The murky sewage carried the stench of blood and decay, sweeping the three into an abandoned canal branch. Orion lay in the mud, his fingers clutching the peeling bio-skin of the crystal coffin—that face, which belonged to him yet lacked any sign of life, glowed coldly under the Blood Moon. The tattered pages of the Finance Minister's ledger were pinned to his chest, the words "Living Container—Code Name 'Nightingale'" smudged by bloodstains.
"The Tomb of Slumber..." Finn wrung out the污水 from his goggles and pointed toward the northern horizon—the幽蓝微光 of moonlight moss pulsed between the mountains, forming a eerie standoff with the black fungal clouds swirling above the royal capital. "The place where the elves buried the dead in ancient texts, Malcolm transformed into a living laboratory!"
Lysandra tore off a piece of her robe to bandage Orion's wound between his ribs. Beneath the bandage, his skin was oozing fine crystals, and spider-web-like threads of crystal clung to the edges of his ice-blue pupils. "Lilian is still alive..." he coughed out crystal shards, repeating mechanically, "I am a fake... but she is the real blood..."
"True blood or fake blood, the blood that can tear Malcolm apart is good blood!" Finn strapped Elara's severed arm to a homemade glider frame. "Take to the air! The ground is swarming with 'blooming' ones!"
The "blooming" he referred to was unfolding along the riverbank—a fleeing noble stumbled and fell, and fungal threads instantly burst through his fine garments! Flesh and blood bloomed like petals, and black spores erupted from his body into the night sky. Further away, the walls of the royal capital were covered in pulsating fungal carpets, and massive fungal tumours swelled like hearts atop the walls.
As the glider soared over the rotting vineyard, the scene below made Lesandra's stomach churn: vines缠绕着半人半葡萄的畸形躯体, those who had once been serfs, their heads now hanging like fruits, gently colliding with the night breeze.
"Biological grafting experiments..." Finn's voice trembled, "Malcolm turned the entire valley into a petri dish!"
The entrance to the Tomb of Slumber emerged under the glow of moonlight moss—not an ancient tomb, but an archway formed by giant fossilised ribs. The surface of the bones was covered with writhing fungal membranes, and at the entrance stood two twisted statues: on the left, a crystallised Orion clone; on the right, a Leander replica with a festering brand.
"Welcome home, counterfeits," the statues echoed Malcolm's electronic voice. The rib arch slowly opened, revealing the blood-soaked passageway within. The walls of the passageway were embedded with countless crystal cocoons, each containing a fusion of elves and humans: a silver-haired, pointed-eared girl with gears embedded in her abdomen, and a disarmed veteran with wooden branches growing from his shoulders.
Orion suddenly knelt down, plunging his crystallised right hand into the fungal carpet! Mycelium climbed up his arm, and the crystalline network beneath his skin glowed faintly. "He's... extracting my memories..." The noble's face flickered between Orion and the clone. "Lilian is... in the core laboratory..."
***
At the end of the corridor was a massive spherical chamber. The dome hung with luminous tendrils resembling neural bundles, and at the centre of the floor stood a cylindrical cultivation chamber formed by coiled vertebrae. Within the chamber floated a blonde-haired girl—Lillian Blackwood. Her eyes were tightly closed, and dozens of tubes extended from her bare back, connected to the pulsating purple-red flesh mass below. Even more terrifying was her chest: her skin had been grafted with a palm-sized brand, a charred lion's head pattern flickering in sync with the pulsating flesh mass!
"A living keyhole..." Finn gasped, "Malcolm is using her as an altar for his immortality ritual!"
Orion's crystalline right arm exploded with a thunderous roar! Shards of crystal flew like bullets toward the cultivation chamber, but were halted mid-air by an invisible force field. Malcolm's ethereal form appeared above the chamber, his lone crystalline eye rotating: "Bloodline resonance? How touching. But the genuine article..." The ethereal form pointed at the brand on Lilian's chest, "is locked with the counterfeit."
The mark on Lysandra's face suddenly glowed brightly. She walked towards the cultivation chamber uncontrollably, pressing her right hand against Lillian's mark! The moment the two marks touched, the vines on the dome lit up, and Lillian suddenly opened her eyes—her ice-blue pupils spreading into pitch black!
"Brother..." Lilian's voice overlapped with Malcolm's electronic voice, "Become a part of me..."
Orion's left eye instantly crystallised! He drew Lasandra's spare dagger with his left hand and stabbed it fiercely into his own left shoulder: "Cut off... the resonance!" Blood mixed with crystal shards sprayed out, and Lilian let out a piercing scream!
Finn seized the opportunity to hurl Elara's severed arm toward the cultivation chamber's base. As the elf's limb plunged into the flesh tumour, emerald green fluorescence erupted! Struggle surged in Lillian's pitch-black pupils, and her left hand suddenly twitched, striking the chamber wall's control panel!
"No!" Malcolm's distorted apparition screamed.
The cryogenic chamber's liquid nitrogen pressure relief valve roared open! Sub-zero white mist engulfed the chamber, and Lilian curled up within the ice crystals. Lysandra smashed open the chamber door, severed the tubing, and dragged the girl out. Orion caught his sister with his uncrystallised left hand, their ice-blue and pitch-black pupils locking in the pool of blood.
"Lillian..."
"...Hurry..." The girl vomited black fungal fluid, "He's going to use me... to activate the geonuclear engine..."
The entire laboratory trembles. The base of the cultivation chamber cracks open, revealing an abyss of unimaginable depth. Purple-red light surges forth from the depths. Finn's detector screams, "Below... energy readings are off the charts!"
