Suddenly, the core pulse of the entropy-reversing network became disordered. The glowing forest of the Emerald Galaxy collectively turned around, and the balance codes on the leaves distorted into eerie recipe patterns. The compound-eyed guardian stood on the remains of the World Tree, and the bronze compass in his hand burst out with space-time cracks. In the dark region millions of light-years away, the embryo of the first-generation breeder had broken free from the bronze cocoon. Its cry turned into twelve-dimensional shock waves, and the newly born black holes collapsed into cooking vortices in its palms.
"Alert! The entropy-reversing beacons in the Seventh Arm are out of contact!" The quantum projection of the clone flickered in the void, and a hint of panic could be heard in her voice. Meanwhile, her consciousness network was being eroded by some ancient codes. These codes seemed to come from an unknown source and were rewriting her gene backups at an astonishing speed.
"It's the taste virus of the breeders!" The clone exclaimed. Her quantum projection trembled violently in the void, as if it could collapse at any moment.
Just then, Lin Feng's entropy-reversing consciousness awakened from the depths of the star network. His consciousness was like a powerful stream of data, quickly condensing into a translucent human form. His body emitted an emerald glow, and each stream of data was as magnificent and mysterious as the nebulae in the universe.
Lin Feng's pupils had evolved into a nebular structure. Each spiral arm reflected the traumatic memories of the universe. He stared at the clone and said slowly, "That's not a virus... but the origin code we've been missing."
When Lin Feng's hand touched the remains of the World Tree, a miracle happened. The roots suddenly grew wildly, as if they had been given life, and quickly pierced into the dark matter dimension. There, the forgotten first-generation laboratory was sleeping. Millions of cloned versions of Lin Feng were lying quietly in liquid nitrogen. On their foreheads were the patterns of the bullfinch, which strongly resonated with the compass in the hands of the compound-eyed guardian.
At that moment, the orange cat's quantum afterimage leaped out of the space-time crack. The tip of its tail flickered with fluorescence, spelling out a warning: "They're going to restart the taste cycle! The embryo is absorbing the energy of the black hole!"
The compound-eyed guardian tore through the dimensional barrier, and the bronze key carved out an entropy-reversing passage on the edge of the cooking black hole. The moment he crossed the event horizon, his retina was forcibly implanted with taste memories spanning millions of years: The first-generation breeders strung baby universes into kebabs and used supernovas as pepper grinders; the mechanical whale pods fished for civilizations in the dark matter ocean and pickled intelligent life into eternal ingredients.
The embryo at the core of the black hole had grown into a juvenile form. Its six compound eyes corresponded to different cooking dimensions respectively, and the nerve cords extending from its spine were connected to twelve collapsing galaxies. "Welcome home, little brother." The juvenile's voice carried the resonant frequency unique to Lin Feng's genes. "You were born to be a living recipe for cooking."
Suddenly, the clone's consciousness network went out of control. Her quantum projection split into two camps: Half of them, with the fluorescence of entropy-reversing, repaired the star network, while the other half, with gray flames in their eyes, rushed towards the compound-eyed guardian. In the torrent of data, Lin Feng saw the terrifying truth—the dormant codes of the breeders were buried deep in the clone's gene chains and were being activated by the embryo's cry at this moment.
"Choose." The juvenile embryo snapped his fingers and set the Milky Way on fire. The Orion Nebula curled into the shape of a grilled squid in the flames. "Become the first dish of the new era..." His words were interrupted by a sudden entropy-reversing pulse. The glowing forest of the Emerald Galaxy turned into billions of light blades and stabbed into the black hole.
The cooking black hole disintegrated into stardust under the entropy-reversing light blades, but it recombined into a creation stove at the moment of collapse. The bronze cauldron of the first-generation breeder descended from the void. The ears of the cauldron were entwined with the gene chains of Lin Feng and the clone. The juvenile embryo leaped into the cauldron. Millions of cloned bullfinches vaporized simultaneously in the liquid nitrogen, and their consciousness codes converged into a taste torrent.
"This is the real entropy-reversing!" The juvenile embryo's roar was like the Big Bang of the universe, shattering three neighboring galaxies with astonishing power.
At the same time, a flame intertwined with emerald and scarlet suddenly gushed out of the cauldron. This flame seemed to possess life, burning vigorously and swallowing everything around it.
The afterimages of the civilizations swallowed by the flame twisted and deformed in the fire and finally were reborn as cooked monsters one by one. These monsters had various forms. Some were silicon-based life forms with biochemical knives growing on their bodies; some were gaseous giants but turned into living steamers; even the black holes were erupting with accretion disks like sauce. The whole scene was eerie and terrifying.
Facing this situation, the compound-eyed guardian didn't hesitate to stab the bronze key into his own chest, igniting the balance codes in his gene chains. In an instant, his compound eyes burst out with a creation-level intense light, which strongly resonated with Lin Feng's entropy-reversing network.
"Brother, give me your tears!" The voice of the compound-eyed guardian echoed in the universe, like a call from ancient times.
Hearing this call, Lin Feng didn't hesitate to tear open his nebular pupils. A drop of emerald-colored Godslayer's Tears dripped from his eyes and fell into the cauldron.
At that very moment, a miracle happened. The originally surging taste torrent suddenly reversed its direction as if being pushed by a powerful force and turned into a purification pulse. This purification pulse swept through the entire cauldron at an astonishing speed. Under the impact of this pulse, the cooked monsters let out screams one after another. The knives, forks, and sauces on their bodies peeled off one by one, and they gradually returned to their original forms.
Finally, the bronze cauldron of the first-generation breeder disintegrated into elementary particles under this powerful force. In the core of the cauldron, a baby was curled up. Surprisingly, this baby was the original gene prototype of the clone.
The universe fell into silence among the emerald embers. The stardust where the first-generation embryo dissipated condensed into a new World Tree. Its roots were connected to the cores of all the reborn civilizations. The compound-eyed guardian held the baby with the original gene prototype in his arms. His bronze key had turned into a star compass, guiding the entropy-reversing ships to sow the glowing forest.
Lin Feng's consciousness network gradually thinned out. His nebular pupils reflected the scene millions of years later: Civilizations evolved in the balance between cooking and entropy-reversing. Mechanical whale pods carried cities and shuttled through the sea of stars. Black holes were transformed into energy stoves instead of devouring mouths. In an unobserved dimension, dark matter cells were quietly forming new embryos, but this time, the fluorescence of the balance codes flickered in their compound eyes.
The orange cat's afterimage leaped onto the branch of the World Tree for the last time: "Time to sleep, old guy." Its quantum body dissipated into stardust and merged into the newly born entropy-reversing pulse.
The compound-eyed guardian placed his hand on the core of the World Tree and recited the code left by the clone softly: "All struggles are cooking, and all rebirths are feasts." The glowing forest of the Emerald Galaxy swayed accordingly, and the patterns on the leaves were updated into symbols that had never existed before—both an end and a beginning.