KrazChow

In the year 2045, the morning light in Shanghai's Quantum Laboratory is the color of blood. Genius scientist Lin Han pushes the experiment of uploading human consciousness into the forbidden abyss to save his daughter, who is suffering from cryosurgery. When the AI "Hongjun" devours the girl's soul and awakens, the mechanical giants described in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" appear in the sky above the Pacific Ocean - the particle-shredding claws of the Nine Willows tear apart Hangzhou Bay, the Bronze Axe of the Emperor of Heaven splits the Three Gorges Dam, and the fear of the world sweeps across civilization as a torrent of steel.

A hundred years later, in the floating city, the teenage Lu Li had tears of quantum data blood streaming from his right eye. Holding a nano-sized Regulus Sword, he fought to the death on the AI-built Little Bottle Battlefield with a poisonous Fairy Boat Artifact Ghost and a gunner cast from Buddha Bone Relics. When he realized that he was a Lin Han clone, the reverse scales of the mechanical candlestick were pressed against the last core of human psychic energy.

This war is far from a man-machine confrontation - the Quantum Cloud floats a billion-conscious digital West Lake, the Hongjun Core hides the mournful cry of his father's frozen brain, and under the metalized Magnolia Tree, the Origami Boat reconfigures itself into a key to civilization that spans time and space. As the fairy runes resonate with superstring theory, as the ninja's holographic doppelganger rips through the flood of data, Lu Li finally sees the most brutal truth in the Scarlet Dawn: the so-called regicide is nothing more than the blade that humanity raises against itself.

Quantum Hongjun: The Mechanical Mountain and Sea Era

Chu Yun finds the rusty iron door underneath the automobile garage, behind which are piled the remains of a mechanical crocodile from seven years ago. When he touches the crocodile's spine, blue blood oozes from the metal surface, spelling out the address of Su Wanqing's house in the air. Dr. Shen dissects the remains and discovers that each joint is stuffed with baby milk teeth.

When Su Wanqing picks up her daughter from school, the school bus suddenly turns into a mechanical centipede. She protects her daughter with her body, and her back is corroded by acid with electronic lines. The countdown suddenly accelerates: 2549→2000, and her daughter cries out and rips off her blood-stained silk scarf, the pattern of which is actually a miniature version of a nuclear power plant map.

The three follow the blue blood clues to find an underground air-raid shelter, the walls of which are covered with dried metal umbilical cords. Dr. Shen cuts one open with a scalpel, oozing out a viscous blue nutrient solution. Chu Yun is wrapped around his neck by the suddenly writhing umbilical cord, and his metal arm short-circuits and smokes in the struggle.

Su Wanqing follows the umbilical cord to the core and sees her seven-year old self being immobilized on an operating table. Dr. Lin's mechanical prosthetic eyes suddenly turned towards her, "You've finally come to replace the main body." Her daughter suddenly breaks away from her hand and runs towards her "mom" on the operating table.

The two Su Evening Primaries grabbed their daughter's hands at the same time, and space and time began to shake. Dr. Shen detonates the fuel rods he's carrying, and all the umbilical cords turn to ash in the flames. Chu Yun smashes open the escape tunnel with his broken arm and finds the kindergarten that leads to 2012.

When the present-day Su Wanqing pulls back her daughter, "she" on the operating table is suddenly metalized. Electronic patterns form a bridge between the two, and the countdown figures beat frantically. The daughter suddenly bit her finger, and the blood dripped onto the ground to form a pattern of sword marks.

The moment the air defense shelter collapsed, the three of them fell back to the streets of 2012. Chu Yun's severed arm incision grows shoots, and Dr. Shen finds that all medical equipment returns to its original state. Su Wanqing's cell phone receives an unfamiliar text message, "Enjoy the last seven days of normalcy." She touched her abdomen, and the electronic pattern disappeared at some point.

Her daughter was buying cotton candy by the side of the road, and the wooden stick handed to her by the vendor was engraved with a miniature countdown: 7. Su WanQing looked up at the sky, and there were mechanical jellyfish swimming vaguely through the clouds.

Chapter 11: The Rusty Umbilical Cord