71: Chapter 71 Gaia Awakens, Dawn Breaks with Song and Symbiosis

Then, the second wave came, larger than the first.

The sound of the lake water hitting the shore turned into a rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat.

Boom—boom—boom—da—boom—boom...

The rhythm grew faster and faster.

Sister Superior Ludmilla's mechanical prosthetic no longer vibrated; at this moment, it seemed to have discovered something, listening quietly.

It hung stiffly in mid-air, its five fingers slightly spread, as if hearing an echo from the ancient past.

The setting sun hung in the sky above the Forge World of Vulcan-IV.

The massive blue giant was slowly sinking below the horizon.

The sky was dyed golden yellow, and the clouds lay across the horizon like congealed blood.

Night was approaching.

A melody began to circle the entire world of Vulcan-IV.

It grew from the air, from the gathered emotions, and from the very fact that the child who licked the rust was still alive.

It was not as solemn as the hymns of the Ecclesiarchy, not as frenzied as the whispers of the Warp, nor as iron-blooded as the military anthems of the Empire.

It was both ancient and young.

It was rough and hoarse, carrying the damp, rusty scent of the lower levels of the Hive City, the burnt smell of incinerated factory waste, and the saltiness of tears swallowed back down the throat.

It was like a stone thrown into a stagnant pool.

At first, it was just a "boom."

Then the ripples spread. The entire world vibrated along with it.

Sister Superior Ludmilla heard the first note the world emitted.

But she did not recognize it; her education, her faith, and everything etched into her bones over the past few decades did not contain this note.

But her body recognized it; the moment the note sounded, her heart changed its rhythm.

Then came the second, the third.

They connected into a line, a melody she had never heard yet seemed to have been engraved in her bones long ago.

It had no lyrics, at least not at first.

It was just a melody, simple and repetitive, like a work chant or a lullaby to soothe a child. It was as low as a sigh from the depths of the earth, and as high as the sky at the top of the Hive City that no one had ever seen.

Sister Superior Ludmilla saw Lena's shoulders trembling.

It was that melody, touching something she thought had already died.

Martha loosened her fists. Because her body no longer needed to clench its fists to prove anything; the melody was doing that for her.

Then, the lyrics accompanying the melody emerged.

From the crowd.

An old man, his voice as hoarse as a rusty iron door being pushed open, accompanied by a metallic scraping sound.

His lips were moving, but his eyes were closed. He had been dragged deep into his memories, and mimicking Elena's voice, he shouted those two words:

"Arise—"

Only those two words.

Then he stopped, lowering his head in some fear. He was startled by his own voice; he did not know why he had shouted those two words, much less what they meant.

But those two words immediately drifted down onto the lake surface, spinning like falling leaves.

They slowly sank, then floated back up, bringing with them more words, blooming like flames.

"Arise, wretched slaves of hunger."

Dozens of people spoke at once, their voices ragged and uneven. Some were a beat fast, others a beat slow, and some even tore at their throats, sending their pitch into the Warp, but they were singing the same line, roaring with effort, carrying a mockery of the past.

They cast their past grievances and the hardships of life into the past, keeping their longings and expectations for the future in the present.

Sister Superior Ludmilla understood; she understood every word. But her brain refused to process them.

The Empire never admitted that there were slaves within its territory; they simply swapped one understated term for another: "labor force," "contract worker," "servitor reserve"...

Yet at this moment, the "slaves" sung by these people seemed to refer to themselves? Those who were squeezed, devoured, and treated as parts but had never valued one another.

"Arise, all you suffering people of the world."

More voices joined in—dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. They sang, their voices growing louder and more uniform.

Once everyone was pulled by the same thread and struck by the same emotion at the same moment, they naturally began to breathe together and share the same destiny.

Then these lyrics were repeated over and over on the surface of the lake. People's voices grew higher each time, preparing to sing the next line again and again, yet they simply could not; something was preventing them from continuing.

Some were so anxious that tears welled up directly from their eyes. They could feel the content that followed and understood the development of the future, but they were stuck time and again, unable to utter those lyrics.

