Silent Ark

Chapter 28: Daily Talk

The Decameron, Night Ten: The Resonance of Silence

CERN Fortress.

The ninth night's "victory in solitude" left nothing behind—except for thicker walls.

Inside the fortress, a polite yet distant atmosphere permeated the eight people.

The mission was still carried out, communication was limited to necessary information, and everyone was breathing behind their own mental barriers.

In Yao Chong's polluted vision, the fortress's consciousness field was like a piece of glass that had been shattered and then barely pieced back together, full of cracks, barely maintaining its shape.

The effects of several consecutive nights of exhaustion are becoming apparent: Shen Ruozhi's dark circles are as deep as bruises, Stark refuses to rest despite his broken arm being in a sling, and Rajeev's model output is increasingly showing inexplicable noise.

Even Elena—the one who's always taking care of others—has started forgetting what she ate for her last meal.

Chen Dunli's brainwaves changed.

The eighth night was still a heart-pounding straight line, but now it presents extremely low-frequency, regular pulses—like the song of a deep-sea whale, slow and somber, creating an inexplicable weak coupling with the quantum core of the fortress.

Shen Ruozhi remained silent for a long time after noticing this change, and did not report it to anyone.

Ali was in a deep coma, but his vital signs were stable, and he never let go of the photo.

Yao Chong's polluted vision began to show uncontrollable fragments of "premonition," seeing countless possible future flashes—most of which ended in destruction.

Liu Pan's visual connection became extremely sensitive, allowing him to clearly "hear" the inner monologues of fear in everyone inside the fortress, including his own increasingly loud fear of utter loneliness.

Night Ten: The Truce of All Things

It's very quiet over there in the quarantine area.

After the fifth night of purification, nine of the thirteen survivors fell into a deep coma. Their vital signs were stable, but they were unresponsive, like nine carefully preserved specimens.

Elena went for a check-up every four hours, and each time she returned, her expression was more somber.

The Cassandra system designed by Liu Pan has remained silent since the overload on the ninth night.

Shen Ruozhi tried to restart three times, but each time it automatically stopped at 17% initialization, with a line of garbled text flashing on the screen before going dark.

She gave up.

The mutation begins with absolute silence.

The sounds of all the equipment operating within the fortress—the hum of ventilation, the buzzing of electricity, and even the gentle rhythm of the life support system—all vanished at a certain moment.

It's not that it's shut down, it's that the sound itself is "erased" from the air.

Absolute silence pressed down like a physical entity, making one's heart pound like thunder.

Then, the light disappeared.

This gave Yao Chong and Liu Pan, the initial witnesses, a strange sense of déjà vu that was both unfamiliar and familiar.

That's right, it's not darkness, it's that the "meaning" of light has been stripped away.

The lights are still on, but they can't illuminate anything; the screen glows, but the image loses its information.

All visual signals turned into meaningless, uniform glow that filled all space.

In Yao Chong's polluted vision, he saw the cause: all the "causal chains" and "probability clouds" within the fortress were being flattened, straightened, and unified by an indescribable force.

This is not destruction, but a forced, absolute "identity".

Shen Ruozhi tried to speak, but found that her voice could not travel in absolute silence—the vibration of her vocal cords was "swallowed" by the air, like shouting into a vacuum.

Her lips moved silently, so much so that no one could actually hear it: this didn't seem to be any of the seven deadly sins previously identified.

She then quickly wrote on the data board, but the words "melted" into meaningless ink dots the moment they took shape.

The information transmission itself is failing.

Stark tried to activate the emergency protocol to shut it down, or to turn something on, but the path his fingers traced on the control panel was like gliding across water, offering no feedback whatsoever.

The causal relationship between actions and results is breaking down.

In Liu Pan's fused vision, he saw the most terrifying scene: inside the fortress, the consciousness of everyone, including the unconscious ones, was being slowly "squeezed" out of their respective bodies by a gentle, cold, and absolutely equal "force field," like candles being taken out of a mold.

These squeezed-out consciousnesses no longer possess individual characteristics, but instead become uniform, milky-white clusters of light, drawing closer to each other and tending to merge into a larger, featureless aggregate of consciousness.

This is not the forced fusion full of longing that is found in "Lust" on the ninth night.

This is an indifferent, absolute denial of "difference" itself.

It is as if there is a supreme will that considers "individual existence" itself to be an error, a kind of "noise" that needs to be corrected, and is trying to reset all consciousness to the initial state of "non-discrimination".

