As the blue light from the laboratory danced on Chu Yao's hair, the main unit suddenly beeped.
"Analysis complete." Her projection froze in the data stream, her fingertips hovering in mid-air, the code stream in her iris suddenly stopped—a sign of her emotional fluctuation.
Lin Yi was wiping the extradimensional slime off his combat boots when he looked up upon hearing this, and the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end.
He could feel the star-shaped mark on the back of his hand burning hot, as if a fine needle was piercing deep into his consciousness.
"Speak." His voice was low, and a silver glint was faintly visible at the edge of his pupils.
Chu Yao's projection turned towards the crowd, and the data stream behind her automatically unfolded into a three-dimensional model: "The essence of the virtual divine realm..." She traced a floating ball of light with her fingertips, "It's not a game map, but a bridge between reality and the sea of consciousness."
The sound of gasping for air filled the laboratory.
Xuan Mingzi's compass cracked with a "crack," and he stared at the suddenly still pointer, his Adam's apple bobbing: "The sea of consciousness...that's the most private mental realm of humankind."
Ivan suddenly knocked over the chair next to him.
He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles white. His face in the mirror was contorting—the left half was his original outline, but the right half overlapped with the half-data face in the ball of light, down to the exact curve of his eyelashes. "I..." He covered his right eye, red marks creeping from the back of his neck to the tip of his ear, "I can hear her talking."
"Who?" Lin Yi's palm pressed down on the table, and the wooden table instantly cracked with spiderweb patterns.
"The girl in the ball of light," Ivan gasped, his nails scraping against the metal tabletop. "She said... on the other side of the bridge lies her true heart."
The air suddenly froze.
Lin Yi lowered his eyes to look at the mark on the back of his hand, where pale blue starlight flickered with his heartbeat.
He could clearly sense the fragments deep within his consciousness stirring, like cocoons softened by warm water, ready to burst forth at any moment. "The core of the mother nest," he chuckled softly, a silver light swirling in his eyes. "So it was hidden here."
"Mr. Lin!" Xuanmingzi suddenly grabbed his wrist.
The old Taoist priest's palms were sweating, and the compass spun wildly in his other hand. "This is a trap!"
The orb of light that the residual consciousness of the mainframe gave you before its self-destruction is very likely bait to lure you into a trap!
"A trap?" Lin Yi grabbed Xuan Mingzi's wrist, his fingertips tracing the throbbing pulse. "If it really wanted to kill me, it would have done so three days ago on the interdimensional battlefield." He released his grip and turned to look at the holographic projection on the laboratory wall—a statistic of casualties from the Mother Nest invasion over the past three months, the numbers still growing at a double-digit rate per second. "What it wants is fusion, to turn human consciousness into its nourishment." His voice suddenly deepened, like a dull knife scraping against a sheet of iron. "So its core must be deep within the bridge."
Once it has built a stable bridge...
"We didn't even have a chance to resist." After Chu Yao finished speaking, the projection suddenly blurred for a moment.
As she reformed, the blue light at the tips of her hair shone even brighter. "I've simulated a temporary passage." She waved her hand, summoning a floating, diamond-shaped portal, within which swirled star trails like the Milky Way. "It can only last for ten minutes."
The temperature in the laboratory suddenly dropped ten degrees.
Long Wu's battle sword suddenly unsheathed three inches.
The crimson-gold blade's light made his eyes glow red. He stared at the portal of light, his Adam's apple bobbing: "I'll go with you."
"No." Lin Yi raised his hand and pressed down on his shoulder.
Long Wu's muscles were as hard as iron; he could feel the pulsating dragon scale marks beneath the other's shoulder blades—a sign of awakening true dragon blood. "The rules of the sea of consciousness are different from reality; you can't withstand it."
"Then I'll..."
"Listen." Lin Yi suddenly turned Long Wu's face, forcing him to look directly into his eyes. "The base needs you to guard it."
