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

On the thirty-first day, Zhu Rongtai spoke.

It did not ask about ownership.

It asked about something else.

[Please complete position number 31.]

Everyone in the main control room stared at these five words.

The word "complete" has already been seen in the archives of the old Heavenly Court.

The meaning of "补全" is to fill in the missing part.

It's not about changing or deleting.

Yes, fill in the blank.

"It wants us to fill it in," Qin Lan said.

"What should I fill in?"

"Fill in the name of number thirty-one."

Lu Chengong looked at those five words and suddenly smiled.

"It's been three years," he said. "It's been waiting for me to step inside."

"You won't fall for it."

"I won't stand," Lu Chenggong said, "but I've realized something."

"What?"

“It doesn’t want me,” he said. “It wants the fact that ‘someone is standing there.’”

Xu Wangshu nodded.

"Yes. It doesn't want people, it just wants the positions to be filled."

"Then we'll answer: There's no one here."

"You can't answer like that," Xu Wangshu said. "If you say there's no one here, it will wait until someone comes."

The main control room fell silent for a moment.

Lin Xiaoman's voice came from the listening terminal of the DreamNet.

"It's not waiting for someone to come."

Everyone looked at her.

"It's waiting for someone to refuse," Xiaoman said.

Why do you say that?

"Because behind that blackboard is 'Unresolved'," Xiaoman said. "Unresolved means—someone was written on it, and then it was erased."

"so?"

"So it doesn't need a new number 31," Xiaoman said. "It needs someone to stand up and say: that number 31 should have been erased in the first place."

No one spoke in the main control room.

Everyone understood what that sentence meant.

Zhu Rongtai is not looking for a substitute.

It is waiting for recognition.

When someone admits: Was it right or wrong to erase the person from the list back then?

"If the world agrees that the erasure was correct," Qin Lan said slowly, "then number thirty-one will remain empty forever."

"right."

"What if humanity admits to making a mistake?"

"Then we'll have to put that name back."

"Put it back," Lu Chenggong said, "that's tantamount to admitting that the mistake was made back then."

"right."

"Who wrote that stroke back then?"

No one can answer that.

But everyone knows that once this question is answered, Zhu Rongtai will no longer need to ask it.

Xu Wangshu did not immediately reply with "Please complete".

She did something else.

She wrote down everything—the counterweight compartment, the roster, the fragments of the ninth day, the ninth piece, and number thirty-one—into a single document.

The material yielded no conclusion.

I only wrote two lines at the end.

[This cannot be filled in for any individual.]

[No one can be erased from the picture.]

The second line is new.

She paused when adding the second line.

Because the phrase "not smearing" is more difficult than "not filling in".

You need to sign it if you fill it in, but you don't need to sign it if you erase it.

In the past, people only cared about signing their names and never cared about erasing them.

After she finished writing, she sent out her reply.

[Position No. 31: I refuse the position; there are doubts about the registration. I will explain myself. This form cannot be filled out on my behalf.]

There was a period of silence at the North Heavenly Gate.

Then he replied with six words.

[Leave the space blank for continued observation.]

No one in the main control room was relaxed.

Because everyone could see it.

Leaving it blank is not the end.

Zhu Rongtai withdrew one hand, waiting to see if the human world would reach out on its own.

That night, Lin Xiaoman changed the folder name again.

This time, she didn't change the folder with the text "Wait for it to finish speaking".

It's another one.

She originally only had three records in that folder.

Now there's a fourth line.

The fourth line was not written by someone else.

She wrote it herself.

[Number 31 is not a number.]

Number 31 is a person.

This person hasn't spoken yet.

After finishing writing, she put down her pen and looked up at the darkness outside the dream network for a while.

The darkness remained still.

But she knew that this time it wasn't that it didn't want to move.

It was also waiting for that person to speak first.