The deafening roar of shattering spatial foundations didn't end; it transmuted into the sharp, crystalline chime of a billion fractures.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The inky-black fissures splitting the Barbed Buddha Bell were instantly filled by rapidly spreading, translucent hexagonal crystals! These crystals held no chill, but the solidified, hyper-dense fractures of space itself. The billions of Incense Nerve strands forming the passage screamed a pitch higher than pulverization could evoke—their very existence was being crystallized, transformed from living rivers of faith and curses into cold, brittle specimens refracting twisted light. Thick nerve fluid and dark sludge solidified instantly, forming countless hanging, murky crystal cascades. The entire collapsing bell interior, along with the invading Stygian flood, was being forcibly dragged into a bizarre, deathly stillness!
The stark cyan-white sigils swirling along the bronze forceps handle blazed with unprecedented, near-blinding intensity within this spatial crystallization! The countdown to forced extraction became terrifyingly distinct amidst the crystalline chimes, tolling like a funeral bell deep within the soul. The extraction force radiating from the jaws surged violently! The thin energy membrane at the edge of the Ninth Golden Wheel's fissure groaned like stressed glass under a hammer blow!
"Guh—aaah!" Lin Wan's body arched backwards as if seized by an invisible giant's throat. The wound in her abdomen tore wider under the dual assault of Golden Wheel toxin (saturation 43%↑) and this external force, splattering crystallizing walls with grotesque aureate-crimson reliefs. Her hands, pressed against her belly in the smoldering gloves, the charred remnants of the Buddha-Brain chip searing her flesh, could summon no resistance against the absolute Rule. Only her bloodshot eyes, swimming in agony and suffocation, remained locked on the clamped shard, a broken, voiceless plea scraping from her ruined throat for the life within: "…En…dure…"
The fetus sensed annihilation! The Rule-force was a cold noose tightening around its core. The fragile "buffer" woven from Lin Wan's blood and toxin, under the forceps' multiplied power, guttered like a dying candle. Anti-matter core stability plummeted to 55%↓! Unprecedented terror overwhelmed greed and rage, morphing into a hysterical, self-destructive survival instinct!
"Parse! Eat! Rule!" Its psychic shriek echoed in the crystallizing void, underscored by the nails-on-glass screech of its bone spurs scraping crystal. Its meager 'Contract Parsing', blinded by the forceps' searing sigils, devolved into a raw, chaotic devour command, focused desperately on the nearest existence—the very edges of its own Golden Wheel fissure and the clamped hairpin shard!
RIIIIP—!
The edges of the Ninth Golden Wheel's fissure, under the fetus's reckless self-consumption, curled and collapsed inward like melting wax! The fissure widened! Simultaneously, the faint pagoda coordinate energy within the shard itself was violently warped and distorted by this chaotic suction! The coordinate pulse, forcibly corrected by the forceps moments before, went haywire again! The fetus sought to swallow the shard, and the Rule-force clamping it, into the chaos of its own anti-matter core! Suicide, and its only perceived escape.
"Coordinates… shifting!" On the nerve-path, the Warlord's vision blurred as the crimson pagoda spire marker flickered and jerked violently! Blood-chart clarity crashed from 42% to 30%↓! Spatial crystallization spread like plague around him; hanging cascades of solidified nerve fluid loomed like giant fangs. The freezing crystallization crept up his exposed heel bone (the cracked bone screaming with frost-splinter agony) and the gushing stream of Cyber-Buddha Ash from his left ear (leak +45%↑!), inducing a soul-numbing chill. The cracked mechanical eardrum in his bronze striker emitted a shrieking, ear-splitting burst of static from the scrambled coordinates!
"No!" His despairing roar was metallic, raw. He saw no path. Crystal walls sealed ahead, coordinates dissolved. Yet, as darkness threatened to swallow his vision, a flicker of cold, metallic reflection—utterly alien to the pagoda's energy—flashed at the very edge of his violently shaking blood-chart, within the micro-engraved Myanmar temple zone! The shape… uncannily like the core bearing of some massive machine! Zhou Yongnian's Mech-Core?! The thought struck like lightning, impossible to grasp in the crystallizing despair.
At the bell's heart, Wu's Purge Protocol arrived!
Billions of crimson data-needles ignored the crystallizing space (the crystal dusted into finer particles where they touched, forcibly 'decoded' by the data stream). Precision-engineered, emotionless lethality aimed true—for the thread of "contaminant" energy clinging to the shard: Lin Wan's blood-toxin blend!
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!
No physical puncture. Data overwrite and erasure. Lin Wan's frail energy wisp vanished like a drop of water in concentrated acid—instantly overwritten, parsed, disassembled, nullified by the frigid data torrent carried on billions of needles. Purge completion: 100%!
"Hhk!" Lin Wan convulsed as if electrocuted! That energy was her final, tenuous tether to the shard, to the fetus—her maternal anchor wedged into the Rule's crack. Its erasure carved a chunk from her soul. A cold, profound emptiness, deeper than the agony in her gut, drowned her. The Quantum Confinement field was long gone; now, even the will to resist was stripped bare.
Yet, Wu's Purge Protocol did not halt!
Contaminant erased, protocol logic instantly identified the next highest-priority threat—the chaotic source distorting the shard's coordinates, attempting to devour the Rule itself! The fetus!
The crimson needle-horde, without pause, pivoted like blood-sensing cyber-leeches, and plunged towards the collapsing fissure in the fetus's Ninth Golden Wheel! Target: The chaotic devour command core, and the shard it warped!
