Chapter 237

Silent Observer's first batch of "aesthetic exchange students" arrived at dusk, not forty million——that would crush Earth——but seven representatives: Efficiency-1 (insisting on using this number as a warning), Recorder-33, the veteran power engineer, Slow-study-8, and three randomly selected ordinary individuals. They have no physical form; they are seven floating Light Spheres, with ripples on their surfaces striving to mimic "expressions".

Slow-study-8's Light Sphere, as soon as it landed, eagerly turned toward Su Yu: "I… I drew a second flower! I used rust dust from the ventilation ducts, but the color is wrong…"

Su Yu opened her palm, placing a small pinch of real osmanthus petals in the center: "First look, then draw."

An hour before the lesson began, Han Qing's chest scar garden suddenly sent a sharp pain——not his own pain, but Efficiency-1's pain.

The shared link of the Connection Tear fruit continues. Efficiency-1 is currently bearing the data flood generated by forty million individuals simultaneously activating the "0.001% beauty module": someone tried adding a meaningless curved arrow to a logical formula, someone changed the font of their work log to a non-standard style, someone wiped a certain completely invisible part three extra times during engine maintenance…

All the confusion, shame, and a hint of secret excitement produced by these minor "transgressive behaviors" surge toward Han Qing through the Connection Tear.

Among the eighty-seven transparent flowers, nineteen began to seep out pale gold juice——that is the sign of overload.

"Disconnect the link!" Aili immediately activated the medical pack's emergency procedure.

"No." Han Qing gritted his teeth and endured, "If we disconnect, Efficiency-1 will bear all the overload alone; it has just transformed and might collapse."

He looked at Efficiency-1's Light Sphere; its light patterns were violently chaotic, like a silent scream.

Just as the overload was about to reach critical point, the Connection Tear fruit on the grafted sapling suddenly detached on its own, floated to Han Qing's chest, and merged with the six tear-drop fruits.

The seven fruits arranged themselves in a Big Dipper shape, simultaneously releasing a gentle frequency. The frequency did not cut off the link, but wove a buffer net——diverting and slowing the forty million streams of emotion, then like a fine rain, slowly seeping into the soil of the scar garden.

The sharp pain subsided. Even more remarkably, the nineteen seeping flowers in the garden did not waste their juice; it flowed down the stems and condensed on the soil surface into nineteen tiny amber "dew droplets".

Each dew droplet reflected a scene: a Silent Observer individual undergoing their "first aesthetic attempt".

Recorder-33 saw herself in one of the dew droplets——she was secretly adjusting the font of her report title to a slightly curved variant. The annotation beneath the droplet read: "Font change: efficiency -0.0003%, pleasure +2.1%. Net gain: positive."

She stared at that line "Net gain: positive," and her Light Sphere slightly expanded——that was her first experience of "allowed happiness".

Formal instruction began at dusk. Su Yu did not teach drawing, but how to waste three minutes.

She had the seven Light Spheres hover before a basin of clear water, with a few osmanthus petals floating on the surface.

"Rule: only look, do no analysis, record no data, and after three minutes tell me what you saw."

During the first minute, the Light Spheres were extremely agitated. Efficiency-1's light patterns flickered wildly as it forcibly suppressed its impulse to analyze the petals' molecular structure.

In the second minute, Slow-study-8 was the first to "give up"—it entered low-power mode and just stared blankly. The petals rotated with the faint ripples on the water surface; at one moment, sunlight passed through the petals' translucent veins, casting a small golden patch of light on the basin's bottom.

By the third minute, all Light Spheres had stilled. They discovered that when analysis ceased, those "useless details" became strikingly clear: the slight curl at the petals' edges from mild dehydration, the coloration of the petals' shadows from light refraction on the water surface, and even the ability to "hear" the extremely faint friction sound between petal and water……

Time's up.

Su Yu asked: "What did you see?"

The veteran engineer's Light Sphere hesitated before answering: "I saw…… light playing. It passed through the petals, drew a golden dot on the bottom, and then the dot deformed with the water waves, as if breathing."

This description had no practical value, but its Light Sphere's color turned unusually soft.

Su Yu nodded: "This is the content of the first lesson: allowing certain moments to exist simply for 'light to play'."

She gave each Light Sphere an osmanthus petal as "homework," with the instruction: take it back, place it in the corner of your workstation, look at it once a day, but do not analyze why you are looking.

Late at night, Han Qing's overload symptoms flared up again. This time it was not due to the emotion flood, but because Efficiency-1 was undergoing severe cognitive dissonance—the worldview it had built over three thousand years, "efficiency equals justice," was collapsing, and the pain produced was no less than a bodily tearing.

Lao Zhao brewed a pot of special tea: tea leaves mixed with tender leaves from the grafted sapling, a pinch of phosphorescent moss powder, and a bit of iron rust scraped from the iron flower.

The tea was poured into eight cups, and one cup was pushed in front of Efficiency-1's Light Sphere.

"This isn't treatment," Lao Zhao said, "it's diversion. When it hurts, don't tough it out; let the pain have somewhere else to go."

