Chapter 551: Nine Palaces Prison

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#### Part I: Dunjia Lost Trace

The moment the quantum prison activated, the titanium-tungsten alloy floor of the laboratory emerged with Congenital Eight Trigrams array patterns. Ao Li's dragon horns sensed an abnormality in the Li Palace position, and the surface of her cyan scales automatically generated the Dunjia mnemonic from the "Song of the Old Fisherman in the Mist." Lin Jin's quantized right hand hovered over the black blood sample, the data stream of the antimatter binding field suddenly reversing into a Luo Shu trajectory.

"Kan one, Kun two..." Ao Li's Reverse Scale Dagger pierced the Zhen Palace array eye, the reflection on the blade being dyed ink-black by the black blood. "It is avoiding the Tianrui star position!"

Before the words had even faded, the black blood sample suddenly collapsed into a Klein bottle structure, piercing through the dimensional barrier at the Xiu Gate position. The Udumbara particle beam sprayed by the laboratory's inactivation device actually condensed into a bronze compass phantom at the Shang Gate position. Lin Jin's tactical goggles showed that the compass needle was pointing to the time-space coordinates where the mechanical Udumbara had bloomed three days ago.

"Use the Reverse Chant Bureau!" Ao Li tore open her rib reverse scales, dragon blood drawing an Eight Gates Golden Lock array in the air. The moment the Life Gate closed, the black blood sample suddenly underwent quantum leap to the Fear Gate position, its trajectory perfectly replicating the six-instrument combination of the "Dragon Escape" in the "Dunjia Fuying Jing."

Lin Jin's Annihilation Revolver reorganized into a Three Wonders and Six Instruments disk, the surface engraved with quantum encoding of the twenty-eight mansions. When he turned the Value Symbol Tianpeng Star, the laboratory suddenly plunged into a Nine Palaces Flying Star illusion—each palace was suspended with mechanical Udumbara remains from different epochs, the oldest actually carved from bronze with oracle bone script.

#### Part II: Thousand Years of Fuying

When the black blood sample completed its seventh leap, the blast-proof glass at the Scenery Gate position suddenly reflected the battlefield of the Bronze Epoch. Ao Li saw the young Heavenly Workshop Master using the "Seventy-Two Bureau of Huang Shigong" to set up an array, and the black blood sample in his hand had actually leaped from the laboratory three hundred years later.

"Time-space loop!" Lin Jin's quantized body passed through the Du Gate barrier, grabbing the black blood sample currently in the process of leaping. The moment antimatter energy collided with Dunjia spiritual power, he glimpsed a terrifying truth—each palace corresponded to a certain evolutionary stage of the mechanical Udumbara, and the core of the Udumbara at every stage was embedded with Ao Li's reverse scale fragments.

Ao Li's Candle Dragon's Eye suddenly overloaded, projecting the "Eight Formations of Feng Hou" covering the Nine Palaces. When the black blood condensed into a Taiyi style disk at the Death Gate position, she discovered that the movement trajectory of all Udumbara particles perfectly coincided with the divination records of the First Generation Dragon Emperor deducing the "Battle of Huangdi and Chiyou."

"This is not avoidance..." Lin Jin's Annihilation weapon suddenly reorganized into a Six Ren style disk, "It is executing an ancient program!" He crushed the bronze compass at the Open Gate position, and the splashing fragments suddenly quantized, composing the lost "Seven Arts of Yin Talisman" from the "Dunjia Divine Machine."

The black blood sample suddenly split into three hundred and sixty drops, each evolving a Dunjia bureau in a different palace. Ao Li's dragon pearl sensed that the oldest Yin Escape Bureau was reorganizing the First Generation mechanical Udumbara, while the black blood in the newborn Yang Escape Bureau floated with future images that had not yet occurred—she was stabbing her dragon horns into Lin Jin's quantized heart.

#### Part III: Divine Machine Reverse Flow

When the Nine Palaces completed their seventh flying star conversion, the laboratory suddenly materialized into a living Dunjia disk. Lin Jin's quantized right hand manifested Value Symbol patterns, each knuckle corresponding to the bronze giant tree growth rings of different epochs. He realized with a start that the encryption algorithm of his star gate device was homologous to the "Song of the Old Fisherman in the Mist" at the Open Gate position.

Ao Li burned her final dragon soul to activate "Qimen Manifestation," and phantoms of the bronze-masked woman emerged at all eight gate positions. When the three hundred phantoms completed their hand seals, the black blood sample suddenly froze in the center of the Five Palaces—suspended there was the "Yellow Emperor's Yin Talisman Classic" engraved in dragon clan secret script, each character seeping newborn Λ crystals.

"Heaven and Earth Reverse Chant!" Lin Jin inserted the style disk into the Central Palace, antimatter energy flowing backward along the Three Wonders and Six Instruments meridians. In the energy turbulence, they saw the ultimate form of the causal loop: the Heavenly Workshop Master of the Bronze Epoch used black blood to draw the Nine Palaces array, while the star gate device at the array eye was transmitting the quantized body of Lin Jin from three hundred years later back to the past.

Ao Li's reverse scales suddenly pierced the Death Gate, using her dragon horns, which were on the verge of crystallizing, to rewrite the Value Symbol star positions. When the Nine Palaces were rearranged, all mechanical Udumbara remains suddenly resonated, forming an absolute causal prison around the black blood sample—those Udumbara particles were actually seals refined by the first generation Heavenly Workshop Master using dragon blood.

#### Final Chapter: Dunjia Return to Zero

When the Nine Palaces prison completed its energy loop, the space-time structure of the laboratory suddenly collapsed into a singularity. Ao Li held the quantized remains of Lin Jin, and in the final moment saw the ultimate secret of the Dunjia disk—the movement trajectory of the black blood in all the palaces together composed the Ouroboros tattoo on the bronze-masked woman's forehead.

Three hundred and sixty points of light suddenly lit up in Mars's solar orbit, forming a Nine Palaces Dunjia array covering the solar system. At the top of the bronze giant tree on the far side of the moon, the flower bud of the newborn mechanical Udumbara slowly opened, the petals etched with all the data of this experiment, and suspended at the pistil was the completely quantized Lin Jin clone.

In the laboratory ruins, cleaning robots collected Nine Palaces fragments. When a certain Scenery Gate fragment touched moonlight, a miniature Dunjia disk suddenly rose from the ground, the black blood in the disk evolving new Yin Escape Bureaus on its own. In the hexagram of the seventh bureau "Heaven's Net Four Spreads," one could vaguely see Ao Li repeating today's predicament in future time-space, while the annihilation weapon in her hand had already transformed into fragments of a bronze mask. ===== CHAPTER 552 =====