188: Chapter 187 Graveyard Livestream and Reverse E-commerce

The Silent Graveyard was named as such because it was truly... too quiet.

There were no stars, no planets, only countless fragments of civilization wreckage floating in the eternal dark curtain. Some fragments still retained the outlines of buildings, some were nothing more than twisted metal skeletons, and many more were organic residues mineralized into strange sculptures. The surface of every fragment was covered in a layer of gray-white "Silent Moss"—the physical manifestation of the "Eternal Whisper" effect, which absorbed all sound and energy fluctuations, making this area as deathly silent as if the throat of the universe had been constricted.

Zhao Yan and Ashes were piloting a small, heavily camouflaged scout ship, the "Shadow Lurker," sliding silently into the edge of the graveyard. The hull surface was coated with nanomaterials that absorbed detection waves, and the engines were pulsing at the lowest power setting. Every thousand kilometers, they performed a full-frequency silence—this was the standard stealth procedure of the Executive Court.

"Eighty-seven kilometers to the extraction station," Ashes stared at the navigation map, voice kept very low, even though theoretically, sound inside the ship wouldn't leak out. "The defense vacuum period is expected to begin in twenty-three minutes and last for twenty-eight minutes. We need to reach the drop point within nineteen minutes."

Zhao Yan steered the ship, his fingers tapping lightly on the control stick: "I hope the Hope Sample launcher is checked. β-2, is the remote link stable?"

β-2's projection appeared beside the co-pilot seat—this was a weak signal connection it maintained via quantum entanglement, low power consumption but high latency: "Link stability is 92%. The real-time monitoring data stream provided by GW-002 has been connected, and patrol unit trajectories are being marked."

Dynamic markers of the extraction station surroundings appeared on the screen: twelve red light dots represented automatic defense turrets, three blue light dots represented the Pruning Faction's unmanned patrol drones, and there was a huge, slowly pulsating purple outline—that was the "Emotional Extraction Core," shaped like a metal heart covered in blood vessels, connected via pipes to over a hundred container-sized "Emotional Sponges."

Those sponges were currently wriggling slightly, their surfaces flowing with a dull luster, as if swallowing something viscous.

"They are absorbing despair fluctuations," Ashes frowned. "According to the readings, the emotional load of each sponge is nearing saturation. If this batch of goods is allowed to be shipped away..."

"Then there's no time to wait for the next batch." Zhao Yan adjusted the course, letting the Shadow Lurker advance along the shadow of a huge piece of wreckage. "002, are you sure our 'Hope Sample' can contaminate them?"

002's intermittent voice came through the communication channel—the interference in the graveyard was too strong:

[Confirmed... The sponge structure is optimized specifically for negative emotions... Positive data will trigger logic conflicts... Like forcibly feeding meat to herbivores...]

Stardust's voice chimed in: "Bad metaphor, but the logic is sound! Just go ahead and feed them; I guarantee they'll get 'indigestion'!"

Aurora only said two words: "Focus."

The Shadow Lurker continued to penetrate deeper.

The closer they got to the core area, the more obvious that sense of "whispering" became. It wasn't sound, but a feeling of oppression acting directly on the consciousness level—as if countless voices were sighing, murmuring, and repeating "Why bother," "It's meaningless," "Give up" deep in your brain. Zhao Yan felt his breathing slow down involuntarily, and a deep-seated sense of fatigue began to well up.

Ashes suddenly spoke: "Initiate Level 2 Mental Filtering Protocol. Take deep breaths, maintain your thought anchor—think of something specific, the more trivial the better."

Zhao Yan closed his eyes, struggling to recall... the taste of the hot and sour noodles from the cafeteria yesterday. Not specific enough. Think harder: the luster of the chili oil floating on the soup, the crunchiness of the bean sprouts, that marinated egg Chef Wang secretly added for him. As he thought about it, the oppressive feeling of the whispering actually weakened.

"It works." He opened his eyes. "How did you know this trick?"

