First AI Writing

De-AI-Flavored Tools: https://docsbot.ai/tools/writing/ai-text-humanizer https://yuanbao.tencent.com/chat/naQivTmsDa/f21ec7fe-e511-11ef-b935-e6ed8668e10c

Removing AI Flavor from Prompts: Try to eliminate the AI-like tone; the article should focus on emotions and details, incorporating imperfect elements such as fragmented thoughts or hazy memories to make the emotions more authentic. Dialogue should be conversational, natural, and include everyday humor. The overall logic of the article should not be too rigidly smooth, preserving the characteristic of human-like thinking leaps.

I want to start writing a short Chinese novel, the genre is horror fiction - detective mystery, and the writing style should be inspired by American author Stephen King. Please first study his book on writing techniques, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” focusing on suspense setup, including creating a horror atmosphere, the ticking sound of an approaching deadline, the 逼近 of a monster, and hints of demons and monsters emerging from the normal world and the hearts of ordinary people like Randall Flagg.

I have set the style as: realistic, horror, and mind-bending. The character settings are: a dad, a doctor, and a female CEO. The plot setting is: mystery, and the background setting is rural.

First, determine: the title of the work, character names, recommended wording, and work description. Then begin to outline the theme, plot, and characters, the main storyline, and the writing outline.

Ensure the content is reasonable and easy to understand, reducing complex adjectives.

——After a thorough analysis of Stephen King’s horror aesthetics and user needs, the following creative plan has been generated——

Title: “Seven Days of Fog”

Character Names: Chen Mo (32 years old/Former police officer/Single father) with burn scars on his left arm; Lin Xia (28 years old/Forensic pathologist/PTSD) always carrying a silver autopsy knife; Su Man (40 years old/CEO of a pharmaceutical company/Secretly taking antidepressants) with a missing little finger on his right hand; Zhou Yongnian (55 years old/Village head/Freytag’s anti-hero) who always knits red yarn gloves

Slogan: “When the blood fog passes over the third eye of the statue at the village entrance, you will hear the cry of a baby in the cornfield—That’s not the sound of the wind.”

Work Description: On the night when a heavy rain collapses the mountain access road, three city dwellers with secrets are stranded in Foggy Village. The blood-stained fingerprints in the missing child case file, the 108 bronze bells hanging deep in the granary, and the nightly scheduled wails from the maternity ward are tearing open the perfect facade of this model new rural community. When the dad discovers bone ash mixed in his daughter’s 奶粉罐, the forensic expert finds a prescription from his own clinic in the deceased’s stomach, and the female CEO recognizes the group logo on the sacrificial mural—they finally realize that they are the last three human candles in this 30-year-old human sacrifice ceremony.

[Theme Construction] Core horror imagery: gestation (distorted)

• A 腐烂 pregnant woman giving birth in the cornfield

• The village elementary school playing “Lullaby” every noon

• The Chinese pharmacy is brewing a decoction of placenta and electronic components

【Stephen King-style suspense device】

1. Spatio-temporal displacement (church clocks running counterclockwise)
2. Everyday alienation (supermarket shelves filled with food expired in 1987)
3. Physical Horror (QR code patterns appearing in the whites of villagers’ eyes)

【Main Structure】 Dual-narrative: Modern line: A trio investigates the case of a 连环失踪女童 (连环 means “serial” or “repeated”) 1987 年线: A collective breakdown event among family planning work teams

【Core Trick】 Missing children = Quantum state materialization of aborted fetuses from three decades ago

【Chapter Outline】 (Excerpting key turning points)

■ Rainstorm Night Chen Mo prepared formula milk for his daughter in the back seat of the stranded SUV, the headlights illuminating a sign “2km to Wuyin Village,” with the reflective film peeling to reveal an old sign “Ghoul Infant Valley.” GPS suddenly broadcasted: “You have arrived at July 15, 1997.”

■ Village Health Clinic Lin Xia noticed that all medical records had death times marked as 23:07, and a glass ampule stuck with fetal hair rolled out from the depths of the medicine cabinet. Through the window flashed a pregnant woman wearing a 1980s polyester shirt.

