Chapter Fifty-Eight: Stardust Whispers

As the Explorer No. 8 silently glided into the dedicated dock of the Jinjiang Special Forces base, it was already deep into the night by Earth time. The starport remained brightly lit, yet compared to the lifeless, brutal expanse of outer space, the air here carried a faint, reassuring dampness unique to their home planet.

After the transfer of prisoners, mission briefings, and simple medical examinations, the four men wore exhaustion that was hard to conceal on their faces, though their eyes still burned with an unextinguished flame. The fragmented words of the traitorous commander and the self-destructed base weighed heavily on their hearts like a massive stone, yet they also pointed toward a deeper, far-reaching direction.

General Chengzhu Mu’s orders were concise and clear: rest and stand by, consolidate information, and await the next analysis results. Thus, that night held no further briefings nor all-night technical discussions.

Without explanation, Peng Duan procured a pile of dry firewood and kindled a campfire in a sheltered clearing at the edge of the base’s training grounds. The crackling flames dispersed the chill of the night and softened the taut lines on their faces.

Mingjie Wu silently warmed several nutrient packs by the fire. Nan Ouyang produced a small thermos filled with a calming herbal tea she had brewed according to an ancient recipe, its elegant fragrance drifting gently with the rising steam.

Yan Xu sat on a rough training post, staring into the flickering flames while his mind sank deep. “The collapse pattern of the Ramstar energy core shares a 17.8% similarity with the base’s self-destruction energy release model,” the covetous consciousness reported coolly, as if annotating experimental data. “Both involve forcibly annihilating matter to achieve a peak energy surge—inefficient and wasteful.”

“But sometimes, isn’t that the simplest and most direct method of ‘clearing’?” Xu silently responded, recalling his parents, Ouyang Nan’s father, and the truths and lives that had been ‘cleared away.’

After a brief silence, the covetous entity unusually did not rebut but transmitted a complex fluctuating message: “Unable to comprehend energy use based on ‘silencing’ logic. On Ramstar, individuals subjected to ‘iteration’ or ‘termination’ for higher-level goals are considered reasonable.”

At that moment, Peng Duan bit into a softened, heated nutrient bar, mumbling indistinctly, “Tch, when will this stuff ever taste like something? I really miss my mom’s osmanthus cake—so fragrant and sweet, with a hint of locust honey...”

“Osmanthus cake?” The covetous consciousness caught the unfamiliar term, tinged with pure curiosity. “A type of high-energy synthetic food?”

Xu shook his head slightly, a faint, subtle smile curling at his lips. In his mind, he told the consciousness, “No, it’s a snack made from plant flowers, grains, and sugar. Its greatest value isn’t energy, but... flavor, and the memories connected to it.”

He relaxed his mind and voluntarily opened a deeply hidden childhood memory to the consciousness—

A summer night in his old family courtyard, his grandmother fanning herself with a bamboo fan; steam rising from the bamboo steamer on the stove; the air filled with the sweet fragrance of osmanthus flowers.

As a child, he stood on tiptoe, eyes full of longing, waiting for the very first freshly steamed, scorching hot yet irresistible osmanthus cake—the soft, glutinous sweetness and his grandmother’s deeply wrinkled smiling face.

This vivid, sensory memory, brimming with warmth and emotion, was transmitted without reserve through the symbiotic bio-information waves to the covetous consciousness.

The consciousness abruptly stuttered, as if an overloaded processor. After a long pause, it responded, its cold, electronically synthesized voice strangely modulated: “Memory data... received. Associated emotional tags: warmth, satisfaction, anticipation... quantitative analysis impossible. Ramstar possesses similar ‘gustatory memory pods’ capable of precisely simulating any chemical signal to stimulate taste buds, but only for energy supplementation efficiency or physiological research, without linkage to... memory and emotion.”

Speaking, it seemed to ‘explain’ or ‘share’ by channeling energy. Above the campfire, tiny pinpricks of light began to converge—not a hologram, but a more exquisite, one-way light screen projection using free particles and energy fields in the air.

A vast, unfamiliar yet exquisitely detailed star chart slowly unfolded.

