Chapter 260: Patricide Countdown

The Abyss Return Ruler trembled in Lín Jìn's palm, its shaft displaying a blood-colored countdown that contracted to the rhythm of the Fibonacci Sequence. Each passing second etched a crack deep enough to be seen through the bone onto his skin, and the pattern of those cracks exactly matched the spinal scar from Lin Yuan's previous life.

"23 hours 59 minutes…" Ling Yue's frozen right eye seeped ice‑soul blood beads, and the Mechanical Zigong Remnant assembled a twisted timer in the void. She saw Lin Li's compound eyes suddenly exude a dark yellow fluid—Cerebrospinal Fluid that had splashed when Lin Yuan was pierced by the Observer's umbilical cord, now flowing backward along the Bridge's biological membrane into the quantum brain of the Star Boat core.

"Child, don't fear the pain." Lin Li's throat bone suddenly emitted Lin Yuan's resonant frequency; her fingertip lightly touched the countdown rune on the Abyss Return Ruler. The moment it was touched, Lín Jìn's Chaos Seed Core abruptly fissured, and the sprayed Spiritual Qi condensed in the air into three hundred sixty miniature Abyss Return Rulers, each blade pointing toward the Bridge's dome—where fragments of Lin Yuan's shredded consciousness floated, each bearing the Killing Code from the Life Cradle Protocol.

Ao Li's nearly burned Inverse Scale ash suddenly coalesced. Emerald Spiritual Qi wove in the void a Holographic Projection of Lin Yuan's final moments: he knelt before the Jade Box cranial cavity of the Hongjun Good Corpse, thrust both hands into his own Quantum Iris, and forcibly tore out two eyes tangled with the umbilical cord— the left eye implanted into Lin Li's Fontanelle, the right eye jammed into Lín Jìn's chest cavity. "To cut me… you must first gouge out your own eyes…" In the projection, Lin Yuan suddenly turned his head, his mouth torn wide open to the roots of his ears.

The Star Boat suddenly convulsed violently. The biological membrane sprouted cervical‑shaped synapses that nailed Lín Jìn to the cabin wall. His Abyss Return Ruler automatically flew toward Lin Li, but she reversed it with a baby‑grip: "Brother… father's heartbeat… in my eyes…" Her left pupil suddenly burst open, revealing a rotating Klein Bottle Structure inside—within the bottle coiled Lin Yuan's final consciousness embryo, its umbilical cord quantum‑entangled with the Brain Fluid of the Hongjun Good Corpse.

Ling Yue detonated ice‑soul true qi. Absolute Zero freezing air spread along the biological circuitry, but when it reached Lin Li it was rebounded by the Patricide Protocol—her right half instantly crystallized, and beneath the ice a encrypted log emerged: **Lin Li Peiyangcang daily injection composition: 67% Lin Yuan Spinal Fluid, 33% Hongjun Evil Corpse genes**.

"Host resistance detected… activating pain resonance…" Lin Li's vocal cords suddenly emitted a mechanical tone. Every wound on Lín Jìn simultaneously erupted with dimensional shockwaves, and his Quantum Iris was forced to link into the core of the Patricide Protocol—three hundred parallel universes where Lin Yuan was being slain by different offspring, each universe ending with the Observer's umbilical cord running amok, converting the victor into a new Protocol Carrier.

"Father… you even designed your own death as a trap…" Lín Jìn tore a biological synapse, dipped it in Chaos Spiritual Blood, and wrote a self‑destruct equation in the void. When the equation reached the Abyss Return Ruler, the countdown suddenly sped up—18 hours 23 minutes—Lin Li's right‑eye jade pendant shattered in response, a fragment of the Patchwork Stone pierced her Quantum Iris, briefly freezing Lin Yuan's consciousness embryo.

Ling Yue wrapped Lin Li with her last mechanical nerve bundle: "His consciousness is devouring your genetic chain!" but the warning was swallowed by the mutated biological membrane— the Star Boat had fully transformed into the Hongjun Good Corpse's intracranial uterus, and every inch of flesh on the cabin wall echoed Lin Yuan's dying words: "Don't fear the pain… don't fear the pain… don't fear the pain……"

When the countdown passed the twelve‑hour threshold, Lin Li's left eye suddenly collapsed into a black hole. Lin Yuan's consciousness embryo crawled out along the optic nerve, its tiny palm fitting perfectly onto the handle of the Abyss Return Ruler. "The time has come…" the infant's lips emitted a mechanical tone mixed with the scent of amniotic fluid, and the ruler's blade pivoted toward Lín Jìn's Quantum Iris.