When Tang Ren held up the trilobite fossil as a shield, the Ordovician seawater suddenly solidified into a gelatinous state. Su Chen used the mucus of the brachiopod to glue together the damaged mechanical eye, and a red alarm flashed on the retina: "The genetic pollution index has exceeded the threshold value--"
"Is this a fucking environmental warning from 500 million years ago?" Tang Ren threw the fossil at the creeping crinoids, and the biological debris reassembled in the air into oracle bone script, which popped up: [Probability of civilization survival 0.03%]. Qin Feng suddenly pressed his shoulder, his fingers digging deep into the animal skin: "Look... the seabed is glowing!"
The three of them followed the light and saw a crack of 1 meter in the Cambrian seabed. A staircase made of bronze gears and trilobite shells wound down, and each step was engraved with the CRIMASTER ranking of different eras. Tang Ren's jade cong fragment suddenly floated to lead the way, and the edge of the fragment reflected the shadow of his father debugging a genetic instrument at the end of the stairs.
"The Qianwei Pass!" Tang Ren took off his animal skin skirt and tied it to the stone pillar as a totem flag. When they stepped down the 847th step, the sea water retreated suddenly, revealing a quantum laboratory hidden in the Precambrian rock layer. The incubator was soaked with embryo samples of twelve civilizations, from dinosaurs to silicon-based life.
---
On the operating table in the center of the laboratory, the mechanical compound eye was performing microscopic operations. Qin Feng took a closer look and found that the tweezers were clamping a miniature version of the human DNA double helix, and the operation record showed that the operation lasted 500 million years.
"Welcome to the civilized operating room." Sinuo's holographic image seeped out of the parrot snail shell, and the origami in her hand turned into an RNA chain model, "You are the observation team of the 9,847th experiment."
Su Chen suddenly crashed into the main console, and the mechanical prosthesis was inserted into the genetic map interface. A huge amount of data poured into his consciousness: humans are just mutated from the Cambrian source code, and the Q organization is screening the "perfect civilization" in a closed space-time loop. Even more terrifying, the surgical record contains the biological signature of Qin Feng's mother when she was young - she once deleted the dinosaur evolution code with her own hands.
"Mom... why?" Qin Feng crushed the trilobite fossil in his hand. Tang Ren suddenly lit the alcohol torch with a flint and licked the glass of the culture chamber with his tongue: "I don't care if you are a dinosaur or a silicon-based, I'm going to eat all kinds of charcoal grilled food today!"
---
When the laboratory started the self-destruction program, the coral-shaped quantum computer suddenly grew wildly. Each coral branch was a civilization voting device, and the data flower blooming on the top showed the real-time vote count: [Preserve human civilization] VS [Start a new species plan].
"Vote for your mother!" Tang Ren stabbed the voting machine with a harpoon, and the juice splashed onto Su Chen's mechanical eye. In an instant, Su Chen saw the horrible truth - each voter saw himself in a different timeline. From a witch in the Stone Age to a starship captain, countless "Su Chens" are making the same choice in different time and space.
Qin Feng inserted the jade fragment into the coral trunk, and the gene map suddenly materialized into an ancient giant tree full of light fibers. In the drooping crown of the tree, the members of the Q organization from all generations were sleeping in the fruits, including Saotome Suzu, who should have died in her youth. Tang Ren tore off the vines and shouted: "It turns out that this group of street-shopping workers are reincarnated!"
Sinuo's shadow chuckled at the top of the tree: "All civilizations have experimental fields, you are just the most stubborn weeds." She waved the RNA origami, and the roots of the tree suddenly sprayed out two layers of mountain ash.
---
A root server fused with bronze and biological tissue emerged from the ashes, and the operating interface was flowing with magma-like codes. Su Chen recognized this as the "life restart device" that his mother had been researching before she disappeared, and each button corresponded to a mass extinction event.
"Press it, and you can rewrite the Cambrian source code." Sinuo said with temptation mixed with the roar of the mountain, "or let humans continue to be failures."
Tang Ren suddenly stuffed the fragment of the jade cong into the gap of the operating table: "I'll restart you!" The quantum memory in the fragment was activated, projecting a scene of the Liangzhu ancient city 500 million years later - the young Qin Feng was picking up the same piece of jade cong in the archaeological pit.
In the turmoil caused by the time paradox, Qin Feng grasped the key: the energy source of the root server was sealed by his mother in the Cambrian period. He pressed the dinosaur fossil into the operating table and rewrote the gene lock with the topology formula taught by his father.
"Error! Error!" The root server spewed out Ordovician sea water, and the shadow of Sinuo began to pixelate and collapse. Tang Ren took the opportunity to throw an alcohol sprayer into the core cabin: "Please drink a glass of extinction cocktail!"
---
The explosion and quantum storm threw the three back to the beach in the early Cambrian period. When the tide receded, the reef exposed the activated source code of life - a ball of primordial soup emitting blue light.
"This... a kind of life." Qin Feng's hands were shaking. Su Chen's mechanical eye detected the nanorobots swimming in the soup, and they were organizing Q to tamper with the evolutionary path device.
Tang Ren suddenly took off his animal skin skirt and dipped into the primitive soup: "Look at me, Meng Po Soup Plus!" The animal skin fibers reacted with the quantum soup to produce a new base pair sequence. The beach suddenly shook, and countless evolutionary lines unfolded in the air: in one world, humans grew gills, and in another world, dinosaurs established civilization.
Sinuo finally appeared in the clouds: "Choose, do you want to be the emperor or a sinner?" She folded paper into two keys and inserted them into the keyholes of different timelines.
---
Qin Feng broke the two keys at the same time. The key fragments fell into the primordial soup, triggering quantum ripples that wiped out all traces of human intervention. Tang Ren's animal skin skirt turned into ashes in the energy impact, revealing the seaweed-like Hetu Luoshu on his waist.
"Civilization... should grow its own legs!" He raised his middle finger at the gradually fading Sinuo. Su Chen activated his mechanical prosthetic eye with the last bit of electricity, and his retina flashed his mother's smile in the closed time loop - she had hidden the true seed in the redundant code of human genes 500 million years ago.
As the white light engulfed the Cambrian beach, the three heard the first cries of life one after another. The shell of trilobites, the compound eyes of shrimps, the spiral of parrot snails... All evolution may return to chaos.
---
In the morning mist of 2024, Tang Ren screamed and broke the tranquility of the Liangzhu Ruins: "Why did my pants turn into animal skin?!"
Qin Feng stared at the warm jade fragment in his hand, with Cambrian sea salt crystals on the edge. Su Chen's new artificial eye suddenly focused automatically, and on the glass wall of the tourist center, a silhouette of a girl folding paper was reflected - behind her ear was a trilobite-shaped quantum tattoo.
The radio at the site suddenly interrupted with an urgent news: "A group of living fossils from the Cambrian period were discovered in the South China Sea, and some of the organisms carry unknown gene sequences..." Tang Ren grabbed the archaeological team's Luoyang shovel and shouted, "Let's get started! This time I'm going to wear radiation-proof animal leather pants!"
No one noticed that in the blind spot of surveillance, a mechanical shrimp's compound eyes were quietly turning in the depths of the display cabinet. The CRIMASTER logo on its shell was gradually lighting up with the footsteps of tourists.