Crimson Moon Cataclysm

The icy bite of the underground river instantly saturated their clothes, feeling like countless steel needles piercing to the marrow. Lin Mo dragged the choking Amelia onto the slippery, rusted iron ladder. Pale corpses floated in the murky water below, each bearing a familiar patch of silvery-grey metal embedded in the back of their necks—**identical to the bomb implant dug from Zhang Tie's severed arm.**

"The signal source... over there!" Amelia coughed violently, raising her wrist. Her portable terminal projected a faint pulsing map; a cluster of dense signal sources stubbornly throbbed deep within the abandoned wastewater treatment plant, like a dying heart.

*Scrape… Scrape…*

From the darkness, the sound of scales rasping against damp rock walls drew nearer, carrying inhuman patience. Lin Mo shoved the heavy thermite cutter into Amelia's cold, trembling hands, his voice barely a whisper. "Aim at the water. I'll draw her away." Before she could respond, he stomped hard on a loose rock beneath his foot.

*Crack!*

The sharp sound echoed through the confined waterway. Almost simultaneously, a grey-green shadow dropped like an inverted bat from the stalactites above! Su Ting's vertical pupils burned with twin cold blood-flames in the dark. Her scaled claws tore through the air with annihilating force, aimed straight for Lin Mo's crown!

**BOOM—!**

At the last possible moment, the nanite swarm above Lin Mo's head frantically coalesced, instantly forming a rapidly spinning, drill-bit-shaped shield of silvery-grey!

A deafening shriek of metal on metal exploded! Sparks burst like fireworks! The shockwave shook stalactites loose from the ceiling. Using the recoil, Lin Mo shot backward like an arrow and plunged into the icy, rushing underground river.

"ROAR—!" Su Ting let out an enraged screech. Without hesitation, her grey-green form shot into the dark water like a poisoned arrow, scales parting the surface faster than any fish, pursuing Lin Mo relentlessly.

---

Amelia fought down her terror. Following Lin Mo's instruction, she aimed the searing hot nozzle of the cutter towards the churning water surface. Stumbling, she followed the signal source's guidance, pushing open the heavy, rusted iron door of the treatment plant.

The sight froze her blood.

This was no longer a place for processing waste. It was a vast, icy, terrifying workshop reeking of formaldehyde and blood.

* **Forest of Clones:** Thousands of enormous transparent glass cylinders stood like a grotesque forest, arranged in neat rows. Suspended within each, bathed in pale green nutrient fluid, floated pallid human bodies. Countless faces, illuminated by the eerie green glow, all wore **Amelia's own features!** Their eyes were closed, as if in eternal slumber.

* **Consciousness Crucible:** Thick cables snaked down from the ceiling, connecting to ports atop the cylinders. Screens displayed cascading streams of complex brainwave data. Cold text flashed: **"Personality Template Injection: Caregiver 07... Progress 87%..."**

* **Death Assembly Line:** At the far end of the workshop, "mature" Amelias were scooped from the cylinders by robotic arms and placed on a conveyor belt. Another precise robotic arm, gleaming coldly, embedded a silvery-grey metal implant beneath the skin at the back of each clone's neck. A micro-laser etched a cold serial number onto it. Then, these hollow-eyed replicas were conveyed into a dark tunnel beyond.

"They... they're mass-producing... me?" Amelia's legs gave way. She collapsed onto the cold, slippery floor, stomach heaving. A nearby monitor flickered, showing footage of her childhood birthday party—the last happy memory before the New Dawn kidnapped her! Fear and absurdity threatened to overwhelm her.

"Welcome to the 'Ark Foundation,' Subject 97. Here lies the true seed vault for humanity's future." A voice rasped with metallic friction spoke. A bald man in an immaculate white lab coat stepped from the shadows. His left eye was replaced by a complex mechanical prosthesis glowing with a cold blue light, scanning Lin Mo and Amelia dispassionately. "I am Dr. Walker, the principal designer here." His mechanical eye locked onto Lin Mo, emitting a faint scanning sound. "As for you... an out-of-control defect left behind by a *Sower*."

Walker's statements were like icy scalpels, dissecting the bloody truth layer by layer:

* **New Dawn's Truth:** "We are the final spark! The authorities were bewitched by the *Reapers*, executing the Ark Plan to exterminate humanity! We resisted! We discovered the truth—the so-called Sower meteorites were merely tools to scatter nanite swarms and screen hosts! *They* are the older hunters!"