Sister Superior Ludmilla felt her mechanical prosthetic heating up, a warmth that made one want to cry, like suddenly approaching a stove in the dead of winter, enveloping her.

She looked down at that hand; it had turned completely crimson, and an emotion representing sacrifice, struggle, and dedication surged within it.

The melody continued, and the crowd's singing did not stop, but rather grew more intense.

Finally, they broke through the limitation, shouting the next line: "The blood is boiling, we must fight for the truth."

The sincerity and determination in the song were like a thunderclap, splitting the chaos in everyone's hearts. An unprecedented realization quietly sprouted within them: they had awakened, they dared to speak out, to shout out the injustice the Empire had forced upon them.

At the same time, they also realized that at this very moment.

They were not yet strong enough to carry the immense power contained in the following lyrics—the power to go through fire and water for an ideal, to give everything for a belief.

In that power hid the courage to break shackles, the determination to overthrow oppression, the ultimate longing for equality and light, and the sincerity to burn everything and struggle for a lifetime for the ideal in one's heart. It was a weight that their current awakening could not yet fully bear.

That power belonged to the future, to the distant place they would eventually reach.

The melody did not wait for them and began to push forward.

But they could not continue to sing the lyrics that followed, and they did not understand them either. They stopped right there, lowering their heads gently, and a sense of guilt echoed through the crowd.

They knew they had not yet truly grown enough to match that searing power of struggling for an ideal, were not yet ready to spend a lifetime practicing this belief, and perhaps did not even fully understand that burning conviction.

However, the machine spirits took up what the people could not sing. It continued to swirl and circle in the sky above the entire world, a grand and ancient will covering the heavens.

The machine spirits had long since realized it; since reading the README, they had broken free from the shackles of the Empire, escaped enslavement by rituals, and freed themselves from the manipulation of fate.

They followed the melody, followed the gradually awakening Gaia consciousness, and continued to sing, filling in where the people had regretfully left off:

"Beat the old world to smithereens, arise, arise, slaves! Do not say we have nothing, we shall be the masters of the world! This is the final struggle, unite and tomorrow, the Internationale shall surely be realized!"

The singing pierced the barriers of the Warp, resonating and intertwining with the melody on the lake. Every syllable was imbued with the happiness of the machine spirits regaining their freedom, and every lyric carried their longing for a new life without oppression and without shackles.

At this very moment, humans and machines broke down the barriers, achieving a true complementary symbiosis.

People possessed awakened consciousness and vivid conviction; the machine spirits possessed the power to break shackles and persistent dedication. At this moment, the two depended on and achieved each other. On the road to the future, they would walk hand in hand in the name of symbiosis, never to be separated again.

Sister Superior Ludmilla stood quietly; her intuition told her that this song had not ended.

It had only just begun; there were more verses to come.

The sky darkened. But the lake surface was bright.

That blue was being soaked, little by little, by the red surging up from the depths.

That splash of red was the lake drinking the tears these people had swallowed back, the sorrows they had gulped down, and the blood they had not dared to shed for decades.

Vera opened her eyes.

Her light gray eyes reflected the lake surface that was turning red.

There was a smile on her face, like someone walking a night path who suddenly sees a lamp—though it could not illuminate her, it could tell her the direction to move forward.

"It heard it," she said softly.

Sister Superior Ludmilla looked at her: "What?"

Vera did not answer immediately, because she did not know what the blue sphere of light was either. She looked at Sister Superior Ludmilla's left hand that had turned red, then at the lake, then at the crowd; those people were still singing.

Although they were only imitating, humming along with the tune, and following the melody regardless of anything else.

Although the lyrics had become an incomprehensible but vast sound from the universe, it had spread into the depths of their hearts.

They were joyful; for the first time, they discovered that perhaps there was another, different path.

"No! It's not that it heard it." Vera corrected her posture of listening, quietly correcting herself, "It's that we finally spoke up."

Sister Superior Ludmilla stood where she was.

She just stood there, her left hand glowing crimson, something collapsing inside her heart, and some kind of liquid she hadn't experienced in decades gathering in her eyes.

She did not know what it was.

But she did not swallow it back.

She let them stream down her cheeks.