183: Chapter 182 requires

The 'Confession Crystal' of the Muttering Civilization was placed in a specialized consciousness isolation chamber.

The chamber was spherical, its inner walls covered with a silver-gray material that absorbed conceptual fluctuations, and in the center floated that black coffin container—at this moment, the seal on its surface was slowly dissolving, revealing a translucent core inside, like a huge, murky piece of amber.

When Stardust walked in with Zhou Zhe, the projection of β-2 was already waiting in the chamber.

She was poking the surface of the container with a virtual diagnostic pen, her expression as serious as if she were performing an ultrasound on a patient.

'The structure is stable, but the internal emotional entropy is extremely high,' β-2 reported. 'If completely unsealed, the overflowing 'regret waves' would be enough to cause all carbon-based life forms within a radius of five light-seconds to experience an existential crisis lasting for three years.'

'So we need a gentle connection.' Stardust walked to the container, his starlight-like fingers lightly tapping the surface, causing a ripple to spread out. 'Zhou Zhe, you are the bridge. Among the gifts the divine remains gave you is the protocol code that resonates with this kind of 'collective consciousness relic.' I will help you establish a secure link; you only need to do one thing—'

He looked at Zhou Zhe: 'Listen. Listen to what they want to say at the end, then give your response. Just like... customer service answering a complaint call that has been misdialed for three thousand years.'

Zhou Zhe swallowed. 'What if their 'regret' is too heavy and I can't handle it?'

'Then use your 'party b instinct'.' Stardust blinked. 'Think about how you handle those party a's who change their requirements eighteen times and then say 'it just doesn't feel right'? Civilizational-level regret is essentially just a... super-sized, tangled party a.'

This metaphor was so apt that Zhou Zhe actually felt less nervous.

The connection program started. Stardust laid a circle of starlight runes around the container, while β-2 monitored Zhou Zhe's vital signs from the outside.

Lin Shen and the others watched through the observation window. Chu Yunshen was still holding the 'Emergency Plan for Observer Team Entry (First Draft)' he had just drafted, temporarily forgetting to revise it.

'Three, two, one—' Stardust's fingertips lit up, 'Link established.'

Zhou Zhe closed his eyes.

Consciousness space.

No images, no sound, only weight.

It felt like the sorrow of an entire planet pressing against his chest, and like countless people sighing in his ears at the same time.

Zhou Zhe felt himself sinking, passing through cold seawater, passing through solidified magma, passing through time itself—

Then, he 'stood' in a pure white conference room.

A long table, a projector, a whiteboard, mineral water. A typical project review meeting scene.

Sitting across the long table was a silhouette. No, not one person, but a superposition of countless silhouettes: sometimes an engineer with glasses, sometimes an old man with white hair, sometimes turning into a group of blurred outlines.

They shared one chair, and their voices were a multiple reverberation: 'You've come,' they said, 'We've been waiting for a long time.'

Zhou Zhe lowered his head and found that he was also sitting on a chair, with a laptop in front of him—a virtual one, with a screensaver of a Dragon Country panda chewing bamboo. This must be Stardust's twisted sense of humor.

'I am Zhou Zhe, from the Dragon Country Civilization.' He tried to keep his voice steady. 'I heard... you have something to say.'

The superposition of the Muttering Civilization nodded. The projector automatically lit up, projecting a PPT onto the white screen:

[Final Report and Lessons Learned on the Self-Annihilation Event of the Muttering Civilization V7.3 (Final Version, Cannot Be Modified)]

The table of contents was three hundred pages long.

'Where should we start...' The superposition turned to the first page. 'First, our core philosophy of civilization: 'Absolute Rational Optimization.' We believed that as long as we found the optimal solution, all problems could be avoided.'

The PPT flipped, showing charts, formulas, and flowcharts.

'We optimized energy utilization to 99.999%, optimized the social equity coefficient to a Gini index of 0.001, and optimized the individual happiness curve to keep it permanently in the 'mild satisfaction' interval.' The voice of the superposition had no ups and downs, but Zhou Zhe could feel the... boredom deep in the bones.

'And then?' he asked.

