The sunstone in Aurora's hand blazed with light as she sensed a change: "The river of light is... providing another way to interpret these ruins."
"Not by cracking its logic, but by resonating with the suppressed human emotions and hesitations that existed at the very beginning of its design."
Elune's wings of light brushed across the flowing river of light, causing ripples of time to shimmer: "It is revealing the cause, not just displaying the effect. It lets us see how this experiment first began at the hands of a group of people who perhaps also felt confusion and struggle."
Enoch's spirits lifted: "In that case, our mission can be adjusted! It's no longer just about deconstruction or reconstruction, but Resonant Archaeology."
"With the help of this river of light, we can try to converse with the irrational emotional imprints left by the original designers, restoring the experiment's true initial motivations and... the starting point of their regret."
Abraham nodded slowly: "This, perhaps, is the true foundation for establishing a historical memorial with genuine cautionary significance. Not to display evidence of crimes, but to understand how a tragedy is born from the first cracks."
At the three battlefields, the river of light acted like a universal yet unique medicinal catalyst. It did not use force to overcome complexity, but rather used resonance and acknowledgement to dissolve the deadlock, pointing toward new possibilities.
Meanwhile, aboard the dawn.
Bai Cheng stood quietly on the bridge, her silver eyes closed. Through the oath of starlight, she seemed to become the river of light itself, simultaneously perceiving the changes in the three locations:
The logical ice of the Silent Sanctuary was melting, the demise of the Edge Echo Belt was being reversed, and the cold history of the Place of the First Fire was being interpreted with warmth.
The book of commonality floated before her. On its latest page, the words written by the singing of stars and the belief of children glowed faintly. Beneath them, new text was converging and forming from the flow of the river of light, drawn from the three scenes:
"When thunder becomes an awakening rather than destruction—"
"When the mirror becomes a vessel rather than a prying eye—"
"When scars become understanding rather than hatred—"
"Where the river of light reaches, definitions dissolve, and existence blooms."
She opened her eyes and looked at the navigation screen. On the star chart, the points of light representing the three fleets were becoming brighter and more stable as the river of light spread. The resonance network between them grew more resilient and profound due to the river's link.
A clear picture formed in her heart: these three actions were not isolated. They were respectively liberating the imprisoned present, reclaiming the fading past, and interpreting and transforming the heavy origins.
And the river of light was the key that ran through all three, providing brand-new possibilities.
"It's not enough," Bai Cheng whispered to herself, not in denial, but seeing the further next step. "The river of light needs to reach the sea, echoes need a place to return, and acknowledged existences need... a home that truly belongs to them."
She pulled up the full map of the Star Abyss, her gaze falling on a vast and peaceful sector of space that had not been marked by any civilization.
There were no concentrated resources there, no strategic chokepoints, and even the starlight seemed exceptionally gentle.
A thought emerged naturally: that place could perhaps become the physical anchor for the book of commonality, a common home for all the retrieved echoes, the liberated Silencers, and the reinterpreted history.
An archive of sparks or a place of echo resonance that is not defined, but only carries stories.
But this required everyone's consensus, the successful convergence of the three actions, and... a formal proposal.
Just as she was reflecting, three nearly simultaneous thoughts, filled with excitement and realization, came through the oath of starlight network:
From Zi Yuan: "The logical ice has been broken, the Silencers are waking up, and we are escorting the first batch of echoes to the Edge Echo Belt to rendezvous! This river of light... is a signpost and a bridge."
From Leng Ningxue: "The demise has stopped, and the echoes have begun self-repair and integration. The river of light provides the fundamental frequency for their stable existence."
"We expect to preserve most of the core echoes and have discovered some... unexpected seeds of memory hidden deep on the edge of dissipation."
From Enoch and Recorder Seven: "The dialogue at the Place of the First Fire has ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) begun."
"We are attempting to resonate with the irrational emotional imprints left in the ruins."
"Preliminary discoveries have been made... regarding contradictory records of the experiment's original intent. The river of light is the key medium."
A very faint, relieved smile appeared at the corners of Bai Cheng's mouth.
She looked at her palm, where the phantom of the book of commonality slowly rotated, waiting to collect all the stories and write a new chapter.
And outside the viewport, that river of light originating from the nameless hillside was flowing ever more majestically toward every corner of the Star Abyss, as if gently announcing:
The listening has already begun; the singing is about to start.
The overlooked stars will eventually find each other's radiance.
The river of light flowed silently through the Star Abyss like a wordless epic, quietly weaving the actions scattered in three places into a web.
When Zi Yuan's Thunder Fleet escorted the first batch of silent echoes awakened from Logic Amber to the Edge Echo Belt, the Emerald Network and the Mirror Shuttles had already established a temporary resonance harbor.
Those faint lights that had just escaped their imprisonment and were still fragile met the ancient echoes being nourished by the river of light and slowly recovering their vitality. There was no repulsion; instead, they blended and resonated naturally, like streams flowing into a lake.
Lu Duo's Emerald Network captured a wonderful sight: a Silent Echo—a blurry shimmer that only retained the attachment to the warmth of a mother's palm—gently touched a segment of an edge echo on the verge of disappearing.
It was a fragment of a lullaby sung for the last time by a mother before a certain civilization was destroyed.
The moment the two touched, the shimmer solidified slightly, and the lullaby fragment became complete and clear, as if some form of delivery and solace had been completed across time and space.
"They are completing each other..." Yu Nian said softly, the light of the pure heart vines gently enveloping this gradually activating area. "The deprived and the forgotten are giving each other their missing parts."
On the light screen in front of Leng Ningxue, the data curves began to rise steadily. "The echo decay rate has dropped to 0.01%, and the intensity of some core echoes has begun to rebound."
"Furthermore, the injection of silent echoes seems to have stimulated deeper memory sediment within the Edge Echo Belt."
"Three previously undetected deep memory vortices have been discovered, which may contain more complete core information of civilizations."
"Then let's go down and dig!" Blue Bird's lightning was already impatient.
"Wait," Zi Yuan pressed her shoulder, her gaze following the direction from which the river of light flowed, then looking toward the coordinates of the Place of the First Fire.
"The Young Mistress said to look out for what has been overlooked."
"These deep vortices might be exactly that."
"But we need a more stable method, and we also need... to wait for news from the Place of the First Fire."
"If they can reveal the original contradictions of the experiment, it might help us open these vortices more safely."
Just then, a new resonance wave came through the oath of starlight network from Enoch and Recorder Seven, carrying a hint of exhaustion, but also a clarity like clouds parting to reveal the sun.
