The hairpin atop the pagoda hummed, shaking off scabs of rust-colored blood. The veins of the celestial blood-map seared themselves into the ninth mandala ring within the fetus's vertical pupil. Bronze contract fragments floating in the swamp suddenly rose, assembling under Lin Wan's bloodstained fingers into fractured bamboo strips of Qin dynasty law.
"No two particles share one nest." Five syllables ground from her lips, carrying the chill of freezing organs.
Bullet holes in Napoleon's bicorne hat warped and expanded! An invisible repulsion field swept the battlefield—reader comments on Empress Wu's phoenix robes convulsed: "Flee!" distorted into "Offer!", "Save me!" dissolved into "Bury here!". Three hundred sinking clone wombs burst like rotten pomegranates. From amniotic steam, umbilical tentacles emerged, studded with shreds of readers' brain matter.
"Word-knives are fun..." The fetus licked the torn edges of Lin Wan's abdominal wound, milky voice laced with scorched-neuron acidity. "Cut deeper, Mama."
Cyber-Buddha ash spewed from the warlord's ear cavity as he stomped the temple coordinates on the blood-map. Shockwaves from the hairpin resonated with his bootfalls—a bronze courtroom erupted from the swamp. Clone carcasses stitched into a Shen Living puppet, joints pierced by auditory nerves like earthworms; Zhou Yongnian's mech-core spun on the defendant's stand, shell glowing with pawn clauses; a judge's block built from Wu Zhao die fragments oozed tricolored pus, each drop corroding spacetime whirlpools—
Lin Wan's toe touched the vortex of Life 319 as Xianyang City's rain lashed the youth on the bronze cauldron. Eighteen-year-old Shen Living's ribs glistened under downpour. A welding torch seared the mech-part embedded in his chest, stench of charred meat mixing with petrichor.
"Pawn left lung for die-steering rights." Zhou's electronic voice crackled through torch hiss. "Sign... saves plague-stricken Lin Wan outside the gates."
Blood beaded on the boy's lashes: "A-Wan... truly there?"
"He feeds you lies!" Present-day Lin Wan's golden-tattooed fingers speared toward the mech-back. The welding torch veered—piercing the boy's ribs! Alveoli sprayed pus-blood onto the contract as the scorched bone was jammed into the die's axle hole: "Deal done... pity the girl died at dawn."
The fetus's Black-Hole Fontanelle gaped: "Daddy's rib-cartilage!" As it devoured the boy's chest, Lin Wan saw blood-smeared fingers carving Qin script in mud—the missing stroke of the starship code!
Spacetime collapsed again. Now plunging into an Andromeda embryo vault, one hundred thousand cryo-pods held her and Shen's clones. An aged Shen Living was nailed to the control panel, heart impaled by Trisolaran probes, each beat pumping azure coolant.
"Final bargain." The warlord tapped cigar ash on Shen's hollowed chest. "Pawn heart to delay Buddha-Mother's birth... lets your wife flee the delivery room."
Shen's clouded right eye fixed on a monitor—mechanical forceps splayed a pregnant belly open. The death rattle from his crushed larynx bled onto the contract!
"Fool... that's my counterfeit!" Lin Wan tore a spacetime rift. But the fetus was faster—its fontanelle swallowed the monitor feed, pupils narrowing with gluttony: "Knockoff... still tasty."
As the mech-arm wrenched out the heart, Lin Wan's hand shot through dimensions. She crammed the pulsing organ into her ravaged womb: "Baby... this is the feast!"
The fetus's fangs tore into its father's heart. The ninth mandala ring split, oozing the cosmetic-powder scent of Wu's hairpin.
Seven hundred spacetime vortices detonated in the courtroom. Shen-puppet's nerve cords snapped taut, playing a dirge on the corpse-poison carillon. Data cables shot from the warlord's ear-cavity toward the fetal pupil: "Collateral... returns to vault!"
"Not your turn." Lin Wan pressed bloody lips to the fetus's brow. "Quantum confinement."
Every umbilical tentacle repulsed and exploded! Readers' brain matter quantum-entangled into bronze surgical clamps, jaws clamping the nerve cords. Her hands plunged into her abdomen—amidst the fetus's feasting—and ripped out the Temporal Nexus Cord: a nerve-rope woven from seven hundred pawn contracts, each knotted scar bulging with era-specific trauma.
"Mama prunes sick branches..." She spread the cord across the judge's block. The fetus's mandala pulsed crimson: "Where to cut?"
Her nail scored a tumorous bulge on the cord—Life 42's vision-pawn scar. As the golden-laser blade fell, the tumor gushed not blood—but living Qin-script strokes from Xianyang's rainy night! The serpentine characters burrowed into starship wreckage, reassembling it into a bronze sarcophagus. Inside the lid, Shen's auditory nerves pinned the hairpin to the center, carving fresh contract-glyphs:
(He pledges seven hundred lifetimes yet unlived,For her and child to escape the temple's blood-web,The readers' collective will seals the pact)
Empress Wu's data-form shriek vanished into the sarcophagus. The warlord's boots shattered under quantum confinement, mechanical heel-bones revealing micro-carved temple blood-maps. The fetus vomited half a heart, nerve cords tangled with a hairpin shard: "Fishbone... stuck."
Lin Wan wiped mucus off the shard. The cosmetic-red tint on its tip matched the missing hue on the celestial blood-map's pagoda spire.
"Good child," she pressed the shard into the fetus's mandala crack, "we demolish temples..."
The swamp solidified into bronze mirrors. Every reflection showed wet contract-glyphs on the sarcophagus as Zhou Yongnian's mech-core disintegrated inside with a dull boom.