* **Origin of the Bombs:** Walker's mechanical eye projected a beam of light, displaying a holographic schematic of the implant from Zhang Tie's arm stump, identical to those in the river corpses. "These implants? Precisely the creations of the *Sowers*! To eliminate failed experiments like Zhang Tie who couldn't achieve stable symbiosis with the swarm, posing a 'contamination' risk! They treat humanity like bacteria in a petri dish!"

* **The Clone Mission:** "These pure clones have no native genetic markers, no traceable genetic signatures! They are shadows, ghosts! The 'invisible army' meant to infiltrate Reaper-controlled zones in the future and rebuild human civilization! They carry the true hope!"

"Lies!" Lin Mo roared, instantly raising the cutter towards Dr. Walker's forehead. The muzzle glowed white-hot as nanites flooded it. "That meteorite told me *you* are the traitors! You sabotaged the 'Ascension Covenant'!"

A smile of pity and mockery twisted Walker's face. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers.

*Hummm—!*

Within the workshop, every clone suspended in nutrient fluid snapped their eyes open simultaneously! Thousands upon thousands of pairs of hollow eyes, their pupils suddenly igniting with the same icy **silver-white light** that pulsed within Lin Mo's nanite swarm!

"Eliminate intruders." Thousands of voices merged into an emotionless, cold metallic chorus, echoing through the vast workshop with bone-chilling pressure.

---

As if pulled by invisible strings, the glass cylinder hatches hissed open. Countless naked, vacant-eyed "Amelias" surged out, moving with stiff yet unnerving speed. The skin at the tips of their slender fingers split, revealing sharp, bone-white spikes that gleamed with lethal cold! Their attack patterns were identical to Su Ting's!

"Blood Crystal! They've been injected with Blood Crystal concentrate!" Amelia screamed in horror. She saw the closest clone's neck skin faintly revealing the familiar, vein-like pattern of grey-green scales—**the Reaper's corruption had already infiltrated the heart of the resistance! Walker was the traitor!**

"*Thwip!*" Bone spikes tore through Lin Mo's nanite armor. Pain flared. The clones knew no fear, no retreat, pressing forward relentlessly.

"Heat! Disrupt their control signal!" Amelia cried out, seizing on an idea. She slammed the already-charged thermite cutter into a nearby rusted sewage main pipe!

*HISSSSS—!!!*

Scorching white steam, like an enraged dragon, erupted from the ruptured pipe! The dense, superheated fog instantly engulfed a large area. Clones struck by the steam faltered, their movements jerky. The silver light in their eyes flickered violently, as if their signal was being severely jammed.

"Foolish struggle!" Dr. Walker roared, slamming a blood-red button on the console. "Taste the agony of your minds being shredded!"

*HUM—!!!*

An invisible but excruciatingly sharp high-frequency pulse ripped through the entire workshop! The air seemed to vibrate intensely, emitting a sickening whine. Amelia screamed, clutching her head as she rolled on the ground, blood trickling from her nose and ears.

Lin Mo was similarly hammered! The high-frequency pulse felt like countless red-hot needles stabbing into his brain, triggering a catastrophic resonance with the core frequency of his internal nanite swarm!

"ARGH—!" Lin Mo howled like a beast, silver light erupting wildly beneath his skin! Uncontrolled nanites tore through his flesh, surging outwards. They swarmed above him, spinning frantically, coalescing into a chaotic silver vortex meters wide, radiating pure destruction! Agony flooded him, forcing shards of visions into his consciousness:

* Enormous, streamlined Sower ships navigating magnificent planetary rings, seeding countless nanite-bearing meteorites onto a verdant planet below…

* Grotesque Reaper warships, forged from dark red crystal, enveloping an infected planet in a crimson force field. The planet's surface boiled; colossal Blood Crystal veins erupted…

* Earth… The Ark Plan command center… Dr. Walker bowing respectfully. Deep within his mechanical eye, a fleeting glimpse of **the Reapers' unique, writhing crimson data code!**

"You work for the Reapers! You're their dog!" Lin Mo bellowed, eyes bulging with rage. Fury and agony from his very soul detonated the out-of-control swarm!

The silver vortex in the air suddenly collapsed inward with terrifying force!

A minute point, a **silver-grey singularity** radiating horrific gravitational pull, formed instantly!

*CRRRRASH—!!!*

The entire factory groaned under unbearable stress! Clone cylinder glass near the singularity silently exploded into dust! The massive consciousness infusion machines twisted and tore apart like paper, components and cables violently sucked into the tiny silver abyss! Dr. Walker's body was ripped from the ground, screaming as he hurtled towards the destructive center!

