Chapter 64: Reunion at the Stardust Teahouse

The sound of the night tide along the Pingtung coast still echoed in their ears, and the salty scent of the sea breeze seemed to cling stubbornly to their combat uniforms. Yet, Xu Yan’s squad was already deep within the familiar bamboo grove behind the Jinjiang Base.

The ancient tea pavilion rested quietly under the moonlight. Its carved wooden windows stood wide open, allowing the cool moonlight to flow freely inward, casting a pattern of distant, interlaced light and shadow onto the plain white cotton-cloth-covered tea table.

A rustic purple-clay teapot sat in the center of the table. Its warm, lustrous body skillfully gathered the motes of starlight piercing through the window lattice, projecting a miniature, shifting celestial map onto its belly, as if containing the boundless universe within a span of inches.

Jing Zhimin was already waiting there.

He was not wearing his uniform, but simply dressed in dark linen. He seemed to have laid down a heavy burden, yet appeared more solemn than ever before.

The spring water on the small red-clay stove was already boiling. Billows of white steam intertwined with the moonlight and starlight, blurring the boundaries between reality and artistic conception.

“Sit.”

He motioned for the dust-laden quartet to take their seats. His gaze lingered for a moment on Xu Yan’s slightly fatigued yet sharp-eyed face, before sweeping over Ouyang Nan’s hands, which tightly clutched the encrypted terminal recording the tidal password data.

“The commotion in Pingtung was significant, and the emergence of the ‘Tidal Password’ carries far-reaching implications.”

Jing Zhimin slowly poured the tea. The first brew was clear in color, but its fragrance had already quietly permeated the air. “Redeem is like a shark that has caught the scent of blood; they will not let the matter rest.

“The command center has decided to elevate the ‘Stargate Project’ and all related investigations to a higher security tier, and some non-core collaborative efforts will go underground.”

He pushed the teacups toward the four of them, his voice lowered yet every word distinct. “Starting today, this ancient tea pavilion will also serve as your backup contact point and intelligence exchange station. Every brick, tile, tea leaf, and branch here has witnessed a history far older than the Interstellar Alliance.”

He picked up his own teacup without drinking immediately, gazing instead at the tea leaves rising and falling within, as if looking into a sealed chapter of time.

“In the early days of the Alliance, technology was backward, formidable enemies lurked on all sides, and poor communication was the greatest obstacle. Back then, the earliest pioneers relied on the most ancient ‘tea’ to knock on the doors of one closed civilization after another.”

“Tea?” Duan Peng asked in some astonishment, finding it hard to imagine how a cup of water infused with leaves could hold much utility in an era of starships and mega-cannons.

“It is not the tea itself,” Jing Zhimin shook his head slightly, “but an attitude, a sincerity. Laying down weapons, stepping away from the negotiating table, and facing a liquid that requires patient waiting and careful appreciation—in front of such a thing, any disguise is difficult to sustain. Many of the initial non-aggression pacts and technological-sharing frameworks took their nascent forms right across such tea tables, in the most primitive yet most sincere manner. This is the almost-forgotten ‘tea ceremony diplomacy.’”

His words cast a heavy and mysterious veil over the quiet night and the ancient tea pavilion.

Upon hearing this, Ouyang Nan seemed touched. After a momentary hesitation, she drew an object carefully wrapped in plain silk from her inner pocket.

Unfolding the layers of silk revealed a round tea cake, dark in color and pressed exceptionally tight. The surface seemed dusted with a fine layer of crystalline particles resembling stardust.

“This is the ‘Stardust Tea Cake’ left behind by my grandmother,” Ouyang Nan said softly, imbued with a near-reverent tone. “She said it was personally pressed by my great-grandfather, with a tiny bit of ‘stardust’ gifted by the ‘Sky Travelers’ mixed inside. It is both the sole physical testimony of the old ‘tea ceremony diplomacy’ and an heirloom passed down through our family. Before she passed away, my grandmother said that if we ever faced a major choice concerning the starry sky and the future, we might try this tea, and perhaps it would bring clarity.”

“Stardust?” Xu Yan’s gaze sharpened, instantly associating it with the unnatural energy patterns on the Pingtung reefs.

