Energy flowed erratically beneath the metal dome, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of burning ozone.
When Lin Yi's Space-Time Blade was pressed against Night Owl's throat, the veins on the latter's neck suddenly bulged—it wasn't the panic of being threatened, but a twisted excitement.
"You think you can win by cracking the system?" Night Owl's voice was like rusty gears grinding against your eardrums. His hand moved so fast that it left afterimages as he pressed the key pendant on his waist.
Just as the patterns on the pendant's surface resonated with the energy conductors in the core area, Long Wu suddenly let out a muffled roar.
The dragon, which was directly receiving the energy wave, suddenly jerked its neck back, and its originally golden-red scales were covered with purple patterns, like rice paper soaked in ink.
His dragon flames shifted from a fiery orange-red to a ghostly blue, and his claws carved deep grooves into the metal ground, yet he moved uncontrollably toward the core defense system.
"Old Dragon!" Lin Yi's pupils shrank sharply, and the power of spacetime condensed into a blade in his palm, but it was repelled by the energy barrier suddenly deployed by Night Owl.
The barrier had a cold, bluish hue, and its edges were adorned with a few wisps of purple markings identical to those on Long Wu's body.
The shadowy figure's fist slammed into the barrier, creating only a ripple: "This is a side effect of the key's resonance. His energy constitution is too pure; he was chosen as the vessel."
The owl's laughter pierced the barrier: "The Seven Keys of Creation require a living furnace, and your dragon will... be the perfect vessel!"
"After the seven keys have merged—" He suddenly stopped, his gaze falling on Lin Yi's chest.
The spacetime emblem there resonated with the silver medal thrown by the shadowy figure, the two energies intertwining into a pale golden net that tore a crack in the Night Owl's domain interference.
Taking advantage of this gap, Lin Yi approached the barrier, his fingertips touching the cold, hard energy wall. The power of spacetime climbed along the patterns—he saw countless fragments of time flash before his eyes: the scene of Night Owl replacing the key pendant in the dark room three hours ago, the moment when the tattoo on the shadowy arm matched the patterns on the pendant, and the small movement of Night Owl's fingertips when Long Wu was implanted with the purple pattern.
"The key on your waist is fake." Lin Yi's voice was soft, yet it froze Night Owl's smile on his face. "The real key is with the Shadow; you have no control over the fusion process."
"Impossible!" Night Owl's pupils contracted to pinpoints, and his sword-wielding hand trembled for the first time.
The core defense system behind him suddenly emitted a piercing shriek, the fusion speed of the seven key phantoms accelerated abruptly, purple blood began to seep from Long Wu's dragon horns, and every step he took left charred dragon claw marks on the ground.
"Chu Yao!" Lin Yi turned to look at the girl who was frantically typing on the terminal.
The latter had cold sweat on his forehead, and the ends of his hair were blown up by the chaotic energy: "Although the defense system is paralyzed, the Seven Keys Fusion is an independent program!"
I need thirty seconds to crack the fusion protocol —
"Only ten seconds!" The shadowy figure suddenly flung out three diamond-shaped chips, which were precisely embedded into the three energy nodes in the core area.
The chip glowed with an eerie green light, forcibly slowing down the fusion process: "This is a forbidden technique from another dimension, capable of temporarily freezing the resonance frequency."
Dragon Five's tail suddenly swept across, its target Lin Yi!
The azure dragon flames licked the hem of his clothes, and the acrid smell of burning made it hard to open his eyes.
Lin Yi spun around to avoid it, but saw the clarity in Long Wu's eyes fading, replaced by an empty purple light—that was not the old dragon he knew, but more like a puppet controlled by the Seven Keys' will.
"Old Dragon, hold on!" Lin Yi bit his tongue, and the moment the metallic taste spread, the light of the Time-Space Badge surged.
He saw the purple runes within Long Wu's body flowing along his blood vessels, each thread connecting to the fusion beam in the core area. "Time Reversal!" He pointed his fingertip at Long Wu's brow, only to see the purple runes become even more intense during the reversal—the power of the Seven Keys fusion could actually resist the power of time and space.
"It's no use!" Night Owl suddenly tore open his shirt, revealing the same pattern on his chest as the key pendant. "This is the contract I made with the Seven Keys over ten years. Even if the key is fake, the resonance is enough to destroy you—" His words were cut off by a dragon's roar.
Suddenly, Long Wu's dragon claws gripped his own dragon horns, and purple blood dripped from between his fingers.
His dragon flames regained their golden-red hue, faint yet like a spark in the night: "Boy...don't...look..." A broken human voice squeezed out from the dragon's throat, making the barrier vibrate.
"Old Dragon is fighting back!" Chu Yao's terminal screen suddenly lit up with a green light. "The fusion progress is stuck at 87%!"
He's holding back the Seven Keys with sheer willpower!
Lin Yi's Adam's apple bobbed, and his eyes burned.
He thrust the Blade of Time and Space into the ground with his backhand, pressing his palm against Long Wu's chest: "I'll help you!" The power of time and space surged into Long Wu's body like a hot spring. The purple markings hissed the moment they came into contact with the golden energy, and coiled up frantically like snakes being scorched by fire.
