Chapter 217: The Seven Seconds of First Contact's Silence

When the energy entity of the blazing furnace arrived, the sky did not burn.

It first brought silence—a absolute hush that emptied all ambient sounds, leaving only the heartbeat amplified infinitely. Then the plant network transmitted the first wave of perception:

【Contact Initiated】

【Emotional Frequency Forced Synchronization Activated】

【Range: radius 532 km】

【Synchronized Emotion: Anger (purity 99.7%)】

Han Qing felt a heavy blow to the chest. Not physical, but emotional—three thousand kinds of anger surged in at once: the anger of betrayal, the anger of helplessness, the anger of shame at one's own existence, the primal anger at the universe's injustice…

The white flower's load instantly jumped to 58%.

"It's now!" Xiao Yu's wrist light sigil fully activated, a pale gold barrier enveloping the six core team members, "Bridge's calculated cooling fissure activity cycle—each time anger burns for seven hours, there is a seven‑second 'fatigue gap'!"

An orange‑red vortex appeared in the sky, with a fine ice‑blue fissure at its center.

The fissure was slowly widening.

The singing civilization's "Anger‑Enveloped Ballad" sounded first. Not through sound, but via the plant network's roots—every leaf of the listening‑speech flowers began to vibrate, emitting a low‑frequency humming melody. Where the melody passed, tiny ice‑crystal petals began to condense in the air.

The ice‑crystal petals drifted toward the vortex and melted the instant they touched the angry energy, but the resulting vapor formed a ring around the fissure… a damp silence.

The eighth petal of the white flower suddenly detached from its receptacle, hovering in mid‑air.

The petal did not wither; instead it unfolded into a transparent film half a meter in diameter. The film displayed the interior of the fissure:

A lifeform shaped as a "Forger" of lava and light, curled within an eternally burning core. Its "hand" (if those energy tendrils can be called hands) clutched tightly to its chest, where a slightly darker patch marked the location of the cooling fissure.

It embraced its own pain, because that was the only "substance" it could touch.

"Did you see?" Su Yu lowered her voice, folding a paper crane treated with fire‑resistant material in her hand, "Its anger is not a weapon, but… armor. It hurt so much that it wrapped itself in flame, and the flame became a new cage."

She gently tossed the paper crane. It did not fly toward the vortex; instead it landed on the ground and began pecking a blackened stone with its beak—steady rhythm, like knocking on a door.

In the third minute of forced anger synchronization, Old Zhao was the first to show symptoms.

He stared at his palm, where the transplanted purple flower was withering. Yet he did not panic; instead he sat cross‑legged, pulling a yellowed photograph from his chest— a portrait of his wife and son on the last birthday before the great disaster.

"When anger arrives," his voice was steady, though his fingers trembled, "I count the smiling faces in the photo. One, two… when I reach the third, the anger can no longer catch up."

The geometric flower in the one‑eyed woman's eye socket rapidly shifted shape, finally settling into a heat‑dissipation grid. She walked to the edge of the purification tower, facing the vortex, and "looked" toward it with the side of her face that had lost an eye.

"I used to think anger was fire," she whispered, more to herself, "Now I think anger is the smoke after the fire goes out— you think it's burning, but it just doesn't know how to disperse."

Aili's medical kit opened automatically. The first of the seven injectables inside was now faintly glowing—an emergency formula for "Emotional Overload‑Induced Physiological Collapse." Yet she did not touch it; instead she closed the kit and wrapped three coils of bandage around her hand.

"I want to remember this feeling," she said to Kevin, who was desperately trying not to push his glasses off (already the fifth time), "If I later encounter patients trapped by anger, I'll know what that weight feels like."

The pressure of forced synchronization forced Xiao Yu to kneel. Yet she did not resist; instead she voluntarily released part of the light sigil's protection, allowing a strand of anger to flow in.

"What are you doing?!" Han Qing tried to pull her.

