Chapter 198: The Gardener's Greenhouse

The world beyond the door is not a ship.

At least not a ship in the traditional sense—no deck, no cabins, no engine. It is a huge, translucent spherical space hovering in the absolute darkness three kilometers beneath the sea. The sphere's wall is made of some kind of living crystal, inside which nebula-like halos flow, within which countless tiny points of light drift, each flashing on and off in its own unique rhythm.

Upon Han Qing's first step into the sphere, he felt the deep purple leaf-bud mark on his chest flare with sharp pain—not harm, but resonance. All the light points in the spherical space turned toward him simultaneously, their flashing rhythms beginning to sync, like a sea of stars paying homage to an unfamiliar star.

Xiao Yu's wrist light-print projected a trembling translation:

"Detected the genetic marker of the Seeder Ai Ou……

Marker carrier: Bridge individual·Han Qing……

Marker source: chest implant……

Verification passed."

Su Yu looked around; the seven-colored seed on her chest glowed steadily, but its frequency was clearly suppressed—the energy field here was too strong, strong enough that individual power was like a candle facing the sun. "The ship Chen Mo spoke of…" she whispered, "is a greenhouse. A greenhouse for cultivating what?"

The answer lies at the sphere's center.

There hovered a huge, multifaceted crystal, each facet displaying a different image: some showed the geometric cities of the vortex civilization, some the misty art of the gas civilization, some the crystal forests of the silicon-based civilization, and… a close-up of Earth's plant network, the purple wildflower in the ruins of the chemical industrial park.

Above all the images floated three glowing words—not characters, but images projected directly into consciousness:

Gardener

Garden

Seed

Xiao Yu suddenly dropped to her knees, the child clutching his head, her wrist light-print bursting into chaotic light of three thousand colors. "They're screaming…" her voice trembled, "the three thousand civilization seeds… are afraid of choosing. Gardener means responsibility, garden means sacrifice, seed means…"

"It means a new beginning." a voice came from within the crystal.

It was neither mechanical nor human, but something between the two, a voice with the rhythm of plant growth.

Light and shadow at the crystal's center coalesced into a vague humanoid outline—no features, no details, only flowing light. Yet its presence felt older and heavier than the combined might of the three hundred capital ships outside.

"I am Ai Ou." the outline said, "or more precisely, I am the last automated response program left by Ai Ou. I left this place three thousand years ago to seek the answer to a question."

Han Qing stepped forward: "What question?"

"How can different beauties coexist in the same universe." Ai Ou's outline turned toward those civilization images, "I built this 'Inter-civilizational Memory Garden' to preserve the most precious 'useless beauty' of each of the three thousand civilizations. But I found that preservation is not enough. Beauty needs to grow, to mutate, to…… cross‑contaminate."

The outline pointed at Earth's image: "So I chose this planet—not because it is special, but precisely because it is ordinary. Ordinary soil can grow unexpected flowers."

Su Yu suddenly understood: "The plant network…… is yours left behind?"

"It's an invitation." Ai Ou said, "inviting all civilizations to deposit their 'beauty' here, waiting for the day when a civilization learns how to be a gardener—not just tending its own flowers, but tending the whole garden."

The image switched. It showed the Se Lan civilization: precise geometric cities, an efficient energy network, and then…… the activation of a standardization protocol, which eliminated individuals who had spent a little too long gazing at nebulae.

"Se Lan is my most regrettable creation." Ai Ou's voice showed emotion for the first time, "I taught them technology, but didn't have time to teach them 'why.' They learned to build gardens, but forgot that a garden's purpose is to let flowers bloom."

The burning pain of Han Qing's chest leaf-bud mark suddenly turned into a pull. He found himself walking toward the crystal, his palm pressing against the facet displaying Earth's image.

The facet softened like a water surface, rippling outward. Within the ripples appeared more scenes: Chen Mo picking up the purple wildflower's seed in the ruins, the surgery implanting the seed into Han Qing's chest, the plant network's first autonomous growth, three new lifeforms emerging from cocoons……

"You have already made your choice." Ai Ou said, "but now is the final confirmation: will you become gardeners, guarding this garden; or become the garden itself, letting all civilizations coexist within you; or…… become new seeds, carrying all memories elsewhere to start anew."

