Chapter 192: Empty City and the Star River

Memory stripping progress: 97%.

Han Qing stood at the center of the ring, feeling like an emptied room. The walls remained, but the paintings hanging on them had all been taken away, leaving only square, slightly lighter-colored imprints. He remembered he should have feelings about certain things—like his father's military badge, which Old Zhao was now gripping tightly three meters away—but the exact feeling was like looking through frosted glass.

Countdown: 39 hours.

Su Yu was folding the sixtieth star. Her fingers were steady, but Kaiwen detected her heart rate had risen to 120 beats per minute. Aili's white syringe was still in her hand, and she stared at the spot on Han Qing's temple—those silver veins had already spread to his hairline, like ice crystals growing on a window.

"Last 3%," Kaiwen's voice came from the monitoring device, "mainly… recent memories. About the healing community built over the past months, the interactions with everyone, and…"

He didn't finish, but everyone understood: including the evening they watched the sunset together with Su Yu, the night teaching Xiao Yu to identify stars, the moment of high‑five when fixing the first water‑purifier with Old Zhao.

The three new lifeforms suddenly spoke in unison, their voices carrying a strange Resonance: "He is resisting the final stripping. Not actively resisting, but… those memories are too sticky."

Old Zhao stepped forward: "What does that mean?"

"It means," Xiao Yu's wrist light imprint flickered, "some memories are too heavy, so heavy that the original formatting protocol couldn't erase them, and the plant network now can't strip them either."

Han Qing lowered his head to look at the two paper stars in his palm. One, crooked, was his own folding; the other, containing a seed of hope grass, was folded by Su Yu. The memories of these two stars were being stripped—he could feel roots gently tugging at that memory, as if untying a very tight knot.

But strangely, the more the knot was untied, the tighter it became.

Because each layer stripped caused something new to stick: the arc trajectory when Su Yu tossed the star, the feel of paper rubbing the palm, the subtle pulse of the hope‑grass seed within the paper… These perceptions themselves were becoming new memories, covering the wound left by the stripped old memories.

"He is using the 'now' to fight the 'loss,'" the one‑eyed woman said suddenly. The roots in her eye socket had ceased growing, but the geometric‑poem memory fragments of the vortex civilization made her perspective strange, "like covering old footprints with fresh snow."

Han Qing lifted his head. The rainbow‑string shadow in his left eye rotated slowly, while his right human pupil was slightly out of focus: "I seem… to be forgetting how to forget."

The sentence was convoluted, but Su Yu understood. She stopped folding paper and walked to the edge of the ring—cannot go closer, it would interfere with the ritual field.

"Then don't force yourself to forget," she said softly, her voice cutting through the hum of leaves, "let remembering and forgetting coexist. Chen Mo once said, the toughest thing isn't that it never breaks, but that it can be pieced back together after breaking."

Han Qing stared at her. The memories of Su Yu were being stripped, yet the living person before him, the slight tremor at the corner of her mouth as she spoke, the golden edge the morning light traced on her hair strands—these present facts were more real than any memory.

He suddenly made a move no one had anticipated.

Han Qing gently placed the two paper stars on the ground.

It wasn't discarding, but arranging—one facing east, one facing west, leaving a step's distance between them. Then he stepped barefoot onto the soil, his soles directly touching the earth.

In an instant, the plant network of the healing forest emitted a low Resonance.

It wasn't Han Qing actively triggering it; the plant network responded autonomously to his "state." All ordinary people who bore portions of the civilization's memories suddenly felt the tiny alien memories inside them begin to "grow."

The roots in the one‑eyed woman's eye socket blossomed into tiny geometric flowers— the vortex civilization's way of expressing "understanding."

The reservoir elder's palm displayed a misty pattern— the gas civilization saying "thanks for sharing."

Old Zhou's mechanical prosthetic surface sprouted crystal‑like veins— the silicon‑based civilization's "friendship code."

More astonishingly, these changes in turn reinforced the filter net. The light net woven by the three new lifeforms suddenly thickened threefold, and within the silver‑green glow began to intermix specks of color from three thousand civilizations.

"Collective consciousness Resonance intensity increased by 280%!" Kaiwen's hand, pushing his glasses, paused mid‑air, "They… they are using those shared memories to reinforce the network in reverse!"

Xiao Yu's wrist light imprint projected new information:

"Detected preliminary formation of a cross‑civilization memory symbiosis network.

Participating nodes: 341 Earth lifeforms + 3 hybrid lifeforms + 1 bridge entity + 3000 civilization seed projections.

Current state: autonomously evolving.

Evolution direction: unknown."

Memory stripping progress: 99.7%.

The final 0.3% cannot be stripped away by any means.

The plant network sent a confused message: "Target memory fragments exhibit abnormal stickiness. Component analysis shows—these memories are all related to 'others.' Others' smiles, others' tears, others' outstretched hands, others saying 'I'll help you.'"

Han Qing stood still, eyes closed. At this moment he had almost lost all "stories about himself," yet strangely those "warmth about others" were firmly stuck at the base of his consciousness.

