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

Xiaoyao was taken aback.

“The system only kills out-of-control individuals.” His voice was extremely low, yet it was like a blade slicing through ice. “But have you ever seen a ‘malfunctioning entity’ write letters to itself over and over again in the incubation chamber? Which artificial life form would carve ‘Mom, I’m still here’ on the wall with its fingernails before being formatted?”

He pointed to the ceiling—where liquid was now slowly dripping from the long-dormant ventilation ducts.

It's not water.

It's tears.

Transparent teardrops with a pale blue fluorescence fell to the ground one after another, eventually coalescing into tiny flowers.

"Have you heard it before?" Xiaoyao suddenly asked. "Mom's songs... are actually songs she learned from an alien civilization."

Su Ting paused for a moment.

“She wasn’t lying.” Xiaoyao looked up at the flowers formed from her tears, her voice soft. “She told me that the song was a civilization’s last ‘goodbye’ to the universe before its extinction.”

Su Ting didn't answer, but suddenly pulled out a small metal piece from the lining of his tactical vest—about the size of a fingernail, covered with fine grooves, its edges worn and rough, as if it had been rubbed countless times.

He placed it on Xiaoyao's palm.

"Do you recognize this?"

Xiaoyao was stunned.

On that metal sheet were extremely tiny ripples—not circuitry, not coding.

It is a sound wave spectrum.

And that melody... was the nursery rhyme she hummed last night.

"This is... Mom's?" Her voice trembled.

“No,” Su Ting said in a low voice, “it’s yours.”

Xiaoyao suddenly looked up.

"The system first scanned you when you were three years and seven days old." His gaze was sharp as a knife. "At that time, you hadn't learned to speak yet, you could only hum songs. This is the song you were humming."

He paused, his voice suddenly becoming hoarse: "But you've never even heard the original. You... made it up yourself."

Xiaoyao's breath hitched.

“You are the only one,” Su Ting said, word by word, “an ‘abnormal’ who, without being given any melody, pieced together a complete nursery rhyme using incorrect data, broken memories, and severed neurons.”

He suddenly laughed, his eyes reddening with laughter.

"What they're afraid of isn't that you remember your mother. What they're afraid of is... that you remember her more clearly than your mother does."

In the distance, the crack suddenly widened by an inch.

A stream of light, like a ribbon, descended and slowly wrapped around their wrists. It wasn't a cold touch, but a warm, gentle one, like the strength of a baby grasping its mother's fingertips.

"Is it... welcoming us?" Xiaoyao asked.

“No.” Su Ting gazed at the stream of light, “It is… waiting for you to sing.”

Xiaoyao was silent for a moment.

Then, she gently closed her eyes.

Take a deep breath.

When she opened her eyes again, there was no fear or confusion in them.

There was only a clear, almost cruel, calm.

She spoke.

It's not a nursery rhyme that's out of tune.

It wasn't a broken, intermittent humming.

It was a complete, clear, and precise melody that sent chills down your spine.

Every note seems to be written in blood, watered with tears, and founded by thousands of lives that were erased.

"Little bunny, open the door."

Her voice was as clear as the first snow melting into the morning dew.

"Open it quickly, I need to get in!"

As the second sentence fell, the lights in the entire corridor suddenly blazed on, only to go out all at once the next second, leaving only the crack burning in the darkness.