The ruins of the royal capital lay shrouded in a eerie silence, covered in white fungal flowers. As Lesandra carried the unconscious Orion across the square, his charred severed arm scraped against the back of her neck, and crystallised blood flakes trickled down. Up ahead, the clock tower was wrapped in vines, forming a jade-coloured colossal pillar. Finn was using Elara's severed limb to touch the vines, and green fluorescent light flowed along the veins into the city's network.
"The energy is stable!" The boy slid down from the vine platform, his goggles revealing deep dark circles under his eyes. "The white flowers have converted the mycelium into a water purification system, but..." He lifted Orion's blood-soaked bandages and gasped—the crystallisation had spread to his collarbone, and the outline of mechanical gears was visible beneath the skin on his chest!
"Malcolm's mechanical heart is parasitising him." Lesandra placed Orion on a stretcher woven from vines. The nobleman's icy blue right eye suddenly opened, with the faint outline of gears spinning in the depths of his pupil.
"Sleep... tomb..." Orion's vocal cords emitted an electronic friction sound, "Backup core... activating..." He convulsively grabbed Lysandra's wrist, his crystalline nails piercing her flesh. Where the blood fell, the white flowers beneath the stretcher suddenly withered, their mycelium reverting to pitch black!
Finn's detector flashed red: "Malcolm's consciousness is being through Orion!"
The council hall was set up in the half-collapsed sanctuary. When Lysandra entered, hundreds of eyes fixed on her face—the old and new brands intertwined on her cheekbones, like the teeth of a wild beast. The one-armed blacksmith struck his anvil: "The Branded Legion needs a commander! Lysandra Thorn, in the Purification War..."
"Brought new disasters! " A merchant in a silk waistcoat kicked over a wooden crate, and the black bread that rolled out quickly moulded and spoiled. "After she brought back that noble monster, the purified water turned toxic again!" The crowd stirred, and several emaciated children huddled behind their mothers, coughing, their skin oozing black fungal spots.
A limping washerwoman stood in front of Lysandra: Lord Orion saved us!"
"And then?" The merchant pointed at the stained-glass windows of the sanctuary—the glass reflected the terrifying scene outside the city: black fungal threads were devouring white flowers, staining the new vines a murky dark purple. Where the fungal threads spread, abandoned armour automatically reassembled and walked, broken swords suspended and spun on the fungal carpet, forming an army of the undead!
"Malcolm is regrouping outside the city!" the merchant screamed, "And that monster is devouring our hope in the cellar!"
The crowd split into two streams. Supporters raised their rusty weapons, while opponents threw rotten vegetable leaves. In the chaos, Lysandra leapt onto the shattered altar, tearing open the bandage on her right arm—the wound Malcolm had manipulated from Orion had not healed, and the mycelium beneath the flesh wriggled like living worms!
"There's also a poisonous seed in this body." She drew her dagger and pressed it against the wound, "Shall I cut it out and show you?"
Dead silence enveloped the hall. The fungal threads pulsed in her wound, synchronised with the footsteps of the undead army outside the city.
"Twenty hours." Lysandra's dagger sliced through the rotting flesh, black blood splattering on the altar. "Give me twenty hours to deal with the threat outside the city. Otherwise..." She ran the bloodstained blade across her throat. "...you'll use my head as a banner."
***
The iron door of the cellar was sealed by layers of vines. Orion was fixed to the wall by alloy chains, the gears on his chest rising and falling with his breath. Finn connected the neural sensor helmet to the vine network, and data cascaded down the screen.
"Malcolm's stream of consciousness is being重组 in the mycelium network, but the core commands are coming from here!" Finn pointed at the mechanical light on Orion's chest, "We must physically destroy the backup core, but it's fused with his heart..."
Lysandra pressed Ella's severed arm against Orion's chest. The fluorescent glow of the elf's severed limb seeped into the skin, causing the mechanical pulsations to suddenly become chaotic. Orion's right eye regained clarity for an instant: "The Tomb of Slumber... the Spinal Laboratory... Lilian's clone..." He suddenly coughed up a chip, "...it's the carrier of the backup core!"
Finn's instruments suddenly sounded an alarm! The screen showed a crack at the top of the fungal tower outside the city, revealing a columnar cavity formed by human vertebrae—the enlarged version of the Sleeping Tomb cultivation chamber! Inside the chamber floated Lillian's clone, with countless neural tubes extending from its back and connecting to the fungal tower.
"Malcolm is turning the capital into a living energy tower!" Finn's face turned pale. "The clone's chest... also has a branded keyhole!"
The twin brands on Lysandra's face suddenly burned with pain. She grabbed the neural sensor helmet and fastened it: "Connect me to Orion."