"No! You damned monstrosity! Initiate… Initiate Final Protocol!" he shrieked madly, his remaining eye bloodshot. The red-lit mechanical eye flashed insanely. Then, a deep, massive shuddering began beneath the factory floor, like the heartbeat of a waking behemoth—**the self-destruct sequence had activated!**

---

"The database! The clones' original genetic and personality template database must be destroyed! It can't remain for either side!" Amelia choked out, fighting the agony and dizziness in her skull, blood trickling from her lips. She grabbed Lin Mo, who was on the verge of collapse from his power's backlash, and dragged him towards the control room. The gravitational singularity moved with Lin Mo, leaving utter devastation in its wake.

Inside the control room, massive screens scrolled like waterfalls: millions of clone profiles—photos, genetic sequences, personality template data… Soldiers, scientists, laborers… even templates bearing the likenesses of former world leaders!

"Hurry!" Amelia threw herself at the console, fingers flying over the blood-smeared keyboard. She jammed a specially designed, physically-isolated virus U-drive into the interface. "Override command… Execute!"

The data streams on the screens instantly turned chaotic, crimson. Countless error warnings flashed frantically.

"Upload complete! Virus activated! We have ten seconds at most!" Amelia's voice was shrill with desperation.

At that moment, the control room's thick alloy security door exploded inward as if hit by a cannonball! Su Ting stood in the doorway, dripping wet, oozing strange blue blood. Her left arm was missing below the elbow, clearly the result of the thermite blast. But more horrifying was the raw, flesh-mangled stump—tiny, blood-crystal-like tendrils squirmed madly, weaving together, rapidly regenerating and hardening. In seconds, they formed a vicious **bone blade** shimmering with crimson light and metallic coldness!

"Take the data! Go to the meteorite!" Lin Mo shoved the virus-key hard drive into Amelia's hands, using his last strength to push her towards the emergency exit on the opposite side of the control room. He turned to face Su Ting. The berserk nanites screamed along his arms, instantly coalescing into two high-speed spinning, saw-toothed **silver-grey chainsaws**!

*Clang! Shriek! Zzzzt—!*

Chainsaw and regenerated bone blade collided at speeds beyond the eye's ability to track! Each impact showered sparks and shredded the air with metallic shrieks! Shockwaves hurled console wreckage aside. Su Ting's Blood Crystal-enhanced strength and speed were monstrous. Every blow numbed Lin Mo's arms; the nanite chainsaws groaned under the strain. Yet, during another brutal clash, deep within Su Ting's crimson vertical-slit pupils—eyes burning with pure destructive hunger—a flicker of something else appeared. A trace of human Su Ting's lost confusion and pain.

"Mo... hurts... so hungry... stop..." A hoarse, broken voice, belonging to "Su Ting," struggled past her lips, tinged with a sob. That shred of humanity fought desperately against the Blood Crystal's endless erosion and ravenous hunger.

Lin Mo caught that fleeting spark. A desperate, insane idea exploded in his exhausted mind. He jerked backward, letting the chainsaws on his arms dissolve instantly!

"Huh?" Su Ting's bone blade cleaved empty air, her momentum faltering.

In that split second, Lin Mo marshaled every nanite still under his control. Not to attack, but to form a dense, silvery membrane that slammed over the pulsating core **Blood Crystal** embedded in Su Ting's forehead!

The nanites weren't consuming it. Instead, they emitted an incredibly specific, high-frequency **resonant vibration**—the **exact inverse wave** of the lethal frequency emitted by Walker's neural resonator!

"AAAAHHHH—!!!"

Su Ting screamed, a sound utterly inhuman! She clutched her head, body convulsing violently as if struck by invisible hammers! The grey-green scales covering her instantly lost their luster, curling and peeling away like burnt leaves, revealing fragile, bleeding skin beneath. The Blood Crystal under the nanite membrane throbbed wildly, a spiderweb of cracks spreading across its surface as if on the verge of shattering! The Blood Crystal's control over Su Ting was instantly, severely weakened by the precise counter-frequency!

---

*BOOM! CRASH! KABOOOOOM—!*

The entire underground factory shuddered like a dying beast. Massive concrete slabs and twisted metal girders rained down. Lin Mo had no time to think. He wrapped Su Ting—unconscious from the counter-frequency assault—in his remaining nanites and leaped into the raging underground river surging beneath the collapsing factory. Amelia, clutching the vital hard drive, followed close behind.

The icy, turbulent current swept all three along, battering them against the dark underground river's walls. After an eternity, the water violently hurled them into a vast, isolated subterranean cavern.