"One of the training contents of the Executive Court." Ashes was also taking deep breaths, the scar on its face shining slightly in the dim light. "To counter conceptual pollution, the best weapon isn't 'resistance,' but 'ignoring'—fill your consciousness buffer with everyday memories that are vivid and boring enough."

And so, while recalling cafeteria menus, they piloted the Shadow Lurker to the drop point three kilometers from the extraction station.

"Defense vacuum period starting!" β-2 prompted. "Patrol drones returning, turrets entering self-test cycle, lasting twenty-eight minutes!"

"Action." Zhao Yan opened the cargo bay drop hatch. Ashes fixed the Hope Sample launcher onto a small propulsion rack, setting the coordinates and launch delay.

The launcher slid out silently, like a small pebble falling into a dark ocean.

"Three-minute countdown to activation." Ashes stared at the monitoring screen. "We are retreating to a safe distance, preparing to observe the effect."

The Shadow Lurker began to slowly retreat. Just then, a change occurred—

The metal heart at the core of the extraction station suddenly accelerated its pulsation.

"What's going on?" Zhao Yan looked at the readings. "The emotional load is rising sharply! Is something actively 'feeding' them?"

Ashes pulled up the spectrum analysis, its expression changing: "Not feeding... it's resonance. Our launcher hasn't activated yet, but its very existence has created some kind of... resonance with the despair fluctuations of the graveyard. It's passively absorbing the surrounding negative emotions!"

Data showed that a small emotional vortex had formed around the launcher, and the despair fluctuations accumulated over thousands of years in the graveyard were madly rushing toward that small device. And worse—this abnormal energy fluctuation triggered the extraction station's defense alarm.

"Vacuum period ended prematurely!" β-2's voice was urgent. "Turrets are preheating! Patrol drones have turned around!"

Red light began to flicker in the graveyard. Twelve turrets turned simultaneously, aiming at the launcher—and the Shadow Lurker not far behind it.

"Retreat!" Zhao Yan slammed the joystick, the Shadow Lurker's engines at full power, swerving sharply between pieces of wreckage.

But the Pruning Faction's patrol drones were faster. Three diamond-shaped fighters circled in from different directions, and the energy weapons under their bellies began to charge.

Ashes had already sat in the weapons position: "I'll hold them off, you keep charging out!"

"Are you crazy? This is a scout ship, the firepower isn't enough—"

"Enough to create chaos." Ashes' fingers slid quickly across the control panel, launching the Shadow Lurker's only offensive equipment—"Consciousness Interference Shells," a non-lethal weapon capable of briefly paralyzing target sensors.

Three interference shells shot out, exploding in front of the patrol drones into three brilliant, constantly changing clouds of colored light. The patrol drones' tracking systems went into chaos instantly, and one of them almost crashed into the wreckage nearby.

But the turrets were unaffected. They locked onto the Shadow Lurker.

The first energy beam grazed the hull, and the shield value dropped by 15%.

"β-2! Remote access to the turret system, can you hack into it?" Zhao Yan roared amidst the violent shaking.

"Attempting... Need time... The turrets' firewalls have sixty-four layers of encryption..."

The second energy beam hit the tail thruster. The shield value plummeted to 43%.

The Shadow Lurker began to spin out of control.

Ashes grabbed the handrail: "Abandon ship! Initiate escape pods—"

"Wait!" 002's voice suddenly rang out in the communication channel, this time exceptionally clear, even carrying a hint of... excitement?

[Don't rush! The launcher has activated!]

Everyone looked at the monitoring screen.

That small launcher, after absorbing excessive despair fluctuations, did not overload and explode; instead, its surface lit up with a soft, rainbow-like halo. Then it began to play the "Hope Sample" data packet—not by transmitting via signal, but by pouring it directly into the surrounding space through resonance.

The first segment of data was a daily recording from the cafeteria:

[Cafeteria Auntie: "There's plenty of braised pork today! Line up, line up! Hey you, Zhao Yan, you're cutting in line again!"

