Chapter 552: Star Candle Nerve

Lin Jin's fingers moved in a blur across the console, the three-dimensional map of the starship on the holographic projection flashing red frantically. The Λ crystal reactor in the power compartment broke through the critical line, those crystal clusters that should have released energy during the antimatter annihilation process now wriggling in the transparent container like living things.

"Warning, neural synchronization rate dropped to 23%." The mechanical female voice pierced through the alarm buzzing on the bridge.

Cold sweat dripped from the young commander's chin onto his silver-gray uniform. When he looked up at the distorted nebula outside the porthole, a string of bizarre blue-purple light spots suddenly flashed across his retinas—this was definitely not a visual residue that should have been left by hyperspace jumping.

A metallic tearing shriek came from beneath his feet. Lin Jin stumbled and grabbed the command console, seeing pale blue mist spreading along the ventilation ducts. For a moment he had a hallucination, as if countless translucent snakes were swimming in the mist.

"Snap!"

Cyan-gold light exploded on the bridge. The hem of Ao Li's black flag-dress swept across the console, the talismans drawn with dragon blood burning scorch marks into the air. When the girl's slender fingers pressed against Lin Jin's temple, he smelled the scent of incense mixed with rust.

"Don't move." Ao Li's voice carried the resonance tremor unique to the dragon clan. "In your eyes... there is something swimming."

The dark gold vertical pupils suddenly contracted. Lin Jin had never seen such a grave expression on the face of this usually lazy dragon clan supervisor. Through the blood beads seeping from her fingertips, he saw that all the crew's physiological monitoring in the holographic projection was fluctuating violently.

"This is not a normal fuel leak." Ao Li suddenly tore off her pearl hair ornament, two dragon horns between her raven hair glowing with cyan light. "The Ouroboros curse that devoured ten thousand dragon clan elites three hundred years ago—why would it appear on a starship?"

The ship's hull suddenly tilted violently. Lin Jin grabbed Ao Li's wrist in the weightlessness, seeing those blue mists condensing into materialized chains that wrapped around the crew's necks. The usually taciturn navigator, Xiao Wu, suddenly emitted an inhuman roar, and on his temples, dark blue patterns were winding into shape like living things.

"Hold him down!" Ao Li spun and flicked out seven jade slips, dragon blood condensing into a Big Dipper array chart in the air. But it was already too late—Xiao Wu's eyeballs suddenly burst, and blue light sprayed from the empty eye sockets, projecting a giant Ouroboros totem on the cabin ceiling.

Lin Jin's tactical dagger flew out of his hand, only to vaporize the moment it pierced the light mist. He suddenly remembered the bizarre scene he had seen in the Λ crystal mining area three days ago: the surfaces of those crystal clusters buried deep in the earth's crust were also covered in similar mysterious patterns.

"It's resonance!" Ao Li's dragon horns began to seep gold blood. "The Λ crystals in the fuel compartment are resonating with the curse! Quickly cut off..."

A heaven-shaking explosion drowned out the second half of her sentence. Lin Jin rolled into the emergency pod while holding Ao Li amidst the blast wave; through the blast-proof glass, he saw a scene he would never forget—the metal of the entire corridor was vaporizing, and the crew members wrapped in blue light were floating in the void, their flesh and blood merging with the starship armor into some kind of monster flickering with crystal luster.

"Antimatter annihilation countdown: 180 seconds." The mechanical voice was chillingly calm.

Ao Li suddenly bit her tongue, drawing a complex star chart in the air with gold-red blood. When her palm pressed against Lin Jin's chest, the boy felt hot liquid flowing backward through his blood vessels: "Listen, Λ crystals are the carriers of the Ouroboros curse. The 'Fuxi Soul Scripture' records that to sever the causal chain, someone must enter the time-space backtracking illusion..."

Her voice stopped abruptly. Lin Jin discovered with horror that the same Ouroboros pattern had emerged on Ao Li's neck, and those patterns were frantically devouring the girl's golden blood. Even more terrifyingly, his own palms had somehow sprouted dark blue light spots.

"It seems neither of us can escape." Ao Li suddenly smiled, gold blood dripping from her lips onto the star chart array eye. "Do you remember asking me how the dragon clan went extinct?"

She tore open the stand-up collar of her flag-dress, revealing old scars that reached the bone on her collarbone. Deep within those hideous wounds, blue light was pulsing.

"The soul lamps of the High Priest back then were lit using the Ouroboros curse." Ao Li's pupils began to dilate. "Ten thousand dragon clan members suddenly began to devour each other's flesh and blood at the victory banquet, because our neural networks had been inscribed with a self-destruct program long ago..."

Blinding white light swallowed all sound. Lin Jin activated the emergency escape protocol in his final moment of clarity, only to see the countdown suddenly stall at 0.7 seconds. Time-space seemed to have been pressed on pause, with only the Ouroboros pattern on Ao Li's neck still slowly swimming.

Countless memory fragments suddenly flooded his mind. He saw the dragon clan sacred hall three hundred years ago, where a priest wearing a bronze mask was embedding Λ crystals into an altar; he saw countless tiny Ouroboros snakes awakening deep within the starship fuel compartment's crystal clusters; finally, he saw himself—standing in the center of a burning sea of stars, holding half a broken dragon horn in his hand.

"So that's how it is..." Lin Jin suddenly laughed. In Ao Li's shocked gaze, he plunged his hand into his own chest where the curse had emerged and pulled out a mass of pulsing blue light from his heart position.

"Are you crazy?!" Ao Li's dragon horns erupted with blinding cyan light, but the boy had already pressed the blue light into the main console. When his blood soaked the Λ crystal control interface, the entire starship suddenly emitted a roar like a prehistoric giant beast.

"Since the curse needs a host." Lin Jin's pupils began to seep light where blue and gold intertwined, "Then let the starship itself become the prison for the Ouroboros." ===== CHAPTER 553 =====