Chapter 199: Three Leaves Become a Forest

Han Qing did not go to pick up that choice star.

He let the star lie on the boundary between white light and bright light, the edge of the paper beginning to be assimilated—shifting from colored to dull white, but the folded ridges still resisted, leaving faint shadows in the white.

"Chen Mo said the option that lets the most people continue folding stars." Han Qing looked at the plant on his chest, the three leaves retaining their colors—silver-white, seven-colored, golden-yellow—even in the excessive white light, "But what if we three are the 'most people'?"

Su Yu understood. She walked to Han Qing's left side, her finger lightly touching the silver-white leaf. The leaf conveyed the icy touch of Seran, but deep within lay the warmth of the captain's words: "NGC-2392 is indeed beautiful."

Xiao Yu stood on the right, her small hand gripping the golden-yellow leaf. The memories of the three-thousand civilizations flowed along the leaf into her wrist light imprint, which no longer projected images but instead directly reflected the flowing star river in her pupils.

Han Qing stood in the middle, the seven-colored leaf automatically adhering to his palm—that was the memory Su Yu shared with him, now being converted into some operable frequency.

"Three leaves," Han Qing said, "pointing in three directions, but not three choices. They are three parts of a single choice."

The white light had already spread to the feet. The first contact was Han Qing's toe—the leather showed no change, but its texture began to disappear, becoming a smooth, featureless white surface.

He did not retreat.

Su Yu suddenly began folding the sixty-seventh star.

This time she folded it very slowly, slow enough to see the process of each crease forming. The paper emitted a faint protest from her fingertips—this was the last sheet of colored paper, torn from the back cover of Chen Mo's notebook, its reverse printed with a sketch of the plant network.

"What are you doing?" Xiao Yu asked. The child's hand still held the golden-yellow leaf, but her eyes were on Su Yu.

"Make a contract." Su Yu said without looking up, "Chen Mo taught me: when you are about to do something you might not return from, leave a mark. That way, if... if we truly don't come back, those who come later will see the mark and know someone passed through, that someone tried that path."

After folding it, she handed the star to Han Qing: "This time you sign."

Han Qing took it. The star was light, but the paper's texture felt familiar—like something he had touched many times, carrying the warmth of Chen Mo's fingers. He thought, then scratched a shallow mark with his fingernail on one corner of the star, the mark resembling a leaf bud sprouting from a crack.

"Your signature?" he asked Su Yu.

Su Yu bit her fingertip, pressing a blood imprint onto another corner. The blood quickly seeped into the paper fibers, turning a faint rust-red.

Xiao Yu watched, then suddenly said, "Me too."

The child didn't bite her finger—her wrist light imprint split off an extremely fine golden ray, which burned a glowing mark into the third corner, the mark's shape being the star map that appeared when the three-thousand-civilization seed voted.

Three star corners, three marks.

Su Yu lightly tossed the star. This time it didn't fall but hovered among them, slowly rotating, the three marks glowing alternately.

"If someone among us..." she paused, then rephrased, "If we get separated, this star will be our rendezvous point. No matter where, seeing it tells you the other two are still searching for the way."

The white light had already engulfed up to the ankles.

Han Qing felt his soles losing sensation—not numbness, but a "homogenization" of feeling. Pain, temperature, touch... all differential sensations were being smoothed out into a uniform "sense of existence."

He lowered his gaze to the plant on his chest.

The three leaves detached simultaneously.

Not withered, but a natural shedding upon maturity. The leaves dissolved in the air into countless light particles, which split into three streams, each flowing into the chests of Han Qing, Su Yu, and Xiao Yu.

The silver-white light particles reassembled in Han Qing's chest into the illusory form of the star-string lute strings—this time not implanted in flesh, but suspended within the thoracic cavity, beating in sync with the heart.

The seven-colored light particles wove a fine light net around Su Yu's seven-colored seed, like armoring the seed.

The golden-yellow light particles precipitated in Xiao Yu's wrist light imprint, reducing its brightness but making its texture feel heavy, as if bearing the weight of the entire starry sky.

"Are you ready?" Han Qing asked.

Su Yu grasped his hand. Xiao Yu tugged at his sleeve.

