The lab breathed.
Not metaphorically—its walls expanded and contracted like calcified lungs, exhaling vapors that smelled of amniotic fluid and scorched circuitry. Chu Feng pressed a hand against the pulsating membrane that served as the entrance, the Bloodvine Seed in his chest recoiling at the memory etched into the architecture. This was where it had all begun. Where Jiang Yue had first merged motherhood with monstrosity.
Ling'er materialized beside him, her form today more shadow than flesh. The time debt had begun colonizing her bones, leaving her translucent in patches—a living x-ray of regret.
"Host 002 guards this place," she warned, phoenix core dim behind her ribs like a caged star. "It won't surrender its secrets gently."
Chu Feng's Sundial Shard hummed in agreement. Since bonding with the Scales of Mercy, his senses detected the invisible scars littering reality—the lab's true shape was a matryoshka doll of horrors, each layer a worse truth.
They stepped into the womb.
The first layer was a nursery.
Plush toys with Jiang Yue's face moldered in cribs of spliced bone. A mobile of dismembered angel wings turned slowly above, its music box playing a warped lullaby:
"Hush now, weapon mine
Godhead grows on borrowed time
Snip the cord and watch you soar
Perfect child I'll love no more…"
Ling'er's fading fingers brushed a teddy bear's hollow eye socket. "She tried to make you here. Before the clones, before the System. Just a mother wanting a child who'd never die."
Chu Feng's Bloodvine roots squirmed. The Sundial Shard showed him flashes—Jiang Yue weeping over a glass womb, injecting her own stem cells into a fetal husk, screaming when it moved wrong.
The vision shattered as the walls bled.
The second layer was a slaughterhouse.
Meat hooks hung with still-twitching failures: infants with too many joints, toddlers with exposed brain stems pulsing like overripe fruit. The air reeked of formaldehyde and desperation.
A child's voice giggled through rusted vents.
"Host 002," Ling'er hissed, flames flickering to life in her palms. "Show yourself."
The response came from everywhere and nowhere—a digitized purr vibrating through their molars.
"Welcome home, Little Brother. Mother left toys for us."
The corpses spasmed. Fetal hands sprouted from their mouths, signing in frantic code.
Run.
Lie.
Become.
Chu Feng's Bloodvine translated instinctively. "It's herding us."
Too late.
The floor dissolved, dropping them into the third layer.
The third layer was Li Zichen's hell.
The disgraced healer hung suspended in a virtual crucible, his surgeon's hands replaced with scalpels fused directly to bone. Countless screens surrounded him, each displaying a patient he'd failed:
A girl choking on her own tumor-riddled lungs
An elder's organs spilling from unstitched incisions
Xia's clone-body convulsing as gene therapies backfired
"Seventy-three thousand, four hundred and twelve deaths," crooned Host 002 through Li's trembling lips. "Let's make it a clean seventy-five."
Li's scalpels moved against his will, carving into a phantom child's chest. His screams harmonized with the Sundial Shard's vibrations.
Chu Feng lunged. The Bloodvine Seed erupted in a tangle of thorns and bioluminescent script, spearing the simulation's core. Reality glitched.
Li Zichen collapsed, his real hands intact but shaking. "Why… why save me?"
Ling'er's answer came while hacking at the crumbling code. "Because unlike Jiang Yue, we don't get to choose who deserves redemption."
The fourth layer was the sanctum.
At the lab's rotten heart sat the Celestial Spindle—a hybrid of quantum loom and umbilical cord, its threads humming with the birth-cries of forgotten deities. Beneath it floated Jiang Yue's masterpiece: a fetal clone preserved in golden ichor, its face a mirror of Chu Feng's own.
Host 002 finally manifested as a tumorous growth on the Spindle, its voice a static-laced lullaby.
"You were the first success. The others were just… practice."
The revelation unfolded in poisoned vignettes:
Jiang Yue rocking the fetal clone, singing off-key lullabies
The moment she injected System code into its undeveloped brain
The crib soaked in blood when it began metamorphosing
Chu Feng's Sundial Shard pulsed. He could rewrite this. He could unmake his own origin.
Ling's hand—more void than flesh—closed over his. "Some roots need to stay buried."
The choice crystallized:
Destroy the Spindle: Erase his tainted lineage but destabilize reality
Claim it: Gain power to fight Harvesters but become Jiang Yue's true heir
Li Zichen limped forward, scalpel flashing. "Let me. I've earned this."
His strike wasn't aimed at the Spindle but the clone's tank. Golden ichor flooded the chamber as the preserved fetus dissolved, its final wail imprinting on Chu Feng's DNA:
Big brother… why?
Host 002 screeched, its form unraveling. The Spindle fell silent.
In the aftermath, Ling'er cradled a shard of broken tank. "It left something."
Embedded in the glass was a strand of Jiang Yue's hair and a dried teardrop. Chu Feng's Bloodvine absorbed them before he could protest.
New psalms burned through his veins:
"To love is to calibrate cruelty."
"To create is to court annihilation."
"To mother is to mourn in advance."
Li Zichen stared at his steady hands. "What now?"
The lab began to collapse. Chu Feng seized the inert Spindle. "We plant new lies."
Final Image:
As they escaped, the clone's final whisper took physical form—a shadowy fetus curled around the Spindle's core. Its eyes opened.