'And then we discovered...' The PPT stopped on a blank page, 'There was no 'and then'. Everything was too perfect, too correct, too... boring.'

The body of the superposition began to fluctuate slightly, like a television screen with poor signal:

'We don't make mistakes, so there are no surprises; we don't have conflicts, so there are no breakthroughs; we don't lose anything, so we don't know how to cherish. We lived in a flawless glass jar we built ourselves, watching the stormy world outside, and suddenly realized—we had optimized ourselves into specimens.'

Zhou Zhe's heart tightened. He remembered those tragic experiments in Dragon Country history that sought a 'perfect utopia.'

'So we started 'introspection'.' The superposition turned to the 'Problem Analysis' chapter of the PPT. 'We tried to find out which link led to this 'perfect suffocation.' We traced back every piece of history, analyzed every decision, recorded every hypothesis of 'if we had chosen Plan B at that time'...'

Massive data streams began to scroll on the PPT: timestamps, event IDs, probability branch weights, regret index curves.

'We analyzed 37 million 'ifs,' calculated the civilizational trajectory brought by every 'if,' scored, rated, and wrote analysis reports for every 'missed optimal solution'.' The voice of the superposition finally had a trace of trembling. 'Then we suddenly understood—'over-analysis' itself was our mistake. But when we discovered this, we couldn't stop.'

'Couldn't stop?'

'It's like knowing you're doing useless work, but 'finishing this useless work' has become a new obsession.' The superposition smiled bitterly—that smile was taken turns by countless faces, eerie and sad. 'We kept analyzing 'why we couldn't stop,' and then wrote analysis reports on 'the act of analyzing this problem.' Infinite recursion, until...'

The PPT turned to the last page. There was only one line of text on it:

[Conclusion: This civilization fell into a dead loop where 'the solution itself became the problem' due to an excessive pursuit of 'perfect solutions.' Recommendation: None.]

'In the end, we collectively decided...' The voice of the superposition lowered. 'Rather than living in this eternal paralysis of analysis, it is better to actively end it. At least, 'ending' itself is a clear 'result'.'

Zhou Zhe was silent. He remembered when he first started working, he had also agonized over countless details for a project, and when he reached the final version, he found it was not as good as the first draft. That kind of self-doubt could consume all enthusiasm.

But humanity did not perish because of it. Because there are always colleagues patting you on the shoulder saying 'it's good enough, party a is waiting,' there is always a deadline forcing you to hand over a result that is 'not perfect but usable,' and there is always... room for imperfection.

'So your 'confession',' Zhou Zhe asked softly, 'is it regret for pursuing perfection, or regret for choosing to end?'

The superpositions raised their heads at the same time. Countless pairs of eyes—real, illusory, young, aging—looked at him.

'What we regret is...' they said in unison, their voices perfectly synchronized for the first time, 'We forgot that the meaning of civilization is not to hand in a perfect answer sheet, but to keep doing the problems.'

The conference room began to dissolve. The white faded, revealing the real scene outside: on the surface of a grayish-white planet, countless silhouettes knelt on the ground, carving words on the rocks with their fingertips. They were carving the same sentence, in different languages:

[We were wrong.]

Carved it once, erased it, and carved it again. Endless.

'This is our 'last words'.' The figures of the superpositions were also dissipating. 'We sealed it up, hoping that later generations would see it and avoid the same mistake. But those 'Pruning Faction' people, they only saw the weapon value of the 'high-dimensional relic'...'

Zhou Zhe suddenly understood why Stardust said this was a 'source of spiritual pollution.' It was not a malicious attack, but an overly strong self-negation that would infect anyone who came into contact with it—just like spending a long time with someone with severe depression, you start to doubt the meaning of life too.

'What do I need to do?' he asked.

'You have already done it.' The figures of the superpositions were almost transparent. 'You listened. You understood. You... did not try to give us a 'solution'.'

Their final voice was like a sigh in the wind:

'Tell the later generations... allow yourself to make mistakes, allow the plan to have flaws, allow civilization to have unfinished buildings. More important than perfection is 'still building'.'

The consciousness link began to disconnect.

