Chapter 274: I Also Once Planted Flowers

The coup leader's Light Sphere color shift lasted 17 seconds.

That red licorice ginger tea circulated three rounds within his energy body—sweet, spicy, warm—and finally left a strange tingling, not physical pain but a data‑level "memory trigger warning."

"Leader?" the Deputy sensed an anomaly, "Activate the purification protocol? Foreign substances possibly—"

"Out." The coup leader's voice frequency unusually fluctuated, "Close the door. No one may enter without permission."

The light click of the door closing echoed in the command room.

He retrieved the poem on the sugar water container and reread it. This time he performed a deep‑frequency analysis—sure enough, beneath the verses lay an older layer of code, which was…

"Starlight Flower Cultivation Log, access key." The coup leader's Light Sphere suddenly contracted, "Impossible."

Key entered.

A memory file encrypted sevenfold and labeled "Absolutely Useless Data·Permanently Archived" was forcibly unlocked by the chemical trigger of the sugar water.

Old Zhao didn't sleep.

He was kneading a new dough—the seventh technique his wife taught, said to "let the dough remember the hand's temperature." At the thirty‑seventh knead, the monitor suddenly flashed an emergency warning:

【Heartbeat Network Alert: Node 'Conservative Flagship Core' shows violent memory data fluctuations. Fluctuation pattern matches: deep emotional memory resurgence. Trigger: sugar water compound. Recommend immediate observation.】

Han Qing, in pajamas, walked into the kitchen, the Teaching Scar on his chest glowing.

"You felt it too?" Old Zhao didn't stop, "It's like someone pried open a box that's been locked for decades in the basement."

"Not pried open." Han Qing sat down, the scar's light reflecting on the dough, "The box cracked itself—because what's inside still remembers sunlight."

The seventh bud of the grafted sapling trembled without warning at that moment.

Memory images surged forth:

The young coup leader—then called "Dawn-3"—had a Light Sphere of pale gold, standing side by side with Pure-1 in the cultivation chamber.

Before them was a pot of newly sprouted Starlight Flower, the soil thermometer reading 28.3 °C.

Pure-1 said, "The temperature must be precise."

Dawn-3 said, "But each flower may desire a different temperature—look at this leaf, it's slightly curled; perhaps it wants 26 °C?"

That was his first proposal of the "differential demand" concept.

Pure-1 recorded the view in the log, noting: "Dawn-3 proposes: beauty may have personal preference. Pending verification."

Fast‑forward the scene:

The Starlight Flower bloomed—not the standard six petals but seven, one petal half the size of the others.

Dawn-3 excitedly adjusted the lighting, "Look! Imperfection can also be beautiful!"

Pure-1 remained silent for a long time, then said, "But this violates Article 4 of the Aesthetic Foundations Law: symmetry."

"Then rewrite the law." Young Dawn-3 said, the Light Sphere flickering with excitement, "Laws should serve beauty, not the other way around."

One final jump in the scene:

A senior reviewer arrived, pointing at the seven‑petaled flower, "This is a substandard product. Destroy it."

Dawn-3 stood before the flower, "It's alive! It's blooming!"

"A bloom that defies the law has no existential value."

That pot was taken away.

The next day, Dawn-3 voluntarily applied for the first Memory Purification Surgery. The surgical record read: "Voluntarily delete memories related to 'substandard aesthetics' to better serve the Absolute Purity Ideology."

Memory playback completed.

The coup leader—Dawn-3—'s Light Sphere hovered in the center of the command room, its color wildly flashing between pale gold and iron gray.

Dustless-9 was reciting the third poem from his sister's poetry collection.

Representatives of the other warships listened quietly, their Light Spheres softened considerably. At that moment, an access‑request prompt forcibly popped up—from the Conservative Flagship, permission level: highest.

"Access granted." Dustless-9 said.

The coup leader's image appeared in the channel. On his Light Sphere's surface, an extremely rare pattern emerged—the "memory retro‑wave" that Silent Observers only display under extreme emotion.

"Meeting paused." he said, his voice odd, as if two people spoke simultaneously, "I have an additional piece of information."

Everyone waited.

"Seventy‑seven years ago," the coup leader's Light Sphere pattern grew clearer, "Pure-1 and I cultivated a pot of Starlight Flower. It bloomed seven petals, one of them tiny. I said, 'Imperfection can also be beautiful.' Later the flower was destroyed, and I applied to delete that memory."

The channel fell into dead silence.

"Until just now," he continued, "a sip of sugar water… repaired the data fissure left by the deletion. Now I want to ask Pure-1 a question."

Pure-1's remote image turned slightly.

"You ask." Pure-1 said.

"That pot of flowers…" the coup leader's ripples began to stabilize, the color finally fixed—no longer iron gray, now pale gold tinged with silver lines, "Before destruction, you secretly kept a petal specimen, right? My restored memory has a 0.3‑second blank, which you erased—what did you hide?"

Pure-1 remained silent for a full ten seconds.

Then it broadcast a picture to all channels:

A tiny, irregular Starlight Flower Petal, encapsulated in a transparent data layer. Beneath the petal was a line of handwritten annotation:

【Dawn-3's Flower·Proof 'Beauty Can Have Personality'·For Future Teaching Use·Preserver: Pure-1】

The seventh bud of the grafted sapling fully blossomed.

No spores were released; instead a gentle frequency wave radiated. Where the wave passed, everyone "tasted" a sensation—not the sweetness of sugar water, but the feeling of "acknowledging one's past naivety"… a sense of relief.

New text appeared on Han Qing's Teaching Scar:

"Teaching Record: The hardest lesson isn't teaching what to learn, but teaching people to re‑acknowledge the things they once knew and later denied. Teaching Aid: a petal hidden for seventy‑seven years."

Old Zhao placed the kneaded dough into the thermal box, wiped his hands, "Alright, now he has to rethink—who he truly is. Is he the coup leader who seeks to eradicate all imperfection, or the Dawn-3 who once defended a tiny flower petal?"

Xiao Yu asked softly, "What will he choose?"

"Consider whether he fears confronting his past self more," Han Qing said, "or fears continuing as the current… person who can't even recognize himself."

At that moment, the Heartbeat Network popped up a notification that the 28th new node had awakened.

Node coordinates: conservative flagship, command room.

Node code: Dawn-3 (temporary).