The fragments of the Scythe of Entropy glowed in Lin Yue's palm. The fluorescent light of the "Future Determination Reagents" she had shattered spread along the World Tree's roots, deep into the Embryo Bank. Xia Zichen's Star-Embroidered Sword suddenly deviated from its direction toward the newborn universe, and the star map of the black-robed figure on the blade suddenly showed tearing cracks—an anomaly not seen since the Mirror Battle in Chapter 17.
"The roots are spreading fear." Ah Fu's Oracle-shaped sword sliced through the fluorescent vines wrapped around his ankle. The reflection on the blade wasn't his own face, but the swollen egg of possibility from Chapter 5. It had now grown into a giant cocoon, its fist-like lines cracking and leaking a coded slime. "The Administration's 'Order Virus'... is parasitic within possibility."
Zhang's black cat suddenly leaped onto the trunk of the World Tree. The bark beneath its claws oozes ink-like words, the very words she'd written in Chapter 5: "The answer is on the way." But each word twists into a rhetorical question: Is the end of the road a cycle? "Remember that talking nebula in Chapter 22?" she rips off the chain of her pocket watch. The inside of the watch reveals the author of the black hole's autobiography, whom she met in Chapter 10. "It said, 'Every choice generates a mirror universe'... Perhaps we're constantly fighting our own shadows."
Lin Yue's double helix and Xia Zichen's star pattern suddenly resonated, and they both saw the same scene: the Memory Recycling Station administrator, rescued in Chapter 15, now standing before the giant cocoon, clutching the memory Molotov cocktail that was supposed to have been destroyed in Chapter 8. "He said in Chapter 25, 'Ashes will remember the shape of flames,'" she said, her fingertips tracing the newly formed eye-shaped scars on the tree trunk. Those eyes suddenly opened, their pupils replaying the childhood memories read by the guard in Chapter 3. "What if the core of the Administration... is our own memories?"
Xia Zichen clenched the fragment of the Egg of Possibility, only to have it suddenly pierce his palm. As blood dripped onto the tree roots, the entire embryo bank began to fade like an old photograph. They returned to the swarm of jellyfish they had just passed through the portal in Chapter 1, only to find that the glowing guards had transformed into black-robed figures, their fingertips frozen with question marks. "Chapter 7's 'Answer the unknown before moving forward'... was a trap." He swung his sword to split the guard, but the blade got stuck in the star pattern between his brows. "We've been using the key given by the Administration to open their locks."
Ah Fu suddenly remembered the fragments of the First Guardian's diary hidden in the hilt of the Oracle Sword in Chapter 19, when he was repairing it: "When memory becomes a weapon, the enemy hides in reflections." He thrust the sword into the ground, and the ancient text spread like ripples, illuminating golden chains suspended deep in the nebula. Each chain was engraved with the name of the protagonist, and at the end of the chain were mirror images of them, wearing the robes of the Administration.
"The mirror image in Chapter 5 isn't an enemy, it's a warning." Lao Zhang's notebook automatically flipped to the star map in Chapter 30. All the question marks turned into arrows, pointing to the same coordinate: the "Origin of Possibility" at the center of the embryo bank. The black cat suddenly spoke, the voice of the time black marketeer encountered in Chapter 28: "You thought you were defeating order? It's just that order tricked you into thinking you'd won."
Lin Yue's memory beam swept across the mirror people's chests, revealing that the center of their emblems wasn't a fist, but a closed eye. When Xia Zichen's Star Sword severed the first chain inscribed with "Xia Zichen," all the mirror people screamed simultaneously, and the World Tree's branches began to drop black fruit. When the fruit cracked, out jumped the mechanical elves they had saved in Chapter 12, their eyes now covered by code.
"This is a recursive trap." Ah Fu caught the falling mechanical elf. The gears on its palm were engraved with the paradox formula that Lao Zhang solved in Chapter 9. "Every time we unlock a possibility, we generate a mirror universe controlled by the Administration, just like... replacing old chains with new ones."
Old Zhang suddenly ripped open the back of his pocket watch, and out fell not the movement but the coin from Chapter 5, with ants on both sides. The coin rolled across the ground, casting a different shadow at each mirrored person's feet: Xia Zichen's shadow grasped the Scythe of Entropy, Lin Yue's shadow burned memories, Ah Fu's shadow carved the Authority's emblem onto the Oracle Sword, and her own shadow...wrote "Everything is delusion" in the mirror.
"The memory beam from Chapter 3!" Xia Zichen suddenly grabbed Lin Yue's wrist. The light from her childhood observation of ants still lingered on her forehead. "The guards aren't reading memories, they're implanting markers! From the very beginning... we were the 'vessels of possibility' selected by the Administration."
The World Tree suddenly made a sound of shattering glass, and the eyes on the trunk all oozed blood and tears. The tears gathered into a mirror on the ground, reflecting them in countless parallel universes: some of them joined the Mirror Man in Chapter 5, and some were assimilated by the Scythe of Entropy in Chapter 20. In the most dazzling scene, four people were wearing the robes of the Administration and putting chains on the Egg of Possibility.
"Choose, Vessels." The true consciousness of the Authority came from beneath the mirror, a voice composed of countless overlapping voices. "Become the guardians of the new order, or... let all possibilities rot with your 'freedom'."
Lin Yue raised the double helix, only to discover that in the mirror's light, it had transformed into the prototype of the Administration's emblem. Ah Fu's oracle-bone sword automatically pointed at Xia Zichen, the blessing pattern on the hilt transforming into a chain pattern. Lao Zhang's notebook floated above the mirror, its first page etched with the words: What you thought was resistance was a script I had given you.
Xia Zichen looked at the healed wound on his palm, where the same closed-eye emblem as his Mirror Man had been branded. He suddenly smiled and stabbed the fragment of the Possibility Egg into his chest. "If we are the vessel... then let it be filled with what you fear most."
The moment blood splattered on the mirror, cracks appeared on the emblems of all the mirrored people, revealing a glow identical to Xia Zichen's star pattern. The black fruit of the World Tree began to grow wildly, but upon contact with the blood, it blossomed into rainbow-colored flowers. Lin Yue finally understood the meaning of the mirrored people's final words in Chapter 5—when the first possibility begins to devour the others, what is needed is not order, but the courage to subvert oneself.
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