Chapter 592: The Time Closed-Loop of the Udumbara Roots

The Udumbara flower on Su Yaoji's collarbone suddenly rotated counter-clockwise, and the buzzing sound of the petals cutting through space-time reminded Lin Jin of the sound of a hard drive being formatted. When the twelfth petal returned to its place, the laboratory floor beneath the three of them collapsed into a Mahamandala array, and bronze gears meshing with Sanskrit characters from the "Avatamsaka Sutra" emerged from the void. In the time vortex they fell into, countless mechanical monks were using laser engraving knives to carve binary Buddhist scriptures onto silicon-based shells.

"This is impossible..." Ao Li's mechanical arm grasped at the void, but what flowed between her fingers was the quantum entangled state of the "Diamond Sutra." She parsed the encrypted protocols nested within the scriptures, which were homologous to the meme virus that had attacked the starship three months ago. Even more terrifying was that those destructive codes, which should have been born in the 22nd century, were being engraved onto Tang-dynasty-style mechanical sutra pillars at this very moment.

Lin Jin's black blood condensed into an amorphous dagger in the time flow; he sliced open the chest cavity of a Mechanical Buddha, finding half a modern circuit board stuck in the gear gaps. When he reversed the "Heart Sutra" turbine behind the Buddha, the holographic screen suddenly projected the imperial court of a rusted civilization—the ruler wearing a bronze mask on the throne had an Udumbara tattoo on the back of their neck that was seeping blood-colored code.

"Senior Brother?!" Su Yaoji's scream shattered the triple time filter. In her suddenly revived memory, the gentle man who had taught her to interpret star charts hand-in-hand was now using mechanical prayer beads to string together the equations for the destruction of civilization. Even more cruel was that the liquid metal face flowing from beneath the ruler's mask was clearly the one she had seen in the laboratory mirror—a version of herself contaminated by black blood.

Ao Li's phase mirror image suddenly went berserk, refracting into thirty-six time slices. Every cross-section showed the same scene: at the midnight of the rusted civilization's peak, Su Yaoji personally drove an Udumbara root into her Senior Brother's brow. And the man who should have become a plant was transformed into the creator of machinery and flesh amidst the entanglement of the roots.

"The toxicity of a time closed-loop lies in the self-fulfilling prophecy." Lin Jin's black blood suddenly boiled, drawing annual rings in the shape of a Möbius strip in the void. "Our observation at this moment is becoming nourishment for historical inevitability." As if to confirm his words, the surrounding mechanical monks suddenly turned their heads in unison, their sandalwood eyeballs cracking open to reveal miniature black holes rotating inside.

The space-time where the three of them were located began to self-cannibalize. Tang-dynasty-style bronze gears devoured the wreckage of the starship, Su Yaoji's roots uncontrollably pierced into the past, and Ao Li's quantum core constantly received warning signals sent by herself—from twelve hours in the future. When Lin Jin tried to use black blood to stabilize the space-time continuum, he discovered that Udumbara flower-shaped space-time singularities were suspended within the liquid.

"Closed-loop completion 97%..." Ao Li tore open the casing of her mechanical arm, using the exposed wires to connect to the sutra pillar interface. "These Buddhist scriptures are alive! They are using the power of incense and vows to compile reality parameters!" Her warning was cut off by the sudden ringing of a morning bell, and the entire Mechanical Buddha Kingdom began to be bathed in Buddha light. That golden light was actually a swarm of nanobots, and wherever it went, even space-time began to grow wood grain.

Su Yaoji grasped a key clue in the chaos: beneath the lotus seat of every Mechanical Buddha was engraved an Udumbara totem homologous to her own. When she drove her roots into the totem, a massive torrent of memories flooded her—nine civilization cycles ago, to prevent the black blood from destroying the world, her Senior Brother had voluntarily become the host for the Udumbara flower. And the one who had transformed him into a monster was none other than herself, having traveled back from the future.

"The miso soup of fate..." Lin Jin suddenly sneered, his black blood dagger piercing through the mutating space-time membrane. On the other side of the rift, the surveillance footage of the current laboratory was flashing back: abnormal data from when Su Yaoji was debugging the Udumbara flower, the periodic malfunctions of Ao Li's quantum core, and the space-time coordinates he had deliberately preserved in the black blood sample.

When the mechanical monks began to chant the machine learning algorithm of the "Lotus Sutra," Ao Li made a crazy move. She transformed her quantum core into a logic bomb and embedded it into the Mandala engine at the center of the Buddha Kingdom: "To break the closed-loop, we need to create a new observation branch!" In the intense light of the engine's overload, Lin Jin saw several time-space versions of Ao Li dying simultaneously.

Su Yaoji's roots suddenly grew wildly, piercing into the heart of the Rusted Imperial Court. The moment she locked eyes with her mechanized Senior Brother, she read the sealed-away tenderness: before that man was completely alienated, he had used his final flesh-and-blood body to carve "Run!" onto the dimensional barrier. And this scratch was the very original coordinate that had later guided them to discover the secret of the black blood.

"Time to give the Buddha a bit of cyber-shock." Lin Jin's black blood etched a quantum entanglement spell onto the Buddha niche. When the final stroke was completed, the entire Mechanical Buddha Kingdom suddenly fell into a quantum superposition state—the monks existed simultaneously in the states of striking wooden fish and writing code, the Sanskrit on the sutra pillars oscillated between binary and Buddhist philosophy, and the ruler on the throne was collapsing between flesh and machinery.

Amidst the roar of the time closed-loop breaking, the three of them were thrown back to the current laboratory. A shaken Su Yaoji touched her collarbone, finding that the Udumbara mark had gained a bronze inlay; an etching of the "Diamond Sutra" had appeared on the inside of Ao Li's mechanical arm; and Lin Jin's black blood sample was crystallizing, with miniature Mechanical Buddhas curled up inside every unit cell.

The laboratory alarm suddenly sounded, and the surveillance screen showed a bronze-colored Mandala array appearing in Earth's synchronous orbit. The Rusted Imperial Court at the center of the array was reorganizing, and a figure wearing a broken mask was gazing at Su Yaoji's tearful eyes through the sea of stars. In the sound of the space-time bubble bursting, they heard a sigh that spanned a thousand years; the voice sounded both like the transformed Senior Brother and like another version of themselves from a different timeline. ===== CHAPTER 593 =====