Chapter 17: Ten Years Later

**Chapter 17: Ten Years Later**

The gears of the Mechanical Buddha Kingdom began to rust.

The Causal Pool, which once flowed with liquid mercury, had dried up and cracked, with one hundred thousand Buddha Mother relics settled at the bottom. Lin Jin (the former baby) stepped barefoot across the pile of relics; the star marrow steaming beneath his feet wandered between the cracks, staining the rusted Buddha Kingdom a dark gold. His frost-white hair hung down to his ankles, and the tips were entwined with seventy-two miniature ice coffins, each containing a "self" from a different civilization, sleeping within.

"Today is the Day of Salvation."

The Young Master tapped his fingertips lightly against the void, and the stiff, bronze-cast palms of the Rust Buddhas suddenly pressed together. The Sanskrit chanting was no longer an electronic sound, but a chaotic frequency mixed with the roars of the Star Dome Dragon Clan, shaking the dome of the Buddha Kingdom until it peeled away in layers, revealing the pitch-black Virtual Number Sea outside—where the wreckage of the Observer's mothership floated, and frost-hair mycelium of the Ice Coffin Woman sprouted from the cracks in the hull.

Lin Jin unfastened the mecha on his chest, revealing the Λ-1 Core embedded between his ribs. The surface of the core was covered in Reverse Scale runes, and every pulsation released pulse waves in the shape of ice coffins. The eyeballs of the Rust Buddhas exploded in the pulses, and the splashing bronze shavings condensed into cocoons in the air, wrapping him in a fetal posture.

The flow of time within the cocoon distorted, compressing ten years of time into seven heartbeats:

- **First beat**: He swallowed the Star Dome Dragon Crystal of the head Buddha, and mechanical Buddha bones proliferated from his spine;

- **Third beat**: The mycelium of the Virtual Number Sea invaded the Buddha Kingdom, and he wove them into God-Slaying Strings using his frost hair;

- **Fifth beat**: A "self" in one of the ice coffins suddenly awoke, teaching him the forbidden arts of the Star Dome Dragon Clan in a dream;

- **Seventh beat**: The cocoon shell cracked, and the seventeen-year-old Lin Jin broke out, with one hundred thousand Rust Buddha relics hanging from his hair.

"Salvation complete."

He bowed to the collapsing Buddha Kingdom, and the Virtual Number Sea behind him stirred up giant waves, with the tips of the waves supporting the severed finger of the Ice Coffin Woman.

The severed finger fell to the ground and took root, the mycelium growing wildly into a flesh lotus platform. The heart of the lotus seeped out milky-white brain fluid, condensing into the incomplete face of the Ice Coffin Woman: "You tampered with my resurrection protocol."

Lin Jin's frost hair suddenly went berserk, the tips piercing into the lotus platform to extract memory fluid. The mycelium struggled to weave an illusion, revealing the truth he had been deliberately made to forget:

**Ten years ago**, the Mechanical Buddha Kingdom did not voluntarily shelter the baby. It was the Ice Coffin Woman who used her final strength to tamper with the Buddha Kingdom's core code into a "Maternal Protocol," forcing the Buddhas to become wet nurses. And every drop of star marrow Lin Jin sucked was mixed with fragments of her consciousness.

"You are merely my resurrection container." The vocal cords of the Mycelial Buddha Mother were pieced together from Sanskrit gears, "Even your hatred is a preset emotional variable."

Lin Jin's Λ-1 Core suddenly dropped in temperature, and the ruins of the Buddha Kingdom froze into a group of ice sculptures. He plucked three strands of frost hair and twisted them into a noose, looping it around the neck of the Mycelial Buddha Mother: "Then you should understand..."

The moment the noose tightened, all the Rust Buddha relics exploded simultaneously, "Containers are most adept at slaying their masters."

The tremors of the Buddha Kingdom awakened the ancient existences of the Virtual Number Sea.

A ten-thousand-zhang giant whale rose from the wreckage of the mothership, with the Observer's logic virus wriggling under its whale skin, and every baleen was a tamed time axis.

