The ochre glow cast by the Nerve-Ending Canopy wasn't static. It churned like slowly boiling, viscous corpse-tallow, light-waves flowing and pooling over billions of solidified synaptic knobs, exuding a suffocating blend of rancid temple incense and the scorched ozone stench of overloaded circuitry. The only "sound" in this dead sea of ruin was the ghostly hiss of spatial currents scraping across crystalline wreckage.
The Warlord's climb was a torture race against his own disintegration.
Each time he drove the bronze bell striker into the pulsing, melted-and-refused nerve-ending "bedrock" above, the splintered bone of his right heel grated against the crystallized nerve-fluid mass with a sickening screech, mingling with the faint sigh of Cyber-Buddha Ash gushing uncontrolled from the cavern of his left ear (leak +55%↑!). A haze of grey trailed him like a dying tail. Sweat, blood, and ash smeared his cybernetic vision; the blood-chart clarity teetered on the edge of 10%, yet that icy metal coordinate—Zhou Yongnian's Mech-Core—seared into his consciousness like a branding iron.
"Close… Yongnian…" he rasped, the sound like a broken bellows, his cracked lips twisting into a grimace of agony and fervor. The striker rose again, aimed at a particularly large, throbbing synaptic node above. Just as the point descended—
The node contracted violently! Then, like a boil lanced by an invisible needle, its surface split into countless tiny pores!
Zzzzt—!
No liquid spray. Billions of fine, sallow threads of light, like activated neural currents, shot from the pores! They ignored physical barriers, spearing instantly into his cybernetic eye, invading the leaking channel of his left ear, even worming through the crack in his right heel bone!
"GAAAAH—!" The Warlord's scream shifted pitch, not pain, but the horror of corrupted cognition! His vision flooded with infinite, high-speed flashes of fragmented imagery:
Not memories! The now! The unseen "information layer" of the ruin sea unfolding beneath him!
He saw Lin Wan, suspended on the crystallized surface below, surrounded by identical sallow threads reaching from the void like leeches, spearing her bloody abdominal wound! Golden Wheel toxin (saturation 46%↑) swirled like dark gold oil, entangled with the threads. The toxin was being slowly siphoned, conducted upwards along the thread-network towards the depths of the Canopy!
He saw nearby, on a massive shard of crystallized bell, Empress Wu's tattered data-phoenix robe flickering like a failing hologram. Sallow threads coiled around her too. Each time she tried to coalesce data, a thread would pulse, subtly "perturbing" and dispersing her structure like signal interference. Her cold, mechanical glitch-stutter gained more erratic buzzing: "…Loca…tion… fail…ure… Ener…gy… trans…fer… Non…-log…ic…"
He even saw himself—countless threads spearing his wounds, piercing his gushing ash. The faint psychic contamination within the ash was greedily harvested, uploaded! His pain, his fervor, his broken thoughts—all grist for the sallow light-net!
The torrent of information overload threatened to rupture his cybernetic brain. He wrenched the striker free, body lurching backwards, only his left hand clawing onto a crystal spur saving him from the plunge. "Alive… this damned Canopy… it's alive!" he roared, the metallic scrape in his voice trembling, a newfound chill freezing his gambler's fire. This wasn't coordinates. It was a trap! A digestion vat!
Below, in the sea of ruin, Lin Wan's "coffin."
Sallow light-threads pierced the solidified space, spearing precisely into her abdominal wound. The subtle, numbing itch of the toxin being siphoned even overshadowed some of the tearing agony. But this "relief" birthed deeper terror. Her hollow eyes shifted slightly, watching the threads burrow into her flesh, watching them draw away the dark gold toxin like draining blood towards the ochre light-source above. Maternal instinct made her tremble, hands lifting to pull the threads away. But her charred glove fingers barely touched one thread—
BAM!
A vast, chaotic torrent of consciousness—billions of agonized prayers and despairing curses—slammed up the thread and into her mind!
