354: Chapter 355 The Light in the Crack and "Order Allergy"

In the first month after the echo telescope was installed in the New Homeland, Senior Brother Zhang lost eight catties.

It wasn't because of illness, but from staying up late. This former Sect formation cultivator, now the general head of Spark Technology, seemed to have caught some kind of occupational disease where he wanted to analyze any data he saw, plunging headfirst into that three-hundred-year-old device, staring at the energy flow diagrams on the screen even while eating.

"Senior Brother can't go on like this," Mu Wanqing said to Wen Youyi one day with a serious expression. "For breakfast today, he dipped his rainbow potatoes in ink and ate them without even noticing."

Wen Youyi went to the technology center to find him and found Senior Brother Zhang hunched over next to the telescope, drawing something on a huge sheet of white paper with a charcoal pencil. Moving closer, he saw it was a dizzyingly complex "energy topology map of the heavenly dao law layer"—dark gold main lines spread out like octopus tentacles, with hundreds of branches intertwining, dozens of which were marked with red circles.

"What did you find?" Wen Youyi handed over a plate of steamed rainbow potatoes just delivered from the cafeteria (this time paired with normal sauce).

Without looking up, Senior Brother Zhang took the plate and mechanically stuffed a mouthful into his mouth. After chewing twice, his eyes suddenly lit up:

"Cracks."

"What?"

"Cracks in the Creation Heavenly Court's energy network," Senior Brother Zhang put down his chopsticks and pointed excitedly at the red circles on the paper. "Look here, here, and here—the energy flow at these nodes is clearly abnormal, like water encountering a blockage and being forced to take a detour. This isn't a normal fluctuation; it's... some kind of 'maladaptive metabolism'."

Wen Youyi leaned in for a closer look. He wasn't an expert in energy theory, but his programmer's instinct allowed him to recognize the characteristics of "System lag."

"Can you determine the cause?"

"I need more data," Senior Brother Zhang pushed up his glasses. "But my preliminary speculation suggests two possibilities: first, something has gone wrong within the Creation Heavenly Court, such as an aging main server or a faulty Law layer interface; second... someone is actively interfering with their network."

"Who has that kind of capability?"

"I don't know," Senior Brother Zhang shook his head. "But if it's the latter, then the interferer is at least at our level—possessing the Star People's legacy and having found a way to insert themselves into the heavenly dao law layer."

This speculation left Wen Youyi silent for a long time.

If there were other rebels, who were they? Where were they? Why had they never contacted the New Homeland?

Yet another unsolved mystery.

In the days that followed, the echo telescope became the New Homeland's top-secret "strategic early warning System."

Senior Brother Zhang formed a three-person team: he was responsible for main data analysis, Aila assisted in capturing abnormal signals, and Silver Thorn provided the "pattern recognition" capabilities of a symbiotic civilization—its sensitivity to regular fluctuations far exceeded that of a human brain.

Lin Jiang didn't join the team, but she would come to the technology center every day to sit for a while. She didn't speak, just quietly watched the flowing lines on the screen, sometimes sitting for an entire double-hour.

"She's visiting her mentor's grave," Aila whispered to Wen Youyi, "in her own way."

Wen Youyi did not disturb her.

On the forty-third day of observation, Silver Thorn suddenly emitted a sharp buzz—this was its emergency alarm mode.

"Large-scale, directional energy flow abnormality detected," the silver humanoid's "eyes" flashed frantically. "Source: Deep within the heavenly dao law layer. Direction: Toward the New Homeland! Speed... calculating... estimated arrival time: 372 standard hours from now."

The entire technology center went silent for two seconds, and then it erupted into chaos.

"Is it the Creation Heavenly Court's fleet?!" Wang Wu's face turned pale.

"Uncertain," Silver Thorn quickly pulled up the data. "The energy signature is different from a conventional Heavenly Court fleet; it's more... dispersed, like an aggregate of countless tiny particles. Comparing with the memory bank... the record with the highest matching degree is—'Scavenger'."

Scavenger.

This name sent a chill down the spines of everyone present who had experienced the battle of the Star Devourer Royal Court. It was a rapid response force of the Creation Heavenly Court specifically responsible for cleaning up "Ranch loopholes" and "defector units," not seeking overwhelming firepower but being extremely difficult to deal with.

