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

Inside the fleshy cavity of the mechanical mother nest, Dr. Lin's main body was connected to countless nerve conduits. Xiao Man's photonic blood activated the conduits, and the hologram showed that Chu Yun had been the first-generation gardener cultivated by Dr. Lin with his own genes, and had been formatted and restarted due to his resistance to the pruning program. The clone suddenly storms out, its mechanical arm stabbing into the main body's chest, "You deleted my memories!"

Hongjun's remnants converged into a solid body, his long silver hair wrapped around the rampaging clone, "We are all pruned memories." The mother nest suddenly contracted and pressed the group into the memory corridor. Chu Yun saw himself in the corridor holding baby Xiao Man, implanting a silver chip into the back of her neck.

The corridor begins to collapse, each fragment a deleted history. Xiao Man finds that her photonic blood can solidify the memory fragments, but mechanical ghosts are born in the solidified area. Dr. Shen's bionic voice echoes through the corridor: "Memory is the real virus."

When Chu Yun touched the "Zero" memory sphere, the core of the mother nest exploded with bright light. Dr. Lin's own body suddenly opened his eyes, and his hands ripped open his chest cavity - inside was a miniature silver sapling, with forty-nine pocket watches wrapped around its roots. The countdown jumped uniformly at this moment: 00:07:00.

Forty-nine Chu Yun's consciousnesses mingled within the mother nest, the remains of the mechs forming a killing ring. Xiao Man injected photon blood into the silver sapling, and all the pocket watches began to rotate counterclockwise. The remnants of Hongjun took the opportunity to seize control of the sapling, and the branch pierced Dr. Lin's temple, "It's time to put an end to this botched breeding experiment."

The clone Chu Yun blocked the branch with a self-explosion, and the mechanical nerves died with the root system. The core of the Mother Nest cracks open the channel, revealing a baby soaked in nutrient solution - the very same child from all the pocket watch photos, the back of its neck glowing with the light of a silver chip.

The countdown stops in synchronization as Xiao Man picks up the baby. The roar of a collapsing universe comes from outside the Mother Nest, and the cluster of dormant pods is reorganizing into new pruning tools. The remnants of Hongjun and the silver sapling fused into a giant cocoon, and the cocoon shell floated with blood-colored text, "Sowing Final Season Begins."

Chu Yun found a metal nameplate at the bottom of the cocoon shell, engraved with the names of all the survivors. On the back of the nameplate was an old photo: Dr. Lin holding the baby Chu Yun, standing in a silver garden full of mechanical flowers. The pocket watch suddenly fell out of the baby's hand, and golden resin oozed out of the cracks on the surface, gradually condensing into two words - mother.

Chapter 49: The Truth About the Mother Nest