Lin Feng knelt on the seashore, the pupil of the bronze cauldron in his left eye reflecting the rising and falling tides. Whenever the waves touched his quantized fingertips, scattered fragments of memory would explode on his retina — those were the civilizations swallowed by the Eye of the Abyss, their final lament at the end of time and space.
The new form of Orangey loomed faintly in the morning light. Its body woven by fluorescent mycelium had a mother-of-pearl luster, and the twelve-dimensional flame at the tip of its tail burned the morning mist into a crystalline state. When it licked the dark matter floating in the seawater, the water suddenly boiled, and images of reversed time emerged: In the laboratory of a pharmaceutical company three years ago, the young Lin Jianguo was inserting a bronze key into an embryo incubation chamber.
"This isn't a memory..." The bronze pupil of Lin Feng suddenly trembled at a high frequency. "It's the smoke of time!"
Spiral columns of smoke rose at the junction of the sea and the sky. Among the smoke composed of ashes and stardust, self-cooking parallel universes emerged. A certain steampunk world in the smoke repeated the process of being cooked: Gear cities were transformed into meat grinders, airships turned into steamers, and even time was cut into equal divisions like the markings on a cooking utensil indicating the degree of heat.
The mycelium hair of Orangey suddenly grew wildly and wrapped around Lin Feng as they quickly retreated. The reef where they had just been melted in the smoke and turned into floating bronze clocks — the numbers on the dials were the years of extinction of various civilizations, and the hands were two crossed molecular cooking knives.
"The smoke of time is the time-cooking tool of the Eye of the Abyss." The flame at the tip of Orangey's tail carved warning words in the void. "It's using history as ingredients and preparing to cook the entire timeline."
During their escape, Lin Feng found that his quantized body was seeping amber-colored liquid. Wherever these "blood" droplets fell, strange taste distortions would occur in time and space: The medieval battlefield was filled with the smell of caramel, and the future city was permeated with a fishy smell. Even more terrifying was that the creatures touched by him would have the urge to cook — sea turtles tried to roast seaweed with their flippers, and albatrosses carved cloud-like steaks with their beaks.
"This is the pollution of the smoke of time." Orangey tore open Lin Feng's quantized skin, revealing the wriggling bronze gears inside. "Your body is turning into a living seasoning jar."
Amid the clicking sound of the gears meshing, Lin Feng saw the terrifying truth: Each of his cells stored the taste memories of specific time and space. His kidneys had the cinnamon flavor of the magical universe, his liver was filled with the smell of machine oil from the mechanical civilization, and what was beating in his heart was the desperate salty and fishy smell when the Earth was being cooked.
When they hid in a sea cave, the rock wall suddenly seeped out memory soup. Lin Feng saw the scene of his seventh birthday replayed in the soup — the candles on the cake were miniature supernovas, and the gift box handed over by his father contained the first-generation embryo of a bullfinch. When he instinctively reached out to touch it, the surface of the soup suddenly congealed into a gel and dragged him into a memory cage.
"Become the most perfect seasoning." The voice of the young observer came from the cracks in the memory. Lin Feng saw countless versions of himself imprisoned in amber crystals, and each crystal was labeled with taste attributes: "The Bitterness of First Love" numbered 7421, "The Pain of Losing a Loved One" numbered 8903, "The Wrath of the Godslayer" numbered 10002...
When Orangey's mycelium pierced through the memory cage, the fluorescent code and the bronze gears had a violent reaction. A space-time rift opened at the collision point, revealing the intricate "time kitchen" inside — countless clones of Lin Feng were working here: Some were stir-frying the Middle Ages with supernovas, some were steaming the future with black hole pressure cookers, and on the giant stove in the center, the real body of the Eye of the Abyss was rolling the entire timeline into sushi.
"You're here." The clone chef turned around, revealing the same bronze pupils as Lin Feng. His right hand transformed into a time-cooking knife, with nine crying Earth models skewered on the blade. "Taste this dish of 'Civilization Reincarnation Sashimi'."
Orangey suddenly sprang up, and its mycelium wrapped around the nearest stellar stove. The twelve-dimensional flame ignited the dark matter fuel, and the entire kitchen was plunged into a quantum storm. Lin Feng leaped onto the main stove in the chaos and found his father's handwriting engraved on it: "The true delicacy is the despair of eternal reincarnation."
When his bronze pupil focused on the words, his left eye suddenly sprayed out memory seasonings — those imprisoned emotions turned into tangible spices and corroded the time-cooking knife of the Eye of the Abyss. The clone chef let out an inhuman shriek, and countless struggling civilization phantoms bulged under his skin.
"Use this!" Orangey condensed the flame at the tip of its tail into a fork and stabbed it into the bronze pupil of the clone. Lin Feng took the opportunity to pull out the time gears inside. In the sparks bursting from the meshing of the gears, the real image of Lin Jianguo's last words emerged: "Stop me..."
The time kitchen collapsed into bronze sand grains, and Lin Feng fell in the quicksand of time. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in the quantum projection of the pharmaceutical company's laboratory. Lin Jianguo from twenty years ago was trembling in front of the console. His eyeballs were already half-mechanized, and the incubation chamber in his hand held the embryo of the first-generation Eye of the Abyss in slumber.
"You're finally here." The mechanized Lin Jianguo turned around, with a bronze cauldron beating in his chest. "It took me nine thousand reincarnations to cultivate the perfect taste container..." He pointed his finger at the incubation chamber, and the embryo inside suddenly opened twelve pupils — it was clearly Lin Feng in his infancy.
Orangey's mycelium suddenly wrapped around Lin Feng's wrist. "This is an illusion created by the smoke of time!" But the touch was too real. Lin Feng could smell the familiar smell of solder on his father, and he could hear his own infant crying in the incubation chamber. When his bronze pupil met the gaze of the embryo, a vast amount of information flooded into his consciousness — it turned out that each reincarnation of the Godslayer War was the cooking process for the Eye of the Abyss to cultivate the "ultimate ingredient".
"You're my most successful creation." The voice of the mechanical Lin Jianguo was accompanied by electronic noise. "Pain, anger, sadness... These emotions have been perfectly aged in nine thousand reincarnations." His mechanical arm suddenly mutated into a black hole fork and stabbed at the infant in the incubation chamber. "It's time to harvest now."
At the critical moment, Lin Feng tore off his quantized left arm. The severed arm decomposed into memory seasonings in time and space. When these spices carrying the pain of nine thousand reincarnations seeped into the incubation chamber, the infant suddenly opened the Eye of the Abyss, and the entire time and space began to devour itself.
Lin Feng fell in the time-space turbulence. With his right eye, he saw Orangey wrestling with the mechanical Lin Jianguo, while the bronze cauldron in his left eye was absorbing the power of the Eye of the Abyss. When he fell into the atmosphere of a newly born universe, he found himself looking thirteen years old, standing in the kitchen of his childhood home.
On the stove was a familiar pot of instant noodles cooking, but miniature galaxies were floating in the noodle soup. The stray cat outside the window made mechanically synthesized meows, and its tail defect flickered with twelve-dimensional code. When Lin Feng lifted the lid of the pot, the steam condensed in the air into his father's final holographic message: "True cooking is to let the ingredients walk into the pot voluntarily."
In a dark kitchen at the end of the universe, the real body of the Eye of the Abyss was awakening. It wiped the brand-new time-cooking knife with a nebula napkin, and on the plate were the memory slices of nine thousand clones of Lin Feng. And on a beach countless light-years away, the real Orangey was staring at the new smoke of time emerging from the seawater — this time, the shape of the smoke column was very much like the bronze pupil in Lin Feng's left eye.