Chapter 255: Pain Resonance

In the early morning when his memory overload hit 73%, Han Qing began to "taste" time.

The taste of dawn was the coolness of mint mixed with the iron rust's pungency. The sound of water flowing as Lao Zhao brewed tea rose a bitter taste at the back of his tongue. Su Yu's rustling of folding paper sounded like fine salt sprinkled on a wound. And the memory essence continuously seeping from the silver‑mirror fruit in his chest had already condensed around the Scar Garden into seven tiny silver droplets—each droplet sealed a segment of a strange civilization's pain.

"We must suspend ability use," Aili said on her seventh pulse measurement, tone taut, "your neural reflex arc is already delayed; continuing will cause permanent damage to cognitive function."

Han Qing leaned against the window of the Bridge Space kitchen; beyond the window, GuiHuaYuan's nascent civilization wove a "Dawn Landscape" with frequencies—a silent, undulating light. He stared at those lights and whispered, "I can't stop. The fruit now resembles an open wound; it's not me connecting to the memory, the memory is flowing into me."

Before his words finished, his body suddenly went rigid.

Su Yu was adding mint leaves to warm water—Aili's "Neural Soothing Formula." When she dropped the third leaf, she noticed Han Qing's hand trembling slightly, not a pathological tremor but a kind of… Resonance tremor.

"Your hand," she whispered, "moves with the same rhythm as the mint leaves sinking."

Han Qing lowered his head, watching his fingers. Indeed, each mint leaf spiraling down in the water made his fingertips twitch slightly. He closed his eyes, feeling the source of that tremor—not visual guidance, but a deeper frequency synchronization.

Xiao Yu's light imprint suddenly lit up: "Abnormal low‑frequency pulse detected! Not from any known civilization network, but… a hidden signal within the cosmic background radiation! The frequency is extremely weak, yet perfectly synchronized with Han Qing's neural fluctuations!"

Kaiwen immediately retrieved the data: "Signal source distance… cannot be calculated, because the signal doesn't travel through space; it manifests directly on the consciousness layer as a 'Resonance Wave'! Han Qing's overload state has turned him into a living antenna!"

Lao Zhao set down the teapot, his hand pressing on Han Qing's shoulder—an action that provides a tactile anchor to steady consciousness. "Can you discern what the signal is saying?"

Han Qing shook his head, eyes still closed: "It's not language. It's… pain. A very ancient pain, like the desiccated ache of an unearthed relic."

At that moment, one of the seven silver droplets suddenly cracked.

When the droplet cracked there was no sound, yet everyone "heard"—a memory fragment transmitted directly into consciousness:

The dusk of a civilization.

It was not war, not disaster, but a slower death: the individuals of the entire civilization fell into "Silent Slumber" one after another—not dying, just never waking again. The last few awake ones gathered around a glowing seed (the civilization's "Memory Core"), using their final conscious frequencies to broadcast to the universe:

"We are still here. We still feel pain. We still remember the angle at which starlight pierces the atmosphere. If anyone hears… please remember that we once 'liked' it."

The broadcast lasted three hundred stellar years, until the final awake one sank into silence. The light of that Memory Core dimmed, yet did not extinguish—it maintained a minimal pulse, once per minute, like the heartbeat of a sleeper.

And that pulse frequency matched exactly the signal Han Qing was receiving at this moment.

"They are still alive," Han Qing opened his eyes, silver patterns deep in his pupils like cracked ice, "in a collective dormant state, sustained by that Memory Core's minimal life activity. But the core's energy is nearly exhausted—its once‑per‑minute pulse has weakened to the point that even they can barely detect it."

Xiao Yu's light imprint frantically analyzed: "Based on the pulse decay curve calculation… they can sustain at most seventy‑two hours. After that the core will fully hibernate, and the entire civilization will enter an irreversible 'Consciousness Dissipation', equivalent to brain death."

The kitchen fell into dead silence. Only the mint leaves rotated slowly in the water.

Su Yu's folding hand paused mid‑air: "Do we… have to save them?"

The issue is not technical but ethical: can an Earth squad, barely holding itself together (Han Qing on the brink of collapse, GuiHuaYuan's nascent civilization still unstable, the thirteenth civilization on the verge of civil war), spare the capacity to rescue an alien civilization?

And how to rescue them? That civilization has no coordinates, existing only within a resonance of consciousness.

Han Qing stood up, his movements a bit unsteady, but his gaze terrifyingly clear. He walked to the tea table and picked up the Echo‑7‑used teacup, its inner wall marked with silver traces.

"Aili, give me the last stabilizer. Not to suppress the overload, but to let me endure three more hours in the overloaded state."

Aili gripped the medical kit tightly: "And after that? After three hours your nerves might—"

"We'll deal with what comes later later," Han Qing filled the teacup with warm water; the silver marks diffused in the water like ink, "They broadcast 'We are still here' once per minute, for an unknown number of years. Now finally someone has heard. If I say 'I'm sorry, I also hurt, I can't help you'—"

He paused, watching the rippling silver water pattern in the cup:

"—Everything Chen Mo taught me about 'seeding' has become a joke."

