Chapter 559: Crescent Engine

As Lin Jin's quantum right arm pierced into the crustal fissure, the weapon slots on the Mechanical Buddha's chest were erupting with creation-level brilliance. Those world-ending armaments flying from the war museum were currently assembling around the Buddha into twelve pairs of Λ-crystal Buddha hands, each palm opening a vertical pupil filled with the hexagrams of the *Tui Bei Tu*.

"Crescent Engine countdown: three minutes." Starlight seeped from the cracks in Ao Li's dragon pearl; amidst the collapsing crater, she saw an even more terrifying sight—the moon was dehydrating rapidly, the roots of countless bronze giant trees extending from the folds of the surface, and every root was entwined with the mummified corpses of dragon clan observers.

Lin Jin's retinas were suddenly covered in blood-red. When he touched the exposed lunar core, memories from three hundred timelines flooded in simultaneously: a woman wearing a bronze mask placing an infant into the Crescent Engine, using the Nine-Star Alignment Array recorded in the *Luo Shu* to extract dragon blood; the prototype of the Mechanical Buddha standing up from the engine furnace, the Buddha's chest embedded with the half-skeleton of that very woman!

"Ninth Generation Observer Ao Li, bloodline contamination confirmed." The bronze giant tree suddenly emitted the Pavilion Master's voice print, the trunk splitting a nine-hundred-meter-long fissure. Lin Jin saw the Crescent Engine suspended deep within the tree's heart, its console forged from the spine of the First Generation High Priest, nine dragon blood conduits connecting the civilization tombstones of different epochs.

Ao Li's Reverse Scale dagger suddenly flew from her hand toward the engine. The moment the dagger pierced the console, the entire bronze giant tree animated into the human-faced, snake-bodied form of Zhujiuyin, one hundred thousand dragon clan vertical pupils opening between the scales of its bark. Lin Jin's quantum right arm automatically decomposed into a string theory model, every energy string connecting to the Buddha's world-ending hands.

"Stop the blood sacrifice!" Ao Li's broken horn erupted with green light. She saw nine grooves appear on the engine console, eight of which were already filled with dragon blood of different colors—the shape of the last one matching her own Reverse Scale perfectly.

The Mechanical Buddha's hands suddenly slapped toward the lunar surface. Lin Jin deployed a dimensional shield at the critical moment, only to find the vertical pupils in the Buddha's palms reading his gene code. When the shield shattered, he saw his own quantumized right arm stabbing uncontrollably toward Ao Li's back—the Pavilion Master had buried a God-Slaying order in his gene chain long ago!

Dragon blood burned into a *He Tu* in the vacuum. Ao Li transformed into starlight in the instant before being pierced, her burning dragon pearl exploding a black hole in the Buddha's forehead. Lin Jin took the opportunity to break free from control, his quantum tentacles inserting into the engine core, only to touch an infant soaking in Λ-crystal fluid—the infant's gene sequence was identical to his own, its chest tattooed with a miniature bronze mask.

"So I am the living key to the engine..." Lin Jin's pupils split with bronze patterns. When he pulled out the infant, the Crescent Engine suddenly released a gravitational wave that covered the solar system, and the civilization tombstones in all time-space folds began to decompress rapidly.

Ao Li's afterimage reorganized at the edge of the black hole. Her left eye transformed into star marrow due to the annihilation of the dragon pearl, while her right eye reflected an even more desperate scene—the decompressing civilization tombstones were merging with the Buddha's hands, the doomsday symbols of the Mayan calendar spreading from the Buddha's forehead, and wherever they passed, galaxies regressed into quantum foam.

The bronze giant tree emitted a mournful cry that pierced dimensions. When Lin Jin pressed the infant back into the engine core, the moon suddenly collapsed into a two-dimensional foil, and the Mechanical Buddha took the opportunity to devour the entire Crescent Engine. In the brilliance of the dimensional strike, they saw the Buddha tear open its chest armor, and that female skeleton with the same gene source as Lin Jin was pressing a bronze mask onto the Buddha's face.

"Mother..." Lin Jin's quantum tentacles were suddenly absorbed by the skeleton. The moment the Buddha donned the mask, three hundred Ouroboros coffins flew out from the black hole, assembling behind its head into an annihilation Buddha wheel. Ao Li's star marrow left eye suddenly saw through the truth—every coffin on the Buddha wheel was engraved with Lin Jin's name, and inside each coffin slept a version of him at a different age!

A dragon roar erupted from the lunar remains. The remnant soul of the First Generation Observer seeped from the bronze giant tree, transforming into nine blood dragons that coiled around the Buddha. Ao Li grabbed Lin Jin's hand in the time-space turbulence, the ultimate forbidden art of the lost *Luo Shu* appearing in her star marrow pupils: "Use my Reverse Scale to restart the engine! Only a dragon clan observer's..."

Her voice was drowned out by the Buddha's world-ending Sanskrit chant. Lin Jin looked down at the bronze mask inserted into his heart, finally understanding the end of all reincarnation—the 45th hexagram of the *Tui Bei Tu* engraved on the inside of the mask was precisely the scene of the Buddha destroying the world at this moment. When his blood stained the hexagram, the Crescent Engine suddenly reversed its operation, dragging the Mechanical Buddha toward the singularity of self-annihilation...... ===== CHAPTER 560 =====