Chapter 275: Tide of Honesty

The seventh flower bud of the grafted sapling began to rotate.

It was not blooming; it unfolded layer by layer like a precise clockwork mechanism, and with each full turn it released a ring of frequency waves invisible to the naked eye but clearly perceived by every heartbeat network node—Su Yu named it the "Tide of Honesty."

When the first ring of waves spread, Old Zhao had just poured almond tea into the eleventh bowl. A slight tremor as the bowl's rim touched the table suddenly turned in his ears into the sound of his mother setting down a bowl after drinking medicine in his childhood. The memory was crystal clear— the medicine was bitter, yet his mother smiled and said "Drink it and you'll get better," while he clearly saw the diagnosis stating "advanced."

"This tea…" Old Zhao's hand hovered in midair, "What was added?"

"Nothing added." Xiao Yu stared at the monitoring screen, voice tense, "The seventh bud is emitting 'Memory Honesty Waves.' Effect: they passively trigger the deepest true memory fragments of every living being within range, unshieldable."

Han Qing's Teaching Scar on his chest burned intensely. This time, the scar did not receive external data but outputted—outputting the scene he most wanted to hide from his memory:

When he was fourteen, he mocked a stuttering transfer student along with his classmates to "fit in." The next day the transfer student didn't show up for class, and later he heard the child had moved away. Han Qing always remembered the glance the child gave him when leaving—no hatred, only disappointment. As if he had known it would end that way.

He had never told anyone this memory, not even Chen Mo.

The scar encoded the memory into a frequency, mixed it into the Tide of Honesty, and broadcast it across the entire network.

The moment the Tide of Honesty swept over, the war ceased completely.

It was not because of an agreement, but because every combatant—whether conservative, radical, or neutral—was forced to "watch" the most genuine, most unwilling-to-face scenes deep within their hearts:

Dustless-9 did not see his sister's death, but an earlier scene: when his sister first said she hurt, he, busy drafting a tactical report, casually replied "tough it out." If he had put the report down then, if he had earnestly asked "where does it hurt," if…

All weapon indicator lights on his three warships went out simultaneously.

Pure-1 did not see the Starflower either, but the student who had been its first teaching failure—as a teacher— a child born unable to grasp symmetrical beauty. Pure-1's comment then was "lacks basic aesthetic literacy," recommending a transfer to logistics. Three days later, that child used cleaning solvent in the sanitation room to draw a crooked starry sky, then self‑destructed. Beside the drawing was a line of small text: "Teacher, when the stars cry they are also asymmetrical."

Crack‑like patterns appeared on the surface of its Light Sphere for the first time.

Even Dawn-3, who had just regained his memories, saw something deeper: when he applied for a memory deletion surgery, the hand that signed was actually trembling. The night before the operation, he sneaked into the cultivation chamber for a glance—the pot of seven‑petaled flower had not yet been taken, faintly glowing in the moonlight. He brushed the smallest petal, then walked away without looking back. Not out of resolve, but out of fear that another look would make him regret.

He curled his energy body on the command chair, like a plant struck by frost.

Within the aroma of almond tea, everyone confronted their own "Honesty fragment."

Xiao Yu saw the year she was six—she was isolated by other children because she could see frequency fissures, and she hid alone in a sesame field, crying. When her mother found her, she didn't say "stop crying," but asked "do you want to try this while you're crying," handing her a charred sesame candy. The tiny sweetness amid the bitterness she remembered for twenty years.

"So…" Xiao Yu touched the memory interface on her forehead, "Mom's hand was trembling then, too."

All of Su Yu's paper cranes hovered in midair. The scene she saw was: the first time she used the "Real‑Frame Rate" technique, she deliberately cranked up a datum—to make the effect more striking. That data error caused mild dizziness in three participants, but no one noticed. She wrote "All normal" in the report, then dreamed for seven consecutive days of the three people falling.

"Error value 0.3." Su Yu whispered, tearing the paper she was folding, "I owe them an apology."

Kaiwen's scene was the most mundane yet most painful: in the "Potentially Important Little Things" folder he had created, a line had been omitted—a three‑year‑old routine maintenance had triggered a "Emotional Data stream minor anomaly" alert. He had dismissed it as unimportant, clicking "Ignore." That anomaly was later confirmed as the earliest sign of spore contamination.

"If it hadn't been ignored…" Kaiwen took off his glasses and rubbed them hard, "If."

When the seventh bud completed its seventh rotation, what it released was no longer memory images but the truest emotions present at the moment the memories formed.

Dustless-9 tasted his sister's pain for the first time—not physical pain, but the solitary ache of "the closest person is beside me yet I can't say I'm hurting." That pain made his entire energy body shudder violently, and the engines of his three warships emitted a mournful low‑frequency whine in unison.

Pure-1 felt the suicidal student's despair for the first time—not despair over beauty, but despair that "its own beauty would never be recognized." Cracks on its Light Sphere began to exude a faint glow, as if shedding tears.

The most striking sight was the sky above the battlefield, where a massive collective memory mosaic was suddenly projected:

On the left were the "Fear memories" of each member of the conservative warship fleet—fear of falling behind, fear of being unqualified, fear of being eliminated, fear of not being pure enough.

On the right were the "Anger memories" of each radical member—anger being ignored, anger being sacrificed, anger rules being cold, the "for your good" behind anger actually being "for my convenience."

In the center were a dense array of "If then…": if then I had asked another question, if then I hadn't ignored, if then I had dared to look back, if then I had spoken the truth…

The mosaic slowly rotated, and every combatant saw:

The memories on both sides were essentially different expressions of the same kind of pain.

The conservatives' fear was the dread of being abandoned for not being good enough.

The radicals' anger was hating that they had already been abandoned yet were told "it's for your good."

At the root lay the same desire: to be truly seen, to have one's existence valued.

The almond tea cooled to a temperature just right for sipping.

Old Zhao added a small spoonful of honey to each bowl, stirring slowly with the spoon: "Finished watching? Time for a warm sip."

Han Qing's scar on his chest no longer burned, but emitted a gentle warmth. New characters appeared on the scar:

"Teaching Record: The deepest candor is not revealing a secret, but seeing and acknowledging it—those secrets exist because we once believed 'imperfection makes one unworthy of love.' Teaching aid: an entire battlefield's true memories."

Xiao Yu updated the heartbeat network map. Nodes 29, 30, and 31 awakened simultaneously—three ordinary soldiers from the conservative, radical, and neutral vessels respectively. Their first heartbeat messages were almost identical:

【Node 29】 Request: I want to learn how to apologize, for the teammate I reported three years ago for drawing a crooked circle.

【Node 30】 Request: I want to learn how to accept an apology, for the officer who said "hold on a little longer" that I've hated for seven years.

【Node 31】 Request: I just want to ask… now that the ceasefire is in effect, is it still in time?

The seventh bud of the grafted sapling came to a complete halt, and a transparent dew droplet formed on its petal. Within the droplet reflected the battlefield's real‑time scene—every weapon system lay dormant, while only civilian communication channels flickered densely.

The flickering content was not tactical orders, but the same sentence in various languages:

"I saw it. I have been there too. Can we start anew?"