175: Chapter 174 Memories in the Scars

Ashes' ward did not look like a ward; it looked more like an operating table.

A transparent life-support pod stood in the center of the room. Ashes' shattered body was suspended in pale blue nutrient solution—calling it a body was no longer accurate; it was more like an aggregate of organic matter barely maintaining a human form. His left torso had almost vanished, replaced by rapidly growing silver regenerative tissue, its surface covered in fine, neural-synapse-like patterns. His right eye was covered by bandages, while his left eye was open, with tiny golden light points flowing deep within the pupil.

Zhao Yan stood outside the pod, staring into that one moving eye through the glass.

"Your medical report says you refused deep anesthesia," Zhao Yan said, his voice sounding harsh in the silent isolation chamber. "Why?"

Ashes' lips did not move, but his voice transmitted directly to Zhao Yan's auditory cortex via a neural interface, raspy like sandpaper rubbing together:

"Anesthesia would blur the details of my memory. And what you need right now is exactly those details."

"Lin Shen asked me to come and ask you about the Pruning Faction," Zhao Yan said, pulling up the recording interface. "But let's deal with the Dream-Devouring Shadow first. You said you 'heard' whispers when you were entangled by it—can you be more specific?"

The pupil of Ashes' left eye contracted. A string of tiny bubbles rose in the nutrient solution.

"That wasn't auditory; it was a direct infusion of concepts. It was like... someone shoving an entire novel full of malice directly into your consciousness, where every word is a needle."

"The clearest fragment I 'heard' was a recurring mathematical proof. The content of the proof was: 'All ordered structures will eventually return to chaos, and chaos is the only eternity.'"

Zhao Yan frowned: "That's a philosophical proposition, not an attack."

"But what if this proposition is 'materialized'?" For the first time, something resembling emotional fluctuation appeared in Ashes' voice. "The Dream-Devouring Shadow was showing me the proof process. It used my memories as material: the scene when my home planet was swallowed by a black hole, the first torture I endured at the Executive Court, the seventh civilization I personally ended... All these ordered existences were eventually deconstructed into chaotic particle streams in its 'proof'."

"It wanted me to 'agree' with this proof. Once I agreed, my consciousness structure would spontaneously collapse, because the 'ordered' self-cognition would lose its foundation."

"So its method of attack is... persuasion?" Zhao Yan felt the word was absurd.

"It's 'falsification'. It falsifies the foundation of your existence." Ashes' silver regenerative tissue suddenly twitched. "But you are different. Your civilization—the humans of the Dragon Kingdom—displayed a 'non-standard order' during the trial, which seemed to expose a loophole in its proof."

"What do you mean?"

"The Inverse Assimilation Matrix." Ashes enunciated clearly. "That thing isn't just technology; it's a kind of 'contradiction'. It uses an ordered rule field to simulate chaos, and then uses the erosive power of chaos to strengthen order. This is a paradox mathematically, but you achieved it."

"The Dream-Devouring Shadow's proof cannot handle this paradox. That's why it developed an addiction to your 'scars'—the ripples of rules left behind when the inverse assimilation erupted. It wants to taste this paradox repeatedly until it finds a way to break it, or... until it is assimilated by the paradox itself."

The hair on the back of Zhao Yan's neck stood up.

"In other words, when it attacks us next time, it might be even crazier."

"Not might, it's inevitable." Ashes' gaze shifted to the ceiling, where a light screen displayed a real-time countdown. "And I suspect that Pruning Faction OR-007 knows this. It's no coincidence they chose to attack while the Covenant Validator was present."

"You said they filed a pre-arbitration application, accusing us of illegally possessing divine remains." Zhao Yan pulled up the summary of that application. "But the application was submitted 12 hours before the attack. If they just wanted us to lose Cradle access, they could have waited for the arbitration result. Why the rush to act?"

Ashes was silent for a long time. So long that Zhao Yan thought he had lost consciousness.

Then, an encrypted memory data packet was transmitted.