"You're crazy! Malcolm will devour your consciousness!"
"Let him devour it." Lysandra plunged the dagger into the control panel's seam, forcibly connecting the circuit, "I'll feed him some poison."
***
The moment the neural link connected, excruciating pain split Lysandra's skull.
She floated in the storm of the consciousness space, below which was a black ocean of interlocking gears. Orion was suspended above the ocean by chains, with mechanical heart tubes piercing his limbs. Malcolm's phantom stood atop the heart, his crystal eyes rotating: "Ah... the key to the voluntary sacrifice..."
Lysandra charged through the void, memory fragments like blades swirling toward the mechanical heart—the foul stench of the sheriff's branding iron searing flesh, Gideon's explosion of flames, Elara's final smile as she fell into the tree's core... The torrent of pain caused Malcolm's phantom to tremble!
"A crude emotional attack!" The phantom, its crystal eye emitting a red glow. Lysandra was struck hard, the fungal wound on her right arm materialising in the consciousness space, black veins spreading along her arm!
Orion's chains clanged. His icy blue right eye suddenly fixed on Lysandra, a memory pulse crashing into her mind: childhood in the royal cellar, Malcolm handing a dagger to the young Orion, pointing at the terrified elf girl in the cage. "True blood must be tempered with the blood of another race, Your Highness."
In reality, Orion struggles violently! As the chains snap, his remaining left hand plunges into his chest, grasping the beating mechanical heart! "Lilian... Brother has repaid the debt..." Amidst the tearing of flesh, the backup core is forcibly ripped out!
The consciousness space shattered. Malcolm's shadowy form screamed and vanished, the black ocean boiling and evaporating. Lysandra was flung back into reality, vomiting a mouthful of black blood. Finn's screen showed the fungal towers outside the city trembling, and the brand on clone Lillian's chest began to rot!
But Orion's chest was already a blood-soaked hole. His left hand clutched half a mechanical heart, with broken ventricular tissue tangled between the gears, and his ice-blue pupils gradually dilated.
"No..." Lysandra pressed her hands against the bleeding wound.
"The key..." Orion's bloodstained fingers traced the new and old marks on her face, "We need... two..." His head tilted, and his final breath landed on Lysandra's palm.
***
The fungal tower outside the city emitted a dying roar. The clone Lilian fell from the spinal cavity, caught mid-air by fungal threads. The undead army halted its advance, all armour and swords turning toward the royal capital, bloodlight glowing in their eye sockets.
The cathedral doors were smashed open, and merchants wielding torches shouted, "The monster is dead! Sacrifice the red-haired witch! Appease Malcolm's wrath!"
The crowd surged forward like a tidal wave. Lesandra clutched Orion's lifeless body, letting the torches ignite her red hair. Amid the crackling sound of burning hair, she gently laid the nobleman down, rose, and drew the dagger from the control panel.
"You wish to appease the anger?" She stepped over the burning hair toward the crowd, her twin brands flowing like lava in the fire, "Then remember the true anger!"
The dagger sliced open the fungal wound on her right arm! Black blood sprayed onto the altar vines, and the neural sensor helmet suddenly overloaded and exploded! As the shockwave swept through the crowd, Lysandra's consciousness pierced the vine network like a sword—through Elara's bloodline, straight to the core of the fungal tower outside the city!
Malcolm's roar echoed through her skull: "You dare to use my corruption to invade in reverse?!"
Lysandra spread her arms in her consciousness. The fragmented memories of Orion's final moments were transformed into billions of blades—the trembling of a young noble forced to gouge out an elf's eye, Lilian's smile as she plunged into lava, every frame of the true blood splattering onto the clone in the Sleeping Tomb... All the pain surged through the vine network into the fungal tower!
The clone Lillian screamed on the fungal throne, the keyhole brand on her chest shattering! The fungal tower's surface opened a billion blood-red eyes, yet all shed black pus-like tears. The undead legion's swords fell to the ground, white flower branches sprouting from the gaps in their armour.
In reality, Lysandra's seven orifices bleed. She stumbles toward the stained-glass windows of the sanctuary as the fungal tower outside the city collapses in mournful cries. The setting sun shines through the broken windows onto Orion's pale face. From the blood hole in his chest, a white flower sprouts a tender bud.
The crowd fell silent and knelt. The merchant's torch fell from his hand, igniting the fungal patches on the floor.
Lysandra wiped the blood from her eyes. The old and new scars stood out like medals in the twilight. She extinguished the flames, stepped over the ashes, and walked to the highest point of the altar, plunging the bloodstained dagger into the oak table:
"Now, who will sacrifice me?"