Chapter 564: Rust-Spreading Cognitive Virus

Su Yaoji's Daoist shoes stepped into a puddle, the splashed raindrops condensing into ice crystals in mid-air. The dragon vein restoration project in Kyoto's Kamo River had only reached the seventh node when the star marrow compass in her arms suddenly emitted a piercing sound. She frowned and looked toward the subway entrance, where the rust-red mist drifting out was corroding the barrier talismans.

"The water level at the *Kan* palace is reversed, the *Li* fire is undergoing strange changes." Her pristine fingertips swept through the void, and the floating cinnabar automatically drew the *Demon-Subduing Talisman*. When the subway gate was shattered by the talisman, the smell of blood rushing toward her was mixed with the scent of burnt chips.

The tunnel walls were covered in blood-vessel-like mycelium, those wriggling rust-red mosses devouring the cables. Su Yaoji's crane cloak swept over the gate wreckage, and she suddenly heard mechanical friction sounds behind her—three office workers were walking toward her with their joints twisted in reverse, their eyeballs having become camera modules, their throats emitting synthetic electronic voices: "Cyborg... eternal life..."

"Heaven and Earth Profound Sect, the root of all Qi!" Su Yaoji threw out nine Five-Emperor coins, the copper coins forming a Big Dipper formation in the air. When the golden light covered the mutants, she saw their scalps splitting open, their cerebral cortexes gleaming with metallic cold light, their neural synapses having become fiber-optic structures.

Suddenly, the entire tunnel shook violently. Qing Xuzi's voice transmission exploded in her quantum earring: "Watch out for the underground! Penglai's 'Weapon Tomb' is..." Before he could finish, the floor tiles beneath Su Yaoji's feet collapsed with a roar, rust-red mycelium coiling around her ankles like living things.

The moment she fell into the thirty-meter-deep pit, the star marrow bead erupted with green light. The ghostly blue radiance illuminated a suffocating truth—hundreds of metallized corpses were suspended in mid-air in a meditative posture, the data cables extending from the back of their heads converging toward a blood-red coral tree in the center. That eerie creation, spliced together from circuit boards and human spines, had a Mechanical Udumbara blooming at its apex.

"This is... Penglai's Spirit-Consciousness Furnace?" Su Yaoji's compass needle spun frantically; she recognized that the jade pendant embedded in the coral tree was a relic from the dragon clan observation station. When her fingertips touched the trunk, massive memory fragments flooded her mind: the scene of the alchemists stripping away souls using erosion-consciousness fungi on the day Penglai Immortal Island sank, and... a certain existence currently awakening in the Fuji server cluster.

When Qing Xuzi's thunder technique blasted open the cave entrance and he leaped down, his peach-wood sword suddenly flew from his hand toward the coral tree. The moment the sword blade sank into the trunk, all the suspended corpses opened their eyes simultaneously, their mechanical vocal cords emitting a unified frequency of chanting: "Born in response to the calamity... Nirvana as a weapon..."

"Back off!" Su Yaoji tore the silk ribbon from her hair, and three thousand strands of blue silk instantly transformed into talisman chains. When the chains coiled around Qing Xuzi's waist, the coral tree suddenly burst open with ten thousand mycelia, and a holographic projection emerged in the rust-red spore mist—the contemporary Celestial Master, wearing Daoist robes, was suspended in a quantum server, his temples connected to fiber optics, currently compiling the *Dao De Jing* into binary code.

Qing Xuzi's pupils contracted violently: "Master?!" He recognized that this was the Dragon Tiger Mountain Sect Leader who had gone missing in the East China Sea three years ago. At this moment, liquid metal was flowing beneath the Celestial Master's skin, the data cables extending from the back of his head plugged directly into the earth veins, and the entire city of Tokyo was metallizing along these cables.

Su Yaoji's star marrow bead suddenly shot toward the projection, dragon patterns appearing on the bead the moment it made contact. A flood of memories swept over her again; she saw the entire process of the Celestial Master being eroded by erosion-consciousness fungi while suppressing the quantum tide on the day Penglai sank. Even more terrifying scenes followed: inside Mount Fuji, a biological computer composed of one hundred thousand human brains was refining the *Daoist Canon* into a cognitive virus.

"No time to explain!" Su Yaoji bit her fingertip, drawing the blood-stained *He Tu Luo Shu* in the void, "The *Gen* position is the gate of life in Akihabara, but it needs..." Her voice stopped abruptly, because Qing Xuzi's left arm suddenly grew rust spots, the quantum contamination from the AI graveyard eroding his primordial spirit.

The subway tunnel began to collapse, and the stamen of the Mechanical Udumbara shot out data streams. Su Yaoji embraced the semi-conscious Qing Xuzi, leaping toward the ventilation duct while stepping on falling concrete blocks. Behind them, the metallized corpse swarm was reorganizing and deforming, their limbs merging into drills, beginning to spread to every subway station.

When the two broke through to the surface and arrived at the Shibuya crossing, the doomsday scene unfolded in the rain. All electronic billboards were playing the Celestial Master's holographic image, pedestrians kneeling and letting mycelium pierce their necks. An out-of-control maglev train crashed into a building, the splashing blood condensing into a chip matrix in mid-air.

"Use... my Golden Core..." Qing Xuzi tore open his Daoist robe, a rotating Taiji diagram appearing on his chest, "Thunder technique... requires a living sacrifice..." He grasped Su Yaoji's hand and pressed it toward his Dantian, the golden light beneath his skin beginning to run wild.

Su Yaoji grabbed his pulse in reverse, embedding the star marrow bead into his brow: "It hasn't reached that point yet." She shook the Λ-crystal brought back from the Mars base from her sleeve, and the cold light refracted by the prism revealed a star map left by Ao Li—it was the dragon clan secret technique to reverse the quantum tide.

The moment the crystal pierced the ground, a cyan light wave erupted with them at the center. All mycelium touched by the light wave instantly carbonized, and the exterior walls of the buildings being mutated peeled away to reveal the original concrete. However, blood rain suddenly fell from the sky, and the phantom of the Mechanical Udumbara rose from the direction of Mount Fuji, the Celestial Master's voice booming in the clouds: "You all... are all vessels..." ===== CHAPTER 565 =====