Chapter 538: Oviposition Ritual

Quantum stardust flowed outside the porthole, and Lin Jin's fingers tapped a hurried melody on the console. The starship's curvature engine was moaning, and the vibration of the twelve-dimensional strings crawled up the back of his neck along his spine.

"Gravitational well readings exceed the critical value." Ao Li's voice was wrapped in electrical noise, "They are extracting the photosphere of the star."

In the holographic projection, the star with a diameter of three million kilometers was collapsing. The twelve bronze figures of the altar held up a ring-shaped structure, and crimson light flowed along the Taotie patterns on the altar surface. The stripped coronal matter condensed into eggs in the vacuum, and dragon-shaped dark patterns floated on the surface of every embryo.

Ao Li suddenly pressed her temples, and blood light flared from the dragon horns amidst her pale blue hair. Her irises split into twelve concentric circles, reflecting a curled-up shadow deep in the altar. "Those eggs... are crying."

Lin Jin switched to the starship's observation mode. In the image magnified one hundred thousand times, a fetus was wrapped in a semi-transparent egg membrane, with dragon horns similar to Ao Li's growing on its curled spine. When stellar matter was injected, those pale little hands suddenly grabbed the egg membrane, drawing ferocious blood marks in the plasma flow.

"Warning, a quantum tide is forming." When the mechanical female voice sounded, the starship suddenly tilted forty-five degrees. The moment Lin Jin grabbed the joystick, he saw space-time curvature folding into a Möbius strip around the altar.

Ao Li's dragon horns erupted with ghostly blue electric arcs, and her fingernails pierced her palms: "They are... sharing my gene map." Her pupils suddenly dilated, and she floated up, dark matter flow gushing from her hair tips, "Extinguish the Eight Desolations... this is the ritual of Extinguishing the Eight Desolations..."

The starship's protective shield suddenly burst with spiderweb-like cracks. Lin Jin caught a glimpse of mechanical octopuses passing by—the standard combat unit of the Purifier fleet, with Klein bottle-shaped force field generators flickering at the ends of their three-hundred-meter-long tentacles.

"Hold on!" Lin Jin switched the starship to gyro mode. The hull performed seven consecutive short-range leaps in the quantum foam, every flash leaving behind burning space-time folds. The mechanical octopuses sprayed antimatter torpedoes, and the intense light of annihilation revealed the full view of the bronze altar.

It was a behemoth composed of seven-layered Luoshu matrices, with embryonic eggs suspended at every trigram position. Lin Jin saw the black sphere at the center of the egg cluster—the stellar core compressed into a neutron star state, currently transporting energy to all embryos through conduits shaped like mysterious birds.

Ao Li suddenly let out a painful whimper. Her dragon horns completely turned blood-colored, and dense God-Slaying incantations emerged beneath her skin: "They are... sharing my gene map..." Her pupils suddenly diffused, and she curled up, bronze-colored nerve cords piercing out from her back, "Extinguish the Eight Desolations... this is the ritual of Extinguishing the Eight Desolations..."

The starship vibrated violently, and purple energy flow seeped into the cracks of the protective shield. Lin Jin saw the readings jumping wildly on the dashboard—the altar was releasing super-dimensional gravitational waves, and the space-time structure of the entire star field began to turn fibrous.

"Warning, causality chain breakage rate 37%." The mechanical female voice carried noise, "Immediate evacuation recommended."

Lin Jin bit his tongue, the bloody taste keeping him awake. He quickly entered the triple decryption protocol, activating the forbidden weapon in the starship's bottom hold: "Ao Li, give me twenty seconds!"

The dragon-born girl curled up into a fetal position in the air, and glowing blood beads composed the Hetu Luoshu around her. When the mechanical octopus's tentacles pierced the cabin, she suddenly opened her eyes, and the light of ancient fierce stars burned in her golden pupils.

"Those who behold the face of God—" Ao Li's voice carried metallic resonance, "shall suffer the punishment of gouged eyes."

A dark matter storm erupted with her as the center, and the mechanical octopuses instantly decomposed into quanta. Lin Jin grasped the joystick in the energy turbulence, seeing the weapon system finally complete charging. The starship's bottom unfolded into a lotus-shaped launch port, and nine missiles engraved with the trigrams of the "Lianshan Yi" roared out.

The embryonic egg cluster suddenly vibrated simultaneously, and tens of thousands of fetuses opened their golden pupils. Lin Jin's temples throbbed, and he heard the cries of billions of babies exploding in his neural nerves. The moment the missiles hit the altar, Ao Li's face emerged on the bronze surface.

"Wrong!" Lin Jin felt cold all over, "These missiles... are reverse-analyzing our gene keys!"

Ao Li's dragon horns suddenly snapped, and what sprayed out was not blood but stardust. Her body began to turn transparent, revealing a miniature galaxy rotating inside her: "Lin Jin... my reverse scales..."

The intense light of the explosion swallowed everything. Before his consciousness dissipated, Lin Jin saw a dragon pupil covered in mechanical patterns open deep in the altar, reflecting Ao Li in different forms in three hundred parallel space-times. ===== CHAPTER 539 =====