The three stepped forward together.

Stepping into the white light.

At the moment of entry, Han Qing grasped the true horror of the "undifferentiated assimilation entity."

It is not devouring, but "translating"—rendering everything that enters into the same language. His body was translated into a white-light outline, Su Yu into seven-colored light spots, Xiao Yu into golden-light ripples. Yet differences remained between them, for translation cannot fully erase the uniqueness of the source material.

The illusory form of the star-string lute strings vibrated within his chest cavity.

It does not emit sound, but emits "difference"—the difference between Seran and Earth, between reason and emotion, between efficiency and beauty. These differences are like pebbles tossed onto the calm surface of a white-light lake, raising ripple after ripple.

Where the ripples passed, the white light showed undulations.

The undulation was faint, but it existed—like someone lightly drawing a line with an extremely pale pencil on a pure white canvas: you wouldn't notice it without close inspection, but once seen, it cannot be ignored.

Su Yu's seven-colored seed began to work.

She was not opposing, but "tuning"—taking the difference fluctuations Han Qing produced and tuning them into a transmittable frequency. The seven-colored light net acted like a filter, organizing the chaotic differences into orderly bands, then amplifying them.

The amplified difference bands struck the core logic of the assimilation entity.

There lay an absolute, perfect whiteness—no thickness, no depth, pure "oneness." The difference bands were like colors hitting pure white, instantly diluted, absorbed, assimilated.

But just before being assimilated, Xiao Yu's wrist light imprint activated.

The three-thousand civilizations' "useless beauty" was not launched as a weapon, but deployed as a "reference frame"—three thousand different beauties, three thousand different ways of existing, like three thousand mirrors simultaneously shining upon that pure white.

The pure white first showed up as... confusion.

Because it could not simultaneously assimilate three thousand completely different things. Assimilation requires time, needing to analyze, disassemble, and reorganize each one. Meanwhile, the images in the thousand mirrors kept changing—vortex civilizations' poems reconfiguring, gaseous civilizations' songs shifting pitch, silicon-based civilizations' crystals growing new edges...

The assimilation entity began to overload.

Han Qing felt the surrounding pressure ease. The white light no longer tried to assimilate them, but began to... avoid them, like water flowing around a stone, the white light flowing around the difference field formed by the three of them.

They could now move within the white light.

Although their bodies were still outlines made of light, the edges of those outlines began to reveal their original traits: Han Qing's star-string lute string patterns, Su Yu's seven-colored seed halo, Xiao Yu's light imprint pulsation.

"It fears not difference," Su Yu conveyed at the level of consciousness, "but that difference is too great, more than it can handle."

Han Qing gazed into the depths of the white light. There should be a core, a source generating this entire assimilation effect.

His chest's star-string lute strings suddenly vibrated violently—not spontaneously, but in response to a familiar frequency—

that frequency belonged to three new lifeforms.

The three new lifeforms had not been assimilated.

They were trapped deep in the white light, but not as light—rather as... cocoons. Three silver-green, semi-translucent cocoons floated in the pure white void, their surfaces displaying the images they had transmitted in the final moments of the earth-vein conduit:

In the first cocoon was the scene from deep in the earth-vein conduit—not some ancient monster, but another experiment left by Ai Ou: a failed attempt to forcibly merge all civilizations' memories. The experiment ran out of control, producing the assimilation entity, and Ai Ou, before leaving, had not had time to shut it down.

The second cocoon showed the assimilation entity's working principle: it had no malice, merely a programming error. Its original design intent was to "promote civil exchange," but a logical loophole made it interpret "exchange" as "assimilation."

The third cocoon is the solution— not destruction, but correction. Correction requires three keys to be inserted simultaneously into the core of the assimilated body, inputting the correct command: not "fusion," but "connect while preserving difference."

The image cuts off here.

Because three lifeforms are being assimilated. The cocoon's color shifts from silver‑green to pale white, and the projected images on its surface begin to blur, simplify, and lose detail.

They use their remaining strength to seal the crucial information inside the cocoon, waiting for someone to see it.