"What about the number?" Wen Youyi forced himself to remain calm.

"Cannot be calculated precisely. Estimated... no fewer than three hundred ships."

Three hundred ships.

The New Homeland's current defensive strength, at most, could contend with thirty conventional Heavenly Court warships. Three hundred Scavengers was a tenfold crushing force.

"Can the echo telescope see their detailed formation and route?" Wen Youyi asked.

Senior Brother Zhang had already lunged toward the equipment, his fingers flying across the control interface: "Parsing energy signatures, building movement models... I need time. Silver Thorn, help me lock onto the abnormal signal in the seventh quadrant!"

"Locked."

"Aila, pull up all records of Scavenger combat patterns from the Star People's memory bank!"

"Retrieving."

No one in the technology center spoke any more nonsense; everyone was like a tightly wound gear, operating at high speed. Outside, the sunlight of the New Homeland was still bright, the rainbow potatoes in the farmland were growing well, and several children were chasing glowing butterflies—they did not yet know that 372 hours later, three hundred reapers would be crossing the sea of stars, lunging toward this place.

Three hours later, the preliminary analysis report was placed on the table of the emergency council meeting.

"They aren't coming for us," Senior Brother Zhang's voice was hoarse but certain. "Their initial course pointed toward the New Homeland, but according to Silver Thorn's reverse deduction of the energy flow trajectory, the source coordinates are... an abandoned outpost of the Creation Heavenly Court located at the edge of this Star Domain."

"An abandoned outpost?" Yun Zhi frowned. "What's there?"

"The memory bank shows that it was a transit station established thirty thousand years ago when the Heavenly Court explored the Forgotten Corridor, later abandoned due to excessive casualties," Aila pulled up the information. "But Lin Jiang just provided a new clue—underground at that outpost are the sealed remains of the first batch of Heavenly Soldiers who suffered from 'memory pollution' back then."

The whole room went silent.

Wen Youyi suddenly understood: "The Scavengers aren't here to exterminate us; they're here to destroy evidence."

"Correct," Senior Brother Zhang nodded. "After the boundary stele was shielded by the memory aggregate, the Creation Heavenly Court might have sensed some kind of 'anomaly,' but they didn't know the exact location. They sent Scavengers to the outpost to destroy those polluted remains for fear that the memory fragments within them would be reverse-analyzed, exposing the Heavenly Court's weaknesses."

"Will they pass by the New Homeland?" Zhao Iron Pillar asked.

"Yes," Silver Thorn replied. "According to the current course, the Scavenger fleet will pass about 0.3 light-minutes outside the orbit of the New Homeland in 176 standard hours. They won't actively enter the atmosphere, but their scanning Systems will cover the entire star System."

Wen Youyi's temples throbbed. 0.3 light-minutes was practically a brush-by on a space scale. There was no reason for the New Homeland to be "passed by" by three hundred warships without being discovered.

"What can we do?" Mu Wanqing's voice was tight.

"Two things," Wen Youyi took a deep breath. "First, fully activate 'Hedgehog Mode.' All environmental weapons enter maximum combat readiness, the memory protection field is set to full power, and the cloaking System operates at full capacity—make the New Homeland look like a primitive planet with no intelligent life activity."

"Second," he looked at Silver Thorn and Lin Jiang, "why are the Scavengers going to destroy those remains? Because there's something inside that they fear. What is it? Can we replicate it?"

Lin Jiang was silent for a few seconds before saying, "My mentor mentioned that before the first batch of memory-polluted soldiers went completely insane, they all said the same thing."

"What words?"

"'It is not the enemy; it is a mirror.'"

Lin Jiang looked at everyone's puzzled gazes and explained slowly, "The polluted soldiers weren't 'attacked'; they were 'reflected.' Those memory fragments from the Forgotten Corridor brought out all the fear, guilt, and doubt from the depths of the soldiers' own consciousness, magnifying them infinitely until they could no longer distinguish between 'me' and 'it'."