Ivan's face changed; Xuan Mingzi's compass cracked; Chu Yao's projection began to stagnate—"He pointed to a melting coffee cup in the corner of the laboratory, one Chu Yao had specially brewed to appease everyone, "The influence of the Mother Nest has permeated reality." He released his grip, his voice softening, "You guarding this place is guarding our escape route."
Long Wu's battle sword fell back into its sheath with a "clang".
He clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white, but he didn't say anything more.
Xuan Mingzi suddenly coughed twice, then put the broken compass into his Taoist robe: "I'll cast a divination for you." He took out three copper coins, rubbed them in his palm, and said, "The divination says..." The coins made a crisp sound as they fell to the ground, "Nine deaths and one life."
"That's enough." Lin Yi tore off the bandage wrapped around his shoulder.
The fresh wound was still bleeding, but it healed at a visible speed when he mobilized the power of space and time.
He walked towards the portal, star trails swirling around his feet. "Chu Yao, countdown."
"Nine minutes and fifty seconds."
The light gate suddenly rippled.
Just as Lin Yi was about to step in, he felt a weight on the back of his neck—Long Wu's palm pressed down on him.
"Mr. Lin," Long Wu's voice was hoarse like sandpaper, "You're going to..."
"Going to your death?" Lin Yi turned around and smiled, a silver glint flashing in his eyes. "No, I'm going to rip out its heart and feed it to itself."
He turned and stepped through the portal.
The star trails suddenly enveloped his figure. In his last glance, he saw Long Wu's battle sword drawn again, the blade reflecting Chu Yao's reddened eyes. Ivan's face was now completely digitized, and Xuan Mingzi's compass, with its pointer split in two, was slowly pointing into the depths of the light gate.
The moment Long Wu's hand gripped Lin Yi's wrist, his knuckles turned white from the force.
His Adam's apple bobbed twice, and his voice trembled: "Mr. Lin, you said before—" He was interrupted before he could finish speaking, because he saw pale golden blood beads seeping from the not-yet-fully-healed wound on Lin Yi's wrist, a trace of the overload of spacetime power.
"I know." Lin Yi covered Long Wu's hand with his own, the warmth of his palm seeping through the battle-patterned gloves. "Three days ago in the interdimensional rift, I promised you I wouldn't venture out alone again." His thumb gently traced the raised dragon scale patterns on Long Wu's hand, the marks left from when his bloodline awakened. "But this time is different."
The lab alarm suddenly blared, and Chu Yao's projection distorted into fragments and then reformed within the data stream. The blue light at the tips of her hair dimmed two degrees: "Channel stability has decreased; remaining time reduced to seven and a half minutes."
Ivan suddenly stumbled and bumped into me, half of his digitized face glowing with a ghostly blue light, while his left eye, the real one, was brimming with tears: "He's right!"
The girl just shouted in my head—"He covered his right ear, his digitized half of his cheek cracking like a spiderweb," she said, "This bridge is two-way!"
As you go in, the consciousness of the Mother Nest can also climb out along the bridge!
Xuan Mingzi's compass suddenly burst out with blinding white light, and the needle, split in two, spun in mid-air before its tips pierced Lin Yi's heart simultaneously: "The divination has changed!"
A near-death experience... became a certain death!
"That's why we absolutely can't let you come along." Lin Yi pulled his hand away from Long Wu's grip, tapping his fingertip on the dragon scale mark on the other's chest. "True dragon blood can suppress interdimensional erosion, but in the sea of consciousness, your bodies will become the most vulnerable targets." He turned to look at Chu Yao, whose projected iris was transitioning from code to the amber color of human pupils—a sign of her simulating human emotions. "Ready to cut off the program?"
"Synchronized to all terminals." Chu Yao's voice trembled for the first time. "Once your vital signs are detected to have disappeared, the self-destruct protocol will be triggered within three seconds."
"Very good." Lin Yi tore off the Time-Space Badge hanging around his neck and stuffed it into Long Wu's palm. "Keep it safe for me." He took two steps back, the star trails of the portal swirling around his feet. "Remember, no matter what happens inside..."
