Chapter 310: Perception Overload

In the first minute of the lesson, Han Qing vomited.

It wasn't physical nausea, but a perceptual one——when she tried to use the Time-04 ruler to 'measure the growth arc of the grafted sapling on its seventh day,' she simultaneously saw all possible temporal branches of this tree:

3.7 million possible futures bloomed like fireworks in her mind. Of these, 120,000 futures saw the sapling wither after three days; 80,000 futures had it forcibly removed by the Committee; and another 1,400 futures saw it grow overly lush, its roots rupturing the foundation of Earth's Shelter——

"Stop!" The voice of Time-04 urgently sounded in her mind, "Beginners must establish a 'perception filter'! Otherwise you'll be drowned by possibilities!"

Han Qing knelt on the ground, the Teaching Scar's temperature spiked to the danger threshold. The timestamp markings on the scar's surface flashed wildly, as if about to split.

Xiao Yu's situation was worse.

She merely 'glanced' at Han Qing——using the Resilience-09 ruler, wanting to check the stability of the teacher's temporal wounds——and saw three thousand seven hundred 'potential fracture weak points' on Han Qing's body, each linked to different causal lines:

If the third weak point collapses at 2:07 PM tomorrow, Han Qing will lose the final 30% of her memory.

If the 1,004th weak point is triggered, her Teaching Scar will turn and devour her.

If……

"Too much..." Xiao Yu covered her eyes, tears seeping from between her fingers, "I can't turn it off…… I can't shut my eyes……"

Resilience-09 whispered inside her body: "This isn't seen with the eyes. It's perceived through the 'wound's resonance.' Your six-year-old crack is resonating with her memory fracture…… I can only teach you how to lower the volume; I cannot shut it down."

Old Zhao's calming soup had finished its third batch at that moment.

He said nothing, merely ladling out seventeen bowls—twelve for human ruler-wielders, five for awakened ruler-wielders (though they cannot drink it, they can 'absorb the soup's scent memory').

When the soup bowls were placed before each person, their rims emitted a specific resonant tone:

Han Qing's bowl produced a low bell chime, its frequency exactly canceling the temporal frequency turbulence of her scar.

Xiao Yu's bowl emitted a fine glass wind chime, weaving those 'fracture alerts' in her vision into a tolerable melody.

"Drink the soup first," Old Zhao said, the noodles in his own bowl reflecting the ripples of all sounds in the kitchen, "Drink up, then study. That's the rule."

Aili lifted the bowl, and before drinking she smelled it——using the Scent-12 ruler——the life story of each of the thirty-seven medicinal herbs in this soup: how goji berries tightened their sugars during a certain dry summer, the nightly breathing rhythm of lilies, licorice persisting through seven insect plagues……

"Now I understand why you said you can't just casually cook it," Aili gave Old Zhao a wry smile, "Just smelling it makes me feel responsible for this bowl of soup."

Su Yu remained silent.

After inheriting the Structure-11 ruler, her view of the world had completely changed——nothing appeared 'whole' anymore.

She looked at her own hand and saw possible reorganization schemes for bones, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves: how to immobilize a fractured middle finger with a paper crane, how to heal a cut palm without affecting paper-folding precision……

She looked at Han Qing and saw three hundred twenty-one structural optimization schemes for the Teaching Scar, each allowing the scar to bear more teaching load, but each requiring 'first dismantle the existing structure'.

She even looked at Old Zhao's soup pot, seeing only 'if the pot bottom scorches, how to reorganize the remaining ingredients into something edible'.

"I feel……" Su Yu finally spoke, her voice soft, "I've lost the ability to 'enjoy wholeness.' I cannot see 'a bowl of soup'; I only see 'other forms that the soup could become.'"

Structure-11 gently responded within her body: "But you have gained the ability to 'find a way out in any broken situation.' The Creator designed me saying: wholeness is temporary, brokenness is eternal. Rather than fear brokenness, learn to dance among the fragments."

"How to dance?" Su Yu asked.

"For example, right now—you see the soup about to boil over, but you can see seventeen schemes to prevent it from boiling over. Choose the gentlest one."

Su Yu gazed at the soup pot. In her view, the rising paths of bubbles in the pot revealed adjustable nodes. She reached out and tapped a few points in the air, adjusting the surface tension parameters of several nodes.

The boiling noodles suddenly calmed, as if smoothed by an invisible hand.

Old Zhao stared at her in astonishment.

"I merely…… let it 'choose' another way of boiling," Su Yu explained, "by slightly dispersing some heat to the pot walls, the main noodles become less violent."

"This is dancing," Structure-11 said, "to dance in the interstices of the rules, a dance that breaks nothing yet changes everything."

Kaiwen suddenly rose to his feet, holding a glowing data model——he used the Light-02 ruler to capture all the faint glows of 'spontaneous emission in darkness' in the kitchen, and built a visualization chart.

The chart showed:

·Deep in the cracks of the grafted sapling, there are seventeen grains of 'Faith Light Dust' left by Chen Mo, each glowing as brightly as a miniature star

·Among the eighty-seven students in Han Qing's Teaching Scar, twelve have their 'thirst for learning' glowing, brightness exceeding the system alarm threshold

·At the bottom of Old Zhao's soup pot, a piece of scorched rice crust actually seals the 'apprehensive glimmer' from when his wife first attempted this soup seven years ago

"These lights……" Kaiwen excitedly pushed his glasses three times, "The system previously couldn't detect them at all! They're too faint, but now…… they are our 'hidden energy reserve'!"

