The swamp's stench was cleaved by three hundred golden patterns. The swollen bellies of clones pulsed like breathing lights in the mire, bronze sutras coalesced from corpse-incense twisting beneath their feet—every drop of sludge coated with Napoleon's zombie bone dust. Lin Wan's abdominal wound suddenly spasmed. As blood droplets fell into the marsh, the amniotic fluid of the nearest clone bubbled in sync—agony like high-voltage current seared through her spine, her blood crystallizing into micro-contract runes in the mud.
"Mama hurts..." Amber mucus oozed from the fetus's vertical pupil, its voice sticky-sweet with Mengbo Soup's hallucinogenic fragrance. "The die is chewing my name..."
The terracotta wreckage lurched forward. Blackish flames spewed from the exposed sheet-music fuel chamber in its chest. "Stop it!" The bronze stump-arm pointed toward the swamp's center, but rust had already crusted its vocal oscillator. Empress Wu's voice squeezed through iron cracks: "Wu Zhao... is the true name..."
Three hundred clones threw back their heads in a collective shriek. Golden umbilical cords burst from their abdomens, weaving into a vast net overhead. As violet mist billowed, the Cyber Mengbo Soup evaporated, revealing the grotesque nursery beneath the lake: A bronze die embedded in the throbbing womb of the Buddha-Mother, contract codes being etched into fetal brain grooves by amniotic fluid; Andromeda cryo-pods connected to Trisolaran infusion tubes, nutrient solution swirling with debris of readers' memories; Lin Wan's clone corpses squirmed along the uterine walls, tobacco roots extending from their navels deep into the silt.
"So my amniotic fluid..." Lin Wan's nails dug into her abdominal tear, "...feeds your breeding vats?" Golden filaments exploded from her obstetric glove, morphing into a scalpel that stabbed the nearest clone's belly. When the blade pried open the uterus, compressed reader comments tumbled screaming in the amniotic fluid—"Rip the contract!" "Run baby!"; Peeling back fetal skin revealed Andromeda's eagle insignia branded beneath Burmese sutra moss; Severing the umbilical nerve released whiskey aroma—the scent of Shen Living's soul marrow.
The clone fetus suddenly bit the blade. Its vertical pupil detonated a hologram: The Burmese warlord's boot crushing the die, sole caked in terracotta dust, while behind Shen Living chained to the engine, Empress Wu's hairpin pierced the Cyber Buddha's fontanelle!
"Still blind?" The warlord's cigar ash scattered across the projection. "Every drop of your husband's blood..."
Lin Wan viciously ripped apart the clone fetus! From the gore spurted half a contract page:
[Reincarnation Pawn Clause #7]
Collateral: Shen Living's Auditory Nerve
Exchange: Control of Odd-numbered Die Faces (1/3/5)
Creditor's Seal: Zhou Yongnian's Mech Core Imprint
Zhou's electronic wail erupted from the terracotta chest: "Seven hundred lifetimes... signed in shackles!"
The bronze die at the lakebed flipped violently. When the seal script "Wu Zhao" faced upward, golden light burst from every clone's womb. Three hundred fetuses turned in unison within their amniotic fluid, identical vertical pupils branded on their napes. "Feast time..." Infant wails resonated into a gravity vortex—Napoleon's zombies were sucked into pregnant bellies, Shen's marrow dripping from rib sockets into fetal mouths; Mechanical arhats' sutra-eyes popped out, melting into binary milk; Burning reader comments slammed against the die's contract terms. The fetus in Lin Wan's womb convulsed madly: "Mine! All mine!" Its fontanelle blackhole expanded, devouring clone fetuses—each swallow adding a sutra-ringed mandala to its vertical pupil.
The sheet-music remnants in the terracotta chest suddenly ignited. Flames birthed Shen Living's final memory: Zhou Yongnian driving the hairpin into his cochlea—"Sign to save Lin Wan"; The warlord's bloody thumbprint on the contract—"This life's hearing belongs to me"; The Cyber Buddha's mechanical hand crushing his larynx—"Your voice starts the Buddha-Mother's die..."
"Cover your ears!" The terracotta's sob reeked of rust. "They're reclaiming... my voice!"
A bronze pillar erupted from the lake. Where the burning contracts had been, now stood a three-meter-tall digital avatar of Empress Wu—mech shards coiled in her hair, comment streams flowing through her phoenix robes, her left palm cradling a half-devoured cybernetic Buddha brain. "Good children..." Her right fingernails elongated into metallic cables shooting toward the pregnant bellies. "Feed Buddha-Mother... antimatter energy!"
Lin Wan's glove stabbed her own womb first! Fingers seized the frenzied fetus as golden filaments morphed into a guillotine blade: "Glutton... deserves flaying!"
Terror cracked the fetus's vertical pupil: "Mama no—"
Before the blade fell, a military boot stomped through a dimensional rift! The warlord's heel pinned the blade: "Wait... trade for this!"
He flung a vial of solidified amniotic fluid—encasing Shen Living's left ear in amber. Qin seal script crawled inside the auricle—the terracotta starship's engine code. Deep in the cochlea, a micro-bell chimed at 440Hz, playing the corpse-poison variation of "Rainbow Skirt Dance".