"Purge… system anomaly… purge…" Wu's cold, gear-meshed voice echoed in the crystal tomb.
"Get AWAY!" The fetus's psychic cry distorted with primal terror and chaos, underscored by the crackle of unstable anti-matter discharge. It marshaled boiling poison from its bone spurs, trying to corrode the needles, but the venom was instantly parsed and assimilated by the superior data stream! The needles drove home!
At that precise, fatal moment—
HUM—!
The cyan-white light blazing from the bronze forceps handle peaked! The countdown hit zero!
The terrifying extraction force in the jaws combined with Wu's Purge Protocol interference (attempting to erase the shard's existence) and the fetus's own chaotic pull!
Three irreconcilable, catastrophic forces collided upon the minuscule "singularity" of the hairpin shard!
No sound.
Only a pure, indescribable WHITE.
This White devoured the crystallizing bell fragments, devoured Wu's crimson data stream, devoured the boiling poison and anti-matter glow on the fetus's Wheel, devoured Lin Wan's pain-wracked form, devoured the last glint of the Mech-Core in the Warlord's vision… devoured all color, form, sound, even… the perception of time and space.
Within this absolute White, only one thing remained starkly clear, magnified a billion-fold:
The hairpin shard embedded deep within the Ninth Golden Wheel's fissure.
Snick.
A sound infinitesimally small, yet echoing as if across the cosmos.
The shard, caught in the tripartite vise of the forceps' pull, Wu's purge, and the fetus's devour—was not extracted. Instead—a hairline fracture split its core!
The instant the fracture appeared, an unspeakable suction erupted!
This suction targeted not matter or energy, but… Rule! Information! Existence itself!
First victim: The nearest bronze forceps! The cyan-white sigils embodying absolute Rule twisted, stretched like fireflies caught in a vortex, their light streaming violently into the shard's fracture! The forced extraction program died like a severed power line! The forceps themselves groaned with metallic stress, fine cracks spidering across the ancient bronze.
Next: Wu's billions of crimson data-needles poised at the shard! Their Purge Protocol data streams met an event horizon, ripped apart and swallowed without resistance! Wu's icy mechanical tone fractured, laced with electronic dread for the first time: "…Pro…tocol… lost… Err…or… Source… Unk…nown…!"
Finally: The fetus's own chaotic devour command focused on the shard! This command surged back like a tidal reflux, amplified by the terrifying, ancient suction from the fracture, hammering into the fetus itself! The "melting wax" edges of the Ninth Golden Wheel fissure snapped back into place, the fissure forcibly sealed! But the cost—a massive chunk of the anti-matter glow deep within the fissure was ripped out, sucked into the unknown abyss of the shard's fracture! The fetus screamed a sound beyond comprehension, its consciousness blanketed by pure, formless terror. Its bone spurs curled protectively.
The absolute White began to recede.
The world reformed, irrevocably altered.
The crystallized wreckage of the Barbed Buddha Bell hung suspended in a void, like a colossal, shattered crystal coffin. Within, Lin Wan drifted. Her abdominal wound was a horror under Golden Wheel toxin (saturation 45%↑) and the Rule-suction's violence. Her eyes were hollow, consciousness teetering under pain and the soul-deep void left by the anchor's erasure. The fetus curled within her, the Ninth Golden Wheel fissure sealed but dull, anti-matter stability crashed to 50%↓, radiating pure, post-apocalyptic dread.
Empress Wu's data-phoenix robe was tattered, its crimson dimmed. The Purge Protocol severed, part of its core logic devoured by the fracture, its cold voice now interspersed with chaotic static. Corruption remained at 25%, but radiated unstable "logic-fragmentation."
The bronze forceps still clamped the hairpin shard, but its sigils were half-dimmed, cracked. The extraction program was dead—a declawed beast of cold metal. And the shard itself—split by a hairline fracture. From its depths pulsed no pagoda coordinates, only a deeper, older stillness, as if connected to primordial void.
The Incense Nerve Passage was gone. They drifted on a boundless sea of ruins—shattered crystal, solidified nerve fluid, dark sludge, and spatial debris. The only light came from above—a vast, slowly rotating canopy formed from the melted and re-fused ends of countless incense nerves, radiating a dim, decaying ochre glow.
On this dead sea of ruin, the Warlord was a speck. His nerve-path had crystallized and shattered. He clung, the bronze striker jammed deep into a massive chunk of solidified nerve fluid, anchoring him against spatial currents. Cyber-Buddha Ash gushed from his left ear like an open sluice (leak +50%↑!), forming a thin, dissipating haze. The cracked bone of his right heel was exposed, fissures widened, bone splinters visible. He tilted his head back, cybernetic eye straining against the ochre gloom towards the vast, rotating canopy of nerve endings above.
In his peripheral vision, the Myanmar pagoda blood-chart flickered, clarity reduced to a mere 15%, nearly swallowed by static snow. Yet, in the instant the shard's fracture had devoured the Rule-light, the very core of the chart—the heart of the temple zone—had flashed, however briefly, with a reflection of cold, pure metal utterly unlike the shard's void-deep stillness!
Zhou Yongnian's Mech-Core!
Its coordinates… lay within a node of that nerve-ending canopy!
A light, feral and desperate, kindled in the Warlord's bloodshot cybernetic eye. He licked cracked, bleeding lips, a sound like a broken bellows rasping in his throat—the gambler's rictus grin seeing the last chip fall onto the table.
Fracture gapes, Rule-lock undone.
Canopy hides the war-machine's bone.
A gambler's climb has just begun.