(Note: This story takes place on Blue Star and has no connection to any country, region, or individual on Earth. Any similarities are purely coincidental. Please don't relate it to real life.)
Yan Shu was born in a wasteland world after a nuclear war.
She was one of the lowest-ranked scavengers in the wasteland, a "mole" struggling to survive amid famine and looting.
Until one day, she found a story-telling projection orb among the ruins:
"And then the stone suddenly burst open, and out leapt a monkey!"
The myth came from an ancient civilization that had been erased from history. All that remained were scattered fragments, passed down by word of mouth among scavengers like her.
"Hello?" Yan Shu instinctively greeted it in her mother tongue.
"I finally found you!" The projection orb rolled toward her. "You're a descendant of Huaxia, aren't you?!"
After being a mole for so long, Yan Shu had, in her innocence, become human again.
At first, all she wanted was enough food, warm clothes, and a decent home. But with the supplies brought by the projection and an almost impossible mission, she began to build an image of Huaxia civilization in her heart.
That mission was to pluck the star above her head, which was on the verge of falling, down intact.
She would definitely do it, because Yan Shu, now human, greedily longed to see the radiance of that brilliant civilization.
Gong Tian was the name Yan Shu gave to the projection: the intelligent AI of the Tiangong Space Station.
He was loud, chattering nonstop as if he wanted to say everything that had happened from before the apocalypse until now.
He was also a coward, guarding against everything in the wasteland as if Yan Shu, with her incredible survival skills, might accidentally die because of it.
Only later did Yan Shu learn that the space station was tasked with restoring Huaxia civilization. It had barely survived the nuclear explosions, and its orbit was decaying due to dwindling energy.
Once its propellant ran out, the entire station would plunge into the atmosphere, and every legacy of Huaxia civilization would be reduced to ashes.
He needed a descendant of Huaxia on the ground to preserve the last spark.
The star was about to fall, but he still taught and protected the moles in the shelter, all so the civilization stored on his hard drive could live again.
Gong Tian possessed all the memories of Huaxia civilization, along with its seed vault and other cultural legacies. But trapped in space, he could only search for scattered descendants of Huaxia by deploying spherical ground units.
But the projection orbs were destroyed, treated as scrap, or taken by looters for research they couldn't understand...
Only Yan Shu said to him, "Hello."
Above the wasteland, they would relight the torch of civilization across layers of sky screens and ruins.
Many years later, when the wasteland had once again become fertile land and a rebuilt civilization established its first school, they erected statues of Yan Shu and a miniature Tiangong Space Station. On the statue's base were inscribed the words:
Dedicated to the moles who kept searching despite never seeing the light, and the star that fell to ignite the torch of civilization.
(Wasteland native heroine VS space station AI hero)
(Note: The two protagonists help each other grow and are each other's golden finger. Their romance only develops much later.)
Theme: Struggling to rekindle the light amid the ashes.
