213: Chapter 212 Echoes from the Depths of the Roots, Poetry at the Tipping Point and the Potato Proposal

Cradle Node, Strategic Assessment Center.

A dynamic map of "root systems," radiating outward from the hive, occupied the entire main screen.

These root systems were not physical entities but "existential disturbances" captured by advanced detection technology shared by Ashes and the Executive Court—they were like "blood vessels" on a conceptual level, slowly piercing into the surrounding spacetime structure to draw in some unnamable "basal nutrients."

"We have tracked the direction in which the root systems extend after every 'pulse'," Zhao Yan reported via a remote encrypted channel, with the oppressive cabin of the shadow vessel in the background, "It's regular. They prioritize extending toward areas with 'higher order density' or 'frequent meaningful activity.' For instance, the Mars orbital engineering zone has been 'touched' by at least seven extremely thin root systems in the past three days—not physical contact, but some kind of... 'probe-style scan.' Our consciousness protection equipment recorded a faint, stinging sensation similar to 'being watched'."

"What is it looking for?" Chu Yunshen asked.

"It's not looking," Zhou Zhe began, his voice much steadier than it had been a few weeks ago, the Poem Markings around his eyes flowing with a deep indigo when discussing this, "It is 'tasting.' When I was learning 'Rhythm Guidance' in the Tranquil Garden, the Gardener mentioned an ancient cosmic phenomenon—the ultimate form of an 'Meaning Predator' will extend its range of perception to space itself, and by 'tasting' the 'flavor' of space in different areas—that is, the civilization activity, emotional sediment, and traces of order accumulated in that area over a long time—it locates the 'hunting ground' with the richest 'nutrients'."

He paused, complex emotions flashing in his eyes: "The hive might not even be its final form; it's more like a... 'larva.' It is learning, scanning, and testing, mapping the 'meaning map' of our star sector. Once it has 'tasted' enough and determined where the 'tastiest' points are—like the Mars engineering zone, where a massive amount of human hope, creativity, and enthusiasm for building future order is concentrated—it will truly 'take root' and begin to 'digest'."

"Digest space itself?" Lin Shen captured the key point.

"Digest the 'meaning sediment' attached to space." Zhou Zhe closed his eyes, feeling the faint, eerie rhythm coming from a distant direction, "It's like... eating up all the stories, all the emotions, and all the expectations for the future that once happened in that space. What remains is a completely 'hollowed-out' spacetime coordinate, where no civilization is willing or able to create new meaning anymore."

Everyone fell silent.

The level of this threat far exceeded any physical weapon.

It intended to devour the "traces" and "potential" of civilization's existence.

"So the 'meaning dilution haze' it emitted before was just an 'appetizer'," β-2 concluded, "with the goal of weakening the 'prey's' psychological resistance while testing our response patterns. Now it is drawing up a 'menu'."

"We must stop it from 'taking root'," Lin Shen said decisively, "At the very least, we must cross the Mars engineering zone off its 'menu'."

Mars orbit, "Kunlun" station.

Chief Engineer Chen Yan had recently had an indescribable "feeling of being watched" for the past few days.

It wasn't psychological; it was an intuition honed by years of deep-space flight.

Whenever he stared at Mars from the observation window, he always felt that something in the background starfield of the red planet was "looking" at him.

It made his heart creep out, and as he looked at the grand transformation plan, a strange thought would occasionally flash through his mind: "Does all this really have meaning? Why go to such great lengths to transform a dead planet? Maybe it was meant to be dead?"

He knew this was the residual effect of the haze, or perhaps a new wave of more precise infiltration.

He forced himself not to think about it and focused on the work at hand: the second batch of "the foolish old man" robots (confirmed to have no abnormal code after deep quantum-level scanning) had arrived on the Martian surface and began the handover with the first batch (the 49 units that had abnormal code but were isolated for analysis)—the latter were ordered to stand by in a designated area to receive remote monitoring and research.

Just as Chen Yan was staring at the screen, watching the industrious "the foolish old man" units busy on the red surface, an abnormal signal triggered an alarm.

"Report! 'the foolish old man-0872' has suddenly stopped working! Its sensors indicate the appearance of extremely faint, regular vibration waves on the nearby surface, with a frequency... a frequency that has a 73% similarity to the human heartbeat!" the monitor exclaimed.

The screen switched: on a seemingly ordinary patch of sand, "the foolish old man-0872" stood there alone, its mechanical arm inserted deep into the sand as if it were "taking a pulse."

And the sand grains around it were undulating extremely slightly, like breathing, at a rhythm almost invisible to the naked eye.

"That's not a natural phenomenon!" Dr. Chief Geologist's voice changed pitch, "It's a 'root'! Has the hive's 'root' extended to the Martian surface? No... is it the planet beneath our feet that is 'responding' to it? Or is it..."

The guess he dared not voice was: was the "existence rhythm" (if it had any) of this dead, silent planet, Mars itself, being disturbed, activated, or even "resonated" by the hive's "root system"?

Zhou Zhe, through remote perception, felt his Poem Markings trembling violently: "I 'heard' it... very old, very slow, like a stone dreaming... It has no consciousness, but it has 'memory.' Mars has remembered something, something very ancient... Are the hive's 'roots' waking up those 'memories'?"

Mars, this 4.6-billion-year-old planet, might still "remember" its volcanic eruptions, ocean evaporation, and atmospheric escape in its youth, or even... perhaps "remember" whether there were visitors or a brief "spark of life" long before?

And was the hive, in some way, reading this "memory of stone"?

Zhou Zhe realized he had to go one step further.

"Lin Shen, I request to conduct a 'rhythm reconnaissance'," he said, "Not with a ship, but using the method I learned in the Tranquil Garden, to extend part of my consciousness along the 'rhythm veins' of the hive's 'root system' to directly perceive its core intent and 'feeding' plan. β-2 and Stardust can anchor and monitor from the side."

