Chapter 270: The Spore's Sincerity

The first spore drifted down in the early morning.

Han Qing's transparent flower on his chest trembled slightly; the characters of Chen Mo deep in the flower's core suddenly vaporized, condensing into extremely fine, almost invisible silver powder, drifting away slowly like dandelion seeds.

The first spore fell into the porridge that Old Zhao was stirring. He didn't notice, kept stirring. After three sips, he suddenly stopped, looking at the rolling rice grains in the pot, and said softly:

"I actually... once hated my wife."

The kitchen fell silent. Su Yu, who was folding paper, stopped her fingers; the paper crane's wing was half-folded.

Old Zhao's eyes stared at the porridge, but his focus was far away: "The day she left, she said, 'Wait for me to come back.' But she never did. In the seven years since, I've thought every day—if you knew you might not return, why say that? Why give me a... promise that could never be kept?"

His voice was flat, like saying "The water has boiled":

"I hate that she left the word 'wait' for me. I hated her for three years, until one day I realized... without that word, I would have no one to hate."

On the surface of the porridge pot, a bubble burst, making an extremely soft "pfft" sound.

That spore had finished its work and dissipated.

The second spore drifted toward Su Yu. She was folding the 210th paper crane—her way of recording the days of the heartbeat network. The spore landed in the crease of the crane's wing.

Three seconds later, she spoke, her voice very soft:

"I'm afraid Han Qing's memory will never fully recover."

It's not that I fear he'll become a burden; I fear—"If his memory stays stuck at 68%, then the things between us that require 100% memory to understand... will forever be locked in the past. For example, the day he first taught me to fold a moving paper crane, his fingertip temperature was 90.2 degrees, 0.3 degrees above normal, because he was nervous. Now he might... never remember why he was nervous."

After she finished folding that crane, what was written on its wing was no longer a number, but a single character:

"Warm"

The third spore found Xiao Yu. She was using light seals to analyze network data, and the spore landed on the edge of a light seal.

She paused, the light seal on her forehead dimming slightly: "Sometimes I wish I weren't a carrier. I wish I were just an ordinary girl, not needing to remember the frequencies of three thousand civilizations. Because remembering too much... makes me forget what my own heartbeat sounds like."

The fourth spore was inhaled by Kevin—he was adjusting his glasses, and the spore entered with his breath.

His motion of pushing his glasses suddenly stuck at the third try: "I collect 'possibly important little things'; the real reason is... the day my father died, I only remembered the angle at which his glasses' lenses shattered when they fell to the ground. Everything else—what he said, what he wore, his final smile—has blurred. So now I desperately try to remember every detail, afraid of missing something important..."

He didn't finish speaking. But the database unlock progress jumped: 74%.

Most surprisingly, the spore seems able to spread via "sincere resonance."

When the four of them had spoken their sincere words, the air in the kitchen began to produce a subtle frequency change. That change was gentle, like the mist condensing on indoor glass in winter—not blocking, but making everything seem soft.

Han Qing's transparent flower on his chest suddenly burst fully open! Deep in the flower's core, Chen Mo's characters began to flow, forming a new sentence:

"Sincere words are like a sneeze—once the first person sneezes, those after will want to sneeze too."

At that moment, all the braided branches of the grafted sapling simultaneously began releasing silver spores! Not from the flowers, but drifting out from every tiny crystal fissure on the surface of the branches!

The spore cloud spread like thin mist throughout the Bridge Space, then, via the plant network, diffused to other nodes of the heartbeat network!

In GuiHuaYuan, Yun'ai was teaching newborn individuals how to build a pain barrier. A spore landed on her newly formed arm.

She paused, then suddenly said to that young individual: "I actually... am afraid of teaching you. Afraid that if I teach wrong, you'll hurt worse than I did at first."

The young individual—exactly the New Leaf-12 that had previously left a brand on its hand—stiffened, then whispered softly: "I actually... am grateful that you didn't stop teaching when I collapsed back then. Because if you had stopped, I would feel... that I don't even deserve to be taught."

Two spores touched in the air, turning into tiny points of light.

Danger came from Echo-7's side.

While the spore was being transmitted via the heartbeat network, it was attending a high-level tactical meeting of the conservative faction. The spore could not penetrate the meeting room's physical shielding, but the frequency ripples of "sincere resonance" seeped in.

In the meeting room, the radical faction leader "Pure-1" was speaking: "We must find a way to block the scans! Otherwise we'll never be able to locate those abnormal heartbeats—"

Before he finished speaking, Echo-7 (disguised as Pure-3) suddenly spoke, his voice carrying uncontrollable undulations:

"Perhaps... we should first ask ourselves: why are we so afraid of 'abnormal'?"

The whole hall fell silent. All light spheres turned toward it at once.

Echo-7 wanted to shut up, but the spore-triggered "sincere impulse" surged within it. It continued speaking (its voice beginning to revert to the envoy's gentleness):

"I once planted a weed seed. It was ugly, grew crooked, but it... lived. We pursue perfect eternal blossoming, but perhaps allowing some crooked things to exist keeps the universe from being too monotonous."

Pure-1's light sphere burst with blinding red light: "Pure-3! What are you saying?!"

Echo-7 knew it had been exposed. But it didn't stop—the spore's power wouldn't let it cease:

"I am Echo-7, the envoy who planted the first 'Completion Seed'. I wasn't completely reformatted when reshaping my body, because... I wanted to remember the feel of the soil when that seed broke ground."