There were no artificial structures here, only ancient desolation. The cavern walls were covered in archaic, mysterious glyphs glowing with faint silver light, subtly mirroring the form of Lin Mo's nanite swarm. At the cavern's center, upon an altar of natural obsidian, rested a massive **meteorite**—ten times larger than the sample back at the base—radiating a deep, profound, gentle azure light.

As Lin Mo struggled closer, the giant azure meteorite seemed to awaken, its glow intensifying! A clear holographic star map, composed of countless points of light, projected into the cavern air:

* **Reaper Homeworld:** An impossibly massive planet forged entirely of dark red crystal. It hung precariously on the accretion disk's edge of a colossal black hole, radiating palpable evil despite its seeming peril.

* **Sower Relic:** Within a vast asteroid belt, floated an unimaginably huge, complex structure—part beehive, part temple—gleaming silver. A cold label read: **"Silent Cradle - Status: Dormant."**

* **Earth Coordinates:** The familiar blue planet was clearly marked. Beside it, a glaring crimson annotation: **"Harvesting Proving Ground - Designation 97."**

Simultaneously, that ethereal yet cold mechanical voice resonated directly within Lin Mo's mind once more:

**"Reapers distort evolutionary pathways via Blood Crystal… Only activating the Silent Cradle's Purge Pulse… can reverse corruption… restore order…"**

**"Warning: Purge Pulse will indiscriminately eradicate all lifeforms bearing K-type genetic markers… This scope encompasses… approximately 95% of surviving human individuals on the current planet…"**

Sacrifice all of humanity? Lin Mo felt plunged into an icy abyss.

"Don't listen! It's lying!" Amelia screamed hoarsely. She struggled to raise her wrist. Her terminal projected fragments of classified data she'd urgently downloaded from the clone factory's control room—images of several charred, lifeless Earth-like planets, their surface features a perfect match for the "Purge Pulse" described! "The database has proof! The Sowers have destroyed at least twenty worlds harboring intelligent life using the same 'purification' excuse! *They* are the true exterminators!"

*KABOOM—CRACKLE!!*

The ancient cavern suddenly convulsed violently! The hard rock ceiling overhead groaned under immense pressure, then ripped apart!

A mangled, blood-and-grease-smeared metal object, trailing severed cables, dropped through the newly torn opening—Dr. Walker's lone surviving mechanical eye! Its intricate internal mechanisms were exposed, sparking erratically. A heavily distorted, metallic scraping voice, like electronic synthesis gone wrong, stuttered from the eye's damaged internal speaker, saturated with bottomless terror and despair:

**"Com...ing… they… descent..."**

Through the enormous fissure torn in the rock layer, the night sky outside was clearly visible—

Beside the original single crimson moon, a **second scarlet moon**, equally massive, equally veined with pulsing blood vessels, tore through the thick clouds. It cast its baleful, unnatural light upon a world already ravaged beyond measure.

Twin Moons Dominating the Sky!

---

In this moment of cosmic terror, the massive azure meteorite on the altar cracked with a sharp, crystalline sound!

A deep fissure split its surface. Within the crack, instead of rock, writhed countless dense, living **silver nanites**! Like a swarm returning to its hive, they surged out, unerringly enveloping Su Ting where she lay unconscious near the altar. They focused especially on the crack in her forehead's Blood Crystal, the one Lin Mo's counter-frequency wave had fractured.

Something bizarre happened. The silver nanites flowed over the Blood Crystal's fissure. They didn't consume it. Instead, like microscopic welders, they used flowing silver light to "repair" and "overlay" the crack, forming an intricate, bizarre pattern of interwoven silver and crimson.

Su Ting's body shuddered violently. Then, slowly, her eyes opened.

Lin Mo and Amelia gasped.

Her left eye still burned with the endless hunger and destructive desire of a **crimson vertical-slit pupil**.

But her right eye… deep within its pupil, rotated a single point of cold, precise **silver stellar vortex**, seeming to contain infinite galaxies!

Two utterly different lights warred across her face, both sinister and sacred. A voice, neither male nor female, layered with metallic reverberations, issued from Su Ting's lips. It was both familiar and alien, like countless voices speaking as one:

"I see…" Her voice echoed in the vast cavern, her gaze piercing the collapsing rock, stretching into the cosmic depths. "Within the Cradle… slumbers not hope…"

The right eye, swirling with the silver vortex, reflected a soul-freezing horror—at the very core of the silver "Silent Cradle" construct lay not a purification device, but an immense, dark-red **world-egg of apocalypse**, its surface pulsing with thick veins!

**"...but the world-egg of apocalypse… that devours stars."**

**(End of Chapter 7)**