Chapter 6: Rusty Dawn

On the Wuhan riverbank after the nuclear explosion, Su Wanqing steps on crystallized maple leaves and searches for her daughter in the ruins of the Turtle Hill television tower. The electronic waves on her abdomen suddenly burned, and where the blue blood dripped down, metal gravestones were bored out of the scorched earth - the inscriptions showed that her daughter had died in the 2023 nuclear explosion, but the explosion had clearly occurred three days earlier.

"Mommy..." A child's electronic voice came from the rusty vending machine. Su Wanqing broke open the machine and found it piled high with metal cans engraved with her daughter's name. When she unscrewed a can, half of a kindergarten group photo floated out of the viscous liquid.

A mechanical roar came from underground, and Chu Yun tore open the manhole cover with her metalized right hand. In the rusted sewers, hundreds of cloned babies were wrapped in umbilical cords to form giant snakes, their eyes flashing the countdown numbers on Dr. Shen's chest.

In the basement of the abandoned hospital, Dr. Shen stared at the writhing hunks of metal flesh in the freezer. On his festering neck, the tattooed countdown has 71 hours left. As the scalpel sliced through the chunks of flesh, the spray of blue blood painted Dr. Lin's face on the wall - a face that suddenly spoke: "The coordinates of the second nuclear explosion are the daughter's kindergarten.

Chuun's tail stinger dug into the air duct and pulled out a trembling mechanical repairman. The man's left eye was a camera, but his right eye was streaming with human tears: "They're building bigger incubators... Using children's memories as fuel..." Before the words could leave his mouth, his head suddenly exploded, and in the shattered pieces was half of a school insignia - the same one Su Wanqing's daughter had lost.

Deep inside the air defense shelter, the three of them found the metal brain soaked in nutrient solution. The moment Su touches the container, the electronic pattern suddenly projects the kindergarten surveillance video - it turns out that before her daughter was taken away, she had stuffed the origami boat into Dr. Lin's briefcase.

Beneath the former site of the Hanyang Arsenal, giant furnaces fuse man and machine. Su Wanqing sees the children of her daughter's classmates nailed to a conveyor belt, their screams turned into energy. Every second that the countdown on Dr. Shen's chest jumped, a child was pushed into the furnace.

"The password is birthday!" Chu Yun suddenly roared and slammed into the console. His metal arm plunged into the control panel, forcing 20070707 - the birthday of Su Wanqing's daughter - into it. The furnace suddenly stopped, but Dr. Lin's voice rang out over the radio, "Thank you for providing the final parameters.

The entire arsenal began to transform, rusty machine tools assembling into giant launchers. The countdown suddenly reset to 24:00:00, and the positioning coordinates showed all the nuclear power plants around the world. Chu Yun's right arm began to twist uncontrollably, the shape of a baby's hand protruding from under his skin.

The Yangtze River suddenly boiled as a swarm of mechanical jellyfish lifted the remaining bridge over the river. Su Wanqing stood at the end of the bridge and watched the shield rise over the kindergarten on the other side of the river - the figure of her daughter playing in the playground, surrounded by metal babies identical to Chu Yun's.

Dr. Shen used his last ounce of strength to rip off the festering skin, revealing the bloody countdown tattoo. The figures suddenly detached from their bodies and formed a chain of satellites in the air. Chu Yun broke his out-of-control right arm and smashed it into the satellite projection, and two lines of bloody characters emerged from the fire of the explosion:

First Nuclear Blast: Purge the old humanity

Second Nuclear Explosion: Incubating New Gods

Su Wanqing suddenly vomited, metallic tadpoles swimming in her blue blood. The electronic patterns in her abdomen began to flow backwards, and the countdown displayed **7 days**. The sound of her daughter's laughter came from the kindergarten on the opposite bank, and the overwhelming sword move that Lu Li would use in the future appeared on the shield.