As Long Wu's consciousness faded into darkness, the stabbing pain in his back suddenly disappeared.
He stood on a patch of scorched earth.
The ruins of the Broodmother were still burning in the distance, the bodies of his comrades lay strewn in the blood and mud, and fragments of bloodstained dragon scale armor gleamed coldly in the firelight—that was the battlefield of the Broodmother three months ago, the nightmare he least wanted to recall.
"Team Dragon!" A familiar shout came from behind.
He whirled around and saw Private Wu rushing towards him, clutching his bleeding abdomen, a憨笑 (a simple, honest smile) on his face as usual. "The medical pod was breached! You said you'd take us home..."
Long Wu felt as if a red-hot iron ball had been stuffed into his throat.
He tried to rush over and catch Xiao Wu, but found that his hand passed right through the other person's body—it was just a semi-transparent shadow.
More figures rose from the ruins. Private A-Jie's neck was twisted at an eerie angle, and half of machine gunner Lao Zhou's face was corroded by acid. Blood was still flowing from their wounds, but they all grinned at him.
"Team Leader Long, you promised."
"We failed our mission..."
"It's your fault that we're all like this..."
The laughter suddenly changed tone, turning into a sharp buzzing sound.
Long Wu's temples throbbed, and the wound in his back, pierced by the bone blade, began to burn in his consciousness, as if a red-hot steel needle was drilling into his spine.
He then realized with a start that the corners of these illusions' mouths were covered with the same purplish-black slime as the Night Owl's men—this was mental corruption!
"Fuck you!" Long Wu gritted his teeth, and the sweet, metallic taste of blood splattered into the air.
The excruciating pain tore through the edge of the illusion, and he saw his real body lying on the metal ground of the East Node, the bone blade still embedded in his flesh, blood meandering into a dark red stream along the patterns on the ground.
"True dragon bloodline, awaken!" he roared, and the dragon pattern on his neck suddenly glowed with golden light.
That was the innate mark beneath the skin at the moment of awakening, now darting about like a living golden snake, scorching holes in the illusory black mist wherever it went.
At the same time, the metal ground at the East Node suddenly trembled.
Lin Yi's tactical knife clattered to the ground.
He knelt beside Long Wu, his fingertips pressing against the side of Long Wu's neck, where he could feel a faint pulse.
The blade, which had been scorching hot from Su Qing's warning during his frantic run, now felt like an ice cube on the back of his hand—a warning more dangerous than death itself.
"Long Wu!" He patted the other's blood-stained face, his voice trembling without him even realizing it.
Long Wu's eyelashes twitched, but he didn't wake up.
Lin Yi's gaze swept over the penetrating wound on his back, and his pupils suddenly contracted—the purple spots on the bone blade were spreading into Long Wu's body; it was a corrosive toxin unique to Night Owl's subordinates.
\"Chu Yao!
"The East Node needs medical support—" He had just pressed the communication button when he heard a muffled sound coming from the direction of the energy ball.
Looking up, the azure energy sphere, which should have gradually faded as the node closed, had expanded by a circle, and the light patterns on its surface had changed from flowing water ripples to twisted snake shapes.
Chu Yao's rapid breathing came through the communicator: "No need to call for medical help, look at the energy ball!" Her projection appeared in mid-air, the garbled code at the ends of her hair even more intense than before. "When I hacked into the Night Owl system, I discovered a hidden partition. He planted a 'fake spark' in the open, the real one..."
"The real destructive device hasn't been activated yet," Lin Yi interjected, tapping his fingertips heavily on the tactical board.
He suddenly remembered the interplay of dark blue and crimson when the western node was charging. It wasn't a progress bar being stuck; it was two energies clashing. Night Owl had deliberately made them close the node to trigger the real killing move.
"Long Wu's injuries..."
"The toxin spreads ten times faster than in the medical pod," Lin Yi interrupted her, placing his palm on Long Wu's wound.
The power of time and space surged beneath his skin as he attempted to freeze the spread of the toxin, only to find that the purple spots avoided the area of time stagnation as if they were living things.
Cold sweat dripped from his chin onto Long Wu's face. "Chu Yao, check Night Owl's mental attack patterns. Long Wu's consciousness may be trapped in an illusion."
"Checking!" Chu Yao's projection suddenly distorted into static. "Wait... Xuan Mingzi's signal has disappeared!"
In the data stream of the western node, Xuanmingzi's virtual body is disintegrating.
He stood in front of the Night Owl's core control cabin. His once flowing blue Taoist robe was now covered with spiderweb-like cracks, fragments of code torn apart by the Night Owl's defense system.
He deliberately exposed a weakness to lure Night Owl into pursuit, all to buy Long Wu time to escape the illusion—but he underestimated the cunning of this interdimensional leader.
