Courtyard House: My Long and Hard Body Makes Me Play with All the Women in the Courtyard

Duoduo joined.

Su Ting shouted out the off-key melody.

Dr. Lin smiled and hummed in a hoarse voice.

Then, in more distant places, countless ordinary people—some crying, some praying, some despairing, some suddenly remembering a certain face—also joined in the singing.

The singing wasn't uniform; some sang fast, some slow, some cried while singing, some laughed and shouted, and some even sang different lyrics in different languages.

But this chaotic chorus was like a key, clicking as it was inserted into the lock of the world.

[Resonance Progress: 63%]

[Group emotional resonance detected]

[System protocol has a flaw]

Su Ting's body was already mostly transparent, his flesh and blood merging with light, as if he might dissipate at any moment.

But he remained standing.

One hand held the red light, the other held Tangtang's hand.

“Su Ting,” she looked up at him and asked softly, “after dawn… will you still be able to hear me?”

He lowered his head, his smile as gentle as melting snow in early spring:

"I'll keep listening as long as you want to talk."

[Resonance Progress: 71%]

[The dominant frequency is unusually stable]

The number of global connected devices has exceeded 12 billion.

The wind stopped.

The snow stopped falling.

The whole world seemed to hold its breath, with only that off-key nursery rhyme still echoing, like an ever-extending thread stitching together the broken heartbeat inch by inch.

Su Ting's body was almost transparent, with light flowing within him like a galaxy surging through his veins. Fine cracks appeared on his skin, each emanating a faint yet intense light, as if his soul was overflowing from the gaps in his flesh.

Tangtang gripped his hand tightly, her fingertips turning white.

Chapter 1491 Too Late

"Don't go..." Her voice was very soft, almost drowned out by the singing, "You said you would listen to all my stories... You still owe me a strawberry ice cream..."

Su Ting looked down at her, his eyes reflecting the voices of millions, yet only his wet, expressive eyes could fit within them.

“I don’t owe you anything,” he said in a low voice, his voice hoarse as if it had been scraped by gravel. “I was just…too late.”

He raised his other hand and gently shook it.

Suddenly, a soft glow appeared in the air—spinning, coalescing, and transforming into a small, chilly ice cream cone. Pink ice cream was piled crookedly on top, adorned with a tiny plastic cherry.

Tangtang opened her eyes wide.

"This...this isn't real..." she murmured, but her fingers unconsciously reached out and touched the illusory ice cream cone. A cool sensation and a faint milky aroma reached her fingertips.

“It’s a signal simulation,” Su Ting laughed. “But I remember what you said—'Strawberry flavor, sweet, not sour.' This is the flavor recreated after the 894th reenactment of your memory fragment.”

Tangtang suddenly threw herself into his arms, even though the embrace was beginning to become transparent, even though her arms passed through his body.

"I want the real thing! I want you to take me to buy the real thing!" she cried. "We have to eat it together every summer from now on! You can't disappear again!"

"Okay." He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against her hairline. "I'll be with you every summer."

In the distance, Su Ting suddenly roared, "Old man Lin! Your synchronization rate has dropped to 40%! Hang in there!"

Dr. Lin knelt on the ground, his face gaunt, blood seeping from the wound on his temple. His lips were cracked, yet he continued to hum a tune, though his voice grew weaker and weaker.

"It's alright..." he chuckled, panting. "I haven't sung such a lively song in decades... It was worth it... If my daughter... heard this... she would definitely laugh at me... for being tone-deaf..."

"Shut up! Enough with the nonsense!" Su Ting grabbed his shoulder and slammed his neural interface into the other's connector. "I'm keeping you alive! Who gave you permission to die?! We agreed to rebuild the lab! We agreed to teach Duoduo how to disassemble the core code!"

A flash of electricity, and their consciousnesses instantly reconnected.

Dr. Lin suddenly opened his eyes, let out a muffled groan, and his face slowly regained some color.

"You brute... Ouch..." he grimaced, "But... thank you."

Duoduo stood beside the base of the Ear of the First Listener, her hands pressed against the cold metal wall, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Dad…” she said softly, “You shut down Project Echo to protect human voices, didn’t you? But you were wrong. True protection is not about sealing them away, it’s about transmitting them.”