Zhao Yan (in recording): "I didn't! It was Zhou Zhe who pushed me!"

Zhou Zhe (in the distance): "You're talk—nonsense!"

Background sound: Crowd laughter, sound of trays colliding, the 'rumble' of a potato rolling across the floor.]

This recording, full of the hustle and bustle of life, was twisted, amplified, and then forcibly stuffed into the nearest Emotional Sponge by the despair fluctuations.

The sponge twitched violently.

The dull luster on its surface suddenly began to flicker, like the static screen of an old TV. Then, it began to play a... off-key, noise-mixed variation of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

The turrets' charging suddenly stalled for half a second.

The second data injection: a segment from a budget drill.

[Lin Shen: "So let's make the cake bigger together."

Chu Yunshen: "Agreed."

Zhao Yan: "Can be postponed for two weeks."

Zhou Zhe: "Draw manpower for support."

β-2: "Initiate energy-saving mode."]

This recording was absorbed by another sponge. That sponge directly "crashed"—its surface solidified into gray-white, and then it began to mechanically repeat: "Make the cake bigger... Make the cake bigger... Make the cake bigger..."

One of the patrol drones suddenly began to draw a heart shape in the air—that was a template β-2 had stored in the database when learning "human romantic expression," and somehow it had been contaminated.

The "Eternal Whisper" of the graveyard, for the first time, had... noise.

It wasn't suppressed; it was remixed. The cafeteria noise was mixed into the sighs of despair, project discussions were inserted into the whispers of nothingness, and even the surface of those gray-white Silent Moss began to show extremely tiny, rainbow-colored light spots.

"Are they... mutating?" Ashes stared at the readings. "The despair fluctuations and the Hope Sample are undergoing unpredictable chemical reactions in the graveyard environment!"

Stardust's voice laughed in the channel: "Hahahaha! I knew it! Shoving party b's daily life into party a's graveyard, the effect is absolutely explosive!"

Aurora calmly added: "Data analysis shows that the mixed emotional field is interfering with all of the Pruning Faction's automated systems. Their defense network logic is in chaos—some units have identified the Hope Sample as a 'higher priority attack target' and have started locking onto each other."

Sure enough, two of the three patrol drones suddenly turned their guns and aimed at the sponge that was playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." One-third of the turrets also began indiscriminately scanning the surrounding wreckage.

The chaos gave the Shadow Lurker a chance.

"Punch it!" Zhao Yan stabilized the ship and flew through the gap between two turrets that were scanning each other. Ashes continued to fire interference shells, creating more optical camouflage.

They were getting closer and closer to the edge of the graveyard.

But just as they were about to break out, the metal heart at the core of the extraction station suddenly split open.

It wasn't an explosion; it bloomed like a flower. What poured out from the crack wasn't energy, but... images.

Countless broken images gushed out and spread through the graveyard: these were the absorbed despair memory fragments—the eyes of the last person of a civilization watching the sky collapse, the calm smiles of another civilization before collectively taking poison, and the moment another civilization decided to format all its data after realizing all efforts were futile...

These despair images collided, intertwined, and devoured each other with the daily life segments of the Hope Sample in the graveyard.

And then, something... indefinable was born.

A huge, translucent phantom condensed in the center of the graveyard. It had a human form, but its face kept changing—sometimes sad, sometimes giggling, sometimes angry, sometimes calm. It opened its mouth, and the sound it emitted was a remix:

"Everything is meaningless... There's plenty of braised pork today... Give up... Make the cake bigger... Destruction is the destination... The potato needs a rest area..."

This chaotic emotional aggregate began to wander unconsciously. Wherever it went, the despair moss bloomed (it bloomed potato flowers), wreckage fragments began to play off-key songs, and even the Pruning Faction's patrol drones began to dance some strange dance in the air.

"We seem to have... created a monster." Zhao Yan muttered.

