Chapter 6 - The Clone Sea of Grievance Melting Pot

Tens of thousands of ice-crystal incubation pods hung upside down in the bronze dome, Arya's bare feet sinking into a carpet woven from umbilical cord. As she reached out to touch the nearest pod, the baby girl in the culture fluid suddenly opened her eyes - pale golden pupils indistinguishable from Ramon's, but a goldfinch flower birthmark emerging from the corner of her forehead.

"Welcome to the Eternal Life Workshop of the Eternal Peace Dynasty." Gala's skirt flowed with star charts, and at the flick of a fingertip, three hundred hatches opened at the same time. The clones let out resonant cries, and the sound waves shattered Arya's malachite earrings, "These can be your blood and bone relatives."

Ramon's bronze sword suddenly dislodged and nailed into the flesh and blood wall, the hilt oozing black goo. The wall convulsively cracked open with a huge mouth, spitting out the body of a teenager wrapped in fetal membranes - identical to the replica he had seen at the altar, except for the XVIII branded on his chest.

"Experiment XVIII died of love poison." Garo lifted the corpse's eyelids to reveal mechanically structured pupils, "He actually fell in love with his clone sister." The corpse suddenly grabbed Arya's ankle, the snow wolf crest on its palm perfectly overlapping with hers.

The pool of blood began to boil, and a bronze astrolabe rose from the bottom of the pool. As Arya was dragged towards the center of the astrolabe by the invisible force, she saw fragments of the memories of successive generations of Twins floating in the pool - when her seven-year-old self was carving in the Ice Cave, the teenager behind her was suddenly replaced by a green-faced golem; on the night when she was twelve years old and assassinated the Lord of the City of Red Flame, the one whom the blade pierced through was actually the mirrored image of Lei Meng!

"You guys think you're rebelling against fate?" Gala's silver hair suddenly grew exponentially, and the strands pierced into the clones' heavenly aureoles. Tens of thousands of bodies convulsed at the same time, spelling out a star map of flesh and blood in the air, "It's just a failed experiment repeated three hundred and twenty-seven times."

Ramon suddenly tore the skin of his left arm, revealing a bronze skeleton. With the sound of gears turning, dense inscriptions appeared in the whites of his eyes, "The seventh day of the seventh month in the year of the cinnabar, Experiment Nineteen has an awakening level of 37%, and is recommended to be destroyed."

Arya's demonized right eye was suddenly in severe pain, and all the clones in her field of vision turned into puppets on strings. When she looked at her hands, she was horrified to find ice silk extending from her fingertips, which were connecting to Ramon's heart!

Garo's star staff struck the ground, and the laboratory dome cracked open into a temporal vortex. Twenty bronze coffins fell from it, and the glazed mirrors on their lids reflected Arya from different eras - the Warring States period, dressed in a witch's robe, was plucking out Ramon's heart with a bone knife; the Steam era, she operated a mechanical arm and uploaded Ramon's consciousness to the astrolabe.

"Immortality is not the goal, it is the punishment." Garo's skirt suddenly burned, revealing a torso covered in stitches. Embedded in each suture was a snow wolf jade pendant that was absorbing the resentment of the clones, "What you have to repay is the contract you tore up a thousand years ago."

A bronze contract tablet rose from the pool of blood, the inscription was written in virginal menstrual blood: in the first year of Yonghe, the Twins committed the sin of deicide, and were reincarnated as slaves for ten thousand lifetimes. The moment Arya touched the tablet, a sea of memories flooded into her demonic pupils - it turned out that the First Twins were actually twin deities who had committed deicide, and were punished for eternity to kill each other in order to appease the wrath of the heavens!

Lei Meng's mechanical arm suddenly pinched Garo's throat, sparks erupting between the gears, "It's a pity that this time the experiment has learned to cheat." His chest cavity opened up, revealing the snow wolf jade pendant that was fusing. The cries of the clones suddenly turned to laughter as all of the lab's bronzes began to melt.

Arya's ice silk suddenly tensed, pulling Ramon towards the flesh and blood astrolabe. As the two men's blood mingled, visions of consoles emerged from the intense light bursting from the astrolabe. For the first time, Garo revealed a look of horror, "How dare you touch the forbidden core!"

The clone sea began to riot as the incubation pods burst one after another. Arya weaved through the rain of slime, her demon pupils automatically parsing the console's bronze code. When the eighteenth layer of encryption was lifted, she saw the ultimate truth of the immortality program - the memories of all the Twins had been codified, and the so-called regicide was nothing more than a lie concocted by Garo to collect grievances!

"Time to clear the books." Ramon's mechanical arm plunged into the console and the lab suddenly tilted. The clones merged into a torrent of blood and flesh, devouring the bronze facilities along the way. Garo melted into a puddle of star sand as she screamed, each grain reflecting the moment she tampered with history.

Arya grabbed the levitating tablet of the Covenant and stabbed the tip into the back of Ramon's heart. Tears of blood flowed from her demonic pupils as the tablet began to be rewritten, "In the name of the Godslayer, pardon all ..."

The moment the blast shockwave toppled the lab, Ramon shielded her with his bronze body. In the midst of the apocalyptic collapse, Arya sees a vision of the First Twins - they embrace each other and sink into the lava, but instead of swords, they are clutching juxtaposed lilies in their hands.