Night Owl's face twisted completely. The energy wave he unleashed with his sword was no longer aimed at Lin Yi, but instead struck at Long Wu's back.
The dark figure suddenly appeared, taking the blow head-on with his back—his black trench coat tore open with spiderweb-like cracks, revealing skin covered in runes beneath: "Run!"
I can't last thirty seconds!
"Ten seconds is enough!" Chu Yao's fingers flew across the terminal like butterflies. "Merger protocol cracked... complete!"
A mechanical error message rang out in the core area, and the seven-key phantom suddenly disintegrated into points of light.
Long Wu's dragon claw slammed into the ground with a "bang," and his massive dragon body trembled and shrank, transforming back into human form.
He clutched his chest, coughing up a mouthful of black blood, but then grinned: "Damn it... this key is stronger than the strong liquor we used to drink."
The owl's pupils contracted sharply, and it turned to flee.
Lin Yi's Blade of Time and Space was already pressed against the back of his neck: "Trying to leave?" His other hand pressed against the contract markings on Night Owl's chest, "Time-Space Stripping—"
A golden band of light emerged from the patterns, revealing the very key that had been replaced by the night owl.
It turns out that the tattoo on the shadowy figure was the other half of the key. Night Owl was afraid of being discovered, so he used a fake key to confuse the situation, but he did not expect that the master of time and space could see through the disguise of all timelines.
"You lost." Lin Yi gripped the key, his gaze sweeping over Night Owl's contorted face before settling on Long Wu's blood-stained clothes.
At that moment, he noticed that when Night Owl swung his sword just now, the blood vessels in his wrist paused for a very short time—not because of injury, but as a sign of some kind of energy backlash.
An alarm suddenly sounded outside the metal dome; the support team had arrived.
But Lin Yi's gaze remained fixed on Night Owl's wrist, where a barely visible dark line was moving beneath the skin.
The alarm sound under the metal dome was torn to pieces by the energy turbulence. Lin Yi's knuckles turned bluish-white on the hilt of the Blade of Time and Space. He stared at the dark patterns moving on Night Owl's wrist. Just now, when the sword was swung out, the dark patterns happened to wrap around the artery at the moment when the opponent's blood vessels stopped.
"That's not a backlash." He murmured, his pupils reflecting the writhing patterns of dark lines.
As the power of time and space surged in his mind, he suddenly recalled a scene he had relived three hours earlier: when Night Owl replaced the key pendant, his fingertips had quickly tapped his wrist pulse three times.
It turns out that those weren't nervous little movements, but rather the activation of some hidden energy pathway.
"Old Dragon, protect Chu Yao." Lin Yi suddenly spoke up. Long Wu was wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand covered by dragon scales. Hearing this, he looked up, his golden-red pupils still burning with undiminished fighting spirit: "Alright!" His huge dragon body half-squatted down, protecting Chu Yao's terminal under his belly. Purple blood dripped down from the gaps in the scales, spreading out small dark spots on the ground.
The shadowy figure's fingers traced the tattoo on his arm, his gaze sweeping over Night Owl's increasingly contorted face: "He's preparing a killing move."
Before he finished speaking, a purplish-black ball of light had already condensed in the Night Owl's palm. At the center of the ball of light, tiny spatial rifts surged, like countless hungry little mouths gnawing at the air.
Lin Yi's temples throbbed—he had seen this move in a time fragment half an hour ago, but the ball of light back then was only the size of a fist, while now it had swelled to half a person's height.
"Time-Space Distortion - Mirror Abyss." Lin Yi enunciated the words very softly, and suddenly golden ripples like water waves spread across the spine of the Time-Space Blade.
He flicked his finger, and the ripples shot out like living things toward the open space between Night Owl and the squad.
The air distorted into a mirror-like surface where the ripples passed, reflecting the owl's vision and energy fluctuations diagonally upwards.
"Watch out!" Chu Yao's terminal suddenly beeped. Her fingertip traced afterimages across the holographic screen. "His attack trajectory has been distorted—"
\"boom!\"
The purplish-black ball of light grazed Long Wu's dragon horns and exploded, the shockwave causing the steel plates of the metal dome to fall off in a flurry.
Long Wu slammed his tail heavily onto the ground to steady himself, several scorch marks appearing on his scales, but he grinned, revealing his white teeth: "This force is much lighter than the meteorite that hit me last time!"
"A great opportunity!" Chu Yao's eyes suddenly lit up. She placed the terminal on the energy wire on the ground. "Night Owl's attack just now shattered the secondary encryption layer of the core area!"
"Now we can directly read the underlying code of the fusion protocol—" Her fingertips tapped in the air, and the garbled text on the holographic screen receded like a tide, revealing lines of flowing, star-like characters. "Look, this quantum key was planted by him ten years ago, and now it's become a vulnerability!"
Night Owl's face turned a deep purplish-blue as he stared at the still slightly trembling Mirror of Time, his Adam's apple bobbing as he gasped for breath: "You... how could you possibly break through my domain?"
