The hum of the starship's engines suddenly distorted into a cat's purr. Lin Yue was combing the black cat's fur when it suddenly pierced through her fingertips—its body had become so transparent that she could see the star map behind it. The black cat flicked its tail. Its gear-shaped glasses reflected the spire of a medieval castle, but the image was also shrouded in the afterimage of the cyberverse's data stream. "The overlap of consciousness has begun... Look at your palms."
Xia Zichen spread his hands, and beneath the star-patterned light, the blood vessels in his palms pulsed in sync with his "self" from a parallel universe. Sword marks from a different time and space emerged from Lin Yue's wind runes. They were memories of the battles Xia Zichen, the mechanical steampunk cosmos, had left behind in Gear Alley. Lao Zhang's holographic projection suddenly split into three overlapping images, each holding a wrench, a scalpel, and a quill. "The dimensional barrier has cracked under the impact of the empathic wave. Now you can see the real-time perspectives of your other 'selves'!"
"But this also means--" The black cat's voice was mixed with the echoes of multiple universes, "The fragments of the first generation's consciousness may be parasitic through the cracks. Be careful of those strange scenes that suddenly become 'familiar'..." Before she finished speaking, a dazzling silver light burst out on Lin Yue's retina. She saw "herself" in sixteen universes look up at the same time, looking at the same falling space-time anchor star.
In the castle hall of the medieval universe, Xia Zichen, wearing armor, was chopping a gargoyle with a star-patterned sword, and suddenly Lin Yue's terrified face in reality was superimposed on his field of vision: "Be careful! The gargoyle's eyes are fragment resonators!" Before he finished speaking, Xia Zichen's mechanical arm in reality suddenly rose uncontrollably, and the medieval scene was reflected in the sight - it turned out that "him" in a certain universe was borrowing the combat experience of this body through the empathy chain.
"Is this a cross-dimensional coordinated operation?" Lin Yue summoned the Wind Blade, its blade entwined with cybernetic data streams, easily slicing through the sudden dimensional rift in reality. On the other side of the rift, the steampunk cyborg Xia Zichen was injecting gear energy into the mechanical heart of a black cat, whose pupils reflected the stained glass windows of a medieval castle.
The gears of Black Cat's pocket watch began to rotate counterclockwise, and the dial displayed the time flow rate of seventeen universes simultaneously: "The critical point of consciousness duplication is the 'emotional resonance peak'. Now, you must synchronize the 'first encounter memory' of all universes to stabilize the barrier." Lin Yue touched Xia Zichen's palm, and the two of them fell into the vortex of multiple memories at the same time -
- Cyberverse: He used code to rebuild the lavender garden for her in the Data Ruins;
- Steampunk: She used wind blades to spell out an escape route for him before the gears exploded;
- Medieval Era: He protected her Wind Rune and blocked the dragon's venom for her;
- ...Every first encounter in the universe brings different wounds, but the same lavender blooms where memories overlap.
The starship in reality was suddenly locked onto by seventeen beams of light of different colors, each emanating from a universe experiencing a cascade of consciousness. In Lin Yue's pocket of wind, all the courage candies melted simultaneously, blending into a sweet, rusty aroma—a resonance concocted by "them" from various universes, using blood and data, gear oil, and dragon breath.
"Look out the porthole!" Xia Zichen pointed outward. Starships from seventeen universes were arranged in various configurations, forming a space-time resonance formation. A medieval "she" soared by on a dragon, the wind patterns on its wings creating visible ripples with the runes of reality. A cyberverse "he" sent coordinates via a data stream, revealing the fragments of the Holy Grail, which were materializing simultaneously in seventeen dimensions.
The black cat's transparency had spread to its chest. It struggled to leap onto the console and pressed seventeen buttons with its paws: "Activate the empathy matrix! Let all of you share a single sea of consciousness!" The moment all the buttons were pressed, Lin Yue felt a myriad of emotions flood into his brain simultaneously—the cold codes of the cyberworld, the clang of medieval swords and shields, the clashing heat of steampunk gears. But at the deepest level of all, the ever-present lavender glow in each pair of "them"'s gazes toward each other.
In the sea of consciousness, the rainbow bridge split into seventeen tributaries, each culminating in a different version of "them." The steampunk cyborg Xia Zichen tossed a block of gear energy, which the real-life Xia Zichen's robotic arm caught with unwavering confidence. The medieval "her" poured holy water from the Holy Grail into the cracks, and the real-life Lin Yue's wind blade suddenly glowed with a divine golden light.
"Is this what the First Generation meant by 'symbiotic brilliance'?" Lin Yue observed the tacit cooperation between herself and Xia Zichen in various universes, realizing that when they no longer cling to "uniqueness," the love in each time and space becomes a weapon for each other. The black cat's voice echoed from all dimensions simultaneously: "Remember, you are not seventeen cycles of loneliness, but seventeen refractions of the same beam of light."
The starship's main control system suddenly sounded alarms from multiple universes, indicating that fragments of the First Generation's consciousness were invading through the Overlay Rift. In reality, Xia Zichen's star pattern on the back of his neck suddenly felt hot. He saw his medieval self possessed by a fragment of the First Generation. He raised his holy sword to strike at "her," but the cyberverse "him" wrapped his wrist in firewall code.
"Use the empathic chain to transmit the 'scent of first encounter'!" Lin Yue urgently mobilized the lavender memories of all universes. The Wind Talisman culture formed an invisible aroma network, crossing dimensions and penetrating the nasal cavity of each possessed "Xia Zichen." A medieval holy sword shattered into points of light upon contact with the lavender scent. Virtual lavender blossomed from the firewall code of the cyber universe, and fragrant lubricant seeped from the gears of the steampunk world.
When the last fragment was expelled, "they" from the seventeen universes simultaneously knelt before the sea of consciousness. The black cat's body, now transparent, revealed only the gears and glasses. It used its final strength to piece the seventeen fragments together into a complete inversion matrix: "Now... embed the matrix into the 'first encounter node' of each universe. This is the key to breaking the cycle of the first generation."
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