He remembered Old Zhao's coarse, hoarse voice teaching him to tie knots, but couldn't recall what he had said then.

He remembered Aili's focused profile while suturing his wound, but didn't remember how the wound occurred.

He remembered Xiao Yu's tentative tone the first time she called him "Brother Han Qing," but didn't recall how he responded.

He remembered the temperature of Su Yu's hand gripping his in the darkness, but didn't know why he was in the dark.

"Those memories…" Han Qing began, his voice very soft, as if afraid to disturb anything, "are not mine. They were given to me by others. So… I have no right to pawn them."

Old Zhao suddenly turned his face away. The tough man harshly rubbed his eye with the back of a hand slick with machine oil.

Aili finally set down the white syringe—she realized it was no longer needed. Even though this person had lost 99.7% of self‑memory, the remaining 0.3% fragment about "being treated kindly by others" was enough to anchor a complete personality.

The three new lifeforms linked hands and walked to Han Qing's side. They looked up at him, the silver‑green light in their eyes gentle as fresh spring leaves.

"The fissure is sealed," the first said.

"Repaired with what you gave," the second said.

"And also with what it gave you," the third finished, and the three simultaneously pressed their hands onto the soil beside Han Qing's feet.

The soil rippled. Those ripples spread outward, and wherever they passed, every person who bore civilization memories sprouted a small flower at their feet—not an Earth flower, nor an alien flower, but a hybrid: soft as petals yet geometrically precise.

At that moment, a harsh alarm sounded from the synchronized orbit.

Kaiwen's projected hologram made everyone's blood freeze: at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, three Selan scout ships had completed a jump. Not massive motherships, but reconnaissance vessels— slender, sharp, entirely silver‑white, like three daggers thrust into the darkness.

"They arrived 18 hours early!" Kaiwen's voice tightened, "and they are… scanning Earth's Emotional Frequency distribution. They discovered the collective consciousness network!"

The three scout ships simultaneously emitted probing beams. Those were early versions of the formatting protocol— they wouldn't directly cleanse consciousness, but would mark all "abnormal emotional nodes," providing precise strike coordinates for the following fleet.

The beams swept across Earth's atmosphere.

The first to be marked was Han Qing—a bridge entity, the core of the emotional contamination source.

The second was Su Yu—a tuner, the pollution amplifier.

The third was Xiao Yu—a carrier, the cross‑civilization connector.

Then the markings spread like a plague: Old Zhao, Aili, Kaiwen, the one‑eyed woman, the reservoir elder, Old Zhou… all people who bore civilization memories, all participants in the collective network, were all marked as "nodes pending formatting."

Worse, the markings themselves carried faint cognitive interference. Ordinary people began to feel headaches, memory confusion, emotional swings.

The one‑eyed woman suddenly clutched her head: "Those geometric poems… are screaming…"

The reservoir elder crouched: "The misty picture… has dispersed…"

Lao Zhou's mechanical prosthetic issued a fault alarm: "Crystal music…… out of tune……"

The collective network began to destabilize. The newly formed Resonance showed cracks.

Han Qing opened his eyes.

At this moment, he was a person who had almost emptied himself of all his stories. But he remembered the warmth of 341 people, remembered the gifts of 3000 civilizations, and remembered three new lifeforms saying, "The rift is sealed."

He bent down to pick up the two paper stars, then placed them back into his chest pocket.

Then he did three things:

1. He said to Kaiwen: "Activate the emotional storm. Now, no waiting."

2. He said to Su Yu: "I need you to guide three hundred tuners. Not guide power, but guide…… those they cherish most, most useless, most easily formatted memories."

3. Finally he said to all those marked: "If you are afraid, close your eyes. But do not cut the connection. Let those screaming poems, scattered paintings, out-of-tune music…… continue flowing through you. We do not need to understand them, only need to let them…… flow through."

Countdown: 38 hours.

Three scout vessels began lowering their orbit, like three falling silver stars.

Han Qing looked up at them. The rainbow string shadow in his left eye reflected the vessels' cold geometric outline; in his right eye's human pupil, reflected the trembling yet still standing crowd in the morning light.

He suddenly recalled something—not a memory, but this moment's realization:

What the formatting protocol seeks to clear has never been "error," but "difference." And these people, these Earthlings who bore alien memories, these menders of the rift linking three thousand civilizations, may be the most "different" existence in the universe.

"Then let the difference be a bit greater." He whispered softly.

The star-string on his chest spontaneously emerged, floating before him. This time it was not waiting to be plucked—it was the string itself beginning to vibrate, emitting the first note.

That note was very light.

Light as the sound of a paper star landing.

But all the plants in the Healing Forest, at the same moment, turned their leaves toward Han Qing.

The collective network stabilized.

Not becoming stronger, but becoming…… softer. Soft enough to accommodate screams, scattering, out-of-tune sounds without breaking.

The first scout vessel entered the atmosphere, its hull friction with air producing a scorching trail, like a wound tearing the sky.

Han Qing began folding the sixty-first paper star.