When the laboratory alarm blared like a needle piercing his eardrum, Lin Yi's fingers regained sensation first.
His hand, which was pressed against his side, slammed heavily against the crystalline surface of his consciousness space. The burning pain from the starlight mark shot through his nerves to his temples, forcing him to open his eyes abruptly.
What comes into view is a surging sea of light.
Those memory orbs that were originally suspended were now spinning wildly between him and his "self" on the other side, like bubbles being swept up by a hurricane.
Another Lin Yi stood with his back to the light flow, the hem of his tactical uniform being lifted by the data turbulence, even the tips of his hair gleaming with a cold silver light—exactly the same color surging deep in his pupils every time he used the power of spacetime in his memory.
"Awake?" Mirror's voice was laced with static, as his fingertips casually brushed against a sphere of light beside him. "Take a look at your proudest achievement, 'Awakening.'"
The moment the sphere of light exploded, Lin Yi almost stopped breathing.
There was no blue crystal found at the alleyway, no star trails for her seventeenth birthday, only a laboratory emitting a cold white fluorescence.
Researchers in white coats are inserting a crystal tube into the location of his heart when he was an infant. A torrent of data flows into the crystal tube, weaving star trail patterns under his skin.
In another scene, the boy is pinned to an experimental table, a robotic arm projecting the professional badge of "Master of Time and Space" onto his forehead. The researcher's voice is eerily clear: "Symbiotic program 99.9% compatible, the nest core has finally found a container."
"What you thought was an accidental awakening?" The mirror image approached step by step, and with each step, the ground cracked open like a spider web. "It's nothing more than a guiding program that an advanced civilization has etched into your soul."
Your so-called 'free will' has been locked in the nest's code from the day you were created.
Lin Yi's Adam's apple bobbed.
He could hear his own heart pounding like a drum, and those deliberately forgotten fragments suddenly strung together—the heart-pounding roar every time he used the power of spacetime was the core of the mother nest resonating; the blue crystal he picked up at the age of five was actually a core fragment actively contacting the host; even Chu Yao's compatibility with his "extraordinary talent" was just a script already written by the system.
"That's enough." His voice was hoarse as he bent down to pick up the spacetime blade at his feet.
The engraving of the character "Yao" on the hilt pressed against his palm, like the warmth of Chu Yao's fingertips gently tapping the hilt whenever she helped him repair equipment. "Even if the past was orchestrated..." He gripped the sword tighter, the silver blade tracing a semi-circle between them. "The me of today will fight for those around me, will shield Long Wu from extradimensional spikes, will fight for Chu Yao's chance to be digitized—are these emotions, these choices, also code?"
The mirror image paused.
The silver light in his eyes suddenly surged violently, like a deep pool being stirred up by some force: "You think these 'emotions' aren't programs used by the mother nest to stabilize the core?"
Do you think Long Wu's loyalty and Chu Yao's dependence aren't just illusions created by the system to make you feel secure as a vessel?
"Then let me verify it myself." Lin Yi shouted, and the spacetime blade brought a sharp sound as it tore through space.
The space of consciousness collapsed instantly.
The aftershocks of their clash sent up a sea of light, and the originally gentle sphere of memory light shattered into sharp fragments, cutting Lin Yi's cheeks painfully.
His spacetime blade clashed with the mirrored blade, each contact sending up sparks like star trails—a clash of powers belonging to the masters of spacetime, even distorting space around them into the shape of a Möbius strip.
The mirror image's attack suddenly became tricky.
His swordplay contained techniques that Lin Yi had never used before, yet it was terrifyingly familiar, as if he were using an undeveloped fighting instinct from Lin Yi's subconscious.
For a moment, Lin Yi even had the illusion that the person opposite him understood this body better than he did, and knew better how to manipulate the power of space and time.
But when the mirrored blade was pressed against his throat, Lin Yi suddenly laughed.
"You said I'm a manufactured vessel." He grabbed the other's wrist, the star-shaped mark and the mark on the mirrored hand simultaneously blazing with a blinding blue light. "But just now you used a variation of the 'Dragon Whirlwind Slash' I designed for Long Wu last week—that was a temporary modification I made based on his true dragon bloodline." He suddenly exerted force, slamming the mirrored image into the stream of light behind him. "If I were a program, how could I have such an 'error' in adapting to changing circumstances?"
A crisp sound, like porcelain shattering, came from the stream of light.
Fine cracks appeared on the mirrored body, and silver light leaked out from the cracks, faintly revealing another layer of image below—countless tangled data lines, frantically contracting towards a black hole-like core.
