In the liquid time garden, the previously tranquil Möbius strip flowers suddenly began to tremble violently like a disturbed swarm of bees, each flower swaying frantically as if trying to break free from its stem.
At the same moment, the notebook in Lin Yue's hand spontaneously combusted without warning. The flames spread rapidly, engulfing the entire notebook. The paper curled and blackened in the flames, finally reducing to ash.
However, at the moment the notebook was completely burned, a strange light shot out from the ashes. This light came from the seventeen-colored gems in the notebook. Under the influence of the high temperature, it actually exuded a scalding liquid light.
These liquid lights flowed across the charred paper, as if alive, automatically outlining a distorted star map. This star map appeared extremely complex, containing countless broken nodes of time and space.
Each spacetime node was like a festering wound in the universe, constantly oozing dark purple mucus. This mucus spread across the star map, connecting with other nodes to form an intricate network.
"Alert! The inter-dimensional rift index has exceeded the critical value!" Lu Li's data form suddenly split into seven afterimages, each of which was frantically calculating. "These rifts are devouring nearby narrative anchors, as if... as if something is weaving time and space backwards!"
The calico cat suddenly arched its back, and the reassembled gear collar around its neck emitted a shrill buzzing sound. Its pupils reflected the strange symbols emerging in the sky, a spell composed of countless twisted musical notes, dyeing the entire sky an ominous leaden gray. "It's a variation of the 'Hymn of Entropy!'" the calico cat's voice trembled. "It's the forbidden music that the Entropy Demon used to tear the membrane of the universe!"
Lin Yue's original thread of time suddenly surged uncontrollably, black veins seeping through the golden lines. She pressed her forehead in agony, countless unfamiliar fragments of memories flooding into her mind—in a doomsday battlefield in a parallel universe, a group of warriors in silver armor transformed their hearts into harp strings, attempting to mend the shattered spacetime with the sound of life; in another dimension, an ancient tree-like civilization used the narratives recorded in its growth rings to fight against the chaotic creatures emerging from the rifts.
A quantum communicator suddenly exploded with a crackling sound of electricity, and countless distress signals distorted into eerie shrieks. In images from a steampunk universe, a mechanical city was growing in reverse, its gears reorganizing into a massive organ, each pipe emitting a corrosive black mist. Spiderweb-like cracks opened up on the surface of Cybertron, and from them crawled giant pythons composed of binary code, their bodies constantly covered with scarlet commands: "Delete" and "Format."
"We must find the source of the cracks!" Lin Yue pressed the burning notebook against her chest, and the liquid light of the seventeen-colored gems seeped into her blood vessels along her skin. "These cracks don't seem to be naturally generated, but more like someone deliberately created them..." Before she finished her words, the ground in the garden suddenly cracked open, and countless black vines broke out of the ground. Hundreds of mechanical eyeballs were embedded in the vines, and each eyeball was broadcasting the doomsday scenes of different civilizations.
Lu Li's seven afterimages attacked simultaneously, the golden code transforming into lasers to slice through the vines, only to find that the severed sections instantly reassembled into sharp tuning forks. The calico cat's gear collar blazed with blue light, shattering the tuning fork into dust. However, more black vines had already wrapped around Lin Yue's ankles, their cold touch mingling with the familiar scent of narrative pollution.
"So you're still alive." A cold electronic synthesized voice echoed from the vines, and twelve mechanical hearts embedded in them began to beat in sync. "We've specially prepared this 'prelude to the final chapter' for you." As the voice faded, the vines suddenly tightened, dragging Lin Yue towards the abyss beneath the earth. Lu Li and the calico cat leaped down without hesitation, only to find themselves trapped in a maze constructed from fragments of memory.
Every wall here played a different story: a primitive tribe playing a healing melody on a bone flute, only to be swallowed by a sudden black note; a narrative missile launched by a future interstellar fleet was reversed into a destructive beam before reaching its target. Lin Yue grasped the original thread of time and found that it was resonating with the surrounding memory fragments—the figure of a silver-armored warrior could be vaguely seen in those contaminated fragments.
"These warriors..." Lin Yue touched the wall, and memory fragments suddenly turned into streams of light and poured into her consciousness. "They are the 'Guardians of Time', who once sealed a certain forbidden power in the early days of the universe!" As soon as she finished speaking, the ground suddenly cracked, and a giant hand composed of countless mechanical gears broke out of the ground. In its palm was a beating purple crystal, and the surface of the crystal was covered with the same entropy change spells as in the sky.
"This is the 'Entropy Core'," the calico cat's pupils shrank into needle-like shapes, "a legendary forbidden device that can transform narratives into destructive energy! Those cracks are the resonance points it creates in different dimensions!" The giant hand suddenly grasped the crystal, and the entire maze began to collapse. The memory fragments on the wall turned into sharp blades and flew towards the three people.
At the critical moment, Lin Yue stabbed the Origin Time Thread into the ground. It instantly emanated a silver light, forming a protective barrier around the three of them. Her notebook suddenly flipped open, revealing an ancient diagram left by the Guardian of Time. It was an "anti-entropy concerto" drawn with star paths, requiring the narrative power of twelve different civilizations to play together.
"Lu Li! Analyze the energy fluctuation frequency of the spectrum! Calico cat, use your gear collar to create a resonance field!" Lin Yue raised the notebook above her head, the light of seventeen-colored gems intertwined with the silk thread. "I'll contact the empaths in the multiverse. This time we have to take the initiative!"
As the first note of the Anti-Entropy Concerto sounded, the purple crystal began to vibrate violently. Countless phantoms of silver-armored warriors emerged from the fragments of memory, transforming their weapons into harp strings, merging their power with that of Lin Yue and the others. The entropy core shrieked with unwillingness, and the spells on the crystal's surface began to crumble. The rifts that ravaged the multiverse gradually shrank to the melody.
But just as victory seemed within reach, the purple crystal suddenly exploded, unleashing a torrent of energy powerful enough to devour an entire dimension. At the last moment, Lin Yue flung the original thread of time toward Lu Li and the calico cat, only to be swept into an unknown time and space by the torrent. Before her consciousness faded, she saw the leader of the silver-armored warriors reaching out to her. Engraved on their armor were the same seventeen-colored patterns as those in her notebook...
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