Its dominant dark red hue and the mathematically beautiful distribution of stars starkly contrasted with Earth's night sky. This was the star region of the Ramstar civilization from the consciousness’s memory.

“Wow!” Peng Duan and Mingjie Wu both looked up, astonished by the sudden celestial spectacle.

Nan Ouyang also gazed at the sky, her eyes reflecting deep thought.

With a flicker of intention, Yan Xu retrieved an old brass astrolabe from his equipment pack.

It was one of the relics left by his father, an interstellar explorer’s homage to the ancient wisdom of Blue Star.

He rotated the instrument’s rings, projecting the northern hemisphere’s visible night sky of Blue Star beside the campfire, based on his memory and calculations.

Two star charts—one from Ramstar’s civilization tens of thousands of light-years away, the other from Blue Star’s ancient seafaring traditions—interwove and stood side by side in the silent night by the fire.

Xu’s gaze drifted between the two charts, his fingers unconsciously sliding along the astrolabe’s scales.

Meanwhile, the covetous consciousness employed its immense computational power to rapidly compare their differences and similarities.

At that very moment, as Xu’s finger passed over the position of the Northern Dipper on the astrolabe, and the Ramstar star map’s edge quadrant subtly shifted due to an energy fluctuation—

A miracle occurred.

The two seemingly unrelated star charts briefly aligned at an extraordinarily precise relative position, causing several key stars’ points of light to momentarily coincide!

The overlapping points traced out an extremely ancient and complex symbol—not belonging to any known symbolic system of Ramstar or Blue Star, but more like a... mark?

A sign imbued with an indescribable sense of power.

Though fleeting, the symbol left a profound imprint on the perceptions of both Xu and the covetous consciousness.

“Symbol recorded. Database matching in progress... no exact matches found. However, its energy resonance characteristics exhibit a faint 0.7% correlation with the oldest core star region totem of the Interstellar Alliance,” the consciousness swiftly summarized.

Xu’s heart suddenly skipped a beat upon seeing the symbol, a subtle yet undeniable thrill surging from deep within his veins.

As if the symbol was calling out to something, resonating inexplicably with his very being.

“Star-source power...” Xu muttered instinctively, recalling the traitor commander’s frenzied screams about the “Alliance’s hidden origins.”

A brief silence fell by the campfire, broken only by the crackling flames.

Nan Ouyang handed Xu a cup of warm calming tea. The faint herbal aroma filled his lungs, soothing the sudden flutter and the mental strain of recent days.

Xu accepted the cup, the warmth seeping through its walls into his palms.

He gazed at the now-normal night sky and told the covetous consciousness, “Do you see? Some connections cannot be fully explained by data. Like this tea—its calming effects might be chemically supported, but the peace I feel now comes from the care of my companions.”

He paused and made a decision. “Covetous, I agree that efficiency and rationality should prevail most of the time. But in critical moments—especially when it concerns the life and death of comrades and the ‘path’ I deeply believe in—I must reserve the right to let ‘emotion’ guide my decisions. This is not inefficiency; it is the fundamental line that makes us ‘us.’”

A long silence ensued.

The covetous consciousness appeared to be processing this profoundly ‘inefficient’ proposal with all its might.

Finally, it responded, its tone still flat but tinged with a hint of compromise: “Cannot fully agree, but given the current symbiont stability and unpredictability of subsequent missions, acceptance as a special contingency decision mode is permissible. Logged as: Special Protocol Alpha.”

Xu exhaled softly, knowing this was the greatest concession the consciousness could offer.

He took a sip of the calming tea; its bittersweet flavor spread across his tongue.

At that moment, his personal terminal vibrated gently, and an encrypted message from the base command center popped up:

“Rest period canceled. Assemble at Pier 3 at 0500 hours. New mission: Investigation of abnormal energy fluctuations in the tidal zone off Pingtung coast. Priority: High.”

Xu’s gaze sharpened; he drained the remaining tea in his cup.

The campfire still radiated warmth, the stardust seeming to whisper softly, but the brief tranquility had ended.

The tides along the coastline beckoned toward the unknown anew.