Chapter 276: Weapon‑Flowering Agreement

Seven hours after the tide of Honesty receded, Dustless-9 received the first non‑military agreement sent by the Conservative faction's flagship.

Sender: Dawn-3.

Agreement title: "Feasibility Study on Converting the Main Cannon Energy Core into a Cross‑Civilization Public Garden and List of First‑Batch Part Donations".

The attachment lists 372 weapon parts, from plasma accelerators to the detonation module of Emotional Frequency interference projectiles; each part is marked with its source warship, original use, and a brief description:

Part No. C‑77 · Original use: bow‑mounted main cannon targeting system · Description: previously targeted your Third Fleet. Now requested as a climbing frame for "Apology Rose."

Part No. R‑13 · Original use: memory interference wave emitter · Description: fired seventeen times. Now requested as a Petri Dish for "Truth Moss."

Part No. S‑08 · Original use: battlefield communications jammer · Description: silenced forty‑two distress signals. Now requested to be repurposed as a wind‑chime tube for "Apology Bell."

Dustless-9 stared at the list, its energy tendril hovering three centimeters above the confirm button—this was the first time since his sister's death that his hand didn't tremble while handling military documents.

"Reply," he said. "Accept all part donations. Condition: the original operator of each weapon must personally take part in the modification and engrave their name on the part."

The deputy officer's Light Sphere flickered once: "Sir, this could expose—"

"Exactly, we must expose it." Dustless-9's tendril finally lowered. "Anonymous apologies are too easy. To apologize, we must openly tell everyone—'This thing once tried to kill you, now it wants to plant flowers with you.'"

Lao Zhao was cooking the eighteenth pot of porridge.

This time it was plain porridge, with nothing added. "It's time to cleanse the stomach," he said, watching the live scrolling hand‑off screen on the monitor. "Eating too much sweet stuff makes you forget the original taste of rice."

Han Qing's Teaching Scar on his chest was itching—not pain, but the kind of itch as if new sprouts were about to break through soil. He lifted his collar and saw fine metallic filigree appearing on the scar's surface, with a few drops of transparent liquid seeping between the lines.

The liquid dripped onto the table and astonishingly solidified into a miniature three‑dimensional structure: a scaled‑down model of a main‑cannon part, within which a small cluster of pale‑green sprouts had grown.

"Your scar is…?" Xiao Yu set down the data pad. "Learning the structures of those weapons?"

"Not learning." Han Qing looked at the micro‑sprout. "It's teaching—teaching my body how to turn 'things that once harmed me' into 'things that can nurture life.'"

The grafted sapling sensed the transparent liquid; a braid‑like branch extended, gently brushing the miniature models. At the moment of contact, seven millet‑sized flowers unfurled at the branch tip—each flower's color corresponded to a weapon energy type: plasma blue, interference‑wave gray, Emotional Frequency purple…

"It remembered." Su Yu's folded paper crane perched on one of the tiny flowers. "All weapons' 'past lives' have now become its 'memory fertilizer.'"

When the first batch of parts arrived, the scene was eerily quiet.

The Conservative faction's transport ship opened its hatch; inside were no escort troops, only neatly arranged weapon parts, each bearing a handwritten label. The handwriting varied—some neat, some scrawled, some even with simple schematic drawings.

A young observer—Calm-22—stood outside the hatch, her Light Sphere a wavering pale blue. She was the original operator of the memory interference wave emitter.

Dustless-9 came in person. He brought no guards, only three bowls: a bowl of sugar water, a bowl of almond tea, and a bowl of plain porridge.

"Choose one," he said.

Calm-22's Light Sphere hesitated toward the sugar water, then the plain porridge, and finally settled on the almond tea.

"Reason?"

"Too sweet, too bland," Calm-22's voice was soft. "Almond tea… bitterness with fragrance, like my mood when firing interference waves—knowing it's wrong, yet telling myself 'this is the mission.'"

Dustless-9 handed over the bowl: "Drink it. Then tell me, what do you want to convert your emitter into?"

Calm-22 took a small sip, and the Light Sphere's blue steadied: "I want… to turn it into a device that amplifies faint sounds. Like the sound of a flower blooming, or the barely audible 'I'm sorry' when someone apologizes."