"Is this... the opposite of 'benevolence'? Or... what 'benevolence' looks like after it has been distorted?" Liu Pan cried out in his heart, but it seemed to be blocked by some force and he could not convey it to others.

Yao Chong's polluted vision also saw the process of consciousness being squeezed, but he also saw something deeper: outside the fortress, the pervasive chaos, the roaring frequencies, and the physical collapse, all of which, under this force of "unification," became slow, orderly, and eventually solidified.

What appears to be a restoration of health is actually like a pot of boiling poison being instantly frozen, maintaining its violent state but losing all its activity.

"It's...forcing a truce." A thought exploded in Yao Chong's mind, "stopping all movement, change, difference, and conflict. This is a more thorough 'stasis' than the 'Abyss of Stasis.' This is...the instantaneous attainment of heat death."

Just as everyone's consciousness was about to be completely squeezed out and merged, and individuality was about to be permanently lost—Professor Chen Dunli, who was nearly in a coma, opened his eyes.

There was no dazzling light, no explosive power.

This academic giant, well-versed in physics and philosophy, like any ordinary old man, used all his strength and worked extremely slowly to sit up from his sickbed.

His movements, in this field of absolute silence and uniformity that sought to obliterate all "processes," were like a piercing sound of tearing silk, an "event" that was not permitted.

He looked at Ali Hassan.

Ali remained in a coma, but the photograph he clutched tightly in his hand, bathed in a uniform glow, retained a faint, unique warmth—the difference of "beloved," the distinctiveness of "memory," the mark of "not being unified."

Chen Dunli's piercing gaze slowly swept over everyone.

In Yao Chong's polluted vision, he saw Old Chen's gaze, like the most precise scalpel, briefly severing the "unified force field" that was squeezing the halo of consciousness in everyone.

It's not about confrontation, but about pointing out—pointing out the core point deep within everyone's consciousness that can never be "unified": the obsession with Stark—that he "must be responsible" for him, a lonely yet unshakable conviction.

For Shen Ruozhi—her belief that "the unknown can still be described"—she refused to let go even though she knew it was futile.

For Elena—her instinct that "life deserves care" only became more stubborn when there was nothing that could be done.

For Rajeev—his hope that "the model may be fake but it can be connected"—was as fragile as a spider's web, yet it never broke.

For Liu Pan—his gentleness of "wanting to protect what he sees as a connection," even if the price of protection is his own destruction.

For Yao Chong—his courage to "face pollution and still seek the truth," even if the truth is a deadly poison.

Finally, Chen Dunli's kind gaze met Yao Chong's polluted vision directly.

There is no language.

But a single thought, like a scorching needle, pierced everyone's consciousness simultaneously—not Chen Dunli's voice, but more like an existence that no longer needed sound, directly conveying a "fact": "The unifying force field is not the enemy. It is a fundamental state of the universe—a tendency towards uniformity, erasing differences. Like gravity, it doesn't care whether mountains want to be flattened."

"The seven deadly sins are a projection of this situation distorted by human fear. What you are fighting against is never 'evil,' but the universe's inertia of 'harmony.'"

"The way to resist is not through confrontation, but by proving that 'points' are worth existing."

"Quantum core. Tuning. With your most irreplaceable moments."

Lighter, farther, like the echo's final note: "I will build the bridge. Ali will anchor. Quickly."

Ali Hassan's body suddenly trembled violently, and the tightly clutched photograph burst forth with an astonishing, pure golden light—the most solid "anchor of difference" formed by countless individuals' longing for loved ones, their attachment to their homes, and their adherence to their faith amidst the disaster.

This light pierced the uniform glow within the fortress, providing the quantum core with an absolutely specific and non-homogeneous frequency reference point.

"Now!" Liu Pan's visionary connection roared, like a brainwave reaching straight to the mind, "Think of what you cherish most, what is most personal, what is most irreplaceable... 'the moment of existence'!"

Stark remembered the snowflakes drifting in through the window as his wife held his hand on her deathbed and said, "Don't be afraid to make mistakes, just do it."

Shen Ruozhi recalled the pure, rational ecstasy she felt when she first understood Maxwell's equations, as if the whole world had suddenly become clear before her eyes.

Elena recalled the time after the radiation leak at the ATLAS experiment group, when she single-handedly cleaned the wounds of a young researcher who had been contaminated.

The young man grabbed her wrist, looking at her with blurred vision. His lips moved, and the last word he uttered was not "help," but "thank you."

