The targeted broadcast of "Project Prometheus" was like hurling a seed containing the essence of human civilization into the boundless depths of the cosmos. The team executing the plan, including Mozi himself, harbored no unrealistic expectations deep down about whether this faint call would receive a response, or when. The universe was too ancient, too vast; signs of life might be like dewdrops in a desert, vanishing in an instant. They viewed it more as a symbolic ritual—a civilization's confirmation of its own responsibility, a declaration of existential meaning cast into the void.
Yet, merely seven Earth years after the first targeted broadcast, a response arrived—in a manner far beyond anyone's imagination.
The signal did not come from the young star field that "Project Prometheus" had aimed at, but from a completely unfamiliar direction—a region marked in astronomical databases as containing no known stars or significant radio sources, an area of near-perfect "void." The signal carrier was not electromagnetic waves either, but an extremely faint spacetime ripple that could resonate with the deep-level quantum computing substrate of the **String Light Cloud Brain**—a highly advanced gravitational wave modulated signal.
Its discovery was entirely accidental. A young physicist responsible for monitoring gravitational wave background noise to validate certain predictions of Yue'er's field theory first noticed the anomalous, highly stable, low-frequency harmonics in the data stream—patterns that could not possibly be naturally occurring. The signal's intensity was so weak it nearly drowned in the universe's own breathing, yet the highly structured information encoding it carried immediately triggered the highest-level alert at the **String Light Research Institute**.
The decryption process itself was an extreme test of civilizational technical capability. This was not the "conceptual condensate" fragments attached to logic bombs that Yue'er had encountered before, but a complete, actively transmitted, intention-laden civilization-level information package. Its encoding was unfathomably profound, nested in layers, integrating mathematics, physics, and even some non-human perceptual logic. Utilizing nearly all remaining computing power of the **String Light Cloud Brain**, combining Yue'er's latest advances in **cosmic linguistics**, the Mozi team's deep accumulation in information theory and cryptography, and even indirectly referencing certain **non-local correlation** information processing patterns exhibited by the "Light Moss" collective intelligence, it took several months to finally unlock the outermost "envelope" of the information package.
When the final content was translated into concepts comprehensible to humans and displayed on the holographic screen before the core members of the **String Light Research Institute**, everyone fell into an incredulous silence.
There were no imagined blueprints for super-technology, no abstruse cosmological formulas, no declarations about resources, territory, or threats, not even a simple greeting.
It was a cold, pure list composed of questions. Not many—only seven—but each struck like an invisible heavy hammer against the soul of human civilization, which prided itself as the spirit of all things:
**When the replication and creation of information lose their boundaries, by what is the uniqueness of individual consciousness defined?** **On near-eternal spacetime scales, do pain and pleasure still hold value? If so, in what form?** **Is a civilization's ultimate achievement to shape the external universe, or to understand its internal self?** **Are "love" and altruistic behavior accidental redundancies on the evolutionary path, or basic syntax at the level of cosmic consciousness?** **If existence itself is meaning, does "non-existence" possess equal weight?** **How do you define "beauty"? Is it an illusion of perception, or the ultimate expression of order?** **Knowing that everything will ultimately end in heat death, why do you still choose to move forward?**
After the questions, no signature, no source coordinates—only a concise addendum, translated as: "—Responding to the 'Spark.' Looking forward to meeting on the plains of thought."
A **Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale**. An existence capable of harnessing stellar-level energy and using it for superluminal information transmission. They had received the broadcast of "Project Prometheus," understood the civilizational stage and intent it contained, and then sent this "return gift."
No technology exchange, no display of power—only philosophical inquiries pointing straight to the core.
The conference room was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. Several top scientists opened their mouths, only to find their areas of expertise utterly useless before these questions. A sociologist attempted to apply existing ethical frameworks, immediately realizing their pale inadequacy. This was no longer a technical competition or power game between civilizations—this was... an examination? A qualification certification? Or perhaps, a soul-searching interrogation?
The news could not be concealed, nor needed to be. Through official channels of the **String Light Research Institute**, the seven questions and their background were made public as clearly and accurately as possible.
Instantly, the entirety of human society—from the highly developed intelligent cities of the **New Continent**, to the revitalizing settlements in Earth's reconstruction zones, to scientific outposts and resource frontier stations scattered throughout the solar system—plunged into an unprecedented, civilization-wide intellectual storm.
Global networks were instantly flooded with massive amounts of discussion. Initially, there was shock, confusion, even some offended indignation. Some voices questioned whether this was some kind of prank, or a publicity stunt orchestrated by the **String Light Research Institute** itself. But soon, as more technical details were disclosed and authoritative institutions confirmed the authenticity, a deeper, collective bewilderment began to permeate.
People were accustomed to answering "how" questions—how to build, how to compute, how to heal, how to arrive. But faced with these ultimate inquiries of "why" and "what is," the scientific rationality, economic logic, and social norms supporting modern civilization seemed to suddenly lose their footing.