No vote, no debate. The team expressed their stance through action:

Su Yu began folding a massive paper crane, this time using paper of every color—she intended to craft a "Resonance Amplifier" capable of carrying multi‑frequency signals.

Lao Zhao boiled water, not to make tea but to simmer a mixture of various herbs (sedative, stimulating, neural‑soothing) into a deep brown decoction. "It won't kill you," he said, "but it will let you finish things before you die."

Xiao Yu adjusted the light imprint's output mode, preparing to serve as a "Frequency Relay Station" to share Han Qing's resonance pressure.

Kaiwen built a mathematical model, attempting to infer the physical location of the Memory Core from the pulse's subtle fluctuations.

Zhao Xiaoshu closed his eyes, using the remaining "Bridge Eye" to look toward the signal source: "I see… a very small, grayish seed buried beneath a thick layer of ice. The ice is transparent, but the layer is so thick that light cannot pass through."

Efficiency‑1 Light Sphere transmitted a support plan from the mothership: "The Silent Observer 'Sensory Data Research Division' can provide four hundred volunteers as temporary resonance nodes to share the memory flow. Condition: if the connection succeeds, the civilization's memory data must be shared for research."

Han Qing finished the bitter broth, wiped his mouth corner: "Tell them, change the condition to: if they wish, they may come personally to ask that civilization 'what it feels like when it hurts'."

The preparation took forty‑seven minutes. When Han Qing again placed his hand on the silver‑mirror fruit, actively pushing the overload toward the critical point, the Scar Garden in his chest suddenly blossomed in unison—eighty‑seven translucent flowers emitted a faint glow, as if responding to something.

The connection's establishment lacked any grand spectacle. Han Qing simply leaned his body slightly forward, his breathing becoming extremely light, then whispered:

"I heard it."

It wasn't language, but something more primal: impression fragments from that sleeping civilization's collective dream— the warmth inside a house when it snows, the faint crack of a fruit's skin splitting as it ripens, a child's pride counting stars for the first time, an elder's clenched hand before death.

These fragments surged in like snowflakes, mingling with Han Qing's own memories (Chen Mo's tea, Lao Zhao's son's tears, GuiHuaYuan's silence) and forming a strange "Pain Chorus" within the overloaded consciousness.

What Han Qing did was simply, through resonance, send a simple frequency to that ice‑encased Memory Core:

"I am also still here."

At the moment of transmission, three things happened:

First, the Memory Core beneath the ice suddenly emitted a pulse three times brighter—not a mere reflection, but the excitement of being awakened.

Second, all the silver droplets on Han Qing's chest cracked, the released memory essence condensing in the air into a tiny star map—the coordinates of that civilization, which had been hidden within the gravitational shadow of a nebula.

Third, Han Qing's memory overload reading spiked to 79%, and blood began seeping from the corner of his mouth—not from external injury, but from ruptured neural capillaries.

But he smiled.

Kaiwen immediately locked onto the coordinates: "Seventy‑three light‑years from us, located in the 'Cosmic Forgetting Zone'—where spacetime structures are unstable, conventional navigation cannot reach, no wonder they have never been discovered."

Xiao Yu's complexion changed: "But our resonance connection is like lighting a lamp in the dark. All civilizations that can sense consciousness frequencies may now detect that coordinate!"

As if confirming her words, three alarms sounded simultaneously:

First alarm from the Silent Observer network: "Detected the thirteenth civilization's conservative fleet abruptly changing course, accelerating toward the coordinate region!"

Second alarm from GuiHuaYuan: "The Completer Alliance sensed that the coordinate region is emitting an 'extremely pure unfinished aesthetic', fearing the conservatives will harvest it as a 'perfect unfinished' sample!"

Third alarm from Han Qing's silver‑mirror fruit—it began playing a new parasitic memory: in the conservative laboratory, a voice exclaimed excitedly, "Found it! The oldest 'Almost Eternal' sample! If we can harvest it, we can prove that 'Unfinished is the ultimate beauty'!"

Han Qing wiped the blood from his mouth corner, looking at the flickering coordinate point on the star map.

That civilization had been awakened from its long slumber only three minutes ago, and was already a prey again.

And the one who awakened them was Han Qing himself.

Old Zhao passed over a cup of warm water with honey in it — to replenish sugar for the person who had lost blood. Han Qing took it, his hand steady.

"What do we do now?" Su Yu asked. The paper crane had already been folded, the colors on its wings like a small patch of rainbow in the lamplight.

Han Qing took a sip of the honey water; the sweetness mixed with the bloody taste and dissolved in his mouth.

"Teach them." He said, gazing out the window at the distant starry sky, "Teach that newly awakened civilization three things within seventy-two hours: first, when it hurts, you can cry out; second, someone will hear; third——"

He paused, then downed the remaining honey water in the cup:

"——If someone tries to take away your pain, you can choose not to give it to them."