"You..." The mirror image's voice cracked for the first time. He tried to solidify his body, but Lin Yi's spacetime blade pressed against his chest. "You can't be..."
"I might." Lin Yi pressed his hand to the other's chest, star trails spreading from where their bodies touched. "Because the Lin Yi I am now, protected by Long Wu's battle blade, the Lin Yi whom Chu Yao said, 'This time, it's my turn to protect you.'" In his pupils, silver light intertwined with his original black pupils, forming an even more dazzling vortex. "These bonds are my 'mistakes' in fighting against everything."
The space of consciousness suddenly trembled violently.
The laboratory alarm blared again, this time more urgent than before.
Out of the corner of Lin Yi's eye, he saw the light gate in the distance collapsing, revealing the scene of the laboratory behind it—Long Wu's battle blade cleaved through the last stream of data and was rushing toward the light gate; Chu Yao's projection had materialized, and the code stream at her fingertips condensed into chains, trying to stabilize the collapsing space.
The mirror image of the body began to dissipate.
He gazed at Lin Yi, the silver glint in his eyes gradually fading, revealing a depth of darkness identical to Lin Yi's: "So... the Mother Nest missed this crucial link..."
Before he could finish speaking, he completely turned into stardust.
Lin Yi's hand holding the Time-Space Blade trembled slightly.
He looked down at his chest—beneath the skin there, the star trails were still flowing, but they no longer caused him a burning pain.
From the distant portal came Long Wu's roar: "Mr. Lin!"
Grab my hand!
He looked up and met the figure that broke through the data turbulence.
In the deepest part of consciousness, a core enveloped by star trails trembled slightly.
From the cracks on its surface, a sliver of warm light, identical to that in Lin Yi's pupils, seeped out.
As Long Wu's battle blade cleaved through the last stream of data, pale golden blood beads seeped from the dragon scale patterns on the blade—the price he paid for using his true dragon bloodline to withstand the turbulent data flow.
His reddened pupils were fixed on the swaying figure within the portal, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he called out a second time: "Mr. Lin!"
The roar pierced through the tremors of his consciousness space and crashed into Lin Yi's ears.
His sword strike against the mirror image paused slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the charred data residue clinging to Long Wu's hair and suddenly saw the emptiness in the eyes of "himself" opposite him.
When the mirror image used the "Dragon Whirlwind Slash" variation, although the move was similar, it lacked the vividness of Long Wu's grin before each use of this move—it turns out that the so-called perfect copy can never steal the hottest temperature.
"You have no heartbeat." Lin Yi suddenly sheathed his sword and stepped back, star trail patterns shooting from his fingertips up to his brow bone.
He gazed at the mirrored face, distorted by the interruption of the attack, and suddenly remembered Chu Yao always saying that his vital signs were like a pulsating star chart: "Every time I shielded Long Wu from a blow, my heart would skip a beat; when Chu Yao repaired the Time Blade, my pulse would tremble slightly in rhythm with the tapping of the hilt—you can't replicate these things."
The mirrored silver light's pupils contracted violently.
His knife-wielding movements began to show mechanical stiffness, as if he were forcibly processing emotional codes he had never encountered before.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Lin Yi lunged forward, his left hand forming a claw to grab the opponent's wrist, while his right hand gathered the power of spacetime to strike straight at the heart.
The moment his palm pierced through, he touched a stream of cold data—no body temperature, no heartbeat, only the buzzing sound unique to the core of the nest.
"This is your weakness," Lin Yi said in a low voice, starlight exploding in his palm.
The mirrored body, like an ice crystal thrown into boiling water, disintegrated into tiny data fragments starting from its heart.
Scattered images surfaced from those fragments: a lab coat, a monitor from infancy, a metal plaque engraved with "Mother Nest Core Container"—but notably, the star-studded night sky above him on his seventeenth birthday night, when he squatted at the alley entrance picking up the blue crystal.
"No...impossible..." The mirror image's voice was torn apart by the data turbulence. Before the last wisp of silver light dissipated, a flicker of confusion flashed in his eyes. "Emotions...can actually..."
The words came to an abrupt halt.
The space of consciousness collapsed completely at this moment.
The sea of light swirled into a black vortex, and fragments of the exploding memory orb poured down like a torrential rain, cutting Lin Yi's back and causing blood to seep out.