*Scan complete,* the consciousness stream of Gaze cut in instantly. *The interior of the tea cake is embedded with a large number of nanoscale non-metallic artifacts. They possess an exquisite structure and remain dormant. Their energy signature... shares a faint homology with the carrier of the Pingtung ‘Tidal Password,’ though it is older and more stable.*

A trace of imperceptible excitement flashed in Jing Zhimin’s eyes. “Indeed... The legends are true. Ouyang, might we...”

Ouyang Nan nodded firmly, carefully breaking off a tiny piece of the tea cake and dropping it into the warmed purple-clay teapot.

A miraculous transformation took place.

Upon meeting the hot water, that small piece of tea cake did not immediately unfurl. Instead, those minute particles of “stardust” were the first to ignite with a soft white radiance, resembling a waking micro-constellation.

The nanobots were activated. Rather than causing destruction, they began to operate with extreme precision, releasing a peculiar energy fluctuation that began to resonate with the tea, the water vapor, and even the pervasive moonlight and starlight.

An indescribable fragrance—seemingly blending aged tea aroma, cosmic dust, and a certain pure energy—diffused into the air. Inhaled into the lungs, it instantly refreshed the spirit, and the fatigue of consecutive days quietly dissipated by a fraction.

Xu Yan picked up his teacup and took a shallow sip.

The tea entered the warmth of his mouth, mellow and profound in flavor. Even more wondrously, a faint, cooling current of energy followed, gently brushing across the depths of his consciousness.

*Benign external information stream detected,* Gaze quickly analyzed. *Currently gently repairing the micro-biological information wave damage caused by high-intensity consciousness synchronization and Stargate energy shocks... The efficiency is astonishing. This technology can substantially optimize the neural load of ‘Stargate Project’ operators and enhance stability.*

This stardust tea cake turned out to be the key to repairing biological information waves and assisting the Stargate Project!

However, before the astonishment over the technology could fully settle, Xu Yan’s vision abruptly blurred for a moment.

The steam from the tea rose and intertwined with the halo of moonlight and starlight, seemingly sketching scenes from another spacetime before his eyes—

[Memory Projection: Childhood]

A summer night, the courtyard of his old home, filled with the chirping of insects. A young Xu Yan’s father was smiling and speaking to him. In his hand, he held a similar compass.

“Xiao Yan, look,” his father’s finger pointed at the trembling needle of the compass, and then toward the starry sky. “They aren’t pointing randomly; they are greeting something we can’t see. Just like... just like how one day, we and the stars will be able to greet each other properly, too...”

His father’s smile was warm and full of longing—the purest curiosity and yearning for the starry sky.

“Daddy, are there people on the stars?” the young Xu Yan asked, looking up.

“Maybe. Whether there are or not, we must always maintain awe and kindness...” His father’s voice gradually blurred, and the scene rippled and dissolved like water.

Xu Yan snapped back to reality, his heart gripped by something, aching yet warm.

That was a conversation he had shared with his father about the starry sky, an ordinary night he had almost forgotten in the corners of time.

As it turned out, the seed of exploration had already been planted on such a night, in the gentlest possible way.

He looked toward Ouyang Nan and found that her eyes, too, held a sheen of moisture. Clearly, the tea had also awakened her deeply hidden fragments of memory related to her family.

Amidst the curling wisps of tea aroma, Gaze’s projection floated quietly. He was “observing” it all: the tea ritual, the resonance of memory.

After a long while, that flat, synthesized electronic voice sounded once again, carrying an unprecedented undertone of attempting “understanding”:

“‘Tea’... This practice of subjecting plant leaves to complex processing before dissolving them in water yields a chemical efficacy far lower than directly ingesting purified substances. Yet, within this context, it appears to serve as a... symbolic anchor for information carriers, emotional media, and cooperative pacts. The focus, tranquility, and shared experience brought about by the process generate an unquantifiable group synergy effect.”

He slightly “turned” toward the pot of stardust tea, and the halo of his projection seemed to soften a fraction.

“Lamus possesses higher-efficiency neural interfaces for consciousness synchronization, but cannot replicate this sort of ‘resonance field’ achieved through slow transpiration, gustatory experience, and memory retrospection. This phenomenon... may be temporarily designated as the ‘Zen of Tea’ logical paradox? Further analysis required.”

Listening to Gaze attempt to deconstruct this experience—steeped in Eastern philosophical artistic conception—using pure logic, the corners of Xu Yan’s mouth turned upward slightly.

This companion from Lamus had taken yet another small step across the boundary of cognition.