"The remnant soul of the original game's mastermind?" Night Owl's laughter was like the friction of metal. A holographic projection appeared behind him, with six compound eyes glowing with a morbid red light. "You think you can interfere with my mental illusion with a data storm?"
Innocent. \"
Xuanmingzi coughed up a string of gibberish.
He stared at the countdown scrolling in the control room, the numbers perfectly synchronized with the rate at which the toxins in Long Wu's body were spreading—Night Owl had planned this from the very beginning, using Long Wu's life as bait to distract Lin Yi and the others.
"I'm sorry..." he said softly, his gaze passing through the data barrier towards the direction of the eastern node.
There were Long Wu's gradually weakening vital signs, Lin Yi's taut back, and the hope of the entire Time and Space Army.
In his last moments of clarity, he recalled the first time he met Lin Yi, who stood in the rain in the newbie village, his eyes shining brighter than any mythical-level class.
"But I can lie to him one more time."
Xuanmingzi pressed his fingertips against his chest.
The moment the core program started, his body transformed into a golden data storm, tearing through the Night Owl's defensive matrix like the sharpest blade.
The alarm blared throughout the entire nest space, and spiderweb-like cracks appeared in the mental illusion that had enveloped Long Wu—a final gift before the program collapsed.
The metal ground at the East Node suddenly shook violently.
Long Wu spat out a mouthful of black blood, and the bone blade on his back fell to the ground with a "clang".
He opened his eyes, his pupils blazing with golden light, and the dragon pattern on his neck had spread to half of his face, like a living golden dragon tearing through the darkness.
"Awake?" Lin Yi's hand was still on his wound, but his voice was softer than usual.
Long Wu forced a bloody laugh: "That little Wu in the illusion... he could cry even more than I could back in the day." He tried moving his arm and found that the poison had indeed stopped spreading. "You used time reversal?"
"No." Lin Yi looked down to examine his wound, the spacetime power at his fingertips still slowly circulating. "Someone risked their life to buy you time." He looked up at the energy sphere, where the light patterns had twisted into vortexes. "Now, it's our turn to return the favor."
Suddenly, a crackling sound came from the communicator.
The two looked up at the same time and saw a crack appear on the surface of the energy ball, revealing a control panel inside that was glowing with a faint light.
A six-eyed figure emerged from within, his compound eyes blazing with frenzied flames. His hand rested on the control panel, and his laughter swept through the entire space like a tidal wave.
"You think you're stopping fate?"
(End of this chapter)
The owl's six compound eyes cast a crimson glow on the control panel, and his palm pressed against the glowing crystal, with purplish-black viscous fluid seeping from under his fingernails—proof of his resonance with the core of the hive.
"You think you're stopping fate?" His voice suddenly rose, and the red light in his six compound eyes intensified abruptly. "You're just winding it up!"
The metal ground cracked open with a spiderweb-like pattern amidst the roar, and Lin Yi's tactical boots were jolted off the ground by half an inch.
The moment he looked up, his pupils contracted sharply—the air ten meters to his left was distorting into a mirror, reflecting not the interior of the Mother Nest, but a street scene from the real world: billboards with banners reading "2035 Cross-Dimensional Trade Expo" were falling, and the figures of several passersby were stretched into eerie lines. Among them was a girl in a white dress looking up at the mirror, her face filled with terror—she was the ordinary college student he had seen in the real world last week.
"Reality and virtuality have overlapped." Chu Yao's projection was suddenly torn into pieces, then barely reassembled two seconds later. The garbled code at the ends of her hair almost covered half of her face. "The pseudo-spark has initiated a dimensional fusion program! The spatial anchor point of the East Node is failing. If we had waited three more minutes..." Her voice was cut off by a piercing electrical sound, and the last syllable turned into a sharp buzzing.
Long Wu stood up, supporting himself with one hand. The dragon pattern on his neck had spread to his collarbone, surging like a living thing on his blood-stained skin.
He tore off the shards of armor from his back, revealing a gruesome wound—the toxins that Lin Yi had forcibly frozen with his spacetime power were thawing, and the purple spots were spreading toward his heart at a visible speed.
"Never mind me," he said in a muffled voice, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists. "Take care of that bastard first."
“Solution?” Night Owl’s laughter pierced through the roar of the explosion. His body began to become translucent, and the red light in his six eyes solidified. “When two dimensions overlap, your so-called ‘solution’ is nothing more than being crushed into atoms! Look—” He suddenly swung his claws, and the crystals on the control panel burst forth with blinding white light.
Lin Yi's temples throbbed.