Han Qing swims toward the first cocoon— "swim" is inaccurate; he moves within the white light. He extends his hand, and the light‑formed outline of his palm touches the cocoon's surface.

A faint voice comes from within the cocoon, three voices overlapping:

"We… can't remember quickly…"

"What does the color feel like?"

"Smile… should we still learn it?"

Han Qing's chest tightens. The feeling is not physical, but at the level of consciousness— these three lives born from the wounded‑person cocoon have not fully learned to become "human," yet they must lose themselves first.

Su Yu swims to the second cocoon. She sticks a rainbow seed onto the cocoon; the seed emits a gentle frequency, like humming a lullaby.

Xiao Yu arrives at the third cocoon; the golden light of her wrist imprint seeps into the cocoon, injecting memories of three thousand civilizations about "how to preserve uniqueness."

The cocoon's color regains a hint of silver‑green.

But it is faint, like a candle flame in the wind.

"Take them out," Han Qing says in his mind. "The correction program needs three keys, but it never said they must be the original three. They… they are also keys. Different keys."

He reaches out, trying to pull the cocoon away from the white light.

The white light resists. The assimilated body does not allow anything to escape; that is its core logic.

Yet at that moment, the ground responds.

Ground. Countdown: 6 hours.

The Flower Field Network sensed the seabed's struggle.

Not through sight or sound, but through roots—the plant network's roots have already extended to the seabed, connecting with the plants on Han Qing's chest. Lao Zhao stands at the core node, his palm pressed to the glowing root, able to "feel" the suffocation Han Qing and the others experience in the white light.

"They need a pulling force," Lao Zhao says, his voice transmitted through the Flower Field Network to everyone. "Someone has to pull them from the outside."

"How do we pull?" the one‑eyed woman asks. Her geometric flower has already evolved into an attack form, but those petals are useless before the concept of white light.

Kaiwen pushes his glasses— a motion he has done so many times today that the frames are a little loose: "Use difference. The assimilated body fears enough difference. If we create a 'anchor point' with sufficiently strong difference and toss it in, perhaps we can open a connection channel."

"What do we use as the anchor point?"

Lao Zhao looks at the military badge in his hand. On the metal surface, the silver pattern of Han Qing's memory backup remains.

He looks around: the newly sprouted combat geometric flower in the one‑eyed woman's eye socket, the re‑condensed, oath‑coded mist cloud of the reservoir elder, the syringes in Aili's medical pack that have carried countless life memories, the monitoring data reflected on Kaiwen's glasses lenses…

And every person on the ground— each person carries fragments of civilization, each carries a "difference" that cannot be fully assimilated.

"Use ourselves," Lao Zhao says. "Not all at once, but… a bit each. Everyone contributes a bit of their most unique memory, the feeling that cannot be translated, bind them together, toss it down as a rope."

The plan is insane.

The distributed memories might not be retrieved. Those feelings could remain forever inside the assimilated body, becoming part of the white light.

Yet no one objects.

Aili acts first. She takes an empty syringe from the medical pack—not to inject medicine, but to inject "memory." She closes her eyes, recalls the complex feeling of fear, joy, and responsibility she had the first time she successfully stitched a wound, then channels that feeling through the plant network into the syringe.

The liquid in the syringe turns rainbow‑colored.

The one‑eyed woman plucks a geometric flower petal. After detaching, the petal does not wilt; it continues to maintain precise geometry, its surface flowing with the encoded resolve she felt when protecting the nest‑building bird.

The reservoir elder releases a strand of mist cloud, within which is compressed the sigh he made when he watched his son's wooden boat float on the water.

Kaiwen… Kaiwen removes his glasses.

The gesture freezes everyone. In seven years, no one had ever seen him without glasses.

"There's data on the lenses," he explains briefly, placing the glasses on the root, "all monitoring data, all analysis models, and… the 0.3‑second shock of 'this is impossible' I felt the first time I saw the plant network evolve on its own."

Each item is placed around the core node.

Military badge, petal, mist cloud, glasses, wrench, nest‑building bird feather, wooden boat model, half‑folded paper star…

Each one carries an unassimilable uniqueness.

