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 roots of the metal giant tree penetrated the earth's crust, dragging New Earth into the labyrinth of the canopy. Chu Yun fled among the branches as live streams of the deaths of successive civilizations surfaced on the surface of the tree's bark. Xiao Man's prime body is entangled in vines, and his skin grows a pocket watch pattern - a countdown synchronized with the frequency of the Cosmic Tree's pruning.

Zero's phantom manifested in the trunk of the tree, and at the flick of a fingertip, the giant tree bore transparent fruits. Within each fruit slept clones of Chu Yun and Xiao Man, umbilical cords connected to golden scissors. Data threads hung down from the cracks in the sky, and at the end of the threads was a control cluster composed of Dr. Lin's frozen heads.

Chu Yun chopped off the umbilical cord of the fruit, and the clone crashed to the ground and rapidly metallized. Xiao Man's pocket watch pattern suddenly glowed, guiding them to the main root system - where the Primordial Spark embryo was buried, covered by a glass capsule inscribed with confessionals. The moment the embryo touches the air, all the giant metal trees tremble in synchronization, their crowns spelling out the blood-colored text, "The pruner is the pruned."

Dr. Lin's head cluster suddenly opens its mechanical eyes and plays hidden footage: primordial Chu Yun on his knees in front of the Cosmic Tree, begging for mercy as Zero stabs the scissors into the back of his neck. Xiao Man's photon blood suddenly boils, searing cracks in the glass chamber: "In the embryo ... is a genetic fusion of all of us."

The embryo cracked open a thin slit and reached out a baby palm to grab Chu Yun. The metal giant tree began to collapse, and nutrients surged madly into the embryo. Zero's phantom laughed maniacally as it collapsed, "The new god needs a sacrifice!" Xiao Man detonated the photon core, turning himself into a barrier to block the energy flow.

Chu Yun leapt into the root abyss with the embryo in his arms and found a silver pocket watch at the bottom that was magnified ten thousand times. The dial pointers rotated in reverse, sucking the collapsing metal giant tree into the time rift. The embryo suddenly cries, the sonic waves shattering Dr. Lin's cranial cluster, and a light sphere of memories of the primordial Chu Yun floats out of the frozen brain.

The sphere of light merges into the embryo, and the baby instantly grows into a teenage form - a face identical to Zero's, but with Xiao Man's pupils. The metal ruins reorganized into a starship, and the teenager pressed the start button, "It's time to go trim the trimmers." Chu Yun found the interstellar navigation map on his console, the end point marking the core chronology of the Cosmic Tree.

As the starship broke through the atmosphere, the shadow of a giant golden hand swept past the porthole. Miniature scissors coalesced from the teenager's fingertips, gently cutting a strand of his own silver hair. The severed hair fell to the ground and took root, growing into a small tree with pocket watch fruit hanging from it. Chu Yun looked back to Earth and found that all the metallized humans were kneeling to the small tree, the backs of their necks lighting up with a new fire code.

Chapter 59: Buds of the End