"Bridge said…" Xiao Yu gritted her teeth, cold sweat beading on her forehead, "To establish a link, we must first… share a memory of equal intensity. Let me see… found it."

She closed her eyes. The light sigil projected a scene:

Six‑year‑old Xiao Yu, at the edge of a spore‑contaminated zone, watched her mother forcibly taken away for Isolation by a protection squad. She picked up a stone to smash the suited personnel, but the stone slipped from her hand. The anger she felt for the first time in her life—scalding, helpless, a fury wanting to tear the world apart yet unable to even throw a single stone.

The memory was encoded by the light sigil into a slender pale‑gold thread, drifting toward the white flower's unfolded film.

The film quivered. The Forger inside the fissure suddenly ceased its curling motion.

It "looked" toward the thread.

Contact occurred.

But not through technology—it was through that six‑year‑old child's angry memory.

The Forger's energy tendril protruded from the fissure—a short segment, its tip still dripping lava. It gently brushed the pale‑gold thread.

In an instant, the white flower's load surged to 71%!

The petals began to show charred edges, and Han Qing felt a genuine searing pain in the chest. Simultaneously, a new scene appeared on the film:

The Forger civilization's childhood (if that nascent flame can be called a childhood). It was given the mission to "burn to drive the eternal furnace," but when it first conceived the thought "I don't want to be merely fuel," all the civilization's furnaces extinguished simultaneously for 0.3 seconds.

That 0.3‑second interval was designated "the most dangerous error in civilization's history."

The punishment: it was permanently imprisoned in the core furnace, its "rebellious thought" becoming an extra energy source for the furnace— the angrier it is, the higher the furnace's output.

"So its anger…" Su Yu understood, "is both punishment and power source. It hates itself, but its hate is used to keep the whole civilization running. It cannot stop."

The final instant of the seventh second.

The Forger made an unexpected move: it deliberately pressed the protruding tendril onto the white flower's film.

Not an attack. A light touch, like a blind person feeling a stranger's face.

Through the contact, a brief message consisting of only three "emotional pulses" was transmitted:

1. Is it hot? (pointing at itself)

2. Does it hurt? (pointing at Han Qing's scar‑garden on the chest)

3. Can… it not be hot? (pointing at the fissure itself)

The white flower, using its last strength, responded: it caused the eighty‑seven scar‑garden flowers to bloom simultaneously, each releasing a fragment of "healing memory"— Chen Mo's fingertip soil when planting a seed, Old Zhao's palm sweat when transplanting a small flower, Su Yu's seventh mistaken fold while folding the paper crane…

These subtle, imperfect memories belonging to the realm of "weakness" turned into eighty‑seven specks of glimmer, drifting toward the fissure.

The Forger caught one of them—a memory of the night Old Zhou's daughter died, when his mechanical prosthetic couldn't hold a cup of water, the water spilled onto the floor, and he stared at the puddle in a daze for three hours.

The flame on the lava tendril briefly turned into the transparent color of water.

It lasted 0.1 seconds.

Then the seven‑second window ended. The fissure closed, and the anger synchronization intensity returned to its peak.

But something was different.

The white flower's load fell back to 65%, but three of the eight petals had permanently become semi‑transparent charred glass—like glass scorched by fire.

It did not wither; instead, at the center of the charred petal, a tiny silvery‑white sprout emerged.

"It completed its first transformation," Xiao Yu said weakly, leaning on Han Qing, "The angry energy entity's 'cooling fissure' expanded by 0.03%. Bridge said… it voluntarily slowed the anger pulse frequency to 'allow more time to receive that transparent‑colored memory.'"

The orange-red vortex in the sky began to move slowly—not leaving, but adjusting its orbit, becoming Earth's temporary "emotional satellite".

Beneath the vortex, all the listening-speech flowers of the plant network turned toward the same direction. On their leaves appeared a line of text formed jointly by ice crystals and Hui Jin:

"When does the second lesson start?"