Artists attempted to interpret these questions through painting, music, and holographic imagery, yet often ended their works with more questions than answers. Philosophers and theologians received unprecedented attention; ancient classics were reopened, new schools of thought sprouted like bamboo shoots after rain, arguing fiercely yet unable to convince one another. Ordinary people, in streets and alleys, virtual communities, and at family dinner tables, also began clumsily yet sincerely discussing consciousness, meaning, love, and death—grand themes normally obscured by trivial daily life.
The **"meaning deficiency syndrome"** that had once spread across the **New Continent** seemed to be injected with an extremely potent, even painful catalyst. What had been merely individual emptiness and confusion was now elevated to a height the entire civilization must collectively face—a matter of existential legitimacy.
Xiuxiu sent back observation reports from Earth's reconstruction zones. She found that even people focused on concrete restoration work in harsh environments began spontaneously gathering during breaks, using the most simple language to discuss the seven questions. An old engineer pointed at the soil slowly turning green again and asked: "We're bringing it back to life, but for what? Just for it to 'exist'? Or for... some kind of 'beauty' that we ourselves haven't fully figured out?"
Mozi stood in his office at the highest point of the **New Continent**, gazing through the massive observation window at the miracle city below—constructed by human wisdom, still functioning efficiently. The city remained gleaming, but he could sense an intangible, profound tremor spreading through its foundations. This was not panic, not chaos, but rather... a collective contemplation, a forced clarity that came from examining oneself from the outside, slightly uncomfortable yet sobering.
He did not attempt to guide public opinion, nor rush to organize official teams to "answer" these questions. He keenly realized this was not an academic defense requiring immediate standard answers. It was more like a ritual—a civilization turning from its focus on external survival and development toward profound introspection, attempting to understand its true position in the cosmos... a **"coming-of-age ceremony."**
A civilization, perhaps, only truly begins to emerge from its infancy and move toward maturity when it is no longer merely satisfied with "how" to survive and expand, but begins seriously and painfully to ask "why" it survives and "what kind" of existence it is. Technology can accelerate, wealth can accumulate, but this collective reflection on the nature of existence cannot be skipped, cannot be replaced—it must be collectively experienced by every individual in the civilization, through the pangs of the soul.
He saw the debates, the confusion, and also the unprecedented intellectual sparks and creativity bursting forth from that confusion. He saw people attempting to interpret consciousness from the perspective of quantum mechanics, others redefining love through ecological symbiosis theory, still others searching for tragic reasons for civilization's forward movement under the laws of thermodynamics. There were no unified answers, but the process of thinking itself was already quietly changing the texture of civilization.
Yue'er contacted him. Her voice came through the communicator, carrying a trace of exhaustion but also an unusual brightness: "The questions they ask... are deeper than we imagined. This isn't provocation, it's... an invitation. An invitation for us to enter a higher-dimensional realm of dialogue. Our 'Project Prometheus' sent out the spark of rationality; what they return is... philosophical light that illuminates the boundaries of reason."
Mozi deeply agreed. He recalled human history itself—the identity confusion and existential anxiety individuals experienced during adolescence, often indispensable phases for personality maturation. Now, the entirety of human civilization seemed to be undergoing a similar phase, magnified countless times.
"We don't need to rush to provide a perfect, unified answer," Mozi expressed to the core team of the Research Institute, and through public channels to the world. "What matters is that we are thinking, that we dare to face these questions, that we are willing to dialogue with one another and explore together in confusion. This process of thinking, this ritual of collective introspection, is itself our most sincere and powerful preliminary response to these inquiries. We are undergoing our civilization's **'coming-of-age ceremony,'** and the core of this ceremony is not coronation, but self-examination."
He ordered the **String Light Cloud Brain** to open dedicated computing and storage space, establishing a global shared platform called **"Civilization Echo,"** to non-judgmentally archive all personal reflections, artistic creations, and academic discussions about the seven questions—whether in the form of rigorous papers, immature sketches, or voice diaries filled with confusion.
Once opened, the platform was immediately flooded by surging information streams. There were complex models from top scientists, misty poems from poets, strange crayon drawings about "love" by children, simple summaries of life's meaning from the elderly... This was the soul of a civilization, exposing itself without reservation, chaotically yet vibrantly alive.
Mozi knew that the advanced civilization which sent the questions might be quietly observing all this from some distant node in spacetime. What they wanted to see, perhaps, was not some standard answer, but the courage to think, the depth of emotion, and that stubborn vitality that refuses to stop exploring even in bewilderment—qualities that human civilization would display when facing the interrogation of existential essence.
This **"coming-of-age ceremony"** had no distinguished guests, yet it seemed as if the entire universe were the audience. Human civilization, this young species that had just learned to toddle within its stellar system, was being forced to confront the most ancient philosophical questions and attempt to give an answer belonging to "humanity" in its own way. This process might be long and filled with pain, but it also nurtured the possibility of true civilizational transcendence beyond all previous technological breakthroughs. Mozi stood before the window, with no answer in his heart, only a quiet confidence: whatever the final answer might be, a civilization that had undergone this baptism would no longer be the same civilization. It was growing.