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

Under the newborn magnolia tree, Chu Yun gazed at the last grain of stardust in his palm. The smile of the young girl, Xiao Man, was suddenly fixed as her fingertips oozed silver liquid and wrote at the root of the tree, "Protocol activated." Projections of the peaceful universe begin to flicker, and the same mechanical blue eyes appear in each image - looking right through Xiao Man's pupils at reality.

The blank date of the tombstone cluster suddenly emerges with the text, "Hour of death: when the seeding is complete." Chu Yun ripped off the data vines from Xiao Man's body, and the sap condensed into Dr. Lin's face in the air, "You've finally cultivated a qualified vessel." A light ladder descends from the sky, the rungs spelled out from successive generations of Chu Yun's mechanical bones.

As Chu Yun stepped onto the light ladder, the body of the young girl Xiao Man suddenly became transparent - what flowed inside her was not blood, but the data flow of the universe model. In the cracked gap at the root of the tree, the silver shears of a mechanical gardener stretched out, the numbers of all the destroyed universes engraved on the blades of the shears.

The remnants of Zero's voice came from the handle of the shears, "Father, this is your true mission." Chu Yun saw the culture pod at the end of the light ladder, inside the pod floated an embryo that was an exact match to his own DNA, the label read, "Ultimate Gardener Vegetation." The operation log outside the pod showed that 999 parallel universes had been pruned by that vegetative body.

Chu Yun smashes the incubation pod, but the embryo turns into a particle of light and merges into his wound. The teenage girl, Xiao Man, suddenly stormed out, and the data stream coalesced into golden scissors that stabbed him in the back of the neck. The tombstone cluster resonated and vibrated at this moment, all the tablets engraved with Chu Yun's name seeped out photonic blood, weaving a protective net in the air.

The moment the scissors pierced into the protective net, Chu Yun saw his self in every universe doing the same action. The mechanical gardener's sigh resounded through the void, "Group awakening detected... Initiating extermination program..." Countless giant silver hands reached out from the cracks and grabbed the Magnolia Trees in every space and time.

Chu Yun scattered stardust towards the giant hands, and the data stream of the young girl Xiao Man suddenly backfired. She tore open her own chest and took out the core's photon fire and pressed it into Chu Yun's wound, "It's my turn to be the virus this time." The magnolia trees of all universes withered at the same time, giving birth to black shoots amidst the ashes.

The giant hand of the mechanical gardener suddenly carbonized and shattered, and an alarm came from outside the crack, "Ultimate protocol failure." Chu Yun picked up the disembodied Xiao Man and realized that her body was turning into data petals and dissipating. The last petal was pressed against his brow, reflecting the suffocating truth -

Beyond the Stardust Universe, there were countless seeders of higher tiers observing all of this.

The teenage girl Xiao Man's remaining voice echoed in the void, "Remember, you are also someone else's Magnolia..."

Chapter 71: Ultimate Seeding