354: Nightfall

Honeycomb Experimental City was enveloped in tranquility late at night.

Unlike the panic that permeated among the Nova People due to the threat of war, the atmosphere here was relatively peaceful.

Most researchers had returned to their dorms to rest, with only a few on duty still monitoring various data.

They knew that by the day after tomorrow at the latest, the Interstellar Peace Corporation headquarters would detect the abnormal communication blackout here, and an investigation team would soon arrive.

The base being too large also had this disadvantage. With abundant supplies and complete facilities, it basically didn't need external replenishment. Therefore, the base was not equipped with spaceships capable of interstellar travel; it only had equipment for within the atmosphere.

Great pains were taken to prevent technology leaks to the Trisolarans due to any unexpected incidents.

(Suddenly remembered a BUG, patching it first, nothing happened, nothing happened~)

Under the soft lights of the central laboratory, Pexito was still immersed in the vast sea of information within the Corporation's database.

She had been reading for over ten hours continuously, but there was no fatigue in her clear eyes; instead, they sparkled with an increasingly bright light.

She had just finished a large-scale browse of ecology and the history of life's evolution; the grand narratives of species' rise and fall gave her a deeper understanding of life's fragility and preciousness.

She stretched languidly, subconsciously touching her face, the sense of reality brought by her body still feeling new to her.

"Let's rest for a bit," she whispered to herself, "What should I do? Hmm... oh, I've got it."

"How about I look into what's missing from the memory fragments that gave birth to me."

"I'm really quite curious."

In the "volunteer" memories provided to Pexito by Xia Er and his team, almost all negative content had been carefully filtered out, leaving only snippets of daily life filled with hope and harmony.

Pexito had noticed this long ago but hadn't paid too much attention to it.

But now that she had time, Pexito decided to explore the full truth.

She began searching the database for keywords related to the locations in her memory fragments: "Skyreach City" and "Oceania City-States."

Initially, she looked at public official reports and statistical data, which painted a picture of an orderly, steadily developing region.

But she quickly noticed the almost impossible-to-miss hints in the Corporation's records that something was amiss.

She delved deeper, retrieving internal audit records, where the numbers began to tell a different story.

The material reports provided by Skyreach City showed systematic signs of tampering, with a significant discrepancy between basic living allowances and actual consumption.

Her brows furrowed slightly, and her fingers rapidly slid across the virtual interface, calling up files that required higher-level access permissions.

Soon, she noticed a highlighted appendix. Although the small text next to it indicated insufficient permissions, it turned green after a blink.

Though somewhat puzzled, Pexito didn't dwell on it and clicked in.

When the secret surveillance archives of the Market Development Department appeared before her, Pexito's breathing almost stopped.

The true face of Governor Smith and his cronies was laid bare before her in the most explicit way.

Artificially created demand gaps forced colonial residents to accept extremely unequal trade terms; carefully orchestrated material shortages made basic living necessities a bargaining chip to control labor; covert support for certain dark forces to secretly hand over resistors or those unable to afford high living costs to "Scavengers"; fostering human trafficking networks to bring people from newly established principalities and kingdoms in the fringe areas of Blue Star into Oceania to replace missing populations... The archives also detailed twelve near-riot labor protests that occurred over the past fifteen years, all brutally suppressed, with related records marked as "industrial accidents" or "infrastructure failures."

In the satellite imagery, she saw armed security guards firing on unarmed miners, saw injured people directly abandoned in the wilderness, and saw survivors forced to sign gag orders and implanted with "confidentiality measures."

All these dark realities formed a sharp, suffocating contrast with the world she had perceived from the pure daily memories of the volunteers.

The beauty present in those volunteer memories was the warm, sunlit side; in the shadows, there was a coldness she could not imagine.

An unprecedented strong emotion surged in Pexito's heart; it was not anger, but a deep sense of pity.

She felt sorrow for those lives who still strove to maintain dignity under systemic oppression, and she was shaken by the complexity of human civilization where light and darkness coexisted.

She suddenly remembered a sentence she had read in the database: "The greatest tragedy is not the rampage of evil, but the silence of good."

Behind those tampered reports and covered-up atrocities were countless ordinary people who chose to remain silent or were forced into silence.

She didn't understand why the Corporation knew all of this but did nothing.

Pexito closed the database, and the holographic interface instantly disappeared, leaving only soft light in the laboratory.

She wanted to do something, not for revenge or condemnation, but because she wanted to.

However, she herself did not know that this impulse did not stem from moral judgment, but from an instinctive pursuit of "harmony" and "consistency" in the deepest part of her consciousness.

She gracefully slid off the chair, her long white hair gently swaying behind her.

Walking through the quiet corridor, she arrived at the base's living quarters. Most rooms were already dark, with only one lounge still dimly lit.

Robert was sitting alone on a sofa in the lounge, with a cup of long-cold coffee in front of him.

He gazed out at the unique binary star night sky of Three-Body Star, lost in thought, a look of peace on his face.

Since his soul-searching conversation with Xia Er, his inner anxiety, unease, and remorse had indeed lessened considerably, but long-term insomnia had made him accustomed to only falling asleep in the late hours of the night.

For him, being able to have a peaceful sleep was already the best reward fate offered for his small acts of redemption; the duration no longer mattered.

During his days at Honeycomb, what he enjoyed most was gazing at the magnificent starry sky outside the window in the dead of night, finding inner peace in the quiet.

"Good evening, Mr. Robert." A soft voice broke the silence of the lounge.

Robert was slightly startled, then turned to see the white-haired girl standing at the doorway, a hint of surprise in his eyes. He had never seen this girl at the base, yet her demeanor made him feel strangely familiar.

"Good evening," Robert replied politely, "I don't think I've seen you before. Are you a new researcher?"

The girl smiled slightly and walked to the sofa opposite him, sitting down: "You could say that. I'm Pexito, and I recently joined the Honeycomb Base research team." Her voice was clear and gentle, making one unconsciously relax their guard.

"Pexito..." Robert repeated the name, finding it somewhat unique, "Are you still working this late?"

"I remember, the Corporation doesn't even have a culture of overtime, does it?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come out for a walk." Pexi gently brushed her white hair behind her ear. "I saw lights here, so I came to take a look. Do you often stay up late too, Mr. Robert?"

Robert smiled wryly and nodded: "You could say that, I'm used to it. The starry sky here is beautiful, isn't it?" He pointed to the binary star system outside the window.

The two talked like this, from daily life at the base to observations of the starry sky, and then to the natural scenery of various continents on Blue Star. Pexito's conversation surprised Robert; she was not only knowledgeable but also had unique insights into many things.

During their conversation, Pexito casually brought up a topic: "I recently saw some very interesting information, especially regarding the situations in Oceania and Skyreach City."

"I remember, Mr. Robert, you once lived there, didn't you?"

Robert's expression changed slightly but quickly returned to calm: "Yes, I was born there, and I didn't leave until a few months ago."