Silent Ark

Chapter 9: The Amber Era

A drop of resin dripped down—

Time began to imprison itself.

The beetle's flapping wings formed a star map.

The ants' journey has become an inscription.

In this golden cage.

In an instant, I learned eternity.

Look:

Inside a resin-made coffin.

It seals off the breath of the entire forest.

Fragments of light.

In the twilight of the Cretaceous period.

Suddenly still.

听：

Where the molecules stop.

The winged howl becomes amber.

Millions of years of silence.

Inside the transparent tomb.

Continue to grow.

Each piece of amber is a station in time:

"This place, in an instant, became a mountain range."

And the wound continues to ooze a new era—

Awaiting sealing.

next.

A reckless spring.

Perhaps that day marked the beginning of Yao Chong and Liu Pan's decision to return to China and lead the Silent Ark Project.

Liu Pan stood on the steps at the exit of the underground passage, looked up at the sky, and silently lit a cigarette.

Yao Chong stood next to him for a while, then looked up and stared blankly at the sky.

The sky was still blue.

But the blue has become lighter—not diluted, but the concept of "blue" itself has become thinner.

Like a blue sheet of paper that is repeatedly folded and unfolded, each unfolding adds more white creases.

The creases increased, the blue color decreased, but the paper was still the same paper.

"Look at that," Liu Pan said, pointing to a spot in the northern sky.

Yao Chong read it.

There was nothing there.

The sky was a pale blue, with a few oddly shaped clouds—the edges of the clouds were too regular, as if drawn with a ruler, excessively regular.

"I didn't see it..."

"Don't look with your eyes. Look like the way you saw the line with your eyes closed that day."

Yao Chong closed his eyes.

Then he saw it.

In the northern part of the sky, within the closed "field of vision"—a mode of perception that has been covered for billions of years by the "skin" of physical laws and does not belong to any known sensory channel—there exists.

It is not an object.

It's not light.

It's not energy.

It's a connection.

A diffuse, ubiquitous net, permeating everything like a golden mist.

It extends from the earth beneath our feet to the sky, from the sky to the unseen distance, and from the distance to an even more distant place.

Each thread connects two points—between one tree and another, between a stone and a drop of water, between one person's heart and another's breath—everything is connected by this network.

The "existence" in the northern part of the sky is not the center of the network—the network has no center—but rather the area with the highest density of the network.

There, the silk threads became so dense that they ceased to be mere "threads," transforming into a continuous, golden, and warm form—

Yao Chong couldn't find the words.

If I had to use human language—it's like love.

This "love" itself is a physical entity; it has shape, mass, and temperature.

"Did you see it?" Liu Pan asked.

"...a golden net, a net that covers everything."

"right."

"What is it?"

Liu Pan opened his eyes and looked at the actual sky.

In reality, there was nothing in the sky that was visible to the naked eye.

But his expression wasn't one of confusion, but rather a delayed confirmation, slowly sinking to the bottom.

"I don't know what it calls itself," Liu Pan said, "but if you asked me to give it a name..."

He paused for a long time.

"Benevolence."

The "Investiture of the Gods" archives compiled by Yao Chong later recorded: Ren Taiyi Zhengyin (The Primordial Unity)

Divinity: The cosmic network of empathy, the source of all interconnectedness. It is not an individual, but a fundamental field pervading all consciousness and existence. It fosters altruism, cooperation, and love in civilization, and is the first cause of life transcending selfish algorithms and moving towards a community.

Higher-dimensional form: manifested as the background "white noise" of telepathy in all civilizations, or a golden light network that connects countless worlds like neurons.

Whales spawn from the third to the ninth day after birth.

Globally, the number of people who can see the "net" with their eyes closed has grown exponentially from the initial single digits.

It's not an infection, not a spread; it's more like some kind of awakening.

Once the skin of physical laws is lifted, the previously concealed modes of perception begin to activate automatically—like the water beneath melting ice.

The speed at which each person "sees" is different depends on how "suitable" their consciousness structure is to be activated—scientists, artists, children, and mental patients, whose consciousness was originally marked as "abnormal" by the mainstream cognitive framework, are the first to see.

What one sees varies from person to person. But the first thing everyone reports is the same—a golden net.

It is everywhere, connecting everything, warm, and makes you want to cry.

Although the area affected by the whale fall acceleration incident was small, CERN, as one of the originating sites, was significantly impacted, with a large number of instruments damaged and researchers missing in other experimental areas.

On the seventh day, the remaining researchers at CERN released an uncensored internal report, temporarily designating this entity as "Sovereign Entity-α" and providing a purely descriptive definition: "A background field pervading all known space, capable of transmitting information. This field can establish instantaneous connections between any two systems with information structures, unrestricted by distance or the speed of light."

"Systems connected by this field will spontaneously generate an altruistic tendency—that is, actively transferring their own resources to the connecting party. This tendency is unconditional: the connected party does not need to be 'valuable' or 'worthwhile'; the connection itself constitutes a sufficient condition for the transfer."

In the report's appendix, an anonymous researcher added: "This is not 'love.' Love is conditional—you love someone because they are who they are. This thing is unconditional. The way it connects a tree and a stone is exactly the same at the informatics level as the way it connects a mother and her child."

A tree transfers water to a stone—not because it wants to, but because they are connected. A mother sacrifices for her child—not because she chose love—but because they are connected. We think love is the noblest human emotion. Perhaps it's just because we've always lived as nodes in a web, and the web makes us believe that flow is voluntary.

When Liu Pan saw the report, he was organizing the data on a small supercomputer powered by a diesel generator in a temporary underground shelter set up at CERN.

He read the sentence three times, then said to Yao Chong, who was sitting opposite him eating a compressed biscuit, "You minored in philosophy in your undergraduate studies."

"Um."

Mencius said, "The heart of compassion is inherent in all men." Wang Yangming said, "Extend innate knowledge." The core argument of Confucianism is that people are born with moral intuition; it does not need to be taught, it is embedded within them.

"right."

"What if this 'embedded moral intuition' is not a product of the human mind—but rather an effect of this network?"

Yao Chong stopped chewing.

The compressed biscuit turned into a dry crumb in his mouth, and it took him three seconds to swallow it.