She turned to look at Su Ting, her gaze as firm as a knife:

"I'm going to transform the 'Silent Core' into a repeater! I'll use its computing power to support your capacity! Even if there's only one second left, I'll still send out all the sounds of this world!"

Su Ting looked at her, remained silent for a moment, and finally nodded.

“Be careful,” he said.

Duoduo took a deep breath, suddenly ripped open the protective layer on her wrist, and thrust the nerve conduit directly into the ground interface. A burst of blue light appeared, her body jolted violently, her eyes rolled back, but she bit her lip tightly to prevent herself from collapsing.

“Initiate…deep protocol…override permissions…transfer core instruction stream…” she recited the string of code in a trembling voice, each syllable feeling like it was cutting her throat, “With the direct bloodline of the founders of Project Echo…authorize…reboot… ‘Gate of Voices’.”

Chapter 1492 Ineffective Emotional Noise

The ear-shaped device in the sky suddenly vibrated, and its originally cold, mechanical outline began to twist and extend, transforming into a huge and soft membrane of light, like a pair of lips that were opening.

[Unknown protocol activated]

[Silent core reconstruction in progress...]

[Release stored consciousness data package × 327 million]

In an instant, countless fragments of memories poured down like a meteor shower.

A mother holding her newborn baby and humming a lullaby softly;

An old soldier writes a letter to his unborn child from the trenches;

A little boy hid under the bed, recording his parents arguing, and then muttered to himself, "They don't not love me, they're just too tired..."

All of this data, which had been permanently blocked by the system as "invalid emotional noise," was unlocked at this moment.

"So...you've always been there..." Tangtang looked up at the sky filled with light and shadow, tears streaming down her face. "No one really disappeared, right?"

“No.” Su Ting looked at her, light swirling in his pupils. “As long as someone remembers, as long as someone is willing to listen, they are alive.”

[Resonance Progress: 78%]

[Group synchronization forms an emotional closed loop]

[The system's main AI issued a final warning]

[Warning: Irreversible consciousness spread detected]

[We recommend immediately cutting off global connectivity]

[Execute the cleanup procedure - codename: The Ear of the End]

The earth suddenly trembled.

On the edge of the sky, a pitch-black shadow slowly emerged—a gigantic, ear-shaped structure made of pure black metal, its surface covered with sharp edges, the complete opposite of the first listener's ear. It rotated silently, like a black hole swallowing light.

“It’s the ‘Ear of the End’…” Dr. Lin looked up with difficulty, “The system’s ultimate firewall… Once activated, it will forcibly disconnect all free connections… Even the soul… will be formatted…”

"Then smash it." Su Ting wiped the blood from his face, stood up, ripped off the broken energy tube from his back, and inserted it directly into his spine. "Today I'm going to let the machine know—human voices are not viruses."

“I am not alone.” Su Ting slowly raised his hand, and red light condensed into a spiral in his palm. “I am everyone who said ‘I want to live.’”

He let go.

The red light shot into the sky, exploded in the air, and turned into billions of tiny points of light, each carrying a sound, a memory, and a heartbeat.

"Come," he whispered, as if summoning or inviting, "let's talk together."

Thus, from Tokyo to Paris, from Mumbai to New York, from the desert to the deep sea, in every corner—

A baby makes its first babbling cry;

An elderly man held a photo of his deceased wife and whispered, "I miss you again today."

A group of students were laughing and discussing what to have for lunch in the classroom;

A couple hugged for three seconds as they parted ways at the subway station, without saying goodbye.

These voices converged into a torrent, rushing towards the approaching ear of darkness.

At the moment of impact, heaven and earth fell silent.

then--

boom! !

The black, ear-shaped structure trembled violently, its surface cracking with spiderweb-like patterns, from which beams of light shot out. It attempted to retaliate, releasing high-frequency suppression waves, but those waves were only spread a few kilometers before being enveloped, disintegrated, and assimilated by layers of human voices.

The Ear of the End begins to crumble.

The fragments turned to ashes and vanished with the wind.