Bathed in a pale golden halo of stars, Dawn's Harbor resembled a meticulously crafted sapphire, nestled within the vortex of its new home. The air was filled with the freshness of newly turned earth, the slightly salty aroma of the ocean, and an almost tangible, vibrant scent of hope. The rebuilt city stretched in the morning light, its energy shield like a giant bubble, reflecting a rainbow of colors. Crowds surged on the harbor platform, the clear laughter of children echoing like silver bells. The adults wore the fatigue of surviving a catastrophe, yet their eyes couldn't conceal their longing for the future.

Lin Mo and Xu Shuangyao stood side by side on the highest observation platform, like two silent beacons. They were the spiritual totems of their new home, the mortal projection of the Starry Sky monument. Lin Mo's left cheek, the crystallized region holding the core of the Starry Sky, glowed with a gentle, restrained dark gold in the morning light. His deep eyes calmly surveyed the vibrant city below. Xu Shuangyao's icy blue hair ruffled in the breeze, her clear eyes reflecting the azure ocean and the bustling port. A tranquil, frosty blue starlight enveloped her, the cold aura long replaced by a new warmth. Their hands clasped naturally, their fingertips conveying an unspoken understanding and warmth, like the solid foundation of their new home.

"Look! It's the Guardians!" A little girl with pigtails, held in her mother's arms, excitedly pointed a chubby finger toward the platform. Her clear voice, resonating distinctly in the morning breeze, drew well-intentioned glances and whispers from the crowd.

"It's Master Lin Mo and Master Shuang Yao..."

“Thanks to them…”

"New home... it's great..."

A warm current flowed through Lin Mo's heart, and even the core of the starry sky beneath the crystal on his left cheek seemed to warm slightly. He subconsciously tightened his grip on Xu Shuangyao's hand. Even the faintest ripples appeared in Xu Shuangyao's icy blue eyes, like a tiny pebble dropped into an icy lake. This ordinary bustle was a scene she had never imagined in her long, formatted, frozen years.

However, beneath this peace, an unnoticed undercurrent has been quietly surging in the abyss.

Late at night, on the top floor of the Dawn Star Administrative Center, in a quiet room specially opened for Lin Mo.

There were no windows, only a soft overhead light simulating a starry sky. Lin Mo sat cross-legged in the center of the room, a gentle current of dark-gold energy coursing through him, as regular as his breathing. He was attempting a deeper connection with the newly born starry sky core deep within his left eye, sorting out the vast information left by Pei Du.

Sudden!

Buzz——!

Without warning, the jade-like crystal area on his left cheek erupted with a violent dark gold pulse! The light no longer flowed gently, but like an uncontrolled electric current, instantly shattering the tranquility of the room! The powerful energy shockwave slammed the suspended Lin Mo into the alloy wall, emitting a dull thud!

"Ugh!" Lin Mo groaned, his left hand tightly covering his left eye. A blinding light flashed between his fingers. The pain wasn't from the impact on his body, but from the depths of his soul. It was as if billions of red-hot steel needles were repeatedly piercing the core of his consciousness!

Chaos! Icy despair! Endless, slippery darkness! The suffocating feeling of being pierced and dragged by purple chains! And… that icy whisper, like a maggot on the tarsal bone, imprinted directly on the nerve endings, with an inhuman echo, like the fluttering of billions of metallic insects:

"Order...illusion..."

"The origin...will eventually...return to...chaos..."

"Resistance... is futile..."

It was Pei Du's last fragment of perception before his death! It was the terrifying existence known as the "Eye of the End," deep within the rifts of the Sea of ​​Entropy, whispering polluted whispers across time and space! Like awakened venomous snakes, they madly bit at the most vulnerable connection in the core of the starry sky!

Cold sweat instantly soaked Lin Mo's back. He tried to mobilize his core strength to suppress and purify it, but the whispering was like a thorn in his flesh, entangled with his core itself. Every attempt to suppress it brought more severe backlash and chaos. The vision in his left eye began to split and distort, fragments of reality and chaotic memories intertwined and overlapped.

At the same time, on the other side of Dawn Star, in the highest-level meditation room of the Academy of Life Sciences.

Xu Shuangyao lay in a specially designed neuro-connection chair, her helmet connected to a dense network of tubes. Dr. Owen hoped to use gentle neuro-retrospective techniques to help her further sort out those frozen, formatted fragments of deep memories and consolidate the stability of her nascent personality.

A pale blue nutrient solution enveloped her, and her consciousness sank into a sea of ​​gentle data streams. At first, it was tranquil, like a dark river flowing slowly beneath a frozen lake. However, when the data stream touched a deeply encrypted, buried memory block—

Snap!

It was as if a layer of ice suddenly shattered in my consciousness!

A cold white light! A harsh, emotionless electronic synthesized voice command, like an icicle piercing directly into the soul:

"Command confirmed: Target carrier 'First Flame', coordinates G-7, vital signs fluctuating abnormally, entropy contamination index exceeding standards. Threat Level: Annihilation."

"Executor: Brand 'Frost'."

"Execute final logic: physical formatting."

The perspective suddenly switched! No longer a bystander data stream, but... first-person!

She (Xu Shuangyao) was charging at breakneck speed through an icy metal corridor filled with pipes and emergency red lights! Clutching in her hand wasn't an energy blade, but a simple-looking, solid ion-vibrating blade emitting an aura of absolute freezing cold! The blade hummed, and the air condensed into tiny ice crystals at its tip.

Ahead, the isolation door slid open. Inside a cramped life-support chamber, a young man, no more than fifteen or sixteen, huddled in a corner. His face was as pale as paper, and beneath his exposed chest, eerie, dark purple veins wriggled and spread like a living thing, emitting a frightening, polluted aura. But his eyes, the ones gazing at Xu Shuangyao as she rushed in, were startlingly clear. There was no fear in them, only a bottomless sorrow and... a strange understanding.

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