"Ah…" a weak gasp escaped her, body convulsing violently. Her empty eyes instantly overflowed with infinite, overlapping, twisted Buddha faces and wailing human visages. The Buddha-Brain chip was slag; she had no mental shield left. The fetus curled within her, its Ninth Golden Wheel dull (anti-matter stability 49%↓), shivering with the terror of the invading threads, its chaotic psyche screaming into their shared space: "…light… eat… hurt… mother… gate… open…"
Gate? Lin Wan's fractured awareness seized the word. Not from the fetus! Deeper within the chaotic torrent from the threads, a more profound, hidden "command echo," seeming to emanate from the Canopy's core!
Then, abrupt mutation!
The threads siphoning toxin from her wound began to flicker violently! A powerful suction surged down the threads—not for the toxin, but targeting the fractured hairpin shard deep within her fetus's Ninth Golden Wheel!
The profound stillness deep within the shard's fracture resonated eerily with the suction from the Canopy!
Humm…!
The shard's fracture quivered. A trace of imperceptible void-light flickered. The threads spearing her wound snapped taut, their sallow glow now tainted with a sliver of the shard-fracture's heart-stopping void-sense! The toxin-siphoning ceased abruptly. The energy flow through the threads reversed instantly—no longer drawing out, but attempting to inject something cold and viscous through the wound and threads, into the shard's fracture!
"Hhk!" Lin Wan felt a violent distension in her wound, as if icy, sludgy foreign matter was being force-pumped in! The fetus shrieked, its dull Golden Wheel shuddering violently, the fracture edges threatening to split anew!
Simultaneously, violent energy flared from Wu's direction!
The threads coiling around her, disrupting her data, suddenly snapped taut, pulled with immense force, all pointing in the same direction—towards the shard fracture in Lin Wan's belly! Wu's tattered robe stopped flickering. Her chaotic data-stream gained its first moment of clear direction. Her cold, glitching voice sharpened, urgent with the discovery of a "critical node":
"…Hy…per…-dim…en…sion…al… in…ter…face… De…tec…ted… Lock…ed…!"
She abandoned resisting the threads. Her remnant data-stream, like sharks scenting blood, surged along the tautened threads towards the shard fracture! Target, no longer purge, but… access! Occupy! The void-interface radiating from the fracture, the very thing drawing the threads!
"No…!" Lin Wan sensed the lethal threat—from Wu, from this perverse thread-injection. Maternal instinct crushed the mental chaos. Summoning strength from oblivion, her charred hands seized several threads spearing her belly and, with the dregs of her life, ripped outwards!
Rrrrip!
Several threads tore free! From the ragged ends sprayed not blood, but thick, sallow, psychically toxic pus, splattering her. But more threads remained anchored deep, the cold injection continuing. The fetus writhed in shared agony: "…block… gate… bad thing… coming…!"
Gate! Again! The fetus's chaotic cry, the command echo in the threads, and Wu's locked "interface" collided in Lin Wan's breaking mind!
Above, at the Canopy's edge, the Warlord's cybernetic eye captured the lightning-fast chaos below!
He saw Wu's data-stream racing down threads towards Lin Wan's belly! He saw the sallow pus spraying from the torn threads! He saw countless more threads shooting from the Canopy's depths with heightened density, converging on Lin Wan's position—as if it had become a vortex core!
"Interface… gate…" The Warlord's bloodied teeth ground. The chaotic information stream still battered his brain, but a wilder thought exploded: The thing attracting Wu and the Canopy threads was on Lin Wan! That thing… could it link to the Mech-Core?! Fragments of Zhou Yongnian's last transmissions… something about a… "gate"?!
Gambler's instinct crushed fear. He ignored the fading blood-chart coordinate. His gaze locked onto Lin Wan's position below—the focal point of all sallow threads! He wrenched the striker from the synaptic node. Not upwards. He swung his body like a desperate ape and leaped, plunging towards the deadly focal point below! Shattered bone screamed through the void.
"Grab… that gate!"
Fracture gleams, mother rends the light-net's seams.
Wu locks the Void-Gate, gambler plummets to his fate.