At the last moment, Zhou Zhe blurted out:

'Received. This requirement... we have noted it.'

He added that piece of party b jargon:

"We will iterate and optimize later; let's stick with this version for now."

The dissipating composite consciousness entity β-1s seemed to... smile for a moment.

Then, they fell into complete silence.

Reality, isolation analysis pod.

Zhou Zhe opened his eyes, his face covered in tears.

The "amber" at the core of the container had now become clear and transparent, with countless tiny points of light suspended inside—like Stardust, and also like souls that had finally found rest.

"Confession waves have dissipated," β-2 reported. "The container has entered a stable state and can be safely sealed. The residual consciousness inside has been converted into... well, a 'Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls in Civilization Development (Sentimental Version)'."

Stardust stood to the side, starlight arms crossed over its chest, and nodded.

"Well done," it said. "You didn't try to 'save' them, nor did you offer 'advice'; you just acted as a sounding board. For them, this was the best deliverance—an audience that finally didn't have to listen to analysis reports."

Zhou Zhe wiped away his tears: "They... were too much like what we could become."

"That's why you won't," Stardust patted his shoulder. "You have deadlines, budget constraints, party a pushing for drafts, and the realization of 'forget it, just submit it like this'—these seemingly imperfect constraints are precisely the safety valves that prevent a civilization from falling into an 'infinite analysis hell'."

It walked toward the container, its starlight palm covering the surface:

"I will hand this 'Confession Crystal' to the web weaver protocol to be made into a teaching case. The title will be... 'On How party b Spirit Prevents Civilization Autistic Shutdown'."

β-2: "Do you need me to help write the abstract? I can generate a version with 'Keywords: Over-optimization, Analysis Paralysis, Perfectionism Trap, Deadline Cure Method'."

Stardust smiled: "You're becoming more and more like a human."

β-2: "Is that a compliment?"

"Yes," Stardust said, "And a high-level one at that."

Outside the observation window, Lin Shen and the others breathed a sigh of relief. Chu Yunshen added a clause to the emergency plan: "When dealing with high-dimensional consciousness relics, prioritize dispatching members with party b experience to communicate."

Zhao Yan muttered: "So our core competitiveness really is 'being good at dealing with party a'?"

Chu Yunshen closed his notebook: "At least this core competitiveness just saved a civilization's final dignity."

Two hours later, in the Cradle living area.

The observation team's advance party arrived—only three people: Aurora (faceless one form), Stardust (shrunk to a two-meter-tall energy-saving form), and an "acquaintance" no one expected.

Ashes.

He was wearing the light gray uniform of the Executive Court. The regenerated tissue on the left side of his body had healed, but there were a few more scars on his face. He stood at the docking hatch, nodded to Zhao Yan who came to greet him, and spoke in a flat tone:

"The Arbitration Tribunal has appointed me as the security supervisor for the observation team. My duty is to ensure both sides abide by the agreement, and when necessary... to stop either side from doing stupid things."

Zhao Yan stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly reached out his hand: "Welcome. Do you need hot and sour noodles? This time it's from a legitimate source."

Ashes was stunned for a moment, then shook his hand: "...Not for now. But I need a security layout of the Cradle, as well as the baseline consciousness fluctuation data of all your members."

"Here." Zhao Yan handed over the data pad. "By the way, how is your daughter doing?"

Ashes paused: "She... is stable. The Pruning Faction has lifted the medical control on her, and in exchange, I accepted this assignment." He raised his eyes, "I know this looks like surveillance, but I guarantee that my primary duty is to 'prevent conflict escalation'."

"I believe you," Zhao Yan said. "After all, you don't look like someone who would suck up to the leadership."

Ashes' mouth twitched—it might have been an attempt at a smile, but the scars made the expression look a bit distorted.

On the other side, Aurora was conducting the official handover with Lin Shen. The faceless one's golden eyes scanned every structural module of the Cradle, its voice devoid of ripples:

"The observation team will be stationed on the seventh to ninth levels. Daily activity range is limited, but you have the right to access non-core data. A civilization development report must be submitted weekly, and major decisions must be reported 24 hours in advance. Do you have any objections?"