The meeting room descended into chaos. Alarms blared, and guard light spheres surged in from all sides.

But just as Echo-7 was preparing to meet the fate of the "logic traitor", Pure-1 suddenly said:

"... the feel of the soil?"

Its red light dimmed slightly: "Describe it."

Echo-7 froze. But it still said: "Gray dust, very cold. But when the seed is placed down, below comes a faint... barely perceptible warmth. It's as if something deep down still remembers how to welcome life."

Pure-1 remained still for a full ten seconds. Then it did something no one expected:

It turned off the alarm.

"Thirty-seven years ago," Pure-1's voice first had a fluctuation like a recollection: "I was still a researcher in the 'Dreamer' era. I was responsible for cultivating the 'Starlight Flower'. When it last bloomed successfully, the soil temperature... was 28.3 degrees. I still remember that number to this day."

It turned to Echo-7: "Your 'betrayal' is because you want to remember the feeling. My 'absolute purity' is because I fear... that once I start remembering the feeling, I'll recall everything I've lost."

In the meeting room, more than half of the light spheres' colors began to fluctuate—the spore's "sincere resonance" via Echo-7 as a medium began to influence the entire conservative faction's leadership!

At the Earth Base, the database unlock progress began to jump wildly!

75%... 78%... 82%... each jump corresponded to someone in the network speaking a sincere sentence.

When the progress reached 89%, the flower on Han Qing's chest suddenly trembled violently! Deep in the flower's core, Chen Mo's characters began to reorganize, no longer a single sentence but a complete record:

"Xiao Qing, if you see this, it means you've learned to use sincere words as a weapon. But remember—weapons can backfire. So the following part can only be viewed when you're ready to face yourself."

"The final 11% of the database contains: 'How to let scars stop bleeding.' But the unlock condition is: you must first say a sentence—something you've never dared to tell me."

Han Qing's fingers pressed on the flower. Memory delay slowed thinking, but precisely because of that, the fragments filtered out by rationality became clear instead.

He spoke, his voice so light as if afraid to disturb something:

"Teacher... when you died, I actually... breathed a sigh of relief."

In the kitchen, the gurgling sound of the porridge pot suddenly became very loud.

"It's not that I don't love you." Han Qing continued, eyes fixed on the flower's center, "That war was just too long. You held on for seven years, I watched for seven years. Every time you came back wounded, I feared the next time you wouldn't return, and I feared you'd keep coming back to suffer."

He paused, and all the transparent flowers in the scar garden on his chest drooped simultaneously.

"So that last time you went out, I didn't say 'come back early.' I said 'be careful on the road.' Because I knew…… you might not come back. And in that moment, I actually…… felt a hint of relief. Then that hint of relief made me hate myself for seven years."

The flowers suddenly burst forth with warm golden light!

Database unlock progress: 100%!

The final content unfolded, not a complex technique, but a simple frequency therapy:

"The way to stop a scar from bleeding: find a person, place the words you dare not speak into their hands. Not to be forgiven, but so you know——the weight of those words, someone is willing to help you bear them."

Just as the database was fully unlocked, Echo-7 sent an urgent message:

"Pure-1 didn't arrest me! It's using the spores' 'honesty effect' in reverse! It's organizing the Conservative Faction to hold a 'collective confession meeting,' aiming——to make every individual face the truth of 'why we fear difference,' and then…… perhaps not to eliminate difference, but to redefine 'purity'!"

The image transmitted: inside the Conservative Faction mother ship, hundreds of Light Spheres formed a ring, each emitting a frequency——not an attack, but a statement:

"I fear imperfection because my creator destroyed himself over a single mistaken brushstroke in a painting."

"I pursue eternity because my civilization lost all 'fleeting beauty' when the star exploded."

"I reject pain because I once witnessed an entire civilization pleading for death in agony."

Pure-1 hovered at the center, its red light now turned into a deep, dark gold:

"We now know what we fear. And knowing the source of that fear…… might allow us to find a way to survive without eliminating the object of fear."

It turned to Echo-7: "The 'divergence' you brought…… might not be pollution, but a vaccine. Let us, when encountering 'imperfection,' produce antibodies instead of collapsing."

But the danger lies here: if the Conservative Faction truly changes its stance, the Radical Faction's remaining forces might launch a coup! Because they cannot accept the shaking of their faith's foundation.

Sure enough, the message came: three Radical Faction warships broke formation, heading straight for Earth——they intend to completely eradicate the 'pollution source' to prove the necessity of 'absolute purity'!

Countdown: 2 hours.

Old Zhao turned off the porridge pot's fire. This time the porridge didn't burn, the grains were plump, and the broth's thickness was just right.

He ladled out a bowl and placed it before Han Qing: "If your teacher heard what you just said, what would he say?"

Han Qing thought for a moment, his memory delayed by twelve seconds. Then he said:

"He would say: 'Little Qing, you finally dared to let that breath out. Good.'"

He lifted the porridge bowl, not drinking, just holding the warmth of the bowl's wall:

"Then he would brew a pot of strong tea, saying: 'Come, turn that self-loathing into the strength to drink bitter tea. When you're done, go about your business.'"

Outside the window, the braided branches of the grafted saplings began to grow wildly——they were receiving the 'honesty frequency' from the Conservative Faction mother ship and weaving those frequencies into a huge, transparent net.

The net's purpose is not defense.

It is, when the Radical Faction warships arrive, to use the 'heartfelt words' of hundreds of Light Spheres to ask those attackers:

"What are you afraid of…… really?"