358: Chapter 359 The Meaning of Friendship and the "Last Batch of Guests"

Little Girl's victory celebration lasted until deep into the night before breaking up.

Wen Youyi did not go to sleep, instead coming alone to the edge of the experimental forest. Under the moonlight, those silver-blue treetops shimmered with a faint light, like a field of quietly burning flames.

"Can't sleep?" Footsteps came from behind; it was Yun Zhi.

Wen Youyi didn't turn around: "I'm thinking about what Little Girl said."

"Which sentence?"

"Because they are friends."

Yun Zhi walked to his side and also looked at the forest: "Do you think she's wrong?"

"No," Wen Youyi shook his head, "I think she's too right. So right that I'm a bit... I don't know how to respond."

He paused: "We adults are always calculating: how long the Law field can hold, when the cracks will flare up, if one hundred and three days is enough for training. We calculate back and forth, calculating ourselves into an increasingly narrow dead end. Little Girl is different. She thinks the trees are friends, so the trees will help her. It's that simple."

Yun Zhi was silent for a moment, then said: "What you think is simple might not be so simple. Little Girl can be friends with the trees because she gave her time, her sincerity, and also three pieces of rainbow potato."

Wen Youyi was stunned for a moment, then laughed: "You're right. I almost forgot, making friends also requires giving."

He looked at the forest and suddenly remembered something.

"Yun Zhi, do you think these trees in the forest count as 'residents' of the New Homeland?"

Yun Zhi thought about it: "They have no consciousness, no sense of self, they can't vote, they can't work... By the Council's standards, they don't count."

"But they will protect Little Girl."

"True."

"Then if one day an enemy comes, will they protect us?"

Yun Zhi fell silent.

No one could answer this question.

Three days later, the answer was revealed in an unexpected way.

Early that morning, the reconnaissance units sent word: abnormal energy fluctuations were detected at the edge of the star System, and an unknown object was approaching the New Homeland. It wasn't a fleet; it was very small, and there was only one.

By the time Wen Youyi arrived at the observation station with the core team, the echo telescope had already captured a clear image of that "object."

It was a ship.

A tattered ship that looked as if it had been gnawed on by something. It was a size smaller than the Hidden Dragon, its surface pitted and scarred, with smoke still rising from several places. But most eye-catching was the paint job on the hull—

A closed eye, with a thin crack across the eyelid.

"Cracked Eye," Lin Jiang blurted out.

The command center fell silent instantly.

That underground organization within the Heavenly Court had sent someone?

"What's its energy signature?" Wen Youyi asked.

Silver Thorn's voice rang out: "Weak, chaotic, nearing collapse. The hull has suffered attacks, the propulsion System is severely damaged, and it can maintain flight for thirty standard hours at most."

"Can we communicate?"

"Attempting... the other side responded! The signal is very weak, but it can be parsed—"

A burst of harsh static came through the communication channel, followed by an intermittent voice accompanied by heavy gasping:

"New... Homeland... do you receive... I am... Cracked Eye... liaison... code name 'Firefly'... have... vital intelligence... requesting... emergency landing..."

As the last word fell, the communication cut off.

On the screen, that broken ship began to spin out of control, falling toward the New Homeland's atmosphere.

"Send rescue immediately!" Wen Youyi ordered. "Hidden Dragon, move out! Aila, Luo Chen, you're responsible for docking and medical preparations! Silver Thorn, monitor its status throughout to prevent a trap!"

Half an hour later, the broken ship was towed into the New Homeland's orbit by the Hidden Dragon and slowly guided into the quarantine zone with a tractor beam.

When the hatch opened, everyone gasped.

There was only one person inside—or rather, something that used to be human.

It was a young woman wearing a tattered grayish-white uniform, her body covered in energy burn scars. Most shocking were her eyes: the left eye was still normal, but the right eye was a hollow socket, inside of which a faint, Firefly-like light pulsed slowly.

"That is... a symbiotic organ for substituted vision," Silver Thorn's voice carried a rare ripple of emotion. "She is using her own life force to keep that organ running so she can hide herself within the Heavenly Court's tracking network."

The woman struggled to open her eyes—her normal left eye.

She looked at Wen Youyi standing before her, her lips moving:

"Cracked Eye... last batch... liaison... code name 'Firefly'... real name... forgotten long ago..."

Her voice was like a flickering candle in the wind, liable to go out at any moment.

"What did you come to find us for?" Wen Youyi knelt down, trying to keep his voice steady.

"To deliver... the final intelligence..." Inside Firefly's right eye socket, that light pulsed more violently. "The cracks... have been discovered... not all of them... but... enough... the Heavenly Court... already knows... the New Homeland's coordinates... there are... seventy-two days left..."

Seventy-two days.

One hundred and twenty-five days earlier than the fastest estimate of one hundred and ninety-seven days.

The faces of everyone in the command center changed.

Firefly continued: "They... sent... two fleets... the main force for a frontal assault... the other... to flank and ambush... time difference... thirty-six hours... you... must... split your forces..."

"What else?"

"Also..." Firefly's hand trembled as she fished something out from her chest.

It was a thumb-sized, entirely transparent crystal, with a drop of blood sealed inside. The blood was dark gold, like solidified flame.

"This is... the 'Blood of the Defectors'... collected by Cracked Eye... over three hundred years..."

"The final drop of blood... taken from three hundred and seventy-two... Heavenly Court members... who ultimately chose to defect..."

"What is it used for?" Senior Brother Zhang asked.