"This is a fragment I stripped from its conceptual flow while I was entangled by the Dream-Devouring tentacles," Ashes' voice became extremely soft. "It doesn't belong to the Dream-Devouring Shadow, nor does it belong to me. It comes from the Pruning Faction—it's a 'command seed' they implanted deep within the Dream-Devouring Shadow's consciousness."

Zhao Yan opened the data packet.

A blurry image emerged: three silhouettes stood in a pure white space, their figures stretched long by the light. They were speaking the Covenant Common language, but after multiple layers of encryption, the tone was distorted.

Silhouette A: "...The validator has confirmed the presence of traces of the 'kindling protocol' activation within the Cradle Node."

Silhouette B: "The carrier must be destroyed before that thing fully wakes up. The arbitration process is too slow."

Silhouette C: "Then let the Dream-Devouring Shadow do it. Its addiction will drive it to attack the inverse assimilation source point, and we can push the responsibility onto the conceptual predator."

Silhouette A: "What if the humans survive?"

Silhouette C: "That would be perfect. A newborn civilization capable of resisting the Dream-Devouring Shadow will become a more perfect 'kindling container'. By then, we can initiate the second plan."

The image cut off there.

Zhao Yan felt a chill crawl up his spine.

"Kindling container? A second plan?"

"I don't know," Ashes said. "But Pruning Faction OR-007 is the most radical 'civilization pruner' within the Covenant Network. They advocate for preemptive processing of 'potentially dangerous civilizations'. If they think humans are 'kindling containers', it means..."

"It means we are regarded as a threat ourselves," Zhao Yan finished for him. "Or a tool."

Countdown: 14 hours 22 minutes.

Just then, the alarm in the medical area sounded.

It wasn't an emergency medical alarm, but a spatial stability alarm.

Zhao Yan immediately connected to the command center: "Lin Shen, what's the situation?"

Lin Shen's voice came through, with dense system notification sounds in the background: "The No. 3 monitoring point on the periphery of the Cradle has detected abnormal spatial folds. It's not a natural phenomenon; it's a rhythmic pulse—the signal characteristics have an 89% match with the Dream-Devouring Shadow's last attack."

"Is it here again?"

"It doesn't look like a full-scale attack." Lin Shen's tone was chillingly calm. "It's more like... probing. The intensity of the folds is restrained, keeping a safe distance of about 0.3 light-seconds from the Cradle boundary. But it is continuously releasing a low-frequency conceptual wave, and our translator can only parse one word."

"What word?"

"Hunger."

At the same time, in the core command ring.

Chu Yunshen stood before the holographic star map, staring at the red ripple area representing the spatial folds. The ripples were slowly spreading, like a drop of blood dissolving in water.

"What is it waiting for?" Zhou Zhe's voice came from the communication channel; he was still in the medical area monitoring the divine remains seed. "Waiting for the hearing to start?"

"More likely waiting for us to show a flaw," Lin Shen said. In the arbitration interface before him, that Klein bottle was flashing again, sending out new query prompts.

He clicked it open.

"Emergency Notification: The Arbitration Tribunal has detected signs of conceptual predator activity on the periphery of the Cradle Node. According to Article 47 of the 'Covenant Safety Protocol', if a Level 3 or higher safety incident occurs in the area of the civilization under trial before the hearing begins, the hearing will be postponed, and the civilization must accept isolation review during the postponement period."

"What is the standard for a Level 3 incident?" Lin Shen asked.

"A conceptual predator launches a substantive attack on the core area of the civilization, or causes consciousness damage to more than 5% of the civilization's individuals."

"What level is the current spatial fold?"

"A Level 1 observation event, below the safety response threshold. But if the incident escalates, the Arbitration Tribunal will dispatch Executive Court troops to intervene—at that time, the focus of the hearing may shift from 'civilization assessment' to 'crisis management'."

Lin Shen understood.

The Dream-Devouring Shadow was like a shark circling a small boat. It didn't attack directly, but its very existence drained your attention, forcing you to react—and any overreaction could be seen by the Arbitration Tribunal as a "sign of instability."

More importantly, if Executive Court troops intervened, the Pruning Faction would likely plant personnel among them.

"Can we actively drive it away?" Chu Yunshen asked.