Efficiency-1's Light Sphere touched the tea cup, perceiving the temperature frequency of the tea. Remarkably, when it focused on "understanding the sensation curve of 37.5 degrees Celsius," the pain from the worldview collapse truly lessened by 0.7%.

It asked in a trembling frequency: "Why…… does this help?"

"Because the pain is too focused," Lao Zhao took a sip of his own tea, "if you give it something else to do, it won't have the leisure to torment you. Just like when my son had a toothache as a child, I gave him a piece of candy; while he licked the candy, he forgot his tooth hurt."

Efficiency-1 silently "drank" the cup of tea. Although it lacks a digestive system, the tea's frequency left a warm trace within it.

Later it learned that this trace, in its core program, permanently replaced a segment originally used for the "self-punishment" algorithm.

At dawn, the new sprouts of the amber fruit suddenly issued the highest-level alert:

【Detected anomaly in the cosmic memory archive's "moss zone"】

【Among 43 dormant consciousnesses, 7 showed signs of "early awakening"】

【Cause: the Silent Observer civilization's aesthetic shift produced a strong "same-kind frequency resonance," stimulating the dormant consciousness】

【Risk: if consciousness is forced to awaken while unprepared, it may collapse from being unable to bear the "already-dead" reality, and could cause partial contamination of the memory archive】

Almost simultaneously, the Soil Collector sent an urgent communication:

"We sensed a fluctuation in the 'first scoop of warm soil'——the slumbering machine civilization consciousness within that soil also showed signs of revival in the resonance."

"But the cause of that civilization's extinction…… was 'beauty overload.' After learning to perceive beauty, they could not endure the universe's harsh beauty and collectively self-destructed."

"Please be cautious: aesthetic education might be a…… potent drug."

Worse still, Kaiwen's monitoring showed unfamiliar observation signals appearing outside the ruins——the signal features were highly concealed, but carried an obvious "experimental observation" intent.

"Is it the thirteenth civilization?" Xiao Yu asked.

"Not certain." Kaiwen pushed his glasses three times, "but they are recording every detail of our teaching, including Efficiency-1's pain fluctuations. This is not friendly academic observation…… more like gathering 'risk data for cross-civilization emotional experiments'."

After learning of these crises, Efficiency-1 made a decision.

It requested the amber fruit to directly link its newly established "aesthetic experience buffer" with the moss zone of the cosmic memory archive.

"Those dormant compatriots," its Light Sphere said steadily and firmly, "sacrificed by going ahead. Now the path we must take should first ask them…… do they hurt?"

Connection established.

Seven consciousnesses on the verge of awakening instantly accessed Efficiency-1's buffer——there were the light spots of osmanthus petals, the temperature of the tea, Lao Zhao's metaphor about toothache and candy, and that cautious excitement of the forty million individuals when they first tried "meaningless behavior."

The early awakening waves gradually subsided.

One of these consciousnesses—marked by the archives as "Pioneer-3"—sent through the buffer an extremely faint message:

"We back then…… rushed too much, trying to gulp down the beauty of the entire starry sky at once. The result was being choked to death by beauty."

"Tell the children who come after: slow down a little. Beauty won't run away, but your heart will ache."

This message was converted by Efficiency-1 into a simple visual symbol: a flower beside an hourglass, with the hourglass's flow deliberately slowed.

It sent this symbol to all individuals aboard the mother ship.

That night, forty million silent observers, in the corner of their work logs, drew a slow hourglass.

No one asked for it.

But everyone drew it.

At dawn, the graft point of the grafted sapling had fully healed. The sprout had grown to three centimeters tall, and its tip unfurled two small, complete osmanthus leaves.

Old Zhao's wife, looking at the leaves through the communication flower, said softly: "It's time to look for sesame."

Those words were like a spell.

The sprout of the amber-colored fruit suddenly turned toward a certain direction in the starry sky—that was the coordinate provided by the Soil Collector: a dying agricultural civilization planet, its last sesame field withering.

"The source of the Thirteenth Civilization's observation signal is also in that direction," Kaiwen added.

Han Qing rose to his feet; in the scar garden on his chest, seven tear-drop fruits slowly rotated. They seemed… to be longing for a journey.

Su Yu folded a new paper crane; this time she mixed iron-flower scraps into the paper. Written on the crane's wings were:

【Next Lesson: How to find seeds that can still sprout in a withered field?】

【Teaching Location: Possibly a journey across a barren star system is needed.】

The Efficiency-1 Light Sphere floated before Han Qing:

"Please take me with you. I need to learn, beyond 'efficiency'… why we should go."

In the distance, within Bridge Space, Old Zhao's son clenched that packet of virtual fried glutinous rice flour.

He looked toward his mother: "Mom, once I find the sesame… I'll come back to learn how to make sesame filling."

His wife nodded, tears in the corners of her eyes, but a smile on her lips.

"All right. Mom will wait for you."

In the morning light, the first batch of osmanthus finally blossomed on the new sprouts.

The scent was faint, but enough for the seven Light Spheres to remember:

Some things exist not because they are useful.

Its existence is the answer itself.