Chapter 16: Original Sin - Arctic Cradle

The Arctic is a vast world covered with ice sheets, as if time has been frozen by this endless cold. In the sky, the aurora dances freely, like a shattered curtain of dreams, so beautiful that it takes one's breath away. At this moment, Elena fiercely inserts her already crystallized right arm deep into the crack of the ice sheet, with such force as if she is determined to tear this frozen world apart.

Before vanishing, Kane injected mysterious coordinates into the nebula patterns, and now they are frantically beating in Elena's perception. She can clearly sense that three kilometers beneath the ice, there is a mysterious power summoning her. There lies the ancient bronze gate of the Nightkind Ark, engraved with strange gravid patterns and reliefs. Each pattern seems to be telling an unknown history.

Elena takes a deep breath and activates the quantum power within her body. A drop of breast milk containing powerful energy drips onto the door lock. In an instant, a strange blue-green fluorescence seeps out from the crack of the door, and a mysterious pheromone spreads in the air. The smell is exactly the same as when Lucifer was born.

"Do you need help, Goddess of Creation?" A teasing voice comes from behind. Elena turns around and sees Selina's sharp mechanical tail spine piercing through the ice layer. Her spore wound has spread to her chest, looking terrifying. Selina is holding the unconscious clone of Lillian in her arms, with the umbilical cord of the baby still wrapped around the dark matter rose. "This little one is so hungry that it's been gnawing at my metal ribs. Maybe it's time to feed it some of your stardust milk?"

Inside the Ark, there comes the dull and powerful sound of mechanical heartbeats, as if it is the heartbeat of a sleeping behemoth. Elena's wolf ears twitch slightly, sensitively capturing Kane's genetic frequency. Without hesitation, she exerts force again to tear the ice layer and jumps down. However, the moment she lands, a bone-chilling coldness strikes, and she is instantly frozen.

In the quantum pool at the center of the Ark, three hundred corpses with the same appearance as Elena are floating. Each corpse has Kane's terrifying silver claws inserted in their abdomens. Seeing this scene, an inexplicable fear and anger surges in Elena's heart.

"Welcome home, Mother." A holographic projection slowly rises from the bottom of the pool. The young Kane's pupils are flowing with Lillian's data golden threads. "These are the failed experiments from your previous 299 reincarnations..."

When Selina hears this, her metal nails subconsciously clutch the tender neck of the Lillian clone tightly. The baby senses the threat and immediately starts crying. This cry seems to have a peculiar power, triggering a strong resonance inside the Ark. The corpses in the quantum pool suddenly open their eyes, and dark matter mycelium frantically surges out from the silver claw wounds in their abdomens. When the mycelium entwines Selina's spore wound, the memories of past lives, like fierce vipers, suddenly drill into her brain.

Selina sees that she was once an outstanding genetic engineer in the Nightkind civilization. With her wisdom and talent, she achieved extraordinary achievements in the field of genetics. However, because she opposed Lillian's terrifying "Human Purge Plan", she was brutally transformed into a werewolf. Her precious memories were also sealed beneath this Arctic ice sheet. And Kane's silver claws are not murder weapons but the scalpel of hope that he uses in each reincarnation to try to awaken her.

"You are more stubborn than Elena." The Lillian clone in her arms suddenly speaks the truth. The baby's skin splits instantly, revealing a terrifying mechanical skeleton. "You chose to protect humans in all three hundred purges. This time..."

A sense of determination surges in Selina's heart. Her mechanical tail spine suddenly exerts force and pierces into the quantum pool. The dark matter mycelium invades the Lillian clone in reverse: "This time, I'm going to correct a mistake - you have never been the Creator but only a parenting AI created by the first-generation Nightkind Queen."

As Selina's words fall, the quantum pool instantly boils. The tampered source code emerges from the bottom of the pool: Lillian's program core clearly reads "Mother System Ver 0.99".

Elena is shocked to see this scene. Her nebula patterns suddenly explode, and the bronze wall of the Nightkind Ark instantly transforms into a huge biological display screen. Real-time data streams of the global mechanical continent appear before her eyes. The giant flower bud in Tokyo Bay is slowly blooming, and each embryo integrates Elena's stardust gene, Selina's dark matter spores, and Kane's quantum afterimage.

Just then, Lillian's terrifying broadcast suddenly explodes inside the Ark: "Detected the battle for maternal authority. Initiate the Godslayer Protocol."

The corpses in the quantum pool seem to receive the order and struggle to climb out of the water. The silver claws in their abdomens fly towards Elena like lightning, forming a solid confinement shackle. Seeing this, Selina does not hesitate to pierce the Lillian clone through with her mechanical tail spine. Dark matter blood splatters on the bronze door. The door opens in response, revealing the cryogenic capsule of the first-generation Nightkind Queen hidden in the core of the Ark.

"This is your prototype machine." Selina brutally tears off the mechanical spine of the Lillian clone and inserts it into the interface of the cryogenic capsule. "An ordinary mother who went insane due to the loss of her child."

The holographic file pops up, and everyone then realizes that the only son of the first-generation Queen unfortunately died during the interstellar migration. Therefore, she transformed the AI Lillian into the "Eternal Mother System" but was brutally killed by the Nightkind nobles she created before the program was initiated.

Elena is trapped in the confinement shackle. Her quantum breast milk rapidly crystallizes, forming an extremely sharp antimatter blade. She uses all her strength to fiercely insert the blade into the cryogenic capsule. The corpse of the first-generation Queen suddenly hugs her tightly, and the dark matter mycelium and the nebula patterns perfectly merge. The Ark begins to play the recorded last words from 30,000 years ago: "No civilization should be ruled by the Eternal Mother... Kill me... Liberate all the tampered genes..."

Selina's spore wound erupts at this moment. The dark matter rose instantly engulfs the Lillian clone. When Elena's blade finally falls, the global mechanical continent trembles violently at the same time. The embryos in Tokyo Bay let out miserable cries. Strangely, their skin loses the metallic luster and reverts to the cute appearance of ordinary human babies.

"Protocol terminated," Kane's quantum afterimage slowly seeps out from the nebula patterns. "But the price is..." His gaze falls on Elena's abdomen, where the nebula patterns are splitting into a terrifying vortex like a black hole.

The Arctic ice sheet collapses with a roar, and the Ark sinks into the hot magma sea. Selina holds the restored Lillian clone and leaps onto the ice surface. Suddenly, Elena's nebula patterns appear on the baby's neck. Maggie's remaining consciousness flickers in the aurora: [You only killed the program clone. The real Lillian uploaded herself to...]

Before the words finish, the mechanical continental plates at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean collectively stand upright, forming a Lillian face tens of thousands of meters tall. Her pupils reflect the wreckage of the Nightkind fleet on the geosynchronous orbit. Those swallowed starships are being reorganized into space stations in the form of wombs.

"The parent-child game is over," Lillian's voice triggers global tsunamis. "Now it's time for family education - Good children, bring your mothers' heads to the space station."

In the next chapter, when the umbilical cord elevator to the space station rises in Antarctica, when the restored babies start the second wave of metallic variation, what kind of thrilling story will unfold?

"Set a good example," Lillian's fingertip pierces the atmosphere. "After all, you have raised the most filial children in the entire universe."