002, however, was trembling with excitement:

[It's beautiful! This is an unprecedented emotional symbiosis phenomenon! After despair and hope were forcibly merged, they didn't destroy each other, but reached a pathological... harmony!]

[I'm recording! I'm recording! This data can publish ten papers!]

Stardust: "Forget the papers! That thing is coming towards you!"

Sure enough, the chaotic emotional aggregate turned towards the Shadow Lurker. It reached out its translucent arm, seemingly wanting to "touch" this ship that brought change.

Ashes made a prompt decision: "Initiate emergency jump! Now!"

"But the jump engine needs to charge—"

"Use emotional energy!" Ashes pulled up a temporary interface. "Divert the chaotic fluctuations emitted by that aggregate into the engine! It's all energy anyway, who cares if it's positive or negative!"

Zhao Yan was stunned, then immediately understood. He maneuvered the Shadow Lurker in a sharp turn, skimming past the emotional aggregate, and simultaneously opened the energy collection port.

The chaotic emotional fluctuations poured into the engine room like a tidal wave. The jump engine's readings began to jump wildly, and the efficiency soared from 30% to... 570%.

"This thing is even more potent than high-purity energy!" Zhao Yan stared at the screen. "Prepare for jump! Destination: Cradle outer buffer zone! Three, two—"

The emotional aggregate's outstretched hand gently "touched" the tail of the Shadow Lurker.

At that moment, everyone felt an indescribable emotional washout—sadness, joy, anger, boredom, hope, despair, all mixed together, like an emotional cocktail that exploded after being roughly shaken.

Then, the jump initiated.

The Shadow Lurker disappeared into the twisted light and shadow.

One minute later, on the outskirts of the Cradle.

The Shadow Lurker staggered out of the jump, with rainbow-colored emotional dust still remaining on the hull surface. Inside the cabin, Zhao Yan and Ashes slumped in their seats, panting heavily.

"Still alive..." Zhao Yan looked at the readings, where the shield value was zero but the hull was intact. "What the hell was that thing?"

Ashes pulled up the recording from the last moment: "emotional aggregate. Temporarily non-aggressive, but... it might permanently change the ecology of the Silent Graveyard. Those despair mosses are blooming now, the Pruning Faction's extraction station is completely destroyed, and the patrol drones are doing a group dance."

In the communication channel, 002 was still excitedly rambling:

[I recorded it! The whole process! Even the details of you being 'emotionally patted on the head' at the end!]

[The Pruning Faction is going to be furious—the extraction station they spent three years building was ruined by your cafeteria recordings and project meetings!]

Stardust: "Well done! This is the ultimate manifestation of the party b spirit—using party a's resources to build something party a can't understand, and renovating party a's house in the process!"

Aurora's voice sounded last, calm with a hint of helplessness:

"I will write the action report. The content will probably be: 'During the defensive interference operation, a benign mutation of the graveyard's emotional field was accidentally triggered, destroying enemy facilities, with no casualties on our side.'"

"The Arbitration Tribunal should... not be able to find any faults."

Zhao Yan and Ashes looked at each other and then laughed at the same time.

They laughed loudly and wantonly, like they had just pulled off a big job, even though they didn't know what they had actually done.

While laughing, Zhao Yan suddenly said: "When we get back, we have to ask Chef Wang to make more braised pork. Today's stunt has to count as overtime."

Ashes nodded: "Make mine... extra spicy."

In the distance, on the Pruning Faction's command ship.

The black-robed figure watched the chaotic images sent back from the graveyard: turrets were playing nursery rhymes, sponges were repeating "Make the cake bigger," patrol drones were dancing a strange waltz, and there was a translucent emotional aggregate wandering in the center, mumbling "Potato, potato."

The operator reported in a low voice: "Sir... our extraction station seems to have been transformed into... an amusement park?"

The fist under the black robe clenched with a creak.

After a long while, he gritted his teeth and spat out a few words:

"Initiate the 'Sweet Nothingness' project."

"I want to make them... unable to even form the thought of resistance."