The light in Firefly's right eye suddenly became fierce:

"Use your... that child's... consciousness... to activate it... it will... 'call out' to... all Heavenly Court units... influenced by the renegades... making them... hesitate... even for... a few seconds..."

"Enough for you... to kill... a few more..."

Before she could finish, Firefly's head slumped down.

Silver Thorn stepped forward to check, then said after a moment:

"She's dead. Her last organ has failed. But her symbiotic organ is still running—that light is still sending a signal."

"To whom?"

"Unknown. But the signal is very weak; it's likely 'reporting safety' to someone. Telling them, 'Mission accomplished'."

The command center fell into silence.

Wen Youyi looked at the strange woman lying in a pool of blood.

Three hundred and seventy-two drops of blood, three hundred and seventy-two people who ultimately chose to betray the Heavenly Court. Every one of them knew they would die, yet they still left this drop of blood.

All so that some "child" they had never met could one day use this blood to buy a few seconds of time.

"Bury her at the highest point of the town cemetery," Wen Youyi spoke, his voice raspy. "Write on the tombstone—'Firefly of Cracked Eye, a friend of the New Homeland'."

"And those three hundred and seventy-two drops of blood," he looked at Senior Brother Zhang, "research how to use them. In seventy-two days, we must make every single drop count."

That night, the intelligence Firefly brought was repeatedly verified.

Seventy-two days.

Two fleets, thirty-six hours apart.

The New Homeland had to split its forces.

But splitting the forces meant halving the defensive strength of each path, meaning the twelve-day defense line that was already insufficient might not even hold for seven days.

"What do we do?" Wang Wu asked.

Wen Youyi looked at the night sky outside the window and did not speak.

Outside, the silver-blue forest swayed gently in the night wind.

He remembered what Little Girl said.

"Because they are friends."

He turned and said to Silver Thorn:

"Connect me to the memory aggregate. I want to discuss a deal with it."

Three days later, the New Homeland welcomed a group of special "guests."

Not liaisons from Cracked Eye, nor fleets from the Heavenly Court, but—the trees from the forest.

The silver-blue trees of the experimental forest, under the "translation" of the memory aggregate, sent seventy-three "representatives."

They had no feet and moved slowly underground using their root Systems. It took three full days and nights to move from the forest edge to the outskirts of the town. Along the way, countless residents watched; some were so scared they hid in their houses, while others curiously reached out to touch, only to be stopped by their companions.

"Don't touch! They're here to talk!"

The seventy-three trees formed a circle in the open space outside the town. In the center of the circle, the memory aggregate projected a blurry humanoid light shadow—its "image" within the human consciousness.

The humanoid light shadow spoke, using the common tongue but with a peculiar raspiness like the rustling of leaves:

"Wen Youyi, we have received your request."

"The children of the forest say you wish to ask for their help to fight the coming enemy."

Wen Youyi stood opposite the humanoid light shadow and nodded solemnly: "Yes."

"Do you know what they are asking?"

"What?"

The humanoid light shadow was silent for a few seconds, then said:

"They are asking: 'After we help, will you remember us?'"

Wen Youyi was stunned.

He hadn't expected the trees to ask this.

The humanoid light shadow continued: "They have lived in the forest for a very, very long time. Longer than your human history. They have seen countless creatures passing through, some friendly, some greedy. But whether friendly or greedy, they all eventually leave and then forget them."

"They do not fear death; they fear being forgotten."

Wen Youyi looked at those silent, silver-blue trees and suddenly remembered what Little Girl had said.

"Because they are friends."

Friends are not tools to be used and discarded. Friends are people who remember each other—or rather, lives that remember each other.

He took a deep breath and said solemnly to those trees:

"We will remember. Not the kind of remembering carved on a stone tablet, but the kind where every child who grows up here will know—there was a forest that once fought the enemy to protect them."

"We will put this in our textbooks, write it into stories, and tell it to generation after generation."

"As long as the New Homeland exists, you will never be forgotten."

In the forest, all the trees began to sway simultaneously. That swaying wasn't the wind; it was them expressing some kind of emotion in their own unique way.

The humanoid light shadow turned to the trees and "translated" a few sentences in that rustling voice. The trees swayed even more violently, and a few trees even began to glow—a silver-blue light, like countless fireflies lighting up at once.

"They agree," the humanoid light shadow said, "and they have something else to say."

"What is it?"

The humanoid light shadow listened for a while, and then its expression—though it was just a cluster of light—became a bit strange:

"They say they really like the names Little Girl gave them. They hope you will continue to call them by those names in the future."

Wen Youyi: "..."

So, in the future defensive battle reports of the New Homeland, there would be records like "The Shiny Little Umbrella Legion launched a feint from the flank" or "The Big Fat Tubby defense line successfully delayed the enemy vanguard"?

He suddenly understood a bit why the Creation Heavenly Court's war simulations never calculated that "trees would join the battle."

Who could have calculated that?

The seventy-two-day countdown officially began to tick again from this day.

But this time, standing on the side of the New Homeland, besides one hundred thousand people, there was also a forest, a memory aggregate, three hundred and seventy-two drops of renegades' blood, and countless "friends" who had not yet been calculated.

Wen Youyi stood at the edge of the town, watching those trees slowly move back to the forest, and suddenly remembered the last sentence Firefly said before she died:

"Enough for you to kill a few more."

He smiled and said in a low voice:

"Not enough."

"What we want is not just to kill a few more."

"It's to make sure that no matter how many of them come, none of them go back."

The night wind blew, and the silver-blue treetops swayed gently, as if nodding.

(End of Chapter)