The hesitation lasted only three heartbeats.
0.3 seconds.
A flicker for mortals, an eternity for Rule.
Lin Wan's fingers, buried in the shard, felt the shift first.
Within the torrent of chaotic information battering her mind, the icy scrutiny vanished. Replacing it was an ancient *scrutiny*, thick with the scent of oxidized bronze. It swept over her shredded vocal cords, her scorched implant socket, her belly cavity awash in crimson-gold toxin, finally settling on her blood-slicked knuckles—bones fused to the shard by sheer will. Deep within the fracture, the heavy pulse subtly altered—*thud… thud… thud…* No longer a battering ram against a door, but the grinding groan of immense, rust-seized bronze hinges slowly turning.
*Now!*
Maternal instinct outpaced thought. A sound like grinding flint jamming choked in Lin Wan's throat. Her fingers, deep in the wound, didn't retreat. Seizing the pulse's shift, she mustered the dregs of her strength and *shoved*—driving the shard deeper into the fracture's core—towards that profound, waiting stillness!
*Ssskritch!*
The shard's razor-sharp fracture edge sliced her fingertip. Scalding blood, laced with Golden Wheel toxin, sprayed directly into the abyssal darkness!
"YYYEEEEAAARRRGGHH—!" The fetus's shriek wasn't pain, but the pure, existential horror of its core being violated! The ice-crystal cracks spiderwebbing the Ninth Golden Wheel instantly flushed an uncanny crimson-gold. The guttering light flared with the violent incandescence of a final rally—not revival, but the prelude to detonation! The death-rattle gasp deep in its anti-matter core was choked off, replaced by the screech of a crucible pushed past its limits!
This drop of blood, saturated with a mother's ferocious protectiveness, was a white-hot key thrust into a rust-frozen lock.
*WHUUUUMMMM—!*
The hairline fracture in the shard erupted with light. Not the void's stillness, but a deep, ancient radiance the color of tarnished gold—thick as congealed blood, smelling of oxidized metal and crumbling scripture. It engulfed the shard, swallowed Lin Wan's embedded fingers, and surged like liquid metal down the fracture's throat!
The Canopy's plunging ochre javelins. Wu's spiraling crimson drill. At the instant of this tarnished-gold eruption, they struck an invisible Wall of Sighs.
*Thwump! Thwump! Thwump!*
The spear-points of solidified ochre light hit the radiance and dissolved like tallow candles in acid—softening, slumping, transforming into viscous, foul-smelling sludge the color of tar and bile. It dripped into the void, sizzling where it fell, etching festering hollows even in the chaotic spatial currents.
Wu's contract-sigil drill fared worse. The scarlet symbols hissed violently on contact with the tarnished gold, the sound of metal dissolving in potent acid! The chains of sigils composing the drill shuddered, fractured. Like cheap iron links tossed into a forge, they dulled, corroded, and crumbled into acrid clouds of rust-red dust, utterly consumed by the hungry radiance!
"Au…thor…i…za…tion… ov…er…ride…? Pri…mar…y… blood…-key…?" Wu's glacial tone fractured, laced with high-frequency static—the sound of rusted gears violently jammed. The three-pip die flickered insanely, attempting to parse this sudden shift in permissions. Only a torrent of corrosive, metallic gibberish flooded back. Her remaining data-streams were wrenched backwards, as if seized by an invisible, colossal fist!
A deep, furious tolling—like a temple bell cracked by a giant's blow—echoed from the Canopy's heart. The ochre glow projecting downwards convulsed violently. The very sludge melted from its javelins now began to *corrode* the synaptic knobs forming the canopy! Melted nerve-endings dripped like burning tallow, igniting into showers of sallow fire-rain. The entire canopy resembled a colossal lump of fat cast into a cosmic forge, beginning to melt, to sag, to collapse—irreversibly.
"Gate… open… re…al…ly… open…" The fetus's horrified echo in Lin Wan's mind held a new, eerie note of compulsion. Bathed in the tarnished-gold radiance, the blood-stained Ninth Golden Wheel vibrated wildly. The ice-cracks flickered within the crimson-gold light. Deep inside, that crucible-screech of overload was forcibly suppressed, warped—morphing into a low, resonant hum that slowly, painfully, synchronized with the heavy pulse from the shard fracture. Like two rust-fused gearwheels, lubricated by mother's blood, attempting to grind back into mesh.
The Warlord's vacant cybernetic eye reflected the cataclysm.
Pinned by data-tendrils in the void, the faint blue spark of the mech-core signature at his dissolving stump was long gone. Yet, as the tarnished-gold radiance exploded and Wu's drill disintegrated, his remaining right hand—the one clutching the bronze bell striker—convulsed uncontrollably!
At the striker's tip, embedded deep within the ancient crack marring the mechanical eardrum, a speck of bronze dust, smaller than a mote, flaked away.
As the speck fell, the Warlord felt the icy coordinate brand—Zhou Yongnian's mech-core sigil forcibly burned into his soul by Wu—ripple. Faintly. Like a pebble dropped into stagnant water.
Imperceptible, yet this ripple traveled unerringly through the chaotic, nascent resonance to the consciousness of the fetus—now struggling to synchronize within the tarnished-gold radiance.
"…Hurt… burn… key… not… enough…" The fetus's thought, mingled with the painful synchrony, carried furnace heat and a newborn, ravenous hunger. Its Ninth Golden Wheel, encased in radiance, violently *contracted*! A chaotic suction, riding the unstable resonance channel, ignored distance and savagely latched onto the rippling sigil deep within the Warlord's soul!
"GNNNH!" The Warlord jerked as if electrocuted. His crumbling consciousness tore open. The agony of the sigil being ripped at surpassed the dissolution of his flesh. He felt like his vertebrae were being ripped out. His remaining right hand clenched the bronze striker, knuckles screaming. Where the speck had flaked away, a thread of light awoke—infinitesimal, ancient, smelling of temple incense long gone cold. An ember-glow of verdigris bronze.
This fragile thread of bronze light resonated faintly, impossibly, across the void—with the mother-blood radiance blazing from Lin Wan's fingertips deep within the fracture!
Deep within the shard fracture, the heavy bronze pulse… *stuttered*.
Then—
A far vaster, denser torrent of tarnished-gold light erupted *backwards* from the fracture's depths!
Not an attack.
It ignored the collapsing Canopy, ignored the glitching Wu, ignored the convulsing fetus.
It arrowed, with predatory precision, towards the Warlord's hand—towards the striker's tip—towards that newly kindled ember-glow of bronze!
Like a starved leviathan, finally scenting its long-lost kin…
The final, rusted cog.