Lin Yue's temples throbbed, and seventeen cosmic "selves" screamed simultaneously in her consciousness. The pain of dragon flame searing her throat in the medieval "her" gnawed at her vocal cords, cybernetic data streams screamed and pierced her eardrums, and the grinding of steampunk gears vibrated between her teeth—the empathic chain was like an overloaded circuit board, exploding blue sparks at every nerve ending.
"Hold on! This is an immune response to evolved empathy!" Xia Zichen's voice exploded in her ears, like a thunderclap, waking her from her confused thoughts.
She felt as if her body was being torn apart by a huge force, and every nerve screamed in pain. Xia Zichen's mechanical arm tightly clamped around her waist, and the hard metal touch gave her a slight sense of reality.
A faint glow of star patterns spread along the contact point, like a clear spring, trying to extinguish the uncontrolled rune fire in her body. However, this force seemed too weak to completely suppress the surging rune energy.
At this moment, seventeen different perspectives suddenly flashed before Lin Yue's eyes, like the montage shots in a movie, switching rapidly and dazzlingly.
Her left eye seemed to have turned into a data display screen, with acid rain data from the cyber universe pouring down like a waterfall; her right eye seemed to have traveled through time and space, with the rose window of a medieval castle blooming before her eyes, the exquisite carvings and brilliant colors dazzling her.
In her peripheral vision, steampunk gears and steam appeared and disappeared, as if building a sci-fi world around her.
Just when she was completely unprepared, the calico cat suddenly leaped onto her shoulder like lightning, its movements swift and agile, as if it had planned it all in advance.
The calico cat's paw pressed firmly against her forehead, and a powerful force was transmitted through the paw into her mind. Suddenly, the calico cat's voice echoed in her mind: "Hurry and build a firewall with lavender memories! Every fear of 'you' is being materialized—"
She was startled, and before she could react, she saw blood seeping out of the mirror! The blood seemed to have life, quickly coagulating into seventeen terrifying monsters.
These monsters have various shapes. Some are giant dragons made of data, their scales flashing with strange light; some are gargoyles made of gears, their wings flapping constantly in the air; and some are shadow knights made of codes, the long sword in their hands emitting a chilling chill.
Each monster carries the characteristics of death from a certain universe, making people shudder. Their appearance seems to foreshadow the impending disaster.
Xia Zichen's robotic arm unleashed a lavender crossbow bolt, but the seventeen-colored flower at its tail split into seventeen paths in mid-air, striking different monsters. Lin Yue heard seventeen separate "selves" exclaim simultaneously, "They correspond to our seventeen regrets!" In reality, her Wind Talisman transformed into seventeen chains, but the moment they touched the monsters, they were stained black by the cowardice of her cyberverse self and the guilt of her medieval self.
"Look at the sea of consciousness!" The calico cat traced arcs of light with its claws, and seventeen timelines twisted madly. The gear alleys of the steampunk universe began to spin in reverse. In the medieval dragon cave, a dragon that should have been dead suddenly opened its eyes, its pupils reflecting Lin Yue's real-life expression of terror. In the data ruins of the cyberverse, "she" tossed a black cat doll into the melting furnace, and in the doll's eyes, the glimmer of the shattered original core flashed.
"They're devouring our emotional anchors!" Xia Zichen swung his sword to cleave the code shadows, only to see the star pattern on the blade stained gray. Lin Yue suddenly grabbed his wrist and pressed his palm against the light band on her collarbone: "Use the memory of our first encounter to reconstruct the resonant frequency! Just like... just like our first touch in the data ruins!"
Memories flooded back like a tide—seven-year-old Lin Yue stumbled amidst the rubble, his bloodied knee brushing against Xia Zichen's shattered mechanical heart. Back then, he was a mere fragment of dying code, yet the moment he touched her, he automatically developed a virtual sense of lavender. In reality, the intersecting rainbow patterns of their bodies suddenly erupted in purple light. Seventeen monsters wailed simultaneously, their darkness peeling back, revealing flickering lavender dots beneath.
"So the flip side of regret... is unfinished symbiosis." Lin Yue whispered as the seventeen "selves" within her sea of consciousness suddenly synchronized their movements: the cybernetic version scooped up the data lavender, the steampunk version dripped gear oil onto the wind blade, and the medieval version used fragments of dragon scales to create Xia Zichen's star pattern. When all the movements were complete, the seventeen monsters transformed into points of light and merged into their clasped palms.
The gears on the calico cat's collar suddenly spun, spelling out the coordinates of the entrance to the original core module on the ground. At that moment, Lin Yue heard seventeen voices simultaneously shouting in her head: "Don't approach the core module! It's a trap set by the original!" She suddenly looked up and saw seventeen different versions of herself in the mirror, each with a different expression: the cyber version had cold eyes, the medieval version shook its head with tears in its eyes, and only the steampunk version raised a wrench, pointing in the opposite direction of the coordinates.
"The empathy chain has split..." Xia Zichen's robotic arm detected seventeen different bioelectric frequencies. "Each 'you''s' trust in the First Generation is diverging. Lin Yue, you must choose - trust the First Generation that created you, or trust your own selves in each universe?"
Lin Yue clutched the Holy Grail fragment tightly, and the lavender within it suddenly began to wither. She closed her eyes, letting seventeen memories surge through her consciousness: the beautiful yet false lavender of cyberspace code, the rusty scent of medieval dragon's blood, the greasy lavender of steampunk gears... but each one was a reality she and Xia Zichen had cultivated together.
When she slowly opened her eyes, the originally transparent and colorless wind rune had been dyed with seventeen brilliant colors, as if it had been endowed with some mysterious power.
She carefully inserted the fragment into the gear on the calico cat's collar. The gear began to turn slowly, making a slight clicking sound. As the gear turned, a crack suddenly appeared in the castle ground, and dazzling starlight emanated from the crack, as dazzling as the galaxy in the universe.
From the depths of the crack, the First Generation's unique voice, a mixture of data streams and cat purrs, could be heard faintly: "Welcome to the center of the Corridor of Consciousness, my children. Now... it's time to decide who will become the new cocoon."
Next chapter preview:
After entering the core module of the first generation, it was discovered that "they" in all universes were actually the seventeen personalities split from the first generation.
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