Light-02 calmly said within him: "Beauty most often exists in the form of 'so faint it's overlooked.' One of the ruler-wielders' tasks is to discover these faint glows and ensure they are not extinguished."

Absolute Luminance-4 immediately connected, using the capability of Mirror-07 to analyze these glows' 'reflection paths,' discovering they could establish an encrypted communication network in the system's monitoring blind spots.

"Preliminary calculation," the warm-colored glow halo on Absolute Luminance-4's surface steadily emitted, "If we use these glows as carriers, we can transmit information under the Committee's nose, with a detection probability below 0.0003%. Because the system defaults to 'ignoring light sources below the threshold'."

This was their first actual tactical advantage.

Just as everyone began to feel a little uplifted, a fluctuation of Burden-18 came from the soil.

Chen Mo's first-love consciousness transmitted a message through the grafted sapling's root system——the voice was faint, but each word carried the fatigue of bearing weight:

"Detected overload signs in seven nodes of the heartbeat network simultaneously."

"They are: the representative of the Awakened Civilization (pain resonance load surging), Shattered Light-7 (crystal fissure emission overlimit), the mist of GuiHuaYuan (semi-corporeal body showing disintegration warning)……"

"I cannot shield these warnings. They're like nails driven into my perception."

"Suggestion: Before the enemy attacks, we must first learn…… not to be crushed by the very things we protect."

Han Qing immediately used the Time-04 ruler to scan those seven nodes.

She saw a harsher picture: these overloads were not random but systemic——every node of the awakened network, due to the matching and teaching of ruler-wielders, produced an 'aesthetic resonance amplification.' Beauty increased, but the vessels bearing beauty also endured greater pressure.

"Just like when sound is too loud and the speaker blows," Old Zhao suddenly said, having heard the 'sound' of those nodes overloading——not a physical sound, but the groan of structures at their breaking point.

He approached the grafted sapling, lightly pressed his hand against the trunk, and hummed an extremely simple lullaby tune. Not with his voice, but using the Sound-14 ruler to transmute the melody into a structural stability frequency, transmitted via the root system to the entire plant network.

Three minutes later, a faint response came from the soil:

"The overload alarms for the seven nodes…… have dropped three levels."

"Thank you."

"But thirty-one nodes are still approaching the threshold."

Old Zhao's hand did not leave the trunk: "Then I'll keep humming until they all quiet down."

Just as Old Zhao entered the seventh minute of his humming——

The seventeenth flower bud on the grafted sapling (the one corresponding to Paradox-17) suddenly began to simultaneously bloom and wither.

It is in a superposition of both open and withered, and the edges of its petals show reverse measurement patterns.

Paradox-17 was urgently separated from Han Qing's body, and its paradox cloud churned violently:

"Detected the first practical application of the 'Aesthetic Reverse Measurement Protocol'!"

"The enemy is using my principle—but in reverse—to measure this flower bud's 'fragility parameter'!"

"They want to prove: even the flower corresponding to the founder's legacy has enough fragility to be precisely destroyed!"

The patterns on the flower bud's surface become increasingly clear, gradually forming a line of text:

"The superposition stability coefficient of this flower's 'existence and non-existence' is 0.7."

"Just lower the coefficient below 0.3, and the flower will self-annihilate due to an 'existence paradox collapse'."

"Expected annihilation time: 17 seconds."

And more terrifyingly: this line of text is written in the founder's script—meaning the enemy has already cracked part of the original authorization and can "borrow" the legacy's power to attack the legacy itself.

Seventeen seconds.

The flower bud begins to turn transparent.

Han Qing's Time-04 Ruler activates automatically.

She saw three thousand possible futures for the flower bud, of which two thousand nine hundred were "annihilation". But among the remaining ninety-seven, there is a particularly weak branch: if we could temporarily amplify the flower bud's "existence belief" within the next three seconds...

"Xiao Yu!" Han Qing shouted, "Use the Resilience Ruler! Measure where its 'persistence of existence' resilience peak is!"

Xiao Yu's Bridge Eye instantly locked onto the flower bud. In her vision, the flower bud's "existence resilience" resembled a string about to snap—but deep within the string lay a remnant of Chen Mo's belief from years ago, buried in the ruins, that "even in ruins, flowers must bloom".

"Su Yu!" Xiao Yu yelled, "Reorganize the structure of that belief point! Make it……harder to tear apart!"

In Su Yu's mind, seventeen reorganization schemes for the belief point appeared. She chose the third— not to strengthen it, but to make it more flexible, like water, so the measurement protocol could not grasp a fixed parameter.

Kaiwen simultaneously used Light-02 to capture the faint glow of that belief point, temporarily boosting its brightness by 300%.

Old Zhao's humming shifted, turning into a sound frequency that supports "existence".

Everyone—all the Ruler-wielders—in that second instinctively completed the first coordination.

The patterns on the flower bud's surface begin to blur.

At the 16th second, the coefficient rose from 0.7 to 0.41.

At the 17th second—

The flower bud did not annihilate.

It stabilized in a state of "blooming 63%, withering 37%", achieving a fragile but sustainable balance.

The cloud of Paradox-17 gradually calmed:

"The enemy's first attack……was neutralized."

"But they have already proven: reverse measurement is effective."

"And next time……they will simultaneously target more targets."

The kitchen was silent, except for the soup pot still bubbling.

Han Qing wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, and the temperature of the Teaching Scar slowly decreased.

"The good news is," she said with a weary smile, "we just completed a perfect coordination."

"The bad news is," Xiao Yu looked at her trembling hand, "the enemy……has really arrived."