The outline turned to Xiao Yu: "Carrier, the three thousand civilizations within your wrist await your answer."

Turned to Su Yu: "Tuner, your ability can harmonize all frequencies, but it requires you to relinquish your individuality."

Finally turned to Han Qing: "Bridge, the seed in your chest is my final work—a fusion of Se Lan and Earth. Your choice will determine whether this fusion is evolution, or……"

Before he could finish, the sphere suddenly shuddered violently.

It was not an external attack, but internal—the "awakened thing" was breaking upward from deeper layers.

In the tremor, new images appeared on the crystal's surface.

They were Han Qing's memory fragments—those preserved by the plant network but not yet returned. Not full scenes, but slices of feeling: the warmth of his father's palm, the pressure of his mother's pen tip when teaching him to write, the sore‑necked sensation when he first saw the starry sky, and Chen Mo's words as he buried the seed in Han Qing's chest: "Live well, wait for the flowers to bloom."

Han Qing stared at these fragments. He should have felt familiarity, should have felt nostalgia, but oddly he felt only an observer's calm—as if watching someone else's home video, knowing the person on screen was himself, yet the emotional connection had been severed.

"You have shed too much of yourself." Ai Ou's voice remained steady amid the shaking, "This is dangerous. A gardener must know each flower's name, a garden must remember every leaf's vein, a seed must carry a complete gene bank. A carrier without memory…… is merely an empty vessel."

Su Yu suddenly grabbed Han Qing's hand and pressed it against the seven‑colored seed on her chest. The seed throbbed violently, its frequency penetrating the skin and flowing directly into Han Qing's body.

"I give you." she said, her voice steady in the vibration, "I give you my memories—Chen Mo teaching me how to fold stars, Lao Zhao humming while fixing the water purifier, Xiao Yu's expression the first time she called me sister, and…… and every moment I watched you gradually become who you are now."

Memory is not images, but frequency.

The seven‑colored seed transformed the most precious fragments of Su Yu's memory into emotional frequency, transmitting it along her arm into Han Qing's body—not overwriting, but filling in—like using colored glass shards to repair a broken window.

Han Qing closed his eyes.

He saw: Su Yu sitting on a bluestone folding paper, morning light tracing the curve of her profile; she gripping his hand in the darkness, saying "Hold on and don't let go"; she gazing upward at the crack in the vanguard ship, her eyes reflecting not fear but a kind of tender resolve……

These memories are not his.

But now they took root in his consciousness, growing his own emotional network—not "remembering," but "experiencing someone else's memories and making them his own."

The leaf‑bud mark on his chest suddenly grew.

Not virtual, but real—a thin, deep‑purple plant stem pushed up from beneath his skin, its tip slowly unfurling two new leaves: one silver‑white, one seven‑colored.

Represents Se Lan.

Represents the Tuner.

Still missing a piece—representing the Carrier's golden yellow.

Han Qing looked toward Xiao Yu.

The child was still clutching his head, the three thousand civilizations within his wrist light‑print still arguing. Some civilizations wanted to become gardeners, to control the garden; some wanted to merge into the garden, relinquishing self entirely; some wanted to turn into seeds, fleeing to farther stars.

"Xiao Yu." Han Qing said, his voice for the first time carrying full warmth—the effect of Su Yu's memories taking hold—"Ask them: wouldn't they like to see a real meteor shower?"

Ground. Countdown: 8 hours 19 minutes.

At the third minute of the flower‑field network's integration, the attack arrived.

This time it was not an energy beam, but something more vicious: a cognitive‑detachment round. Twelve silver‑white projectiles fell vertically from high altitude, disintegrating in mid‑air into countless tiny nanomunits, like a metallic snow that blanketed the whole healing forest.

Each nanomunit emitted high‑frequency pulses aimed specifically at the neural links of emotional memory. An ordinary person hit would become a hollow shell—retaining all knowledge but losing all feeling, turned into a pure survival machine.

Lao Zhao saw the first "snowflake" land on the back of his hand. His skin felt no burn, but his brain gave a "buzz"—the image of his son's departing back, which had once been "heart‑breakingly painful to breathe," instantly turned into the plain factual description "a figure in blue clothes turning and walking away."

The emotions were drained.

