The stench of rotting corpses clogged the bridge like lead-stuffed cotton. As the starship tore through the atmosphere of Universe 42, Napoleon's zombie legion suddenly split open their ribcages—bronze crossbow arrows etched with Theravada Buddhist sutras swarmed out like venomous bees, their shafts reeking of Burmese cigar tar that made Lin Wan's vision blur. She plunged her obstetric glove into the console's corpse-poison tumor, ripped out engine components matted with sutra moss, and hurled them at the viewport. Sparks exploded against bulletproof glass, illuminating the holographic projection spinning amidst the arrows: Shen Living convulsing on the dissection table, bronze fluid seeping from his chest engraving [Daddy's Nutrition Pack], fusing seamlessly with the terracotta figurehead's material.
"Trade my child's eyes for an unbroken statue?" Lin Wan's voice dropped to a rasp, like sandpaper grinding iron. "I'll wrap your slave-trading web around your corpse!"
The arrow cluster froze three centimeters from the fetus's vertical pupil. Burmese cigar smoke rings spilled from the projection, accompanied by the metallic scrape of a magazine loading. "Look closely, madam—your husband's marrow is forging my weapons."
The ship's collision with the swamp drowned his last words. Scarlet light burst from the scarab compound eyes beneath Napoleon's bicorne hat as zombies stomped to a distorted La Marseillaise, cracking the ground. Below the collapsed pit lay a bronze palace submerged in Cyber Mengbo Soup—Qin bricks spliced with Trisolaran sophon tubes dripped embryo preservative; Egyptian obelisks tangled with Rainbow Skirt Dance silk bands; mechanical arhats in shrines had eyes polished from hourglasses filled with readers' memories. Lin Wan's legs suddenly spasmed. Amniotic fluid gushed forth, hitting the floor and transforming into wailing cloned infants. Each clone bore a miniature golden hairpin embedded in their foreheads, their crawling trails sprouting corpse-poison moss.
"The soup... replicates genes!" Terracotta Shen's bronze fist shattered the console. Rust now crept up his cheekbones as Empress Wu's shrill laughter crackled through static. "Come to Buddha-Mother, sweet grandchild..."
Lin Wan viciously yanked a suspended arrow. Golden filaments from her glove constricted the shaft, searing Pali sutras into crimson blood-text:[Product Code NO.42-ZF]
Species: Human Fetus (Antimatter Variant)
Source: Lin Wan's Womb (Cross-Dimensional Coordinate 7.82γ)
Bidders:
- Andromeda Legion (Bid: 1 Billion Years of Time Debt)
- Trisolaran Civilization (Bid: 3 Droplet Weapons)
- Buddha-Mother Palace (Bid: Shen Living's 3000-Reincarnation Contract)
The arrowhead stabbed into her palm! Cigar venom surged toward her heart as the warlord whispered like a venomous serpent: "Sign... and free him..." The fetus unleashed a cosmic shriek. Sonic waves shattered the arrow, revealing a hologram of Shen Living chained to the starship engine—three corpses identical to Lin Wan floated in the fuel tank's fluid.
"My... clones?" She staggered against the viewport. Blood dripped from the arrow wound into Mengbo Soup, solidifying into a swastika-shaped blood sigil just as the entire palace inverted! Soup surged toward the central shrine, pooling into an amniotic whirlpool in a mechanical arhat's palm. From its depths emerged Empress Wu's true hairpin—its tip impaled a cybernetic Buddha brain, Burmese scriptures pulsing through its grooves like binary blood.
"Buddha-Mother labors..." Terracotta Shen's left arm snapped off, bone claws jutting from the stump. "Eyes make fine birthing medicine!"
As claws reached for the fetus, Lin Wan's glove tore through her own abdomen. Fingers clenched the hairpin deep within the antimatter core and wrenched—
The tip pierced the brain's membrane, releasing not cerebral fluid but compressed reader comments: "Rip the contract!" "Bite her, baby!"; The shaft scraped brainstem grooves, memory chips of slave trades slicing her fingertips; The end hooked the pituitary gland, dragging out clones tangled in umbilical cords. The cybernetic brain exploded under brutal dissection. The blast tore off Napoleon's helmet, exposing a scalp studded with control-chip sockets—each dripping Shen Living's soul marrow.
The cloned infants ceased wailing. Plucking hairpins from their foreheads, they stabbed their own temples. Where brain matter sprayed, moss threaded with blood vessels sprouted sutras. Verdant chains snaked around zombie ankles, grinding leg bones.
"Sutra moss is rewriting the program?!" The warlord's cigar tumbled from the projection.
The terracotta wreckage lunged. A bronze right hand plunged into its chest, ripping out a putrid sheet-music heart—the corrupted core rhythm of Rainbow Skirt Dance still pulsed. "Catch it, madam!" The mechanized voice choked with garbled static. Lin Wan slammed the score against the arrow chamber. Sutras engraved on bronze shafts transformed into howling slave specters that swarmed the projection: Qin dynasty convicts in electronic shackles melded with shriveled Trisolaran dehydrators; monastic gears jammed with readers' brain tissue. They devoured not flesh, but binary-priced souls in the contract.
The fetus's vertical pupil pierced the flames, locking onto a bronze die sinking in Mengbo Soup—each of its six faces branded with Shen Living's slave-trade codes from different lifetimes. "Mama..." The infant's voice oozed sticky desire. "That die smells... delicious..."
Bubbles erupted in the swamp. Three hundred Lin Wan clones with distended bellies crawled from the muck, golden hairpin patterns on their abdomens pulsing like luminescent breath.