The holographic screen displayed terrifying images: whenever the novel's world reset, Shen Linyue, inside the life support pod, aged ten years. Meanwhile, the young He Xiao frantically rewrote the code, attempting to create a time amber using a Möbius strip.
"You're the real villain." Future He Xiao suddenly grabbed his throat. "When the Bureau detected the spacetime anomaly, Mother had already died three thousand times!"
He Xiao's prosthetic eye glowed red, revealing a deeper truth—in the starship's main control room, three thousand consciousnesses from the Sunken Moon were wailing. They had been turned into bio-batteries to provide energy for the Time and Space Administration.
"Now, let's reset everything."
The moment He Xiao pressed the format button, the entire cultivation world began to evaporate. He Xiao laughed, tearing open his chest to reveal a pulsating star map: "You forgot, administrator privileges are etched into my soul."
The star map suddenly unfolded into the Milky Way, and Shen Linyue's voice came from each star: "Xiao'er, look at the apricot blossoms that your mother planted..." The collapsing world line suddenly converged, turning into thirty-seven blood-red petals.
As the last petal covered the formatting command, He Xiao suddenly froze—his mechanical eye reflected a laboratory scene: He Xiao, a teenager in 2023, was lying by his mother's bedside, holding her hand and softly reading aloud the novel he had written.
"So...this is the real Möbius strip..."
The starship matrix crumbled, and the cultivation world rebuilt itself in the dawn. He Xiao held the gradually translucent Shen Linyue, listening to her hum the nursery rhyme that had resonated through all reincarnations: "Apricot blossoms fall, blood jade forms, wander freely, never look back..."
"Mother, this time it's my turn to be the storyteller." He lit the last piece of blood jade, and a brand new timeline emerged in the firelight. Shen Linyue's illusory figure leaned down and kissed his brow: "Remember to give the villain a happy ending."
As the wisps of smoke from the burning blood jade coalesced into the outline of an infant, He Xiao heard a double cry. One came from Shen Linyue, who was gradually materializing in his arms, while the other pierced through the dimensional barrier, detonating the heart monitor in the life support pod of the real world.
"The patient has regained consciousness!"
The laboratory in 2035 was in complete chaos. The white-haired He Xiao lay beside the hospital bed, watching his mother, now thirty-seven years younger, slowly open her eyes. Her fingertips traced the mechanical lines on his face, tears falling into his breathing mask: "Xiao'er... have the apricot blossoms bloomed...?"
Meanwhile, the sky over the cultivation world was fading. He Xiao stood in the ruins of the Apricot Grove, cradling a newborn infant in his arms. The baby's swaddling clothes were woven from administrator-level code. As the first blood-red apricot petal landed on the infant's brow, the heavens suddenly unfolded a vast star map—markers illuminated by the burning consciousness of three thousand Shen Linyue.
"It's time to go home." The baby suddenly spoke, its pupils gleaming with binary golden light. It pulled open its swaddling clothes to reveal a star map on its chest, perfectly matching He Xiao's birthmark.
The alarms in the real world suddenly fell silent. Shen Linyue, lying in her hospital bed, removed her breathing mask, and to the astonishment of the medical staff, a star map synchronized with the world of the novel appeared on her chest. She opened the window and saw that the streets, which should have been bustling with traffic, were instead covered in endless rows of crimson apricot blossoms.
"Xiao'er, catch!"
In the cultivation world, He Xiao tossed the infant into the sky. The tiny body disintegrated into a torrent of data in mid-air, carrying blood-red apricot petals as it shattered the barriers of space and time. Both Shen Linyue simultaneously reached out to touch the torrent, and in the radiance of quantum entanglement, the thirty-seven-year time difference collapsed with a deafening roar.
As the morning sun pierced the clouds in the real world, He Xiao's mechanical prosthetic eye began to melt. The last thing he saw was himself in 2023, hunched over his writing, with the ending of "Don't Be Mad, Villain" automatically generating on the screen.
He Xiao sat under the apricot tree, holding his mother in his arms. The Shattered Star Sword, planted in the soil, sprouted into a new seedling. When the blood moon turned into the rising sun, he discovered that Shen Linyue in his arms had transformed into a swaddled infant, and he himself was being gently rocked by a warm embrace.
"Is this enough?" came the administrator's voice from the depths of the sky.
Before Bai-haired He Xiao's prosthetic body completely disintegrated, he uploaded his consciousness into the novel's world. He transformed into a spring breeze, sweeping across thirty-seven apricot trees, each petal resonating with the first line of poetry Shen Linyue had taught him: "The immortal dangles two feet, the cassia tree is so round and full..."
In reality, Shen Linyue suddenly sat up straight. She pulled out all the tubes from her body and ran barefoot to the experimental table. The quantum computer screen flashed red; the novel document was disappearing, replaced by an email:
[To Professor Shen Linyue in 2035: Your paper on consciousness travel has been approved by the journal *Nature*. Also enclosed is a letter from the orphanage; a volunteer named He Xiao, who read novels to you for 37 years, passed away peacefully this morning, and this letter was found under his pillow.]
Suddenly, the blood apricots outside the window began to bear fruit, each fruit a shimmering chip. Shen Linyue trembled as she opened the yellowed envelope, tears wetting the boy's childish handwriting:
"Mom, this time the villains have finally gotten their chance."
The laboratory was suddenly filled with the fragrance of apricot blossoms. When she looked up, she saw the small world in the holographic projection welcoming early spring. A young man in a blue robe carried a beautiful woman who had fallen into a coma across a stream, but the reflection on the water was of himself in a hospital bed in the real world.
"The observer effect has reached a closed loop." The administrator's voice trembled with a choked sob. "The world of the novel will enter an eternal spring, and all cycles of suffering... will become the rings of apricot blossoms."
Shen Linyue planted the chip in a flowerpot, and it instantly grew into a mechanical apricot tree with blue flowers. A holographic screen hung from the tree's canopy, displaying the automatically added text of the final chapter:
The villain never went mad again, for he became the storyteller of spring. Whenever the Blood Jade Flower blooms, you can always hear two worlds gently echoing each other—it's a mother telling her beloved Xiao'er a story that will never end.
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