"Because you were too eager to kill us." Lin Yi slung the Blade of Time over his shoulder, his gaze sharp as a knife. "The more you try to kill someone, the more flaws you reveal."
These words were like a steel needle piercing the owl's nerves. He suddenly tilted his head back and let out a sharp shriek. The dark patterns on his wrist surged wildly along his arm toward his heart, and even the contract patterns on his heart turned an eerie blue.
The shadowy figure's pupils contracted sharply, and he grabbed the nearest Dragon Five: "Back off!"
That was the rampage of the remnant souls of the Seven Keys—"
\"bite!\"
Chu Yao's terminal suddenly emitted a clear notification sound. She stood up abruptly, the blood droplets on her hair splashing as the energy wave shook them: "Crack complete!"
The core defense system's self-destruct program is already bound—"Before she could finish speaking, her expression changed drastically, "Wait, the self-destruct countdown is showing... 99 seconds?"
"What?" Long Wu's dragon claws nearly crushed the edge of the terminal. "Didn't you say that destroying the defense system would be enough?"
Why does it even have a self-destruct feature?
"Night Owl has bound the core area to the entire Hive." The shadowy voice was as heavy as lead as he stared at Night Owl's gradually transparent body—its silhouette merging into the surrounding energy flow. "He intends to perish with the Hive, taking us down with him."
"99..." Chu Yao's terminal screen began flashing red. With each jump in the numbers, the dome trembled even more violently. "88...77..."
Lin Yi's temples throbbed even more violently. He stared at the gradually fading figure of Night Owl, finally making out the full form of the dark patterns—they were miniature versions of the Seven Keys' phantoms, converging along Night Owl's veins towards his heart. "He's sacrificing himself, feeding the remnant souls of the Seven Keys with his flesh and blood," he whispered, the spacetime badge in his palm burning hot. "This way, even if we destroy the defense system, the remnant souls of the Seven Keys can be reborn using the energy from the explosion of the Mother Nest."
"66..."
Suddenly, Long Wu's dragon scales glowed with a scorching golden-red. He shielded Chu Yao behind him and placed his dragon claw on Lin Yi's shoulder: "Kid, take this girl and go first."
Old Dragon, I'm bracing the self-destruct shockwave—
"55..."
"Shut up." Lin Yi pressed down on Long Wu's hand with his back. His gaze swept over Chu Yao's pale fingertips, over the gradually glowing tattoo on the black shadow's arm, and finally landed on the increasingly intense purple light gathering on Night Owl's chest.
The power of spacetime surged within him like a sea, and he suddenly laughed, his eyes reddening with laughter: "Who said we were going to run away?"
"44..."
The owl's voice surged from all directions, carrying an eerie, seven-fold echo: "You...it's too late..."
"33..."
Lin Yi's Space-Time Blade suddenly pierced the ground, and golden light streams shot out like vines throughout the entire core area.
He looked up at the dome, where a purplish-black energy vortex was forming—the final sign of the mother hive's self-destruction. "Chu Yao, synchronize the self-destruct program to my spacetime domain." His voice was as calm as if he were describing the weather. "Shadow, use your tattoo to lock the remnants of the Seven Keys' souls."
"Old Dragon..." He turned to look at Dragon General, his eyes burning with intense light, "Get ready, we need to nail Night Owl's coffin lid shut in 33 seconds."
\"twenty two...\"
Chu Yao's fingertips danced across the terminal, the holographic screen resonating with the light flow of the Time-Space Blade, a string of golden code darting into the center of the vortex; blood seeped from the shadowy figure's arm, the tattoo transforming into chains that entangled the owl's phantom; Long Wu's dragon flames rose again, this time a golden-red more intense than the sun.
"11..."
The owl's phantom finally showed panic. He tried to break free of the chains, but found that with each struggle, the remnant souls of the Seven Keys were pulled closer by the chains—a trap set by the shadow using blood as bait.
"0...\"
The alarm on the metal dome shattered completely at midnight, and the purplish-black vortex began to devour everything.
But at the center of the vortex, a golden light gate was slowly opening—an escape passage that Lin Yi had forcibly torn open using a spacetime rift.
However, just as the portal was about to fully open, the seven remnants of the soul in the Night Owl's heart suddenly burst forth with a blinding purple light.
The purple light pierced through the black shadow's chains, through Long Wu's dragon flames, and even through Lin Yi's spacetime domain, finally landing on Chu Yao's terminal.
Chu Yao's pupils reflected a line of blood-red text that suddenly appeared on the terminal screen: 【Seven Keys Rebirth - Final Chapter】.
The alarm stopped abruptly.
The entire core area fell into a deathly silence.
Only the night owl's laughter echoed from the void, tinged with a manic triumph: "You thought... you'd cracked the defense system?"
His phantom re-condensed in the purple light. This time, his eyes were completely transformed into the shape of seven keys, each line flowing with an eerie light that did not belong to this dimension.
"The real core... has never been in the system."
With a light tap of his fingertip, Chu Yao's terminal suddenly shattered into pieces.
Amidst the flying debris, Lin Yi saw seven beams of purple light, identical to those in the eyes of the Night Owl, slowly rising from the depths of the Mother Nest.
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