Don't go to the moon, there are gods on the far side of the moon.

Haicheng's attitude changed the next morning.

It changes very quickly.

The day before they were arguing that "there must be someone to sign the document for the seven cities," the next day a document was delivered with the title "Preliminary Plan for Receiving the Fire Seeds from Zhurongtai."

The proposal is beautifully written.

Mars relay station, narrowband capture window, near-Earth receiving orbit, multi-city division of labor, risk hedging. Each item has a number, each segment has a process, and it all comes down to one sentence: It is recommended that a city be jointly designated by humans as the "receiving agent".

Collection on behalf of others.

Qin Lan read the document twice and circled those two words.

"The difference between receiving on behalf of someone and signing on behalf of someone else is just one step."

Xu Wangshu didn't speak, but first looked at the signature on the document.

The letter was signed by Haicheng and copied to Liucheng.

In other words, Haicheng wrote the plan first, and then "invited" the other six cities to discuss it. Before the discussion, they had already defined the nature of everyone in the title: the spark must be received.

"That's Wen Qingyue's job," Lu Chenggong said. "Write the proposal first, then discuss the details."

"It's not entirely her fault." Xu Wangshu highlighted several technical paths in the document. "Some parameters were indeed Haicheng's own judgment. They weren't bribed; they were genuinely afraid."

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid that if the spark dies down there, it might catch fire on its own one day."

Once these words were spoken, no one in the main control room objected.

Because Haicheng's fears were not fabricated.

The embers hovered in the narrow band between Mars and Earth, neither entering the hearth nor the warehouse, nor extinguishing. They were like a red-hot iron suspended between two cities. Everyone knew they weren't burning anyone now, but no one could guarantee they wouldn't tomorrow.

Xu Wangshu asked Qin Lan to draft a reply.

He only replied with three sentences.

[1. No fire was brought into the stove; therefore, there is no way to receive the flame.]

II. No intermediary is authorized to collect payments.

III. No plan may be based on the premise of "having been specified".

After the reply was sent, Haicheng remained silent for half an hour.

When he reappeared, his tone had softened.

[Received. Draft withdrawn, to be discussed again.]

Lu Chengong was a little surprised.

"That was so satisfying?"

"Because they never wanted the flame to enter the human world in the first place," Xu Wangshu said. "They wanted the process to enter the human world first. Once the process was implemented, the flame would follow."

She paused.

"The solution itself isn't bad. What's bad is that it first makes 'receiving' a prerequisite."

That afternoon, the stove on the Zhurong Terrace turned a little more.

No longer facing the seventh empty seat.

It tilted slightly, as if it hadn't received a reply all night, and turned its face away an inch.

Lin Xiaoman could see it clearly in the dream network.

The charred little bird also turned away.

It neither looked at the hearth nor at the human world.

It looked further into the narrow band.

It was pitch black there.

It's so dark it looks like someone cut a section of road off a star map and forgot to paste it back.

Xiaoman stared at that patch of black for a long time, and suddenly realized that it wasn't an unfinished star map.

It looks more like someone finished drawing it and then covered it up with something.

She didn't say it right away.

Because she was afraid that if she spoke up, someone in the control room would start writing explanations for that darkness again.

She simply noted it down in her folder, adding a note:

I saw black. It didn't say what it was.

In the evening, Qin Lan re-filed Haicheng's draft.

When archiving, she added two words to the end of the file name: "Revoked".

Xu Wangshu saw it and asked, "Why mark it as 'removed' instead of just deleting it?"

Qin Lan said, "Deleting it is like it never happened."

"Yes," Xu Wangshu said. "They brought it up, but the human world refused. We have to keep this matter in mind."

"What's the point of keeping it?"

"Leave it for next time," Xu Wangshu said. "Next time, someone else will come up with a takeover plan. Then we'll turn the tables on this one and tell them that we made a mistake by taking this step."