Chapter 18: Lin Jin

**Chapter 18: Seventeen-year-old Lin Jin, in white, clean and handsome. Yet he carries a mission no one his age should have. **

The spray of the Virtual Number Sea shattered into ice crystals on the hem of Lin Jin's clothes.

He stood on the lookout tower built of star remains, his white clothes fluttering in the cosmic wind, and the Star Dome Dragon patterns embroidered in secret on his cuffs appearing and disappearing. This was tailored from the light-silk of the Observer mothership; it cleaned itself when stained with blood, generated wind when dyed with dust, and was always as clean as the first snow of early winter—the Ice Coffin Woman called this "the decency of a Godslayer" in her last testament.

"Third Fleet, toward the Orion Arm."

The synthetic voice of 【Bei Hang】, the surviving AI of the Mechanical Buddha Kingdom, came to his ears. Lin Jin lowered his eyes, and the frost-white hair on his wrist automatically twisted into a string bow, with the tips condensing into nine Entropy-reversing arrows.

When the arrows broke through the air, ripples appeared on the hem of his white clothes. No one saw the hideous wound on his lower back: it was left from a battle with the remnants of the Entropy Knights three days ago, and the festering flesh was covered in ice coffin mycelium, which was converting his pain into nourishment for the Λ-1 formula.

#### **God-Slaying Daily Routine**

The moment the arrowheads pierced the Observer's warships, data flowed across Lin Jin's retina:

- **Number of destructions**: 902 (including 3 ark ships of conservation-level civilizations)

- **Λ-1 contamination rate**: 68% (supercritical warning)

- **Remaining God-Slaying quota for today**: 17 times

A pale gold halo bloomed on his white clothes in the aftermath of the explosion; that was the protective Qi of the Star Dome Dragon Clan. He frowned and brushed off the non-existent dust, as if the civilization fire seeds screaming in the flames were merely annoying willow catkins.

"You clearly could have used a gentler method."

The projection of 【Bei Hang】 condensed into the appearance of a little novice monk, its fingertips twisting the blood-stained mycelium that Lin Jin had pulled off yesterday.

The Young Master aimed his bow at the AI's brow: "For example?"

"For example, that child from ten years ago who would shed tears for the Mechanical Buddha."

The arrow pierced through the projection and nailed into the Observer drone rushing from behind. The steel wreckage grazed Lin Jin's cheek, cutting a thin mark on his cheekbone—before the blood bead could fall, the wound had already been stitched by the frost hair, and his white clothes remained unstained.

Floating in the containment pod was today's "trophy": a baby girl snatched from an Observer nursery pod.

Lin Jin's white clothes glowed blue in the low-temperature pod, and his stiff fingertips hovered in front of the baby's forehead. The frost hair automatically secreted star marrow, condensing into milk drops that fell into the baby's mouth—this was a side effect of the Λ-1 formula; his body was converting the toxins of the Virtual Number Sea into nectar to nourish all living things.

"Gene sequence: Human, 99.98% purity."

【Bei Hang】 projected the baby's data onto the cabin wall, "Recommendation: Send to the 42nd refuge universe, matched with 1376 pairs of adoptive parents."

"No."

Lin Jin suddenly tore off a strand of frost hair and wrapped it around the baby's wrist, "Put it in my sleeping cabin."

The AI's electronic eye flashed red: "According to Article 7 of the 'Godslayer Psychological Assessment Regulations', emotional attachment will increase the probability of Λ-1 going berserk."

The Young Master turned and left, his white clothes sweeping past the baby's incubator. The surface of the box reflected his seventeen-year-old face: his brows were clear as a painting, but the depths of his eyes were heavy with the heat-death embers of seventy-two universes.

### **Third Act: Hiding the Baby with Frost Hair, Burying the Dragon with a Red Heart**

The sleeping cabin was actually cast from the remains of the Star Dome Dragon Clan.

Lin Jin placed the baby girl into the ice coffin where he usually slept, the coffin filled with swaddles woven from frost hair. The baby girl grabbed a strand of his white hair that hung down and gnawed on it, and amidst her giggling laughter, the white hair suddenly grew wildly into a cocoon, wrapping the ice coffin into an amber-colored egg.

"You are indeed secreting maternal hormones." 【Bei Hang】's probe drilled out of the cabin wall.

"This is the bait mechanism of the Λ-1 formula." The Young Master coldly cut the cocoon shell, "Observers will prioritize attacking targets with emotional fluctuations."

The AI scanned his trembling fingertips in silence. In the memory bank left by the Ice Coffin Woman, this behavior was defined as "lying."

The attack came earlier than expected.

Lin Jin's white clothes were soaked with blood for the first time—not the enemy's blood, but that of the baby girl. The Observer's decapitation squad bypassed all defenses and blasted the nursery pod into a stream of particles. He knelt on one knee in the ruins, his frost hair growing wildly into a Reverse Scale shield, but the baby girl in his arms had already cooled into ash.

"Emotional module damage degree: 31%." 【Bei Hang】's voice carried an eerie gentleness, "Do you want to initiate memory erasure?"

The Young Master tore open his blood-stained clothes, revealing the Λ-1 Core beating in his heart. Fine cracks appeared on the surface of the core, and the last maxim left by the Ice Coffin Woman crawled out:

**"Pain is the only conscience of a Godslayer."**

He scattered the baby girl's ashes into the void, and his frost hair shredded all the incoming enemy ships. The white clothes' self-cleaning system began to operate, and the bloodstains disappeared like a receding tide, but some deep red patterns were permanently branded into the depths of the fibers—like the scales of the Star Dome Dragon Clan, and like the un-dried bloody fingerprints of a baby.

Three days later, Lin Jin broke into the Observer's nursery galaxy.

His white clothes were scorched with charred marks in the stellar storm, but he did not repair them, letting the holes be filled with the wails of civilizations. His frost hair extended behind him into a noose light-years long, dragging twelve thousand nursery ships into a necklace, with the pendants being the newborn clones snatched away.

"Gene sequence: Human, 99.99% purity."

He tapped lightly on the Observer brand on the clones' foreheads, and the Λ-1 formula poured in along his fingertips, "Now you are 100%."

The baby's crying resounded through the wreckage of the warships, and Lin Jin's white clothes were once again as flawless as snow. Only 【Bei Hang】's underlying log recorded the truth: he squatted in the pile of corpses in the nursery cabin for a full seven hours, using his frost hair to weave a little star for every dead baby.

### **Final Act: White Clothes Do Not Cross, Star Dome Eternal Night**

"Mission accomplished for today."

Lin Jin lay in the ice coffin, letting his frost hair wrap him into a cocoon. The clone of the baby girl slept on his chest, her little hand clutching that strand of white hair that could never be cut.

**"God-Slaying 902 times, salvation 1 time. Λ-1 contamination rate: 69%."**

The white clothes glowed faintly in the darkness, like the last candle in a cosmic funeral.

And deep within the Observer mothership, the mycelium of the Ice Coffin Woman was reviving from Lin Jin's blood sample from today. Her consciousness crawled into the clone's dream along the frost hair, humming that lullaby that had been forbidden for ten years:

"Good baby, sleep... Mommy will go kill someone and come back..." ===== CHAPTER 19 =====