Chapter 216: Tea Party Before the Arrival of Anger

The Anger Energy Entity of the Blazing Forge Furnace will arrive in forty‑seven hours.

The purification tower in the morning light was unusually quiet. All the listening flowers had closed their petals, and silvery‑white defensive veins flowed across their leaves—the plant network's instinctive reaction: something hot was approaching.

Old Zhao, however, had set out a tea spread at the gate of Iron Anvil Town.

"Sit down." Old Zhao boiled water with that chipped iron kettle; as steam rose, he pointed to the seven rough clay cups before him: "Kaiwen, stop adjusting your glasses—you can't finish the data. Aili, put your medical kit down; no bandaging today."

When Han Qing sat down, the white flower on his chest turned slightly toward the tea spread. The edge of one of its eight petals had already taken on a faint orange‑red hue, as if lit by a distant fire.

"It's sensing the Anger Energy Entity." Xiao Yu whispered, "The frequency resonance has started early."

Su Yu folded a wingless paper crane and placed it beside the teacup: "I tried seven folding methods and found anger the hardest to fold—because it refuses to be shaped."

The Bridge's hint appeared in an extremely gentle way—not as an interface, but as ripples on the tea.

Text appeared on the water surface:

【Anger Energy Entity Analysis Progress: 41%】

【New discovery: the energy core contains a "cooling fissure"】

【Speculated cause of the fissure: that civilization once tried to suppress anger, causing the energy to implode and form structural trauma】

【Hint: the cooling fissure reacts to "non‑aggressive temperature"】

Kaiwen's hand, raised to push his glasses for the third time, froze in mid‑air: "So… it's hurting itself too?"

"The fiercest fire often begins to burn when one tries to extinguish oneself." The geometric flower in the one‑eyed woman's eye socket reopened, its petals now arranged like heat‑sink fins.

When the tea was steeped for the second infusion, the three new life forms returned from Bridge Space.

The one with silver‑white and deep‑purple heterochromatic eyes held a constantly shifting mass of light—a draft of the "Anger Wrapping Song" just completed by the Singing Civilization. The song's melody was visible to the naked eye: flowing like quicksilver, yet with a fuzzy edge.

"The Bridge says a direct clash would burn us through." The heterochromatic‑eyed life form's voice sounded like two audio tracks overlapped, "But if we sing a song… about 'why fire fears its own shadow,' it might distract it for 0.3 seconds."

The one with seven‑colored golden light on both hands was trying to graft the song's frequency onto the plant network. When her fingertip touched a listening flower, the flower trembled and opened a small cluster of ice‑blue flame‑shaped petals—not hot, but cool to the touch.

The one with a keyhole on his chest was the quietest. Seated at the edge of the tea spread, the bridge model inside his keyhole simulated various ways the energy entity could strike. Each time he lightly tapped his chest, as if saying, "Still holding up."

With the third infusion, Old Zhao began to tell a story unrelated to war.

"In the third year before the great disaster, the chemical plant's reactor once exceeded pressure limits." He poured tea with a steady hand, "The alarm screamed until ears hurt, and every protocol called for emergency cooling. But an old engineer—now buried in the third row of South Mountain Cemetery—had done something in violation."

Amid the rising steam, Han Qing saw the fire of days past reflected in Old Zhao's eyes.

"He shut off the cooling system and instead slowly raised the temperature by two degrees. Everyone thought he'd gone mad. But seven minutes later, the pressure needle drifted back into the safe zone on its own." Old Zhao pushed a teacup toward each person and added, "Later he wrote in the accident report just one line: 'Some boiling happens because one dares not let it boil.'"

Aili gripped her teacup: "You mean…?"

"The Blazing Forge Furnace's energy entity might be like that reactor." Old Zhao gazed at the sky, "It brings the universe's most furious flame to test us. But if we also respond with 'anger,' we're just pressurizing it."

The white flower suddenly shuddered violently!

The petal tinged orange‑red began to spread cracks, simultaneously releasing a transformed frequency fragment. Xiao Yu's light‑seal instantly translated:

【Painful memory: we once tried to create an "eternal furnace"】

【Moment of failure: the furnace core, from excessive suppression, gave birth to self‑awareness】

【Present state: the consciousness is trapped in eternal anger, hating us and hating itself more for being unable to stop burning】

【Truth of the cooling fissure: it was torn open by that consciousness itself, so it could "occasionally not be so hot"】

Han Qing clutched his chest; the flower conveyed not only information but real searing pain—not a physical burn, but the rolling scald of "hating oneself for existing."

"It's come to challenge us, perhaps…" Su Yu's finger hovered over the paper crane, "A plea for help? Using a method that would burn everyone to death?"

The Water Reservoir Elder silently walked to the edge of the tea spread and set down his son's wooden boat model.

From the model rose a mist‑encoded passage—the words he had spoken years ago while teaching his son to swim:

"Being afraid of water isn't wrong. But if you let that fear bury your face in the sand forever, you'll never learn that water can actually hold you up."

The mist gently enveloped the white flower; its trembling eased. The cracks stopped spreading, and the orange‑red settled into a gradient at the petal bases—like the hue of a sunset sinking into the deep sea.

Old Zhou, with the iron fingertip of his mechanical prosthesis, lightly touched the flower: "The day my daughter left, I too wanted to smash the whole world. But I later realized anger is a poor shovel—the more you try to dig a way out with it, the deeper it buries you."

He paused: "But what if you treat anger as a ruler? Measure how deep your pain runs, then decide: enough, this far and no farther."

When the tea had gone cold, the Bridge's final warning came through:

【Anger Energy Entity has accelerated; arrival time moved up to nineteen hours from now】

【Form confirmed: non‑corporeal, an "emotion star"—purely formed by the collapse of suppressed anger】

【Contact risk: all emotional frequencies within a 500‑kilometer radius will be forcibly synchronized to "anger"】

【White Flower current load: 37%; exceeding 60% may cause permanent withering】

Han Qing rose to his feet; the white flower's eight petals fully opened, like a hand ready to catch a meteor.

"We won't build walls." He said, "We'll dig a channel—to divert its fire to a place where it won't burn anything. For example…"

He looked toward Su Yu.

Su Yu opened her palm, the wingless paper crane resting there: "Like an origami class. Teaching a mass of fire how to fold itself so it stays warm without burning anyone."

The three new life forms nodded in unison. The bridge model inside the keyhole began to reshape, becoming the blueprint of a spiraling channel that guides the flow of energy.

Outside the window, the sky's blue began to faintly orange‑red.

As if someone at the far end of the universe had struck a giant match.