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

The Federation fleet assembled at the edge of the universe indicated by the coordinates, a wall of light stretching infinitely before them. Photonic veins pulsed under Xiao Man's newborn skin, each step sending ripples through the void. Chu Yun modified the mech to add dimensional resonators, but found that the nerves of the mechanical arm resonated with the wall of light out of pain.

The dormant pod teenager suddenly awoke, his pupils reflecting the scene behind the wall of light: countless bubble universes swaying on silver trees. When he touches Chu Yun's mech, the resonator automatically plays a recording of Dr. Shen: "Behind the door is the Creator's garden, and we are all pruned branches."

The moment the wall of light cracked open the passage, the fleet suffered a descending blow. The three-dimensional battleships were flattened into two-dimensional murals and plastered against the walls of the pure white corridor. Xiaoman's photonic blood formed a protective film and carried the survivors down into the incubation chamber - within which floated an embryonic projection of Earth, its umbilical cord attached to silver scissors.

The mechanical being who called himself the gardener manifested himself, holding pruning shears dripping with civilization debris, "Inferior nursery needs to be cleaned up." Chu Yun realized that the blade of the shears was engraved with the names of all the planets of the Federation, and that the umbilical cord of the infant Earth had been cut three times.

Xiao Man injected photonic blood into the Earth embryo, and the withered civilization's root system suddenly grew exponentially. The gardener's scissors become entangled in the root system, and pure white space begins to crumble. The dormant pod teenager takes the opportunity to connect to the main control system, and the Silver Tree projection shows that each pruned civilization has left a backup root system.

The remnants of the Hongjun resonated with the Silver Tree, and the Federation fleet recovered from the two-dimensional mural. Chu Yun raided the main control room with the root debris carried by his mech and discovered that the gardener proper was actually a Dr. Shen bionic magnified ten thousand times. The Earth embryo suddenly goes fetal, and the root system pierces the bionic's chest, oozing blue light plasma.

The Silver Tree blossoms and bears fruit under the nourishment of light plasma, and each fruit is a reborn civilization. The Gardener bionic body shatters into millions of pieces, embedding itself into each civilization's embryo to become a guardian program. The dormant pod teenager chooses to stay in the garden, transforming the pruning shears into seeders, "It is arrogance, not life, that should be pruned."

The Federation fleet returns home to find the wall of light at the edge of the universe turning into a mirror. Xiao Man saw his other self in the mirror raising the pruning shears, with the familiar fruits of the mechanical beasts hanging from the silver tree behind him. Chu Yun found a new message in his mech log, "Welcome to the Incubator Waiting List." The remnants of Hongjun laughed softly among the sea of stars as her body was growing silver branches and buds.

Chapter 43: Out-of-Bounds Echo