Chapter 52: Memory Labyrinth

A muffled whir of gears came from the dome, and twenty‑seven laser beams interwove into a cage. The phantom of the purple‑robed man raised his hand and pressed a switch, and Zhang Jun felt the jade pendant in his tactical pack begin to resonate.

"The game should end now." a synthetic mechanical voice mixed with electrical hiss, "or…"

"Fuck! This is a real‑life Resident Evil?" Zhang Jun's tactical boots crushed half a mechanical arm, and oil mixed with purple slime dripped from the blade of the Heavenly Sword. As the blade sliced the chest cavity of the seventh cyborg, the Lin Group logo on the metal shell flashed especially bright amid the sparks.

Lin Xue's back slammed into the lab's bullet‑proof glass, and the ice spear scraped the cyborg's electronic eye as it lodged into a ventilation duct. She suddenly ripped off the opponent's tactical mask, revealing a familiar barcode on her neck—the identification numbers of the test subjects stolen from her father's lab on her birthday last year.

The alarm shifted abruptly to a sharp buzz. A hologram lit up amid the smoke, and surveillance footage from twenty years ago flickered like snow. At the moment the purple‑robed man turned, the ice spear in Lin Xue's hand "crackled" and shattered, ice shards cutting her palm.

"Dad?" a bead of blood ran down the cuff of his combat suit and dripped onto the encrypted diary's cover, where the three gilt characters "Lin Yuehua" were stained dark red. The lab's ceiling light suddenly burst, and in the flashing crimson, Zhang Jun saw the ice‑crystal pattern on her neck beginning to fissure.

The cyborg's mechanical prosthetic brushed Zhang Jun's ear and slammed into the console, shards of exploded crystal chips cutting his cheekbone. He thrust the Heavenly Sword into the opponent's power core, then turned and shouted at Lin Xue, "The password is your birthday in reverse! Last month your mother's safe—"

The blast wave tipped three cultivation chambers, and purple culture fluid gathered on the floor like a stream. Lin Xue's trembling fingertip pressed "0503", and the diary's inner page suddenly projected a hologram. Twenty‑seven surveillance feeds simultaneously showed Lin Zhen from different angles—handing a jade pair to the purple‑robed man.

"Retreat route C!" Zhang Jun hauled Lin Xue as they rolled into a ventilation duct, and a rumble of the load‑bearing wall collapsing echoed behind them. He felt the vibrating jade pendant in his pocket; blue light reflected fresh blood handprints on the duct's inner wall—identical to those found three days earlier in Xiao Lin's office.

Lin Xue suddenly twisted his jaw, and ice crystals between them formed a prism. In the refracted glint, the spade tattoo on the purple‑robed man's cuff was bleeding—exactly where Lin Zhen was scarred after a venomous snake bite during his Yunnan survey.

"The old guy's feigned‑death tech is more impressive than a plastic‑surgery clinic." Zhang Jun kicked open the deformed grate, and his tactical flashlight swept the lab's ruins. In one cultivation chamber, a half‑face floated, melting away to reveal the cold glow of mechanical bones beneath.

Lin Xue suddenly slapped the diary onto his chest, freezing the hologram on the final page. On the yellowed paper, Lin Yuehua's handwriting was so scrawled it seemed to leap off the page: "The seventh gene edit failed; Old Zhang was right, we shouldn't have touched that jade pendant…"

"Your mother's handwriting," Zhang Jun lifted the charred experiment log with his sword tip, "differs from the bookmark name in the share‑transfer document of Xiao Lin's office by three millimetres of pen stroke."

The alarm suddenly shifted to a bizarre birthday song. Lin Xue ripped open a pocket in her combat suit, and the pocket watch she pulled out was counting down—forty‑seven minutes left until her twentieth birthday. The Lin family crest engraved on its surface cracked open, revealing a tiny signal emitter's blue glow.

"The password is double‑mirror encryption." She suddenly smashed the pocket watch toward the surveillance probe, and frost ran along the data cable, freezing the entire control system. "My dad taught me, the real secret is never in the safe—"

Zhang Jun's blade sliced through the last airtight door, and moonlight mixed with smoke surged in. He glanced back at the self‑destructing lab and suddenly grinned, "Bet five‑cents, your dad is now holding a glass of red wine while watching the feeds."

"What the hell does this broken password even mean?" Zhang Jun hurled the diary onto the console, and the metal surface buzzed. A crystal chip at the back of his neck suddenly heated up, and his tactical glove typed a string of gibberish on the keyboard.

Lin Xue stared at the countdown blinking in the screen's lower‑right corner, her nails absent‑mindedly picking at the frost pattern on her tactical belt. The hologram cast mottled light between them, and she suddenly seized Zhang Jun's wrist, her fingertip sliding over the oil stain on his combat‑suit cuff: "My mother's perfume bottle lock—turn clockwise three and a half turns."

The electronic lock clicked like an old wind‑up toy. Between the yellowed pages fell a half‑sheet of orange‑flavored candy paper, identical to the pile scattered by the checkout counter at the convenience store yesterday.

"June 15, 2003, Zhen's body temperature dropped another 0.7 °C…" Lin Xue's voice suddenly caught in her throat. The hologram automatically played an encrypted video, showing two bodies floating in a cultivation chamber from twenty years ago—her and Zhang Jun's clones blinking in sync.

Zhang Jun's tactical dagger suddenly slipped into a gap in the console, and a hidden compartment popped open, spilling a tiny capsule. The capsule's shell bore the Lin Group anti‑counterfeit code, the same batch number as the energy drink he bought from a vending machine this morning.

"Damn!" he crushed the capsule, and the purple powder in his palm formed the shape of the Big Dipper, "This is the old man's coordinate encryption!"

Cold air suddenly surged through the lab's vent, dispersing the hologram. Lin Xue's tactical boots trampled candy paper strewn on the floor, and ice crystals crawled up the wall along her pant legs. An observation window of a cultivation chamber suddenly burst, and viscous culture fluid pooled on the ground like a stream.

"Seventh‑generation test subject survival rate: 0.03 %." the synthetic mechanical voice mixed with electrical hiss, "Thank you both for providing the latest genetic samples."

Zhang Jun spun and flung the Heavenly Sword, its blade splitting a surveillance probe and dropping a half‑sheet of photo. The yellowed photo's edges curled with scorch marks, the birthmark on the infant's neck matching exactly the one below his collarbone.

"Your old man knows how to play." he tore open his collar, revealing a dark‑red mark, "This round of parent‑child verification is hardcore."

Lin Xue suddenly dragged him toward the blast‑proof door, and behind them twenty‑eight cultivation chambers exploded simultaneously. Purple slime splattered the bullet‑proof glass, corroding honeycomb‑shaped holes. She kicked open the deformed latch, and her tactical flashlight swept the far end of the corridor— the neon sign of Cian Mental Hospital flickered in the rain.

"Bet five‑cents." Zhang Jun swapped liquid‑nitrogen rounds into his assault rifle, "The old guy is now sipping goji tea while watching the feeds."

Lin Xue suddenly drove the ice spear into the wall crack by his ear, freezing a twitching mechanical tentacle: "If you lose, you'll wash my stinky socks for a month."

"Deal! But first, let's be clear, those things of yours with ice shards—"

The alarm shredded the rest of the sentence.

"This dump doesn't even have a ghostly figure?" Zhang Jun's tactical boots crushed a half‑broken twig, the echo bouncing three or four heavy beats down the corridor. He fished out a crumpled candy paper from his pocket, the orange fragrance mingling with a musty smell as it hit his nose.