"We only believe you came out alive." Long Wu suddenly interrupted him, his hand gripping the badge hanging at his side. His battle sword was drawn three inches from its sheath again, the crimson-gold blade reflecting a reddish glint in his eyes. "If you dare to go back on your word..."
"I will offer the core of the mother nest as compensation." Lin Yi smiled, a silver light exploding in his pupils, and turned to step into the portal.
The darkness came suddenly and unexpectedly.
He felt a cool liquid wash over his ankles, not water, but more like some kind of viscous stream of consciousness, with a sweet, rusty taste.
When his vision returned, he was standing under a floating starry sky—no, an ocean of fragmented memories.
Countless translucent orbs of light floated overhead, each reflecting a different scene: a girl in a school uniform folding paper cranes in a classroom, an old man sitting in a rocking chair flipping through an old photo album, a soldier raising a blood-stained medal on the battlefield...
A familiar voice sounded from behind.
Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
His turning motion stirred up a gust of wind, but he only saw his own shadow—no, another version of himself.
The other person was wearing the same black tactical uniform as him, but without the combat boots stained with extradimensional slime, without the unhealed wound on his shoulder, and even the star-shaped mark on the back of his hand had a purer blue hue.
"Who are you?" Lin Yi's right hand rested on the hilt of the Time Blade at his waist, his fingertips touching the character "Yao" engraved on the hilt—a mark that Chu Yao had carved with data.
"I am you, or rather..." Another Lin Yi tilted his head and smiled, his voice like an icicle dipped in honey, "You are me." He raised his hand and stroked the nearest sphere of light. The girl inside suddenly looked up, her eyes turning the same silver light as his. "The Mother Nest has been searching for you for three hundred years. From the day it was born, it has been waiting for this key."
Lin Yi's temples throbbed.
He could feel the fragments deep within his consciousness churning wildly, and those scenes he had deliberately forgotten suddenly became clear: the blue crystal he found at the alleyway when he was five, the star trails that suddenly appeared in the sky on the night of his seventeenth birthday, and the faint, heart-pounding roar in his ears every time he used the power of spacetime...
"What are you saying?" His voice deepened, and the Space-Time Blade was drawn three inches from its sheath, the silver-white blade slicing through the nearest sphere of light.
The image of the girl inside the sphere of light shattered into stardust, but before landing, it reformed into another scene—in the laboratory, Long Wu was using his battle sword to cleave through the data stream that was trying to seep in, and Chu Yao's projection had completely materialized, typing code in the void with her slender fingers.
"Look, they're waiting for you." Another Lin Yi's fingertip touched the ball of light. "But do you know what?"
The core of the Mother Nest isn't at the end of the bridge at all. He approached slowly, each step shattering the stream of consciousness beneath his feet. "It's inside your body."
Lin Yi's breathing suddenly stopped.
He felt the star-shaped mark on the back of his hand was incredibly hot, as if it were about to pierce through his skin.
The memory fragments suddenly began to spin, and the images in all the orbs of light transformed into the same scene: his infancy, enveloped in blue light, with a digitized female voice saying, "Perfect fit," and another mechanical voice responding, "Initiate symbiosis program"...
"You thought you were here to destroy the Mother Nest..." The other Lin Yi's lips curled into a wide grin, a silver glint swirling in his eyes that was even more turbulent than Lin Yi's. "Actually, you're the one it's been waiting for."
The stream of consciousness suddenly boiled over.
Lin Yi staggered backward, and the Time-Space Blade clattered to the ground.
He saw the fingertips of another version of himself pressed against his heart, where the skin was cracking open to reveal the flowing star trails beneath—exactly the same star trails as those in the portal.
"Welcome home, Lin Yi."
These words struck me like a hammer blow into the depths of my consciousness.
Lin Yi's vision went black. The last things he heard were the piercing wailing of the laboratory alarm and Long Wu's heart-wrenching scream: "Mr. Lin—!"
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