Chapter 240: The First Flower of the Withered Land

The sesame field came into view on the seventh day's dawn. It was not the barren wasteland imagined—but an over‑splendid withering. Every sesame stalk retained the pose of the instant of death: some bent into arcs of despair, some stood straight, stabbing toward the sky like a final scream. Most bizarrely, their color was not wilted yellow but a range of intense, dazzling hues—deep violet, indigo, rust red… as if all the beauty of a lifetime had been splashed out before death.

"This is a typical symptom of 'Aesthetic Overload'," the Soil Collector said, his roots lightly touching the porthole, "At the moment of death they perceive some ultimate beauty they cannot bear, so they convert all their life force into a final bloom... then wither."

As the vessel hovered just above the field, the amber‑colored fruit emitted a sharp alarm:

【Detected high‑concentration 'Despair Aesthetic' field】

【Field property: amplifies all memories of 'loss' and 'ending' in entrants, inducing emotional overload】

【Field source: at the field's center, the Thirteenth Civilization's 'Emotion Amplifier' is active】

【Warning: the field's effect doubles for individuals with existing emotional trauma—Han Qing's scar garden, Xiao Yu's Light Sphere imprint, the Forger's burn memories are all high‑risk.】

The words fell, and a familiar searing pain shot through Han Qing's chest—this time not another's memory but his own deepest fear: fearing he would betray Chen Mo's legacy, fearing all his efforts would ultimately be in vain.

The eighty‑seven flowers of the scar garden began to spin wildly, each replaying a 'failure memory': the first planting of Hope Grass wiped out, the moment Old Zhou's daughter died when he could only stand outside the door, the harrowing seven seconds when the Forger dropped frequency…

"It's a trap," the Light Sphere of Efficiency-1 instantly analyzed, "They use the 'Beauty of Death' here as an amplifier, targeting the nodes in our network that bear pain."

The vessel began to descend uncontrollably, pulled by the field toward the field's center.

At the brink of loss of control, the projection of the grafted sapling suddenly fully materialized— that sapling, far on Earth, entangled via quantum correlation to 'overlay' its existence onto the ship. Real osmanthus fragrance burst forth, colliding violently with the 'Despair Aesthetic' inside the cabin.

Where the scent reached, the spinning failure memories began to slow. Even more wondrous, the 'healing' category flowers in the scar garden suddenly glowed en masse, projecting corresponding subsequent scenes beside the rotating memory footage:

After Hope Grass was eradicated, the following year a more cold‑resistant variant sprouted at the ruins' edge;

After Old Zhou's daughter died, the protective device he built saved seventeen children;

The night the Forger successfully dropped frequency, three cities saw a starry sky free of artificial light pollution for the first time…

"Despair is diluted by hope," Su Yu whispered, folding paper swiftly, "but someone must remember... the story after despair."

She folded a paper umbrella—assembled from every sheet aboard, its canopy depicting the osmanthus life cycle: from bud to bloom to wilt to fruit.

The moment the paper umbrella unfurled, the vessel's descent speed reduced by 30%.

The vessel finally settled at the field's edge, not fully falling into the center. Yet the field remained potent; everyone felt as if struggling in viscous syrup.

Efficiency-1 discovered its processing speed had dropped 47%; worse, it began to 'see' every detail of the forty‑nine entities it had formatted—scenes it once deemed 'necessary sacrifices' now tinged with an unfamiliar hue: a faint gray of guilt.

"This is the effect of the 'Emotion Amplifier'," the Soil Collector explained, "It doesn't create new emotions, it just turns your existing emotions... up to maximum volume."

The Forger's crystal temperature began to surge uncontrollably then plunge, swinging violently between 'eternal imprisonment' and 'brief freedom'. Xiao Yu's Light Sphere imprint on her wrist exuded golden fluid—she simultaneously bore everyone's pain.

Han Qing looked at Su Yu. Su Yu kept her eyes closed, fingers slowly drawing something in the void.

"I'm learning the sapling's breathing," she said without opening her eyes, "When an osmanthus tree encounters toxic air, it slows its breath, stores toxins in old leaves, then lets them fall together in autumn. We now… must learn to store pain somewhere, and process it once it's safe."

She opened her eyes; the path her fingers traced solidified in the air into a semi‑transparent osmanthus leaf: "Everyone choose the most painful memory and 'place' it onto this leaf. The leaf will temporarily hold it for us."

It sounded devoid of scientific basis, yet no one present questioned it.

Xiao Yu was the first to reach out, her fingertip lightly touching the leaf. She placed inside the scene of the stone she had thrown when her mother was taken away—the stone rolled three times and stopped in a pool of filthy water.

The leaf sank slightly, its color darkening a touch.

When the Forger's crystal was infused with the moment it first thought "I don't want to be merely fuel", the entire civilization's furnace simultaneously fell silent for 0.3 seconds. The leaf began to emit a faint warmth.

Efficiency-1 hesitated for a long while; finally it inserted the fragment of light memory the target sent when it was ordered to format A-12—the 0.03‑second flash of light. The leaf's edge shimmered with golden dust.

When it was Han Qing's turn, he did not act immediately. He stared at the leaf, then suddenly asked, "What if the leaf becomes full?"

Su Yu replied softly, "Then we let it fall. But before it falls, we will remember what it has held for us."