He could clearly sense that the spatial structure was collapsing at an exponential rate: the energy pipes above exploded into a rain of eerie blue fire, each falling spark burning a fist-sized hole in the air; the metal wall on the right was melting, revealing a surging stream of data behind it, within which the ruins of a real office building could be vaguely seen.
"Chu Yao! Locate the spatial anchor point!" Lin Yi grabbed Long Wu's wrist with his backhand, and the power of spacetime condensed into a dark blue ball of light in his palm.
Long Wu felt a sudden dizziness, and when he opened his eyes again, he had been pulled directly below the energy ball.
He stared at the abyss that had split open beneath his feet, where streams of red and blue data surged, much like the scene during the Brood War three months earlier—when his comrades fell into such a fissure and never returned.
"The anchor point is directly below the console!" Chu Yao's projection finally stabilized, and she rapidly tapped the virtual keyboard with her fingertips. "But it will take at least thirty seconds to recalibrate..."
"Thirty seconds?" Long Wu coughed up a mouthful of black blood, and the dragon pattern suddenly swelled up to his neck. "I'll give you ten seconds!" He stomped his foot, and the metal plate on the ground shattered. Countless dragon scale-like light blades shot out from the cracks, aiming straight for Night Owl's throat.
The owl neither dodged nor avoided; the red light in its compound eyes suddenly condensed into six beams of light.
The moment the light blade and the light spike collided, a deafening roar erupted in the air.
Long Wu was thrown back by the recoil, his back slamming heavily against the energy ball. The blood he coughed up was mixed with tiny fragments of dragon scales.
"Long Wu!" Lin Yi's breath hitched.
He could clearly sense that Long Wu's vital signs were plummeting, like a candle caught in a gale, about to go out at any moment.
The power of the master of time and space was running wildly within him; he could even hear the cracking of his own bones—a sign of overuse of his power, but he couldn't care less at the moment.
"The key now is not to stop it, but to reshape it," Lin Yi said in a low voice.
His pupils suddenly turned pure gold, and the exclusive mark of the ruler of time and space appeared between his brows.
The power of faith that had been dormant deep within their souls began to surge: it was the shouts of the Time Legion members before each charge, "Time and space master, reverse the universe," the words of the elders of the Reality Alliance when they handed over the ancient martial arts manuals, "This is for the savior," and the unwavering gaze of the extradimensional resistance soldiers when they pointed their weapons at the Mother Nest.
Golden light patterns spread from Lin Yi's fingertips to his entire body. Wherever they passed, the cracked ground began to heal, and the surging data flow gradually calmed down.
The owl's compound eye flickered for the first time. He abruptly pulled his hand back from the control panel, only to find that fine golden lines had already crept onto the surface of the crystal—a sign that the power of faith was eroding the core of the mother nest.
"Impossible..." Night Owl's voice trembled for the first time. "This is merely a spiritual crutch of a primitive civilization, how could it be..."
"bite--"
A clear, melodious bell suddenly echoed through the space.
Lin Yi paused, noticing ripples appearing on the crystal surface of the control panel. The pseudo-spark program, which had been running wildly, mysteriously stopped for three seconds.
Chu Yao's projection suddenly shone as bright as day, the garbled code on her hair disappeared, and her eyes sparkled with an unprecedented brilliance: "Unknown dimensional fluctuations detected! The frequency resonates with the faith power of the spacetime ruler, interfering with the core algorithm of the pseudo-fire seed!"
"An opportunity!" Lin Yi's pupils suddenly contracted.
He grabbed Long Wu's waist with one hand and pulled on Chu Yao's projection with the other, while the power of spacetime condensed into a spiral-shaped light gate beneath his feet.
"Hold on tight!" he roared, and the portal opened instantly, the three figures disappearing from the spot.
When they reappeared, they were already standing in front of the corridor at the deepest part of the mother nest.
At the end of the corridor stood a bronze door ten meters high, covered with runes that Lin Yi had never seen before, each rune radiating an ancient and dangerous aura.
Chu Yao's projection suddenly became somewhat blurry, and her voice was filled with undisguised shock: "Detected... behind that door is the 'Destiny Core' of the Mother Nest."
The owl's laughter boomed again from all directions, this time tinged with obvious exasperation: "You think you can win just because you got here? What's sealed within the Destiny Core is..."
"Shut up," Lin Yi interrupted him.
He gazed at the bronze door, golden patterns swirling in his eyes. "Whatever's inside, I'll make it ours."
He took the first step, and Long Wu followed, clutching his chest. Chu Yao's projection flickered between the two.
The runes behind the bronze door suddenly lit up, as if responding to some kind of summons.
Unseen by them, a faint golden ripple was spreading from the direction of the real world, subtly resonating with the space of the nest.
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