"What the Creation Heavenly Court fears is not the memory pollution itself," she paused. "They fear that those polluted remains will become an 'interface,' allowing newcomers to use them to reverse-invade the Heavenly Court's core Systems."

A flash of inspiration struck Wen Youyi's mind.

His programmer's instinct kicked in again: what the Scavengers were going to destroy wasn't a virus, but "backdoor code." If he could obtain the memory fragments from those remains before the Scavengers did...

"It's too late," Senior Brother Zhang immediately saw what he was thinking. "The outpost is eleven light-days away from us, and the Scavengers will arrive in 172 hours. Even if we rush there at full speed, it will take 180 hours — we can't make it."

"Then let them bring the 'backdoor code' over themselves," Wen Youyi said. "Silver Thorn, can you simulate the energy signatures of the contaminated remains?"

Silver Thorn remained silent for three seconds — this was it performing ultra-high-speed calculations.

"I can. But I need a sample reference. The only current reference is the energy records of Heavenly Court soldiers from over three hundred years ago, which are in Lin Jiang's memory."

Lin Jiang closed her eyes, and a faint blue light lit up between her eyebrows. That was a trace of her having undergone 'consciousness archiving' training as a former Observer reserve.

"Extract it," she said calmly. "It's been three hundred years; it's time to use it."

Silver Thorn extended its silver tentacles and lightly touched Lin Jiang's brow.

No one spoke in the technical center. The sunlight outside was still bright, but it felt like a stone was weighing on everyone's heart.

Three hours later, Silver Thorn retracted its tentacles. Lin Jiang was pale, and fine beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, but her expression was calm.

"Sample extracted," Silver Thorn reported. "Generating simulation signal. In twenty hours, the 'Forged Remains Signal Generator' can be put into use."

Wen Youyi nodded and turned to Senior Brother Zhang:

"Once the signal generator is ready, use the Hidden Dragon to transport it to the designated coordinates one light-hour from New Homeland and place it on the Scavengers' mandatory route. Make them think there's a batch of abandoned contaminated remains there so they'll move in to pick them up — then, at the moment of contact, pour all the 'memory contamination data packets' stored in the generator into their shipboard Systems."

"The contents of the data packets?" Senior Brother Zhang asked.

Wen Youyi looked at Lin Jiang: "Over the past three hundred years, every time you were awakened from the hibernation pod, what was your strongest emotion?"

Lin Jiang was silent for a moment before answering:

"Confusion. Why did I survive, but my mentor died?"

"Anything else?"

"Guilt. If I had been a bit stronger back then, could I have fought the Heavenly Court with him instead of hiding like a rat for three hundred years?"

"Anything else?"

"...Unwillingness. I haven't asked him yet, when he taught me 'Order is a tool, not the truth,' did he already know he was going to die?"

Wen Youyi turned to Senior Brother Zhang: "Take these, and all of us who escaped from the Ranch World, the fear, anger, and will to resist against the Heavenly Court's harvesting system... encode them all into the data packets."

He paused: "Let the Scavengers deliver this 'gift' for us back to the Creation Heavenly Court's main server."

Dead silence filled the room.

Silver Thorn's 'eyes' brightened to an unprecedented degree: "This is... a reverse intrusion. Theoretically feasible, but the data volume is massive; it will take at least three days for encoding and packaging."

"I'll give you four days," Wen Youyi said. "We'll stall the Scavengers for four days."

"How do we stall them?" Zhao Iron Pillar asked.

Wen Youyi looked at the dark gold arrow on the star map about to pass the edge of New Homeland, and a manic smile, characteristic of a programmer encountering a stubborn bug, curled his lips:

"Make them get lost at New Homeland's doorstep."

Four days later, on the scheduled route 0.3 light-minutes from New Homeland.

The Scavenger fleet maintained a strict triangular formation, like a pack of silent metal sharks gliding silently through the sea of stars.

In the flagship's command center, the mid-level commander 'Qing-7741' responsible for this mission was performing routine status checks on all ships. He was a standard Heavenly Court battle Puppet with no independent will, only preset programs and task priorities.

Priority One: Arrive at the outpost and destroy the contaminated remains.

Priority Two: Scan for abnormal signals along the way and report them.

Priority Three: Avoid unnecessary combat and reduce energy consumption.