Han Qing inserted a memory he had never told anyone: in Chen Mo's final moments before death, he actually winked at him—a secret signal between them meaning "don't stop, keep going". He was too grief‑stricken then, only recalling the wink in a dream three years later.

The leaf trembled violently, then gradually steadied. In the leaf's center a tiny, winking symbol appeared.

After everyone had placed their memories, the leaf grew heavy and iridescent, like amber bearing too many stories. It drifted slowly to the grafted sapling's branch, hanging like a genuine leaf.

A miracle occurred: the moment the leaf hung, the surrounding 'Despair Aesthetic' field intensity dropped by 18%.

The field's weakening finally allowed the amber fruit to scan the field's center. The scan revealed:

The Thirteenth Civilization's 'Emotion Amplifier' is actually a massive, translucent cocoon‑like structure, within which floats a faintly beating heart—the last Guardian of this agrarian civilization, an individual who voluntarily remains in the Withered Land, using its own life force to sustain the field's 'Beauty of Death'.

"It turned itself into a work of art," the Soil Collector said with sorrow, "Exchanging eternal suffering for ultimate beauty. The Thirteenth Civilization awaits its complete death, then harvests this 'Despair Heart'."

Even more frightening, dozens of smaller cocoons dotted the area—each containing an individual from a different civilization, all repeating the same process: slowly self‑destructing to create 'Beauty of Death', awaiting harvest.

And the withering truth of the sesame field was revealed: after discovering the universe's cruelty, this civilization collectively chose to perish in the most beautiful way. They planted 'Emotion‑Resonance Sesame' in the field—consumers could share the planter's entire feelings. When the final generation's sesame ripened, they infused it with a lifetime's yearning for beauty and despair, then collectively self‑immolated at the field's edge.

"So the sesame here…" Xiao Yu said trembling, "does each grain contain the final beauty a soul sees at the moment of death?"

"It also contains the final pain," the Forger's crystal added.

At that moment, the heart inside the central large cocoon suddenly accelerated its beat! Its frequency synced perfectly with the flashing of Efficiency-1's Light Sphere.

Efficiency-1's light pattern scrambled instantly: "It's… calling me? No, it's replicating my emotional pattern—it needs fresh pain to keep the artwork's 'vitality'!"

The cocoon body began extending transparent tendrils toward the vessel.

Just as the tendrils were about to touch the vessel, Han Qing did something no one expected.

He unbuttoned his shirt, fully exposing the scar garden on his chest, then stepped forward toward the tendrils.

"Han Qing!" Su Yu exclaimed.

"It wants pain," Han Qing said calmly, "Then we give it pain. But the way we give it… we decide."

When the tendrils touched the scar garden, the eighty‑seven flowers simultaneously released all memories—not just pain, but every small thing that followed the pain:

In the third year after Chen Mo's death, wildflowers first sprouted in the ruins;

On the anniversary of Old Zhou's daughter's death, his first prosthetic helped an amputee child walk again;

Even the night the Forger dropped frequency, a child from Seran, seeing real stars for the first time, asked his mother, "Why are they winking?"…

These subtle, ungrandiose memories belonging to 'after the pain' surged into the tendrils like a gentle flood.

The heart's beating inside the cocoon began to change: no longer a single despair frequency, but now infused with hesitation, confusion, and a trace of an extremely faint… curiosity.

"Art should not have only one color," Han Qing said to the cocoon, "See, after pain there is so much… don't you want to see?"

Ripples surfaced on the cocoon's exterior. Among the small cocoons awaiting harvest, one suddenly split open—a jellyfish‑shaped civilization entity inside, emitting a faint signal with its remaining consciousness:

"... I want... to see osmanthus..."

Leaves laden with memories drifted lightly toward that rift; the moment they touched the cocoon wall, the leaves shattered, and all the memories they carried surged in.

The crack in the jellyfish cocoon widened. Intermittent frequencies came from inside:

"After all, once you've been in pain…… you really can…… have sugar……"

The tendrils of the central large cocoon slowly retracted. The heartbeat frequency inside the cocoon stabilized at a new pattern: no longer pure despair, but like a human pulse, with rises and falls, with intervals.

At the edge of the field, on a sesame stalk long thought dead, a normal brown sesame pod suddenly formed. The pod split open, revealing ordinary, deep-black sesame seeds inside.

The Soil Collector whispered: "The cycle of 'beauty in death' has been broken. A seed…… has decided to try to live."

The Color of the Efficiency-1 Light Sphere became unusually complex—it had just undergone the fear of being treated as 'pain raw material,' and also witnessed the transformation of pain. It added a new entry in its log:

"First Law of Aesthetics: Beauty should not come at the cost of self-destruction. True beauty…… should make people want to keep living."

Outside the ship, a scout ship of the Thirteenth Civilization appeared in the distance. They did not attack, merely hovering silently, as if observing this unexpected variable.

Han Qing picked up the sesame that had just formed and placed it in his palm.

The sesame was light, but everyone felt it was heavier than the sum of the splendid colors of the entire withered field……

Su Yu folded a small paper boat and placed the sesame inside:

"It's time to go back. Someone is waiting for sesame filling."

In the distance, beneath the soil south of Earth's ruins, the pulse that normally beats twelve times per minute jumped to thirteen beats at this moment.

As if in a dream, I smelled the scent of sesame.