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's warnings were flooded with golden resin as the Federation starfield turned into an amber world. Xiao Man traveled through the solidified wreckage of the fleet, photon blood etching channels in the resin. Giant scissors still grow in the cracks of the hatchlings, the blades reflecting countless images of the cut universe. Pieces of the Silver Ghost (formerly the remnants of the Hongjun) suddenly come together, forming navigational arrows pointing towards the core of the scissors.

The ground survivors began to crystallize and resin veins grew under their skin. Chu Yun's mecha was cocooned in resin, and the neural connection system forced the Master Controller's message to play, "Pruning is for a more beautiful bloom."

Xiao Man dissolves the resin cocoon with photonic blood and discovers that Chu Yun's mech arm has assimilated with the scissor energy. The silver ghost's arrow guided them to the energy node - it was actually Dr. Lin's pocket watch from back in the day, and at the moment the dial turned into a miniature scissors projection. As the pocket watch touches the seedling cracks, Dr. Lin's voice resounds throughout the Federation: "Time is the best gardener."

The remains of Dr. Shen's bionic body suddenly activated, coalescing resin into battle armor. His chest cracked open, revealing the core of a silver sapling, "You are nothing more than the waste branches I pruned away." Chu Yun used his assimilated mechanical arm to assault the core, but was entangled in the resin and hung upside down at the edge of the crack.

Xiao Man jumps into the rift and sees a temporal corridor inside the scissors: each room is a turning point in the Federation's history. Pieces of the Silver Ghost spell armor to help her break through the time trap. In the lab on the night before the nuclear explosion, she meets young Dr. Shen who is injecting embryos with a silver liquid - the very precursor to resin.

When Xiao Man is about to stop the injection, the Time Guard shows up: a fusion of the Mechanical Beast and the Dark Star Remnant. Chu Yun hits the rift with his mech in the outside world, and the shattered chunks of resin are transformed into weapons in the space-time corridor. Xiao Man seizes the syringe and stabs it into the guard's core, and the entire corridor begins to crumble.

The giant scissors outside the rift suddenly stalled, and the resin amber of the Federation Starfield cracked. Chu Yun breaks free and grips the scissor blade with his mechanical arm. The shards of the Silver Ghost converge into a spear of light, which Xiao Man hurls at the core of Dr. Shen. In the explosion, the pocket watch transforms into a key inserted into the seedling's roots.

When the glare clears, the hatchling cracks into a stargate. The sound of mechanical gears emanated from the door, and a giant clock could be seen turning in the void. Chu Yun dug out half of a golden pointer from the ruins, with unfamiliar text engraved on the end, "Pruning Record: 49th Reincarnation."

Chapter 46: The Light of the Rift