The bronze sarcophagus's tremors turned the swamp into cracked-ice mirrors. As Lin Wan stepped over neural engravings reflected in the glass, cosmetic-red poison mist seeped from the fissures in the fetus's ninth mandala ring. Where the mist touched bronze wreckage, mortise-tenon joints sprouted—Burmese temple eaves and brackets clawed over corroded starship armor, beams strung with Shen Living's stripped auditory nerves pulled taut as lute strings, playing a discordant "Rainbow Skirt Dance".
"Itch..." The fetus scraped Lin Wan's uterine wall, nerve tendrils probing from its mandala cracks like roots drilling into her pelvis. "Buddha's devouring my marrow to build temples!"
A Sanskrit chant exploded from the hairpin atop the pagoda. The temple coordinates on the celestial blood-map collapsed into a wormhole, dragging the sarcophagus down an incense-choked corridor. Rancid ghee entwined with the almond scent of readers' brain matter. Living pigments bled from murals:
Left Wall: Shen Living nailed to historical torture racks, his cochleae carved into chimes, lutes, pipe organs wailing across civilizations.
Right Wall: Lin Wan clones birthing zombies in Buddha-Mother's womb, umbilical cords binding Trisolaran Droplet fragments dripping cryo-fluid.
Vaulted Ceiling: Zhou Yongnian's mech-shards forming a mandala, Empress Wu's hairpin piercing a cybernetic Buddha brain at its center, golden cerebral fluid dripping like lacquer.
"Temple returnees, burn fingers as offering." Incense coalesced into a virtual attendant monk. The burner combusted reader comments compressed into joss sticks. Smoke tendrils sketched the Burmese warlord's torso—Andromeda insignia embedded in his left eye, a bronze bell striker jammed into his right ear cavity, its tip skewering a trembling mechanical eardrum.
The fetus vomited. Half a heart tangled with nerves slammed into the burner. Nerve-strands snaked up, constricting the monk's throat: "Too loud... shut up!"
Sparks from the shattered burner ignited murals. Where living pigments dripped, the corridor fractured into a Thousand-Handed Guanyin labyrinth. At each path's end, Guanyin statues' palms embedded Lin or Shen's eyeballs, pupils dilating to the warlord's 440Hz bell strikes. The sonic waves crystallized fluid in Lin Wan's cochlea.
"Third path on the right..." The warlord's smoke-roughened voice scraped like ice shards. "...tastes like your husband's tongue-root bitterness."
Lin Wan's finger dug into the fetus's mandala crack, scooping cosmetic-poison onto her tongue. Toxin scorched her taste buds. Frost cracked the air as words escaped her gritted teeth: "All paths converge."
Invisible hands crushed every branching path into singularity! Sensory nerves paved the road—Shen's optic nerves wove into flagstones oozing metallic blood from his pawned lung; taste nerves condensed into dewdrops holding Andromeda coolant's astringency; tactile nerves steamed into heat haze scorching contract scars imprinted on the path. The fetus convulsed, gnawing her knuckles: "Poison's sweet... feed me more!"
The Guanyin at the path's end melted into molten iron, revealing the steel spine of a mechanical Buddha. Contract nails studded each vertebra, heads engraved with pawned years:
*(On the rust-crusted nail of Life 319*
Young Shen's left lung pawned in Xianyang's rainy night
Transmuted to verdigris in the die's axle hole)
Lin Wan's glove clawed at the seventh vertebra. Fingertips touched the nail—the entire spine undulated like piano keys, emitting the death rattle from Shen's final life. The sound bled into a blood-contract midair:
(He staked his beating heart
To let a clone Lin Wan gasp three more breaths on the birthing bed
Unaware the real her tore through spacetime)
The fetus's fontanelle shot a black hole, devouring the blood-contract. A new fissure split its ninth mandala at the throat, sprouting fine bronze barbs: "Stale... want it fresh!"
The ceiling mandala crumbled. Zhou Yongnian's mech-core shards descended like circular saws, edges flashing with unburned clauses:
(When the bronze sarcophagus reaches the temple core
Collateral shall be caged forever in the barbed Buddha-bell)
As shards hurtled toward Lin Wan's spine, the fetus inside her screamed and swelled! Cosmetic-poison from its mandala cracks engulfed the shards. Where toxin met contract-flames, a bronze Buddha-bell crystallized. Its inner walls bristled with nerve-barbs, each tip impaling fragments of Shen's pawned senses—a left eyeball floating in Andromeda preservative, a right fingertip clinging to a Trisolaran's withered skin, half a tongue-root twined with readers' brain filaments.
"Debt collection hour!" The warlord's striker slammed the bell.
Deafening peals hurled Lin Wan inside the bell. Countless nerve-barbs pierced her limbs, each siphoning memories—
The Qin password young Shen scratched in Xianyang's mud;
His clouded right eye fixed on the clone delivery room screen;
The blood-oath his auditory nerves carved in the sarcophagus:
(Pledging seven hundred unborn lifetimes
For her and child to break free from the temple
The readers' collective will as witness)
The fetus suddenly stilled. It clamped its mandala fissure around a barb aimed at Lin Wan's heart, pumping cosmetic-poison back into the bronze.
"Ugly bell..." It licked contract-rust from the barbs. "...make it Mama's lullaby."
The entire temple began to melt.