Rajeev recalled the twilight in Kolkata, watching countless streetlights light up one by one, as if darkness was being pushed back little by little, and the inexplicable hope that welled up in his heart.

Liu Pan recalled his time in the university dormitory with Yao Chong, when they argued all night about whether "society can be quantified," and then watched the first light of dawn on the horizon together, exhausted yet deeply appreciative of each other in silence.

Yao Chong recalled the deep light in Chen Lao's eyes when the old man pointed to the phrase "the alternation of yin and yang is called the Dao" in the Book of Changes and said to him, "Chong'er, true science is never afraid to include the observer himself."

These moments, these absolutely private, absolutely different, absolutely unclassifiable "voices of existence," rise, flow, and converge from the deepest part of everyone's consciousness.

They are woven together by Liu Pan's connecting vision and calibrated by Yao Chong's polluted vision, and injected into the quantum core that is anchored by Ali and connected by Chen Dunli.

The quantum core deep within the fortress—which had been shut down for a long time—restarted the moment Chen Dunli's consciousness intervened, and was configured into an unprecedented transmitter.

It emits neither matter nor energy; what it emits is a condensed resonance signal of the very existence of eight scarred individuals.

The signal is extremely weak, and the structure cannot be described by any existing science.

It simply repeats two "conceptual pulses":

"Here."

"Different."

The signal penetrated the fortress, the suppression of the "unified force field," and the solidified chaos outside, spreading into the depths of the universe.

The launch lasted for twenty-seven seconds.

Professor Chen Dunli's body, at the twenty-eighth second, showed no light, no ceremony.

He just—became less "there".

Like a glass of water being slowly emptied, the container remains, but the contents have been absorbed into something larger.

All that remained on the hospital bed was a neatly folded blanket and a white coat.

The white coat had a half-used pencil and a folded piece of paper tucked into its pocket.

Shen Ruozhi later opened the note.

There was only one line of text on it, written in Chen Dunli's meticulous handwriting:

"The observer is also part of the system." — Chen

The light in Ali's photo went out, and he fell into a deep hibernation where his vital signs had almost disappeared.

Yao Chong and Liu Pan both fainted simultaneously, their abilities severely overloaded.

Inside the fortress, absolute silence and the field of unity receded like the tide.

Sound, light and shadow, cause and effect, difference, all return to their origin.

But everyone collapsed to the ground, utterly exhausted, their souls seemingly hollowed out.

Yao Chong knelt on the cold floor, panting heavily.

In his mind, fragments of information far greater than "quantum core, tuning" that Chen Dunli had transmitted to him in those fleeting moments were slowly piecing together—not language, but more like a set of coexisting "cognitive frameworks," which were now finally taking shape in his weary consciousness:

The universe has two fundamental states. One is "division"—difference, structure, and individuality; the other is "unity"—identity, increasing entropy, and wholeness. Life and civilization are born from the dynamic balance between the two.

The seven deadly sins are the projection of "union" distorted by fear—fear of difference (envy), fear of scarcity (greed), fear of loss of control (wrath)... ultimately leading to a forced "union".

Chen Dunli's lifelong philosophical research, combined with the "frequency of goodness" discovered by Yao Chong and Liu Pan, is a projection of "division" after being understood by wisdom—understanding difference (benevolence), understanding order (righteousness), understanding patterns (rites), understanding essence (wisdom), and understanding continuity (faith).

What they just did—using eight scarred individuals to send a signal of "being here" and "being different"—was not a resistance to "unity," but a demonstration to the universe that "division" is worth having.

Of the seven deadly sins, greed and eternal hunger have never appeared as an independent form.

At this moment, Yao Chong vaguely understood—perhaps because it was not a distortion of "harmony," but "harmony" itself.

The other six sins are all branches of greed: gluttony is greed for experience, envy is greed for possession of others, wrath is greed for control, pride is greed for correctness, sloth is greed for comfort, and lust is greed for connection.

Greed doesn't need to appear alone, because it's always there and never leaves.

Yao Chong didn't know whether this proof would be accepted.

All he knew was that his beloved teacher, Chen Dunli, had used all his sense of order to buy those twenty-seven seconds for them.

They didn't know if the launch was successful, they didn't know if the outside world existed, and they didn't know what awaited them.

They simply lay there on the cold floor, listening to each other's gradually recovering, faint heartbeats and breaths.

At least, we are different.

At least, we were here.

time flies.

Maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe forever...