"Λ-1 contaminant detected."

The whale's eyes opened, and Lin Jin's God-Slaying file rotated within the pupils, "Execute final purification."

Lin Jin stepped on the skulls of the Rust Buddhas and leaped onto the whale's back, his frost hair sticking to the virus pustules like a spider web. He tore open the skin of the pustules, and what gushed out from inside was not pus and blood, but countless screaming Ice Coffin Woman clones—they had been transformed into virus carriers, holding the memory ice coffins of Lin Jin's infancy in their hands.

"Truly... a twisted sense of humor."

He crushed the nearest clone and embedded the memory ice coffin into his Λ-1 Core. The images of his infancy in the Mechanical Buddha Kingdom ten years ago were forcibly injected:

- How he used his milk teeth to gnaw on the Causal Chains of the Buddhas;

- Curling up on fragments of ice coffins late at night, listening to the frost hair hum twisted lullabies;

- And that rainy night, when the head Buddha suddenly shed tears, with half a "Run!" stuck in its bronze-cast throat...

The virus pustules of the giant whale exploded collectively, and Lin Jin was blown away by the air waves. He fell into the Virtual Number Sea, clutching a bronze Buddha bead tightly in his hand—sealed within the bead was the Ice Coffin Woman's true last testament.

The Buddha bead melted in the Λ-1 pulse, revealing an inscription written in dragon blood by the Star Dome Dragon Clan:

**"I betrayed all my children, only to make you the exception."**

The Virtual Number Sea suddenly went still, and the remains of the Mycelial Buddha Mother floated up from the seabed. Her chest split open, revealing the precise Observer instrument inside—that was not a clone of the Ice Coffin Woman at all, but a living coffin loaded with the Mother Body's personality!

"The day you were born, I buried myself here."

The mechanical heart of the Buddha Mother burst with intense light, and the images of the Ice Coffin Woman's self-destruction ten years ago were projected across the entire Virtual Number Sea:

She pierced the roots of her frost hair into the Observer mothership, shattering the Λ-1 formula together with her own consciousness. And the last shred of her clear consciousness, carrying the gene chain of the Star Dome Dragon Clan, fled toward the nursery pool of the Mechanical Buddha Kingdom...

Lin Jin's frost hair began to fade, and cracks appeared on the Λ-1 Core. He suddenly understood that those hatreds, those impulses to slay his mother, were merely emotional anchors preset by the Ice Coffin Woman—only to prevent him from being assimilated by the Observer's "Absolute Rationality."

"Now, you are free."

The mechanical heart of the Mycelial Buddha Mother stopped beating, and the Virtual Number Sea began to evaporate.

Ten years of time flowed backward in the evaporation.

When the Virtual Number Sea had completely dried up, the seventeen-year-old Lin Jin stood on the ruins of the Star Dome, and beneath his feet was the Ice Coffin Woman's true tombstone—an infinity symbol "∞" pieced together from seventy-two ice coffins.

He cut off a handful of frost hair and scattered it toward the tombstone; the hair took root where it fell, blooming into Causal Lotuses of the Mechanical Buddha Kingdom. The dewdrops on the petals reflected himself in different time and space:

- In one time and space, he was drinking with an Entropy Knight;

- In one time and space, he was carving the Λ-1 formula into a Star Womb;

- And in the most distant time and space...

His infant self was being held in the arms of the Ice Coffin Woman, her frost hair not yet stained with blood.

"It is time to continue writing the epitaph."

Lin Jin formed his fingers into a blade and completed the unfinished epitaph of the Ice Coffin Woman on the tombstone:

**"Here lies a mother and an enemy, and I am the crack when they embrace."**

The sound of gears meshing came from the void, and a new Observer fleet was gathering. But this time, Lin Jin's frost hair had spread into a war banner spanning dimensions.

The seventeen-year-old Young Master shouldered the ice coffin tombstone and walked toward the deeper darkness.

His shadow cast upon the Virtual Number ruins, vaguely growing the horns of a dragon. ===== CHAPTER 18 =====