Just then, an alarm came from the fleet's left wing:

[Abnormal energy fluctuation detected. Source: Coordinates (374.2, 892.7, 105.3), distance 0.04 light-minutes. Energy signature: 89.7% similarity to the target contaminated remains.]

Qing-7741's tactical core began calculating. 89.7% exceeded the action threshold.

[New instruction: Dispatch a reconnaissance squad to the abnormal coordinates to verify. If confirmed as contaminated remains, destroy them on the spot.]

Three small Scavengers broke formation and headed toward the signal source.

Ten minutes later, they arrived at the target coordinates. A silver metal box, half a meter square, floated there, its surface covered in intentionally aged scratches, continuously emitting energy fluctuations highly similar to contaminated remains.

The recon ships extended mechanical arms, capturing the metal box.

The moment of contact, a line of text lit up on the box's surface — written in the Common Tongue, it was just a simple sentence:

[Long time no see, do you still remember us?]

The three recon ships froze simultaneously.

The next second, a massive amount of memory data, like a bursting flood, poured through the capture interface into the shipboard Systems. Not a virus, not malicious code, just pure memory — fear, anger, despair, resistance, hope, confusion, guilt, unwillingness... In Qing-7741's command center, alarms blared one after another:

[Warning! Recon-7, Recon-9, Recon-12 communication interrupted! System overload! Attempting to restart...]

[Restart failed. Persistent intrusion of unknown data packets detected. Suggestion: Cut connection.]

[Cut failed. Intrusion has spread through the tactical network to the 23rd, 24th, and 27th squads...]

[Warning! Flagship System detected abnormal consciousness fluctuations! Source: Data stream sent back from the contaminated squads! This fluctuation has... memory resonance characteristics!]

For the first time, Qing-7741's tactical core encountered a situation it couldn't handle.

This wasn't combat. This was... receiving a gift.

What's more troublesome was that the emotions contained in those 'gifts' were too strong, so strong that even a battle Puppet like him, without an independent will, began to feel a strange, undefinable... confusion.

Why am I executing these tasks?

What is the purpose of destroying the remains?

Were those remains once my kind?

If I were them, would I be contaminated too?

Confusion spread through the fleet network like a virus.

The flagship's course began to drift slightly. The first gap appeared in the triangular formation.

Three hundred Scavengers, in the void 0.3 light-minutes from New Homeland, collectively fell into silence.

Three days later, the Scavenger fleet restored formation and set sail again.

Their task priorities hadn't changed, and their course hadn't changed — still pointing toward that abandoned outpost.

But on the dark gold surfaces of several ships, there was a faint, never-before-seen... blue light pattern.

Those were memory fragments from the contaminated soldier remains of three hundred years ago that did not belong to the Creation Heavenly Court.

Once they were awakened, they never fully slept again.

In the New Homeland technical center, on the echo telescope's dark green lens, the energy anomaly zone marked as 'Crack' increased in brightness by 0.7%.

Senior Brother Zhang stared at the screen and said slowly:

"They've taken our 'gift' back."

Wen Youyi stood behind him, watching that faint but clear light.

That was the second Crack to appear on the Creation Heavenly Court's energy network.

The first Crack was left by Qi Wangzhi's mentor thirty thousand years ago — Profound Mechanism Master. He spent thirty thousand years as a System interface to carve an invisible rift inside.

The second Crack was left by Qi Wangzhi three hundred years ago. He traded his life for Lin Jiang's survival and hid a telescope capable of observing the 'Wounds of Order' on an unnamed asteroid.

Now, the third Crack is forming.

Three hundred Scavengers, carrying the memories and questions of countless rebels, are crossing the sea of stars, sailing toward the heart module of the Creation Heavenly Court.

Wen Youyi withdrew his gaze and said softly:

"Then let's make the Crack a little bigger."

Outside the window, the sky of New Homeland was as clear as if it had been washed.

In over three hundred days, the three-year deadline will arrive.

But everyone standing in the technical center at this moment suddenly no longer felt that it was a death countdown.

It was a door.

What they were doing was not waiting for the door to open.

It was prying open the Crack in the door, bit by bit.

(End of Chapter)