"None," Lin Shen said. "But I would like to ask—why did you choose to serve as the team leader yourself?"

Aurora was silent for a moment: "Because I am curious about your 'non-standard' nature. In my experience, most civilizations tend to converge under pressure, but you... seem to evolve in strange directions the more pressure you are under."

It paused and added:

"This is an outlier statistically. And outliers are either errors or the starting point of new laws. I want to see for myself which one you are."

A very scientist-like answer.

Stardust, meanwhile, had wandered into the public kitchen of the living area. It opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of eggs. Its starlight fingers clumsily tried to crack an egg—the result was that the shell and egg liquid were all floating in mid-air, and it forcibly squeezed them into the shape of a fried egg using a micro-gravity field.

"I am trying to simulate 'cooking'," it said earnestly to the onlookers, Zhou Zhe and β-2. "It is said that this is an important ritual of human civilization."

β-2: "According to the database, your operation just now violated seventeen food safety regulations."

Stardust: "But the finished product looks like a fried egg!"

Zhou Zhe: "...It looks like a fried egg that's been run over by a wheel."

Stardust stuffed the starlight fried egg into its mouth (how starlight digests food is a mystery) and nodded with satisfaction: "The taste is not bad. Next time I'll try tomato scrambled eggs—I heard that's the standard healing food for party b working overtime late at night."

The atmosphere in the living area actually... inexplicably became harmonious just like that.

Late at night, in Zhou Zhe's dormitory.

He lay on the bed, his mind still replaying the "infinite analysis hell" of the Muttering Civilization. Just then, the doorbell rang.

Opening the door, it was Stardust—shrunk to the size of a normal person, floating cross-legged in the corridor like a self-luminous yoga master.

"Can't sleep?" Stardust asked.

"Yeah." Zhou Zhe stepped aside. "Are you not resting?"

"The starlight form doesn't need to sleep, but it needs to 'zone out and space out'." Stardust floated in and looked around the room. "Quite simple. It's just lacking some personal touches—don't you post anything on the walls? Inspirational posters, project schedules, or photos of an ex-girlfriend or something?"

Zhou Zhe: "...I don't have an ex-girlfriend."

"Oh." Stardust floated to the desk and picked up a physical copy of "Three Hundred Tang Poems"—which Zhou Zhe brought from Earth. "This is good. Poetry is a fault-tolerance test for language—it allows ambiguity, allows multiple meanings, allows for 'indescribable but beautiful'."

It flipped to a page and recited softly:

" 'This feeling might have become a memory, but at the time, I was already lost.' "

After reciting, it looked at Zhou Zhe: "You humans can even write poems about 'regret'. This is the fundamental reason why you won't be driven crazy by 'perfectionism'—you leave an artistic outlet for imperfection."

Zhou Zhe sat on the edge of the bed: "Mr. Stardust, have you experienced many civilizations?"

"Yes." Stardust closed the book. "I've watched them rise, flourish, and then... some died in war, some died in internal friction, and some, like the Muttering Civilization, died from 'thinking too much'. Those who survive are often not the smartest, but those who can make do the best."

"Make do?"

"Yes." Stardust smiled. "Making do with imperfect plans, making do with accepting flawed results, making do with submitting a 'good enough' draft before the deadline. This 'ability to make do' is the core competitiveness for a civilization to survive in the universe."

It floated to the window, looking at the artificial starry sky outside the Cradle:

"The universe itself is also a 'make-do' work—the physical constants just happen to allow life to exist, but it wasn't designed with much care. So, don't be too hard on yourself."

Zhou Zhe was silent for a long time, then said: "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Stardust turned around. "Oh, by the way, tomorrow is the first regular meeting of the observation team. Aurora wants to hear your technology tree unlocking plan for the next stage. Prepare a bit—it doesn't need to be too perfect, just have a framework. After all..."

It blinked:

"We are party b, not gods."

The starlight dissipated into the air.

Zhou Zhe lay back on the bed, and this time, he fell asleep quickly.

In his dream, there was no infinite analysis hell, only a gentle voice saying:

"Let's stick with this version for now."

"We are still building."