"All eyes closed!" Aili roared over the comm channel, "Don't look! Vision will amplify the link!"

But closing their eyes was useless. Nanite units burrowed into the soil, reverse‑infecting through the plant network. The newly sprouted combat‑type geometric flower in the one‑eyed woman's eye socket began to mechanize, its petals turning into precise yet cold geometric plates. The mist cloud the reservoir elder tried to condense formed and immediately dispersed, because the emotional motive "the mist is beautiful" had been stripped away.

The flower‑field network was collapsing.

Individuality remained, but the "emotional root system" linking the individuals was being severed. Soon they would become a collection of mutually independent, non‑resonant "plants", then be eliminated one by one.

Just as the first wave of infection was about to reach the core node, a pulse rose from deep underground.

It wasn't violet light, but a more complex frequency—silver‑white, multicolored, and golden hues blended, dominated by a deep violet. The frequency spread upward along the plant network; wherever it passed, the stripped emotional memories… did not return, but were replaced by something more resilient.

Lao Zhao felt his son's silhouette was no longer "heartache" but had become "responsibility"—not an emotion‑driven duty, but one rooted in rational choice, anchored deep in cognition.

The geometric flower in the one‑eyed woman's eye socket bloomed again, and within its geometric petal structure were embedded philosophical codes from the Spiral Vortex Civilization about "beauty requiring a price."

The reservoir elder's mist cloud re‑condensed, and the swirling mist now carried not simple "beauty" but the oath of the Gas Civilization's millennia‑old "guardian memory."

The flower‑field network did not revert to an emotional network.

It evolved into a "Reason Network"—each individual retained independent consciousness, but what linked them was no longer fleeting emotion, but a carefully considered, voluntarily shouldered "reason."

Nanite snow fell onto this network, like snow landing on a red‑hot steel plate, vaporizing instantly.

The main fleet high in the sky visibly stalled.

They hadn't anticipated this. The formatting protocol can strip emotions, but it cannot strip "self‑chosen reasons"—because reasons are rational, and rationality is the Seran Civilization's strongest domain.

Now they are using their own strongest asset to counter their own strongest asset.

Four awakened main warships seized the opportunity.

They did not attack their comrades; instead they began emitting interference frequencies—not hostile jamming, but "information pollution." Each ship packaged the "Violation" snippets from its captain's private log—such as an extra 0.7 seconds spent gazing at nebulae, a 0.03 % bias toward misty songs, a moment of finding Earth children adorable—and broadcast the packets indiscriminately to the entire fleet.

The Reason Network seized the chance to strike back.

Lao Zhao climbed to the highest point and faced the sky—not with his mouth, but with the collective frequency of the entire flower‑field network, sending a simple message:

"My son is waiting for me to come home.

Is this reason enough?"

Inside the ship.

Xiao Yu's wrist light imprint suddenly steadied.

The quarrel among the Three Thousand Civilizations ceased. It wasn't a consensus; they simply became aware of something more fundamental—they had been debating "why become," yet had forgotten to ask "for what."

The light imprint projected a new scene: not images of civilizations, but fragments of each civilization's most treasured "useless beauty." Within the Spiral Vortex Civilization's geometric poem lay a mother's lullaby for her child; the Gas Civilization's misty painting contained an ancient legend of friendship; the Silicon‑based Civilization's crystal music encoded the data record of its first sight of a rainbow…

Then all the scenes began to merge.

It didn't become a single entity; rather, like puzzle pieces it was assembled, ultimately forming a massive Star Map—the Milky Way's Star Map—but in wavelengths invisible to the human eye, the stars were linked by fine roots, each star a flower, the whole galaxy a garden.

"They voted," Xiao Yu whispered, tears slipping silently— not tears of sorrow, but a physiological reaction squeezed out by an overwhelming emotion, "Three Thousand Civilizations, unanimous approval."

"Approve what?" Su Yu asked.

"Approve…" Xiao Yu raised her wrist, the light imprint burst into unprecedented pure golden light, which surged into Han Qing's chest, causing the plant there to sprout a third leaf—a golden leaf, "to become the soil of the garden, not the gardener, nor the garden itself."

Ai O's outline showed a smile‑like shift of light for the first time.

