning how to smile.

……Choose to relearn how to be a living being that makes mistakes.

In the lower-right corner of the projection, Ai Ou added a line of small text, using an ancient military cipher that only Seran senior commanders could decrypt:

"By the way, the vulnerability in the seventh layer of the formatting agreement is one I left intentionally."

"If you choose the latter, use it."

"If you choose the former…… then format me, for the third time."

"Anyway, I've already died twice—once when leaving, once when waiting."

"Not lacking a third time."

Han Qing's body slowly descended.

The brand on his chest faded, Ai Ou's consciousness receded like a tide. But when Han Qing opened his eyes, in the rainbow pattern of his left eye appeared an extremely fine, silver-white thread-like shadow—that was Ai Ou's final gift: a string of the harp of stars, permanently embedded in his consciousness.

And on the mother planet of Se Lan, among the three hundred conservative faction warships, seventeen suddenly turned their bows, aiming their cannons at…… their own compatriots.

In their commanders' channel, the same sentence echoed:

"Apply…… to restart the emotional module."

"Reason: wanting to understand the waveform of that 'sorrow' segment."