But his gaze was firmly fixed on the colossal object emerging from the center of the vortex—a suspended rhomboid core, its surface shimmering with silver light of the same origin as his star trail imprint. Countless tiny particles of faith power were being devoured by it, and below the core, a line of ancient golden characters slowly appeared as the data was reassembled: "Source of Faith - System Prototype".
"This is..." Lin Yi's fingertips lifted uncontrollably.
When his palm touched the core surface, tens of thousands of pieces of information flooded him like a tidal wave—the advanced civilization's "Civilization Trial Grounds" project, the experiment of feeding the system prototype with the power of faith, and the truth about him as the first complete experimental subject to bear the power of faith.
The blue crystal found at age five was a signal that the core actively chose a host; the awakening at age seventeen was an explosion of faith power accumulated to a critical point; even the profession of "Master of Time and Space" was a container tailor-made for more efficient absorption of faith.
"So that's what I was thinking..." Lin Yi's throat tightened.
But before he could sort out his thoughts, the core suddenly emitted a piercing scream, and spiderweb-like cracks appeared on its surface—it couldn't hold on any longer.
Mr. Lin!
"Only ten seconds left in the spatial passage!" Chu Yao's voice came from the portal.
Lin Yi then realized that her projection had fully materialized, her translucent fingertips pressing against the closing portal, and seven links of the code chain on her wrist had snapped. "A core collapse will trigger a dimensional storm; we must leave immediately!"
"Wait." Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He saw a familiar silver light emerge from the core crack—it was the remnant of the Mother Nest, attempting to escape to another dimension along with the collapsing data stream.
He bit his tongue, using the pain to stay awake, and with a backhand, he drew the spacetime blade, drawing a star trail array on the core surface: "Chu Yao, locate the frequency of the remnant of the mother nest!"
Dragon Five, use the true dragon bloodline to seal off its retreat!
Long Wu's battle sword instantly plunged into the ground.
He raised his head and let out a dragon's roar. Pale golden dragon breath enveloped the core like a net, forcing the silver light that was trying to escape back to its original position.
Chu Yao's fingertips flashed with dark blue code, precisely locking onto the lingering fluctuations: "Frequency synchronized!"
Now we can...
"Seal!" Lin Yi shouted, and the star track array suddenly lit up.
He grabbed the wisp of silver light and forcibly pulled it into his own spacetime domain—where the wine jar he shared with Long Wu, the scarf Chu Yao knitted for him, and the cheers from the first gathering of the Spacetime Legion still remained.
The remnant of the nest let out a shriek the moment it came into contact with these warm memories, but it was ultimately suppressed by the power of faith within the domain and gradually shrank into a glowing crystal core.
"Go!" Lin Yi grabbed Long Wu's wrist and rushed towards the portal.
A deafening roar came from behind as the core completely collapsed, the shockwave causing the three to stagger and pushing them out of their consciousness space.
The incandescent lights in the real laboratory were so bright they made it impossible to open one's eyes.
As Lin Yi steadied himself on the experimental table, cold sweat dripped from his forehead onto the ground, wetting the last piece of data that Long Wu had caught for him.
Chu Yao's projection reassembled beside him, her hair still adorned with lingering sparks of code, yet she immediately brought up the monitoring panel: "Core data extraction completion rate 97%, Mother Nest Remnant Seal stable... but..."
Her voice suddenly stopped.
Lin Yi followed her gaze to the laboratory's floor-to-ceiling windows.
The sky outside was shrouded in a light purple mist, as if some kind of dimensional barrier was taking shape.
Long Wu's battle sword automatically unsheathed, its tip pointing out the window: "Mr. Lin, this fog... and the energy fluctuations from when the interdimensional invaders arrived..."
"We're not just facing the Mother Nest." Lin Yi wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, the star trail mark on his palm trembling almost imperceptibly.
He gazed at the purple mist outside the window, recalling the fragments that flashed through the core information—advanced civilization, faith harvesting, an existence older than the Mother Nest.
These fragments wove together in his mind into a giant web, and at the other end of the web, something was gazing at them.
"Summon the core members of the Time Air Force Legion." Lin Yi turned and walked to the laboratory control panel, his fingertips typing encrypted commands on the keyboard. "Emergency meeting in thirty minutes."
Chu Yao's projection paused slightly, then transformed into a data stream and entered the console.
Long Wu sheathed his sword but did not leave. He stood silently beside Lin Yi, offering his support with his body heat.
The laboratory lights cast shadows on Lin Yi's eyes.
He stared at the "Source of Faith - System Prototype" data flashing on the control panel screen and muttered, "The Mother Nest is just a pawn..."
The purple mist outside the window grew thicker.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com