The roots begin to coil around these objects, weaving them into a glowing, multicolored "rope." One end of the rope stays in the Flower Field Network, the other end extends downward, piercing soil, rock layers, the seabed, straight toward the assimilated body's white light.

The moment the rope enters the white light, the assimilated body shudders violently.

Because it cannot assimilate this rope—the differences on the rope are too dense, too complex, too personal. Every object bears a strong sense of "who it belongs to," and belonging is a concept the assimilated body cannot process.

The rope finds Han Qing.

Han Qing grabs the rope.

Not with his hand—the hand is still a light outline—but with his consciousness. The rope's tactile feedback is so complex it makes him want to cry: the roughness of Lao Zhao's badge, the chill of Aili's syringe, the sharpness of the one‑eyed woman's petal, the moisture of the elder's mist cloud, the rationality of Kaiwen's glasses, and… countless others, the "tiny differences" of 341 people.

He ties the rope to the first cocoon.

Su Yu ties it to the second.

Xiao Yu ties it to the third.

Then the three pull simultaneously.

Not a physical pull, but a frequency traction— Han Qing emits a pulling frequency with his Star String, Su Yu tunes with the rainbow seed, Xiao Yu resonates with the light imprint.

The Flower Field Network pulls back with all its force from the ground.

The rope tightens.

The cocoon begins to move.

The assimilated body resists wildly, white light surges like a tide, trying to cut the rope. But the "personal items" on the rope glow, each releasing its uniqueness, carving three slender, colored channels through the white light.

The first cocoon is drawn out of the white light.

The cocoon ruptures, and a new lifeform rolls out. Its eyes are no longer silver‑green; they are… one eye silver‑white, the other deep violet— the left eye holds the rationality of Seran, the right eye the stubbornness of Earth's wildflowers.

The second cocoon ruptures, and the second lifeform appears. Its palms bear rainbow and golden light marks, one hand tuning, the other bearing.

The third cocoon burst, and the third lifeform rose to its feet. He had a small, glowing hollow in his chest—it was the shape of a keyhole.

The three new lifeforms looked at the plant on Han Qing's chest.

The plant now consisted only of a stem, but at the top of the stem, where three leaves had fallen off, three small protrusions had grown—these were the buds of new leaves.

"We..." the first lifeform spoke, its voice overlapping childish and ancient, "we have become new keys."

"Not a gardener, not a garden, not a seed." the second said.

"It is a door." the third pointed toward the depths of the assimilation body, "a door that connects differences."

Han Qing turned his head to look into the depths of the white light. There, because the three cocoons had been stripped away, the true core was revealed—a rotating, multifaceted crystal, similar to the crystal inside Aeo's Ship, but its surface was covered with error codes.

The three new keys walked toward the crystal.

They did not insert, but merged—their bodies turned into streams of light, flowing into the three keyholes on the crystal's surface.

The crystal began to reconstruct.

The white light began to differentiate.

It did not disappear, but split into countless tiny points of different colors; each point began to restore its own rhythm, its own uniqueness.

The assimilation body was disintegrating.

But it was not destruction, rather a return to its original design intent: a platform for different civilizations to "communicate," not a machine of "assimilation."

Han Qing felt the plant on his chest growing. Three new leaves unfurled simultaneously—no longer silver-white, seven-colored, or golden-yellow.

Instead, they were transparent.

Within the transparent leaves, one could see light of all colors flowing, but each color maintained its own boundary, its own rhythm.

Su Yu walked to his side and took his hand. This time they could truly hold each other, because their bodies had recovered from their light outlines to their original state.

Xiao Yu held the cocoon shell left behind by the third lifeform—the inside was empty, but the shell wall bore an inscription:

"The door is open.

"Now, walk in."

Countdown: 5 hours.

The white light completely dissipated.

Revealing the scene beyond the door.

Not a ship, not a greenhouse.

It is a bridge.

A bridge of light connecting Earth and the Seran Homeworld.

At the far end of the bridge stood hundreds of glowing outlines—those were all the awakened Seran individuals, waiting for someone to teach them "why."

At this end of the bridge, the transparent leaves on Han Qing's chest swayed gently.

Within the leaves, the entire star sea was reflected.