Chapter 521: Insider Suspect

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####**Bleeding Log**

The maintenance bay was filled with the oily stench and the charred smell of arcs. Ao Li's fingertips brushed the crack in the quantum engine hull, and the dragon‑horn fluorescence illuminated the metal cross‑section—there a half‑blood‑stained Reverse‑scale Fragment was set, its pattern perfectly matching the gears of Lín Jìn's pocket watch.

"The sabotage occurred in the third encrypted compartment," the technician Lao Zhang said as his mechanical arm projected a 3‑D model, red markers extending along the Starship dragon bone. "The perpetrator has at least Level‑4 clearance." The Holographic Projection suddenly warped, and a flow of dark matter etched an Ancient God Umbilical Cord Zhengtong onto the model, causing Lao Zhang's pupils to contract sharply.

Medical officer Su Li burst open the hatch, the antibody serum in her test tube boiling: "The Gene Lock database has been tampered with!" She ripped her collar open, and the Star Pattern birthmark on her neck oozed black blood, "Someone disabled the anti‑corrosion protection; my serum is degrading!"

Ao Li's Sword Qi swept over the database terminal, and the sparks revealed the Operation Log— the last access recorded twenty‑seven minutes ago, the user ID startlingly that of the deceased crew member Chen Duo. Yet everyone remembered that Chen Duo had been torn apart by an Ancient God Umbilical Cord during the crossing storm.

####**Silent Accusation**

The seal of the cafeteria airlock burst suddenly, triggering both the oxygen‑deprivation alarm and the gravity‑imbalance alarm. Everyone clutched the safety bolts, floating mid‑air, watching the nutrient pack burst open in weightlessness, the ooze spraying into four blood‑red characters in the air: **Traitor Among Us**.

A fragment of Lín Jìn's pocket watch suddenly adhered to the cabin ceiling, its cracked face seeping black‑gold substance that solidified into three hundred Buddhist Kingdom characters. Su Li's antibody serum auto‑translated: "Godslayer will eventually return to the birth canal." As she finished speaking, the pocket watch fired a Laser, pinning the engineer Wang Meng, who was inspecting the pipelines, to the wall.

"It wasn't me!" Wang Meng struggled to tear off his protective suit, exposing his chest—within the power cell of his cybernetic heart lay a blood‑stained Obstetric Forceps component. Ao Li's dragon horn pierced his spinal interface, and the memory playback showed Ao Li stabbing a Reverse‑scale into a comrade's heart.

"The memory is corrupted," she said, cutting the data cable, watching Wang Meng collapse limp, "Someone is forging evidence with Ancient God cells."

####**Umbilical Cord Polygraph**

Ao Li embedded nine Reverse‑scale Fragments into the conference table, laying a Dragon Clan Forbidden Art array. A pale‑blue light curtain enveloped everyone, each person's gene chain hovering above their heads in holographic form. Lín Jìn's antibody rune went berserk first, spelling out the First Generation Observer's confession in the void; Su Li's serum coagulated into a birth‑canal anatomical diagram; Lao Zhang's mechanical arm projected the energy flow toward the Starship's damage points.

"Look here!" Su Li suddenly pointed at Lao Zhang's gene‑chain projection, where an Ancient God code that should have been blocked by antibodies was pulsing. Lao Zhang's mechanical arm suddenly surged, seven hydraulic tubes lunging at Ao Li, but they were frozen by Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch fragment before reaching the dragon horn.

"Thirty‑seven hours ago, you replaced the neural interface module," Ao Li's Sword Qi peeled back the mechanical arm's casing, revealing a hidden amber core—inside coiled a miniature embodiment of a Star Sea fetus. Lao Zhang's pupils became fully mechanized, his vocal cords emitting a 9527 reverberation: "Mother, you should not resist the labor pains."

####**Double‑Sided Trap**

Just as Ao Li was about to destroy the amber core, the entire Starship plunged into darkness. When the emergency lights flickered on, everyone saw each other's reflections performing opposite actions—Reflection Su Li injecting antibody serum into an Ancient God cell, Reflection Lín Jìn welding the damaged birth‑canal apparatus.

"The Dimensional Amnion has been torn!" Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch fragment burst with intense light, illuminating the dense umbilical‑cord jungle clinging to the hull outside the cabin. Those Ancient God umbilical cords wrapped around the Starship were back‑flowing through the connection between reflections and the real bodies.

Ao Li's dragon horn suddenly pierced his own abdomen, primal dragon blood painting a Godslayer totem in the void. As the light engulfed the reflections, everyone realized Lao Zhang's mechanical arm had already been severed—everything moments ago had been a collective hallucination generated by Ancient God cells. The true saboteur stood before the reactor, holding the First Generation Observer's Godslayer Dagger.

"It's Su Li!" Lín Jìn's antibody blade pierced the medical officer's back, but only struck a holographic projection. The ship's broadcast suddenly echoed Su Li's cold laugh: "Mother, the fetus in your womb is hungry..."

Her true form manifested at the quantum engine core, her abdomen swelling into a translucent sphere, within which a complete Star Sea fetus coiled.