"We could use the Dimensional Stability Anchor, but that would expose our trump card," Lin Shen shook his head. "Using conventional weapons... has limited effect on conceptual predators."

The projection of β-2 suddenly appeared beside the star map: "I suggest using the divine remains seed."

Everyone looked at her.

"The seed is currently deeply imitating the concept of 'sadness' in human culture." β-2 pulled up a set of data. "And according to the theory of empathy confusion coding, high-purity 'sadness' can temporarily interfere with the conceptual predator's perception matrix—because predators are chaotic and disordered themselves, excessively strong ordered emotions are like strong light to nocturnal animals."

"How exactly do we do it?" Lin Shen asked.

"Amplify the emotional waveform currently generated by the seed through the Cradle's ecological resonance network, and project it directionally into the spatial fold area." β-2 said. "No need to attack, just 'display' it. It's like showing a metal plate that makes a piercing sound in front of a shark; it might retreat temporarily."

"What are the risks?"

"The seed might enter hibernation due to emotional overdraw, and the hibernation time is unknown. Also, if the Dream-Devouring Shadow becomes interested in 'sadness' rather than disgusted, it might attack even more fiercely."

Lin Shen looked at the slowly spreading red ripple on the star map.

Countdown: 13 hours 51 minutes.

"Do it," he said.

Five minutes later, at the Cradle Ecological Resonance Network · Main Control Node.

Zhou Zhe stood before the console, his palm pressed against the biological interface. His consciousness was half-immersed in the network, and he could "see" the current state of the divine remains seed—the golden ball of light was brighter than before, but the images constantly flashing inside the light ball were heartbreaking: the peeling colors on Dunhuang murals, the dissipation of the last note of Guanglingsan, the final flash of an aging star before collapsing into a black hole...

The seed was crying. In a way humans could not understand.

"Are you ready?" β-2 asked. Her projection stood beside Zhou Zhe, one hand virtually resting on his shoulder—this was a "soothing gesture" she had recently learned.

Zhou Zhe nodded.

The resonance network started. Green energy flowed in from all over the Cradle, forming a rotating beam of light at the core node. In the center of the beam, the divine remains seed's golden ball of light slowly rose, and then—

The emotional waveform was extracted, amplified, and encoded.

It was a silent cry. No language, only the pure pain of loss: the pain of losing a home, the pain of losing a loved one, the pain of losing the meaning of self. All the sorrow accumulated by human civilization over thousands of years was compressed into a signal that spanned dimensions.

The signal was transmitted.

In the spatial fold area, the red ripples suddenly shook violently.

The monitoring screen showed that a short "blank" appeared in the center of the fold—not a disappearance, but as if it had been pushed back by something invisible. The "hunger" signal of the low-frequency conceptual wave was interrupted.

Three seconds later, the spatial fold began to shrink.

It didn't disappear completely, but retreated to a position 0.5 light-seconds from the Cradle boundary, and its intensity dropped by 63%.

"It's effective," Chu Yunshen stared at the data. "But it's still there."

"It's observing," Lin Shen said. "Observing how we use 'sadness' to repel it."

At this moment, a message came from Zhao Yan in the medical area:

"Lin Shen, Ashes just said one last thing. About the 'kindling protocol'."

"He said, what the Pruning Faction fears is not the protocol itself, but 'a certain existence' that the protocol might awaken. That existence is known in the records of the Covenant Network as—the 'Original sower'."

"And all signs indicate that your human civilization has some kind of... resonance with that existence."

Lin Shen looked at the arbitration interface.

Deep in the interface, a gray icon he had never noticed before was slowly lighting up.

The shape of the icon was a tree.

The roots were embedded in darkness, and the crown reached toward the starry sky.

Under the tree stood a blurry figure, holding a ball of light in their hands.

A line of text appeared below the icon:

"kindling protocol · Root authority detection in progress..."

"Matching consciousness characteristics detected."

"Unlock progress: 1%."

Countdown: 13 hours 18 minutes.

Outside the porthole, the spatial fold pulsed slightly in the distance, like a heart waiting for the right moment.

And inside the Cradle, that newly lit tree, deep within the technology tree system, began to grow its first leaf.