"A wise choice," it said, "The gardener will age, the garden will become barren, but the soil… as long as there is a single seed, it can be reborn."

The crystal began to disintegrate.

It wasn't a collapse, but a decomposition into countless tiny light particles, each bearing a fragment of civilization memory. The particles streamed like a river toward the plant on Han Qing's chest, merging into the three leaves.

The silver‑white leaf absorbed Seran technology and regret.

The multicolored leaf absorbed the Tuner's conversion and gentleness.

The golden leaf absorbed the Three Thousand Civilizations' "useless beauty."

The plant began to grow, not upward but downward—its roots pierced the sphere's base, delving into deeper ocean floor, linking with Earth's plant network, with the ground flower‑field network, with the four awakened main warships, and with all life that still retained a "reason."

And that "awakened thing" finally breached the last layer of barrier.

It was not a monster.

At least not a monster in the traditional sense. It was a… Error Signal. A by‑product of an experiment that Ai O failed to fully shut down three thousand years ago when she departed.

The sphere's base cracked, and what surged out was not darkness but excessive light— all colors blended into a blinding white. Within the white light swirled twisted civilization images: the Spiral Vortex Civilization's geometric poem became a cage of restraints, the Gas Civilization's misty painting turned into poisonous fog, the Silicon‑based Civilization's crystal music devolved into noise, Earth's wildflowers morphed into spreading thorns…

"I tried to let the beauties of different civilizations merge," Ai O's voice began to distort, "but fusion can sometimes produce… a backfire. When beauty loses its boundaries, when all differences are forcibly unified, it becomes this—'Indistinguishable Assimilation Entity.' It will devour everything, turning plurality into singularity, turning the garden into a desert."

The white light began to expand; wherever it passed, the crystal sphere's wall turned a uniform white, the light specks lost their unique rhythm, becoming a tidy, identical flicker.

It was formatting this greenhouse.

And once it escaped, it would spread along the plant network, turning Earth, the Seran fleet, and everything it touched into the same "indistinguishable" state.

"Three options have now become two," Ai O's outline began to fade, "Either seal it with the garden's power, but the garden will be damaged and the Three Thousand Civilizations' memories may be lost. Or…"

"Or what?" Han Qing asked. The plant on his chest had grown to half a person's height, the three leaves each corresponding to a frequency, its roots linking the entire network.

"Or there is a person who voluntarily enters its interior, using 'sufficiently strong difference' to detonate it from within," Ai O's voice was barely audible, "but the one who goes in… will be assimilated. Not death, but something more terrifying—losing all uniqueness, becoming part of the 'indistinguishable.'"

The crystal fully disintegrated.

The white light engulfed half the sphere.

Han Qing, Su Yu, and Xiao Yu stood in the remaining bright zone, roots forming a passage toward the ground behind them, and ahead the sweeping Indistinguishable Assimilation Entity.

The plant on the chest suddenly swayed gently.

The three leaves pointed to three directions: the silver‑white leaf toward the high‑altitude fleet, the multicolored leaf toward the ground flower‑field, the golden leaf toward… Han Qing himself.

It was saying: the time to choose has arrived.

Su Yu suddenly began folding the sixty‑sixth star.

This time she folded at lightning speed, the paper a blur at her fingertips, completing it in ten seconds. After folding, she didn't hand it to Han Qing, but gave it a gentle toss—the star arced and landed on the ground between the three, right on the boundary between the bright light and the white light.

"Chen Mo taught me the final folding method," she said, "It's called 'Choice Star.' Throw it out, and the direction it lands is the answer."

The star spun on the ground.

One circle, two circles, three circles.

When it finally stopped, one sharp point faced Han Qing, one sharp point faced Su Yu, one sharp point faced Xiao Yu.

Three directions.

"It seems," Han Qing said, looking at the three leaves, "the three of us each have our own choice."

He crouched, picked up the star. The paper unfolded in his palm— not torn, but automatically unfolded, revealing a line of small text written inside by Chen Mo:

"If you must choose, choose the option that lets the most people continue folding stars."

Han Qing looked up at Su Yu, then at Xiao Yu, then at the plant on his chest.

The three leaves swayed gently, as if waiting.

And the white light had already spread to his feet.

Countdown: 7 hours.

He made his choice.