"Approved," Dustless-9 said. "What materials do you need?"

"No materials needed." Complex data streams surfaced on Calm-22's Light Sphere. "I'll adjust its frequency algorithm myself. I've been calculating for three days—reverse the interference algorithm, and it becomes an algorithm for 'precise amplification of weak signals.'"

She walked to the memory interference wave emitter, the energy tendril lightly touching its surface. A faint click sounded from inside, as if a lock had opened. On the casing, the operator number she had once engraved melted away and re‑condensed into a new line of text:

Original Sin: once caused forty‑two people to forget. Redemption: willing to let forty‑two thousand faint sounds be heard. Modifier: Calm-22.

Lao Zhao's porridge was ready.

He ladled seven bowls onto the long table, then pulled a small cloth bag from his pocket—inside were seven different seeds.

"Weapon parts as flower pots," he placed the seeds one by one at the bowl edges. "They need special soil. These seeds were left by Chen Mo, called 'Wound‑Healing Soil Catalyst.' When planted in weapon parts, the resulting plants will… remember the entire history of that part."

Xiao Yu picked up a seed and held it to the Light. The seed was semi‑transparent, with extremely fine veins flowing inside. "How do we use it?"

"When planting," Lao Zhao said, "you must say three sentences. First: 'I know what you once were.' Second: 'I accept what you are now.' Third: 'I look forward to what you will become.'"

Han Qing's scar on his chest suddenly burned intensely.

This time, it wasn't the Teaching Memory that burned, but the final locked memory Chen Mo had left—exposed by the wound‑healing soil catalyst, that memory unlocked automatically.

In the memory scene, Chen Mo crouched beside warm soil on the south side of the ruins, holding those seeds. He said to the Han Qing beside him (who was only sixteen then): "Xiao Qing, remember—the best reconciliation isn't forgetting that the other hurt you; it's helping the other turn the tool that hurt you into something that can protect more people."

The teenage Han Qing asked, "What if the other side refuses?"

"Then do it yourself first." Chen Mo buried a seed in the soil. "Show it to them. If one try fails, try twice; if twice fails, try a hundred times. One day they'll think—'So that thing can be used like this.'"

Before the scene faded, Chen Mo looked back, his gaze holding a fatigue and hope that Han Qing couldn't comprehend at the time:

"Hatred fears not confrontation, but being deliberately transformed into something else."

The three‑hundred‑seventy‑first part was completed.

It was a fragment of warship armor, still bearing laser‑scorch marks. It originally belonged to the Radical faction's Third Fleet, which had once intercepted a Conservative transport ship in Earth's geosynchronous orbit.

The one who modified it was the son of the original operators on both sides—a mixed‑heritage observer who had just awakened in the tide of Honesty, designated "Bridge-01." He bent the armor fragment into an arc and engraved two lines on its inner side:

Father: once fired here.

Mother: once defended here.

I: planted the first 'Forgiveness Vine' here. May it crawl over all scars and bloom small flowers that ask no origin.

When he planted the seed, he didn't recite Lao Zhao's three sentences; instead he hummed a lullaby—written jointly by his father and mother in the year they fell in love, its melody so simple it contained only five notes.

The seed trembled within the armor fragment, and then, in full view of everyone—bloomed outright.

It wasn't a sprout that later flowered; the seed coat cracked, and a pale‑gold five‑petal flower burst out directly. As the flower opened, the laser scorch on the armor glowed, the light flowing along the engraving, and finally the whole fragment turned a translucent warm yellow.

"It…" Bridge-01's Light Sphere trembled with excitement. "It remembered that song!"

The grafted sapling vibrated in Bridge Space, its seven braid‑like branches all pointing that way. The dew from the seventh bud finally dripped from the branch, and upon landing turned into a transparent film that shot toward space—

The film enveloped the tiny flower on the armor fragment, then began replicating.

One, ten, a hundred…

All the modified weapon parts were wrapped in the same transparent film. Inside the film, the seeds began to grow and bloom at a speed beyond normal. The flowers' colors differed, but each blossom's core contained a tiny light point—the "past‑life memory" of the weapon part—permanently sealed in the heart as proof that one can "remember history yet choose rebirth."