Malcolm's apparition凝聚s in the collapsing dome, "Too late! Final stage of the purification protocol—" The blood moon countdown suddenly hits zero!
A deafening explosion echoed from the direction of the capital city. A black fungal column a kilometre in diameter shot into the sky, its mycelium spreading through the clouds, casting darkness over the stars and moon in its path. Billions of blood-red eyes opened on the surface of the fungal column, chanting in unison:
**Purification begins**
***
As the Blood Moon was swallowed by the fungal threads, the capital city turned into a hellish landscape.
Countless tentacles extended from the base of the giant fungal column, piercing buildings and human bodies. The clock tower was wrapped in a pulsating cocoon, and the fleeing crowd on the streets fell like straw, with black fungal strains emerging from beneath their skin. Only the Rustwater Alley area glowed with a faint green light—Finn's modified internal combustion engine roared behind the barricades, and the vines sprouted from Elara's severed arm formed a barrier, struggling to resist the fungal filament's erosion.
"Hold on!" The one-armed blacksmith blocked the gap in the vines with his body. As the fungal filaments pierced his chest, the veteran ignited the nitroglycerin at his waist!
The explosion's flash briefly illuminated the battlefield. Finn, in the makeshift command post, pressed the neural sensor helmet against his temple. Before him lay Gideon's legacy—the legion's communication device, its microphone forcibly connected to the vine network.
"All Branded Soldiers!" the youth roared, "Press your brands... onto the vines!"
The crowd fell silent for an instant. The washerwoman was the first to tear open her shirt and press her festering mark onto the vine. Blacksmiths, beggars, orphans... hundreds of marks simultaneously touched the vine network! The excruciating pain made everyone scream, but the vine suddenly burst into emerald light, with blood-red light flowing through its veins!
"Pain resonance..." Finn flashes back to Gideon blowing up the mountain path, "Now... counterattack!"
The vines grow like giant serpents, wrapping around the nearest fungal tentacles and crushing them! Black blood spurted from the severed tentacles, but more tentacles descended from the sky. The command centre's roof was torn apart, and the tentacles lunged towards Finn's head—
The children of Rustwater Alley pounced on Finn! The mycelium pierced the children's frail spines, and blood spattered onto the neural sensor helmets. Finn's screams resonated with the wails of the vine network, causing all connected individuals to bleed from their ears and noses!
"Finn!" Lasandra's voice suddenly cut into the communication channel, "Turn the capital... into a lightning rod!"
***
At the summit of the Sleeping Tomb, Lysandra strapped Lilian to a glider. Orion slit his left wrist with a dagger, letting his blood drip into his sister's pitch-black pupils: "Lilian! The capital needs your eyes!"
Lilian's body convulsed violently, the mark on her chest flickering on and off. She suddenly raised her hand and plunged it into her right eye, tearing out the bloodied, mangled orb! Orion's blood dripped onto the eyeball, which swiftly crystallised into a blue tearstone. The girl pressed the gem into Orion's empty left eye socket: "Use... royal blood... to pierce the darkness..."
The blue tear stone spun in Orion's eye socket, piercing through the fungal clouds and locking onto the underground of the royal capital—Malcolm's mechanical body was fusing with the fungal pillar's core, and the purple light of the geothermal engine had already illuminated nine-tenths of it!
"Finn!" Lysandra roared into the communicator, "Let the vines touch the clouds!"
In Rustwater Alley, Finn tore off his burning helmet. He climbed to the top of the vine tower and thrust Ella's charred severed arm into the main vine! As the elf's blood surged into the network, the vine's tip broke through the fungal cloud, and emerald light tore open a fissure in the darkness.
"Now!" Orion's single eye locked onto the crack in the clouds. He tore the branding patch from Lysandra's face and pressed it into his crystallised right arm. Amid the acrid stench of burning flesh, the branding patch melted into liquid metal, enveloping the blue tearstone eyeball as it shot forth!
The metallic tear pierced the clouds. Moonlight pierced the darkness like a spotlight, precisely enveloping the fusion of Malcolm and the fungal column! Superconducting moonlight collided with the energy of the geothermal engine within the mechanical torso, causing Malcolm to emit an inhuman scream!
"You... cannot destroy... immortality!" The mechanical torso disintegrated in the moonlight, but the purple light at the core of the fungal column had reached its peak. The geothermal engine activates!
The earth trembles like a drumhead. The ground of the capital city cracks open into an abyss, and a massive gear-shaped heart rises from the lava lake. In the instant the heart beats for the first time—
Lillian leaps off the cliff.
The blonde girl, like a bird with broken wings, plummets toward the lava lake, her chest branded by the intense heat, melting into crimson gold. "The blood of Blackwood..." Her final smile was drowned out by the roar, "...to end the curse..."
True blood splashed onto the gear-shaped heart. The furnace-like red light suddenly turned green, and what was pumped out was no longer magma, but jade-coloured light streams! The light flow surged back through the fungal network, transforming the mycelium into luminous white flowers wherever it passed. The blood-red eyes in the night sky closed one after another, and billions of white flowers bloomed on the ruins.
Orion's single eye shed crystalline tears. He caught the glider rope thrown by Lysandra and cast one last glance at the furnace where his sister had vanished.
"It's time to go," Lasandra said, her newly scarred face glowing crimson in the moonlight. "Let's tear apart what's left of Malcolm."
The glider soared into the dawn's light. Below, among the ruins, the mycelium network covered in white flowers glowed like nerves, faintly forming the sleeping profile of Lilian.