Chapter 10: Neon Ghosts in the Frozen Labyrinth

Deep in the elevator shaft of the Tokyo Tower, a strange and eerie atmosphere pervaded. Elena stood in front of a huge glass chamber, looking at the clone of Cain immersed in the green culture fluid, a complex mix of emotions surging within her.

The clone's chest cavity was open, the interface of the mechanical heart exposed, and the code "NT - 00 - β" on the neck glistened with a cold sheen under the dim light. When Elena's fingertip gently touched the glass chamber, the originally quiet clones seemed to be triggered by some mechanism. All three hundred clones opened their eyes simultaneously, and a cold electronic voice resonated wildly in the enclosed space: "Mother is watching you."

Elena shuddered all over. Just then, Maggie's crow flew over like a black lightning bolt, with Cain's relic chip in its beak. Elena quickly took the chip and inserted it into the console. In an instant, a dazzling holographic map burst into view. Seven twinkling light spots radiated from the South Pole across the globe, and finally, they all converged on the undersea temple in Tokyo Bay.

The virtual image of the Nightborne Queen slowly seeped out from the map. But this time, her face turned out to be a combination of Selena's and Elena's, both eerie and shocking. "In three hours, the tide will submerge this tower," Maggie shouted urgently as she desperately fixed the trembling floor with an ice pick. "Lillian is using the Tokyo geothermal veins as an altar. She wants to resurrect the real..."

Before she could finish, the deafening sound of the elevator cable breaking suddenly rang out, interrupting Maggie. The clones, as if going crazy, suddenly smashed through the chamber, their mechanical claws lunging at Elena, tearing her protective suit in an instant. Just as the sharp mechanical claws were about to touch the thorny pattern on Elena's chest, they suddenly froze. The leading clone's pupils flashed the unique gray - green color of Cain, and it managed to utter a few words with great difficulty: "Run... She planted something in your blood..."

Before it could finish, the clone's head suddenly exploded with a "bang," and countless nanobots instantly formed Lillian's hideous face in the air: "The surprise party is about to begin, daughter."

Selena slowly regained consciousness in the ice cave in Hokkaido. The bone - chilling cold instantly enveloped her. She was horrified to find that the crystallization had spread to her left atrium, and the memory virus of the Nightborne Queen was frantically rewriting her DNA. On the ice wall, her semi - human, semi - mechanical body was reflected. Her right arm was a terrifying fusion of bone spurs and metal, and her left eye had turned into a sensor made of blood moonstone, flickering with an eerie red light.

"Do you like your new look?" Lillian's cold and mocking voice came from the crystal.紧接着, the real - time battle situation of the Tokyo Tower was refracted in the ice layer. "Elena is about to kill the last thing that resembles Cain, and you... are about to lose even your hatred."

A sense of determination welled up in Selena. Her mechanical claw suddenly stabbed into her crystallized heart, and she forcefully pulled out the assimilating virus core. She pressed the core hard into the ice wall. In an instant, the coordinate data of the queen's coffin spread on the ice wall like blood vessels. "You made a mistake," Selena gritted her teeth, chewing the crystal at the corner of her mouth, the smell of blood mixing with the pungent smell of engine oil. "You shouldn't have let me see how you sealed the real Nightborne Queen... into the nuclear reactor three hundred years ago."

Elena's bat - like wings sliced through the surging waves of the Pacific Ocean like a sharp blade. At the same time, Selena's mechanical bone wings penetrated the dome of the temple. The two confronted each other on both sides of the altar. However, what was suspended in the center of the altar was not the queen's coffin, but a quantum coffin engraved with antimatter runes.

Lillian's virtual image slowly emerged from the surface of the coffin. She gently stretched out her finger and pointed at Elena and Selena's chests respectively, and sneered coldly: "The essence of the Nightborne power is controlled nuclear fusion, and you... are my fuel rods."

As soon as the words fell, the temple began to collapse violently, and the terrifying gravitational field crazily distorted space - time. The thorny pattern on Elena's chest and Selena's crystallized area unexpectedly produced a strange quantum entanglement. At this moment, Cain's clone suddenly rushed out from the darkness like a ghost, and the countdown on the mechanical heart began to beat frantically, mercilessly locking onto the two: [Mutual - annihilation Protocol Initiated: 00:03:00]

"He is not only a clone of Cain," Lillian's laughter echoed in the temple, causing a violent shock. "He is also a... child cultivated with the genes of both of you."

Elena's wolf - like claws stopped in front of the clone's throat, and Selena's bone spurs also pressed against the back of Elena's heart. The blood of the three intertwined frantically in this terrifying quantum field. At this moment, the Nightborne Queen's coffin slowly emerged from the void. But the coffin was empty, with only a line of shocking blood words: [The real vessel is the future]

"You've been tricked," Maggie's voice came from the depths of the sea. Then, her crystal ball exploded into a shower of stardust with a "boom." "Lillian doesn't want resurrection at all. She wants to trigger nuclear fusion through your emotional conflicts and reshape the timeline!"

As if making a sudden decision, the clone suddenly hugged Elena, using his body to block Selena's bone spurs. His mechanical heart burst out with a dazzling light, and the quantum coffin began to frantically absorb Lillian's virtual image: "Mom... this time... I'll protect you..."

The undersea temple instantly evaporated in the blinding white light, and Elena and Selena were washed onto the dock of Tokyo Bay by the surging tide. Elena slumped on the ground, tightly holding the broken piece of the clone's mechanical heart in her hand, on which a new coordinate flashed: the Himalayan Pulsar Observatory. And Selena was horrified to find that her crystallized area began to grow in reverse, and under her skin, Cain's DNA chain reaction diagram faintly emerged.

Maggie's crow's corpse drifted slowly with the tide, and in its claws, it tightly grasped a blood - stained note: "They are not children but time anchors. Kill Cain's clone, or July 24, 2024, will be the end of human civilization."

Deep in the South Pacific Ocean, the Nightborne Queen's coffin was frantically absorbing nuclear leakage substances, and on the surface of the coffin, Lillian's gloomy face gradually emerged...

 next chapter, when the Himalayan pulsar aims at Tokyo Bay, and when Selena's body begins to conceive Cain's genetic seeds; Lillian whispers in the aurora: "What you're carrying is not a child, but a button to restart civilization."