Chapter 90: Centipede Devouring Memories

The quantum ripples in the abyss refracted a distorted starry sky between the segments of the mechanical centipede. Ao Li's dragon scales emitted high-frequency tremors, those bronze-colored rust spots spreading along her spine into circuit-board-like patterns. Lin Jin heard the sound of gears meshing from his right arm, and the syrup dripping from his fingertips congealed into bronze chains in the void—they entangled the eyes of the dragon-horned babies on the surface of the culture tank, weaving into a glowing net amidst the crying sounds.

"Don't touch those sound wave crystals!" Ao Li suddenly yanked the back of Lin Jin's collar, sparks bursting from the gear patterns in her left eye. The barbs on the seventh limb of the mechanical centipede grazed my ear, tearing a scarlet rift in the space where we had just been standing. I smelled the scent of burning protein pouring out from the rift; it was the pungent sweetness emitted by tens of thousands of cerebral cortices soaking in nutrient fluid.

When the nano-frost mist sprayed by the centipede's mouthparts enveloped them, memory fragments suddenly flashed in Lin Jin's retina: twelve-year-old Ao Li standing in the center of a circular gene editor, her mechanical right hand inserting a chip into the culture tank console. The Taotie pattern on the white-coated man's chest glowed with blood streaks in the blue light of the low-temperature tank; that was Ao Zhan—Lin Jin's biological father—who should have died in Star Calendar 978. The dark red birthmark on the back of the embryo floating in the test tube in his hand perfectly matched the mark below my collarbone.

"The memory anchor has been tampered with..." Lin Jin swung his semi-mechanical right arm at the centipede's compound eye, the splashing mucus congealing into the characters of the "Primordial God-Slaying Scripture" in the air. Those tadpole-like ancient seal scripts wrapped around my wrists, branding a certain erased truth into my nerve endings: every full moon night, the blocker injected into my jugular vein was accompanied by the trembling temperature of Ling Yue's fingertips.

The dragon-horned babies in the culture tank suddenly let out a collective shriek, and boiling syrup carrying black threads like Lin Jin's fetal hair wrapped around my ankles. A roar of gears meshing came from the bottom of the abyss, and the starship AI's synthesized voice echoed with electronic noise: "Variable X-90 awakening detected, initiate Purification Protocol No. 23."

The instant Ao Li's dragon horns pierced her own chest, Lin Jin heard the sound of metal scraping against bone. What she sprayed out was not blood, but syrup flashing with stardust. Those sticky liquids formed a cocoon-like shield around Lin Jin, and the mechanical centipede's segments erupted with bronze sparks when they hit the shield. Lin Jin held her falling body, discovering that the gear patterns in her left eye were rotating in reverse—those were the date numbers Ling Yue had carved on the umbilical blood bottle back then.

"Look at the third joint!" Ao Li coughed up blood containing gears, her vocal cords emitting an electronic, synthesized tremor. A chip ejected from the third segment of the mechanical centipede, and the instant Lin Jin grabbed it with his bare hands, the holographic projection automatically activated: the Lin Jin on the baby bed had seven silver needles inserted into the back of his neck, and below the "Role Cognitive Blocker" label on the drug tag, Ling Yue's tear stains blurred the production batch number.

The four walls of the abyss suddenly bulged with flesh tissue, and the peeling bronze rust reorganized into sugar-crystal skeletons in the quantum field. They rotated DNA double-helix models in their hollow eye sockets, and their mandibles made Ao Zhan's voice when they opened and closed: "Lin Jin, do you really think you are the heir of Heavenly Workshop?" A skeleton's finger bone suddenly pierced Lin Jin's temple, and the seal at the lowest level of his memory palace began to crack.

Ao Li's fully mechanized right hand tore away the scripture fragments wrapped around my heart; those yellowed paper scraps burned into star charts within the syrup. The gear patterns in her left eye projected a holographic image: on the spinal control line at the nape of the Heavenly Workshop Master's neck, twelve cloned brains were vibrating in synchronization within the nutrient fluid. Each cerebral cortex was branded with a Taotie pattern, creating quantum entanglement with the star patterns on the mechanical centipede's limbs.

"The navigation coordinates are a scam..." Ao Li's vocal cords suddenly emitted Ling Yue's timbre, and half of her mechanical body began to disintegrate, "The blood-colored star map points to the maternal culture tank..."

The counter-controlled mechanical centipede wreckage suddenly pounced on the Heavenly Workshop Master, and the instant the spinal tether broke, Lin Jin saw the brand on the back of his neck—the ink of those birth characters was clearly drawn with umbilical cord blood mixed with nanomachines. Memory bubbles floated in the boiling syrup: Ling Yue kneeling before the quantum altar, weaving the fetal hair of a certain baby into the spine of the "Primordial God-Slaying Scripture", while her bulging abdomen flashed with mechanical patterns.

"Cognitive reconstruction initiated." In the starship AI's prompt, the bronze patterns on Lin Jin's right arm suddenly pierced into his chest. The sound of his heartbeat turned into the rhythm of ancient bells, and the memories sealed by the blocker surged like a tide: at three years old, Lin Jin saw Ao Zhan put the crying embryo into a shredder, at five years old, Ling Yue drew a star map on Lin Jin's skin with syrup, and at seven years old, the clone brain array connected behind the Master's spinal tether...

The wave of sugar-crystal skeletons pushed Lin Jin to the edge of the abyss, and Ao Li's fully dragonified body began to quantum-disperse. When she pressed her last dragon scale into my heart, Lin Jin tasted the flavor of the blocker—it was the scent of the colostrum Ling Yue secreted during lactation. The wreckage of the mechanical centipede reorganized into Ao Zhan's face in the pool of blood, his tongue ejecting a spine-shaped data cable: "Do you think escaping the culture tank is freedom? We are all cleaners of the laboratory."

The instant the quantum storm tore open a spatial rift, I saw twelve versions of myself of different ages standing in a circular laboratory. The blocker injection ports on the back of their necks seeped syrup, and they were operating the gene editor console in sync. The youngest one suddenly turned his head, star patterns rotating in his pupils that were identical to those on the mechanical centipede.

Ao Li's last dragon horn pierced the void, and we fell into the observation window of a certain culture tank during the fall. Floating in the light blue nutrient solution were tens of thousands of babies growing dragon horns and mechanical patterns. Their umbilical cords were connected to the cracks in the bronze compass, and embedded in the center of every compass was one of Ling Yue's frozen eyeballs.

"Cognitive blocker version 2.4 failure countdown." The starship AI's voice suddenly became as gentle as a mother tongue, and my mechanical right arm reached toward the nearest baby uncontrollably. The instant my fingertips touched the culture tank glass, those dragon-horned babies suddenly spoke in unison—emitting the crying frequency from my childhood recordings.

The abyss collapsed into a singularity at this moment, and the memory fragments reorganized in the quantum field. I finally understood that the missing corner of the blood-colored star map was the coordinate of the clone gestating in Ling Yue's womb. The mechanical centipede's wails turned into the heartbeat monitoring sound of a delivery room, and Ao Li's last whisper before she completely dissipated was mixed with electronic noise and baby babble:

"Remember, syrup is a substitute for maternal amniotic fluid..." ===== CHAPTER 91 =====