Chapter 512: Godslayer Countdown

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The archive room's door hinge emitted a rust‑eaten wail, and the cold air seeping through the gap wrapped the scent of moldy paper. Ao Li's dragon‑horn tip glowed with a dim blue phosphorescence, illuminating the nanoscopic dust floating in the air—those particles automatically avoided the light, arranging in the darkness a warning Zhengtong that read "No Entry."

"The particle defense system from three hundred years ago is still active," technician Xiao Wang said, raising his radiation detector. The screen suddenly burst into a snow‑flake pattern, "Wait… these dust particles are alive!"

Before the words finished, a ton of dust suddenly collapsed into a black‑mist leviathan. Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch fragments flung out a ripple of space‑time, but the moment they touched the serpent's body they were assimilated into dark‑red blood mist. Ao Li's Sword Qi sliced through the mist barrier, the shattered mist fell to the ground and solidified into countless miniature birthing chambers, each holding a pocket‑sized Star Sea fetus.

"It's a memory‑materialized defense," Ao Li said. The soles of Ao Li's boots became coated with black slime, and the footprints etched onto the floor a Gene Map of the First Generation Observer, "Follow my footprints, and avoid any reflective objects."

The metal surface of the filing cabinet streamed with a mercury‑like substance, reflecting the distorted silhouettes of everyone present. When Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch approached the third row of file shelves, the glass cabinet door suddenly exploded. The yellowed paper documents fluttered like startled birds, igniting in the air into nine hundred burning Star Charts, each chart's center embedding a fragmentary Inverse Scale silhouette.

"Nine o'clock direction!" Ao Li's dragon‑horn suddenly pivoted, and Sword Qi shattered a section of the melting ceiling. A biological hard drive hidden in the interlayer fell, its flesh‑like Fungus Carpet automatically peeled away, revealing a bronze‑colored Dragon Clan seal emblem.

Xiao Wang had just put on anti‑microbe gloves when fragments of the Fungus Carpet suddenly surged. Black mycelium pierced his protective suit, frantically growing pregnancy‑line patterns across his arm. "Don't move!" Lín Jìn slashed the mycelium with pocket‑watch fragments; in the flash of a space‑time rupture, the Fungus Carpet displayed a scene of the First Generation Observer conducting a forbidden experiment—injecting black blood into Ao Li's ancestor's spine.

A sudden gear‑clacking echoed from deep within the archive room. Twelve bronze celestial spheres burst through the wall, their gears trapping dried black‑blood crystals. When the celestial spheres began to rotate counter‑clockwise, the countdown tattoos on everyone's inner wrists flickered faster.

"These are Godslayer timers!" Ao Li's Sword Qi shattered the main gear, and the sparks that erupted coalesced in the air into a Holographic Projection of the First Generation Observer. In the image, a bronze scroll in the hand was dissolving, the remaining script revealing a world‑shaking secret: "Nine‑Scale Godslayer, space‑time as the conduit, when the Star Sea fetus's umbilical cord entwines…"

Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch suddenly floated to the center of the celestial sphere, its fragments reassembling into a dial that split into nine golden filaments. Each filament pointed toward a different direction of the archive room, and the floor gave way with a thud, exposing Inverse Scales sealed within a lead coffin—those Dragon Scales bore engraved pregnancy data, their edges attached to pulsating ancient‑god cells.

"Watch the resonance reaction!" Ao Li's warning was half a step too late. When the first Inverse Scale left the lead coffin, the entire base suddenly rang with an alarm that sounded like a baby's cry. The metal surface of the filing cabinet seeped out a colostrum‑like fluid, and the black‑blood mycelium, nourished by the fluid, transmuted into a cluster of birth‑duct muscles, enveloping everyone in a writhing cage of flesh and blood.

Lín Jìn drove pocket‑watch fragments into the flesh‑wall, and within the tear ripped open by Space‑Time Chaos, a live feed of 9527 on Planet X‑09 flickered into view. Beneath his feet, an altar was melting the ninth Inverse Scale, and the phantom of the Star Sea fetus emitted a delighted tremor above the Ronglu. When the Inverse Scale in the footage fully liquefied, the scale in Ao Li's hand suddenly heated up, and the ancient‑god cells began to erode her genetic chain in reverse.

"This is a bidirectional shackle," Ao Li said. Her dragon‑horn pierced her own arm, using Dragon Clan primordial blood to freeze the erosion, "Each Inverse Scale is both a Godslayer weapon and an anchor point for the ancient god's resurrection." She swung her sword, cutting off the contaminated right arm; the severed limb vaporized in mid‑air into a nebula‑shaped birthmark, precisely imprinting onto Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch surface.

The pocket‑watch suddenly erupted with a supernova‑level flash, and the archive room's black‑blood defense layer melted away like spring snow. At the heart of the light, the encrypted log of the First Generation Observer finally materialized—its characters, written in dragon blood, were seeping into each person's retina:

**"When a Godslayer grasps the blade of the Nine‑Scale, they must remember that the deadliest edge always points toward oneself..."**

The moment the light faded, everyone realized the archive room had already vanished. They stood amid the vast Star Sea, beneath them a galaxy curled into a fetal shape, while the nine Inverse Scales were transforming into a ring of stars encircling the ancient‑god embryo. Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch emitted a final sigh, and from the crack in its dial rose the ultimate clue—the coordinates of the ninth Inverse Scale, unmistakably pointing to the deep interior of Ao Li's regenerating right‑arm bone.