Chapter 25. "The ending basket: When grass pierces the gilded rain"

As Leah's body vaporizes in the star furnace, the palm-printed basketball collapses into a new cosmic singularity. All the mycelium infected by Knox suddenly turned and plunged into the singularity like a poisonous bee that was returning to the nest - where the final rules of the mother Ross wrote with stellar flares are emerging:

"Article 1: Wind has the right to modify the angle of any basket."

Marcus kneeled in the ruins, and Elena's mycelium was cocooning out of his spine. The mycelium network pierces the clouds, rewriting the gilded Bible into the burning Charter of Leaves of Grass. The moment Knox's rainy hyphae touched the charter, the gilded shell peeled off, revealing the initial code buried by Elena - the fried Oreo recipe that five-year-old Marcus secretly hid in the garbage dump.

"So you are too..." Knox's pupils faded away from golden color, and his hyphae curled up in the shape of an iron fence of the welfare home. "We are all tied to the same chain."

Deep in the singularity, Leah's remaining consciousness is pouring a new basket with stellar slurry. The Nets are woven by Rennes' mechanical fingers, the sides are melted by the gilded spine of the Marcus family, and the rebounds are monuments of the ashes of all the slums in the twenty-three universes.

"The last ball," Elena's mycelium wrapped around the throats of all referee AIs, "Use your childhood as a basketball."

Marcus suddenly tore off his gilded spine and split his spine in half: one half was the tooth marks of the plastic basket that he had hidden when he was five years old, and the other half was the will of the old Marcus. He threw the tooth marks to Leah: "This time, I'll pass it to you!"

Leah's consciousness grabbed the teeth marks, and the star slurry suddenly solidified. A new basket was born—slightly tilted thirty degrees, air leaking from the corners, and the surface was covered with rejected poor people's palm lines.

When the Knox's mycelium rain hit the basket, the gilded shell shattered into stardust. He knelt on the grassy ground and watched the mycelium melt into fried Oreo oil stains in the afternoon sun of the welfare home: "It turns out that what perfection fears the most is the cheap human touch."

Rennes' seedder suddenly popped up from the black hole, and the grass grew wildly on the ruins. The children set up baskets with gilded pieces and mycelium wreckage, and their first goal was a charred Oreo.

"Foof!" Marcus ran over limply, but tore the verdict into the air. "The first of the new rules: the basket with leaking air has the right to catch all imperfect dreams."

Leah's palm lines flashed deep in the rebound.

There is a smell of grass and rust in the wind.

And in the distant mirror universe,

A five-year-old girl is aiming at a crooked basket with a stone.

Her broken shoelaces fluttered in the wind,

It's very similar to the shapes at the beginning of all the universes.