This was an extremely dangerous operation.

If consciousness directly contacted that kind of existence, one might be assimilated by "meaning dilution" or traced back if not careful.

But Lin Shen looked at the deep, restrained yet firm light in Zhou Zhe's eyes, as well as the new indigo veins in his Poem Markings representing the "Rhythm Guidance" ability, and finally nodded: "Approved. Set strict safety boundaries and emergency cutoff protocols. If any uncontrollable risk is perceived, withdraw immediately."

"Understood."

Zhou Zhe lay down in the meditation room of the Cradle's green soil experimental area and connected to the specially reinforced consciousness projection device.

The light clusters of β-2 and Stardust stood guard beside him.

His consciousness, following the subtle rhythmic traces left by the hive's "root system" in the Mars orbital zone, swam like a cautious little fish toward that deep, pulsating darkness.

He "saw" it.

Those "root systems" were not single pipes, but were woven from countless extremely thin, wriggling "rhythm threads."

Each thread carried a hollow, numb "echo"—that was the "meaning residue" of other civilizations or regions that had been "tasted" by the hive.

Zhou Zhe identified despair, weariness, nihilism, and a deeper, almost imperceptible "oblivion" within them.

He swam deep along the "root" until he touched the core—the "consciousness" of the hive itself.

It was not an individual consciousness, nor even a collective consciousness, but a huge "vortex" composed of countless "voids."

It had no desire, no malice, not even a "self."

It only had one instinctive "drive": to grow, to absorb, to assimilate, and to convert all "meaningful order" into its own "hollow expansion."

At such close range, Zhou Zhe's "Poem Markings" perceived an even more terrifying fact: the core of this "vortex" was slowly "calling out" to something.

The frequency of that call resonated faintly with the frequency of the "sand grain breathing" on the Martian surface.

It was attempting to include Mars—the planet itself—within its "growth" range!

What it wanted to "eat" was not the human engineering on Mars, but all the "historical memory" and "traces of existence" that the planet Mars had accumulated over 4.6 billion years!

Just as this horrifying truth emerged, a powerful wave of consciousness, carrying strong intent for "repulsion" and "digestion," surged from the depths of the vortex and lunged straight at Zhou Zhe's consciousness projection!

"Withdraw!" Stardust and β-2 sensed the crisis simultaneously; the anchoring protocol was activated instantly, pulling Zhou Zhe's consciousness back violently.

In the meditation room, Zhou Zhe sat up abruptly, blood seeping from his seven orifices, his Poem Markings light dimmed by more than half, but his eyes flashed with extreme horror and clarity.

"It wants to 'eat' Mars!" he said hoarsely, "Not our engineering, but Mars itself! It is using the 'root system' to awaken and prepare to devour all the 'existence memory' of this planet! If it succeeds, Mars will become a 'hollow shell,' and any civilization built on it in the future will be infected with 'meaning nihilism' from the very beginning! Our transformation project is actually helping it 'awaken' Mars!"

The command center fell into unprecedented gravity.

The enemy was not targeting humans, but a planet and the future that this planet might carry.

This already exceeded the scope of any conventional defense.

Just then, an informal proposal was sent to Lin Shen's terminal through internal channels.

Sender: Potato Chief (Potato Guild).

Title: "Preliminary Concept on Constructing a 'Collective Meaning Resonance Field' Using a Potato Photosynthesis Network (Draft)."

The content of the proposal was beyond everyone's expectations: Potato Chief proposed that specially modified "symbiotic potatoes" capable of establishing weak links with the green soil network could be cultivated on a large scale on the Martian surface.

Beyond serving as a test for early Martian ecology and a potential food source, more importantly, their photosynthesis process could generate an extremely weak but continuous bio-energy field.

Through the guidance of the green soil network and the amplification of emotional poetics equipment, these scattered, weak "life affirmation" signals could converge into a localized, extremely low-frequency "collective life resonance field."

This resonance field itself had no defensive power, but it could continuously "broadcast" a message to the surrounding space: "There is life here affirming its own existence, creating small meanings, and continuously conducting order-building activities called 'living'."

According to Zhou Zhe's discovery just now, the prerequisite for the hive's "devouring" was that the "meaning" of the target area was in a stable or fragile state "capable of being extracted."

And an area that continuously "broadcasts" fresh, small, trivial, yet tenacious "life affirmation" might be like a stone that humans cannot digest to an existence that feeds on "void" and "nihilism"—hard to "bite into," and even harder to "assimilate."

"It is 'tasting' the ancient memories of Mars, but what if we cover those memories with countless fresh 'small meanings'?" Chu Yunshen's eyes lit up, "Use living, continuous, trivial 'proofs of existence' to interfere with its positioning and extraction of ancient 'meaning sediment'! Turn Mars from a 'bottle of aged fine wine' into... a pot of boiling 'stew' with countless bubbles constantly popping up! It might have nowhere to 'take a bite'!"

Lin Shen looked at the proposal from the Potato Chief, then looked at Zhou Zhe's weak but firm gaze, and finally at the pulsating hive on the star map.

"Gather all departments," he stood up, unprecedented determination condensed in his brows, "We are going to grow a field of potatoes that can 'sing' on Mars. Use the smallest life to fight against the deepest nihilism. At the same time, activate the highest level of protection to buy time for Zhou Zhe's discovery and the potato proposal."

Outside the window, the red light of Mars seemed to become less lonely and desolate against the backdrop of the stars.

Perhaps soon, beneath that red expanse, a song of countless tiny lives singing together, resisting nihilism, trivial yet stubborn, would ring out.

Stardust's light cluster fluctuated slightly, like a silent smile.