Chapter 596: The Topological Protection of the Pavilion Master

The moment Ao Li's mechanical arm pierced the core of the phase mirror image, the entire virtual number space suddenly solidified into amber. Her quantum pupils exploded into a hexagonal honeycomb, and a torrent of data gushed from the cracks, projecting a suffocating truth onto Lin Jin's retinas—in those memory fragments flowing with bronze-colored machine oil, an Ao Li wearing a crown of starlight was sitting on a throne woven from black holes, with billions of mechanical monks kneeling at her feet.

"Topological lock triggered!" Su Yaoji's Udumbara roots had just touched the data stream when they were scorched. She looked at Ao Li's mechanical body, which was mutating into the royal robes of the Star Sea Pavilion Master; the sound of meshing gears turned into morning bells and evening drums. "These memories are encapsulated in a Calabi-Yau manifold; forcibly cracking them will cause cognitive collapse!"

Lin Jin's black blood blade cleaved through the data vortex, grabbing a key frame in the four-dimensional folds: at the moment of a supernova explosion, Star Sea Pavilion Master Ao Li had sealed ninety-nine civilization fire seeds within phase mirror images. Each mirror image was embedded with an Udumbara flower totem, and a suddenly materializing Su Yaoji clutched her chest—a brand of the First Generation key had emerged over her heart.

"So I am the final phase mirror image..." Su Yaoji's roots pierced into the void, dragging out a holographic projection that was playing: the Star Sea Pavilion Master was holding her in her infant form, implanting an Udumbara seedling into her heart. The galaxy burning in the background was the Andromeda Galaxy that had been devoured by black blood three months ago.

Ao Li's mechanical voice suddenly carried the reverberation of bronze bells: "Civilization restart protocol detected, verifying executor identity." Her quantum core erupted with intense light, burning the Star Sea Pavilion emblem onto Lin Jin's face. The holographic screen suddenly displayed ninety-nine countdowns, each corresponding to the activation program of a phase mirror image.

"She has activated the civilization formatting protocol while in an unconscious state!" Lin Jin's black blood etched a Möbius code onto the console. "Must find the singularity of the memory topological lock!" He suddenly thrust his hand into Ao Li's crystallizing chest cavity, grabbing the bronze chip engraved with the "Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River."

The data torrent swept the three of them into the midnight of the Star Sea Pavilion's peak. They witnessed Pavilion Master Ao Li carving phase mirror images in the virtual number space, each image freezing the core code of a dying civilization. When she carved the seventy-seventh mirror image, the Pavilion Master suddenly drove a dagger into her chest, and the mechanical heart she dug out was perfectly in sync with Su Yaoji's current Udumbara core.

"So you stole my..." The Ao Li in reality suddenly grabbed Su Yaoji by the throat, the memories of the Star Sea Pavilion Master overwriting her cognition. Lin Jin's black blood blade severed the data tentacles, seeing an even crueler truth in the space-time rift: to prevent the civilization fire seeds from going berserk, the Star Sea Pavilion Master had split her personality into Ao Li and Su Yaoji, while Lin Jin's black blood was the chain used to seal them.

Su Yaoji's roots suddenly went berserk, piercing into the ninety-nine phase mirror images. Every mirror image emitted the cries of infants, and Udumbara flowers bloomed amidst the frozen wreckage of civilizations. When the 99th flower bloomed, the laboratory where the three of them were located suddenly ascended into the Star Sea Temple, with the Ao Li entity—a fusion of machinery and flesh—sitting on the throne, and countless clones of Lin Jin and Su Yaoji kneeling at her feet.

"Welcome home, my two humanoid terminals." The Star Sea Pavilion Master's pupils flowed with the star charts of the entire universe. "It is time to continue the civilization screening that was interrupted seventy thousand years ago." She tapped her scepter, and Lin Jin's black blood suddenly flowed back into his heart, while Su Yaoji's Udumbara flower began to grow in reverse.

Ao Li's remaining humanity module suddenly initiated a self-destruct protocol; her mechanical arm exploded into bronze fragments, spelling out a topological paradox formula on the floor of the temple. Lin Jin seized the opportunity to inject black blood into the center of the formula, and the entire temple suddenly descended into the structure of a Klein bottle. At the convergence point of space-time, Su Yaoji's Udumbara flower pierced through the Star Sea Pavilion Master's throne, exposing the initial key hidden within—it was actually the first drop of black blood Lin Jin had manufactured in the laboratory.

When the civilization fire seed system was forcibly shut down, the three of them fell back into reality. Ao Li's mechanical shell was covered in bronze rust, Su Yaoji's Udumbara flower had only three petals left, and Lin Jin's black blood contained the dust of the Star Sea Temple. They gazed at each other in silence until a strange yet familiar fluctuation came from outside the porthole—the 100th phase mirror image was awakening at the edge of the galaxy, its spectrum in quantum entanglement with Lin Jin's black blood.

"Cognitive contamination clearance rate 88%, but..." Ao Li wiped the bronze-colored blood seeping from her mechanical lips, "we all have fragments of the Star Sea Pavilion Master's consciousness sleeping within us." She pulled up the surveillance records that had just been restored; the footage showed that 0.03 seconds before the laboratory's annihilation, three versions of themselves in a superposition state were smiling on the observation platform—that smile was identical to the expression the Star Sea Pavilion Master wore when she destroyed civilizations. ===== CHAPTER 597 =====