■ Temple Confrontation Su Man tore open the banner “New Rural Demonstration Village,” revealing a rusty bronze plaque from 1987 “Advanced Unit for Family Planning.” The village head smiled and lit the red yarn in his hand, as the 108 eternal lamps in the temple exploded one by one.

■ Cornfield Sacrifice Chen Mo ran 狂奔 with his daughter, who was dressed in funeral clothes, as the roar of a giant creature plowing the land echoed behind him. Under the moonlight, thirty 腐烂 decomposing female corpses connected by umbilical cords broke through the ground, forming a human-shaped harvester.

■ Ultimate Reversal The monster emerging from the blood mist has the face of a fusion of the three main characters. Suddenly, a message from thirty years ago appears on the phone: “Thank you for voluntarily becoming the parents of the child”

【Stephen King technique integration】

1. Auditory horror: Mismatching the sound of an electronic watch’s countdown with that of a fetal heart monitor
2. Displaced mapping: Letting Suman’s platinum bag reveal a nursing pad, and Chen Mo’s parenting manual containing interrogation records
3. Everyday Horror: Manipulating villagers’ collective sleepwalking with a baby rattle, mixing forceps collision sounds into WeChat voice messages

Deep in the church cellar now, thirty glass jars are pulsing, the fetus suspended in formaldehyde has opened its third eye covered in circuit boards—this is the perfect trigger for the first explosive point of your story.

Chapter 1: Rusty Bottle Chapter 2: Pregnancy Powder Expired for Thirty Years Chapter 3: Embryo Hair Ampoule Chapter 4: Weaving Flames Chapter 5: Forceps Sounds in WeChat Chapter 6: Reversing Bronze Uterus Chapter 7: QR Code Pupils Chapter 8: Lullaby Anatomy Chapter 9: Human Candle Lighting Ceremony Chapter 10: Quantum Umbilical Cord

Chapter 1: Rusty Bottle

The heavy rain turned the mountain path into a black waterfall.

For the third time, Chen Mo wiped the rearview mirror, and his fingernail grooves were already filled with rust. The wipers of this used SUV made a struggling screeching sound, like someone was cutting open the sky’s arteries with rusty scissors. A plastic milk bottle rolling in the backseat made a sound, and he glanced at the rearview mirror. Three-year-old Xiao Man was pressing her face against the car window, with a few strands of silver in the white mist she exhaled—those were from the new milk powder she had just opened this morning, with a picture of a Dutch cow wearing a hat printed on the can.

“Dad, there are red eyes.” The child’s finger drew long streaks of water on the glass.

The moment the tires hit a bump, the dashboard suddenly displayed a tire pressure warning. Chen Mo swerved sharply to avoid the collapsed section of the road, and the female voice of the in-car GPS abruptly interrupted: “You have arrived at July 15, 1997.” The safety seat in the backseat made a tearing sound of leather splitting, and he smelled a 腐败 sweet smell coming from the air vent, like thirty-year-old expired condensed milk.

Sweat trickled down his spine into his belt. In the rearview mirror, Xiao Man’s 奶粉罐 was leaking, and the snow-white powder that should have been inside was turning a sickly green in the shadows. Chen Mo felt the scar on his left arm, where it began to throb again, just like two years ago when he had rescued this arm from a fire—on that day, he had rushed into the kindergarten fire, but what he carried out wasn’t his daughter.

As the car’s headlights pierced through the rain curtain, he saw the statue.

A three-meter-tall granite statue stood at the village entrance, originally meant to depict a mother holding an infant, but now twisted into a sinister pose. The mother’s fingers dug deep into the infant’s neck, her nail beds filled with corn silk and broken eggshells. The stone infant’s open mouth gushed black mucus, which solidified into stalactite-like spikes in the 暴雨. The most unsettling feature was the third eye embedded between the statue’s brows, from which a dark red liquid seeped from the glassy orb, winding into blood tears in the 暴雨 and flowing over the faded inscriptions on the base: Erected in July 1997.

“Welcome to Mist-Hidden Village.”

A hoarse greeting made Chen Mo almost draw his gun. In the rearview mirror, a face carved with 沟壑 appeared, water plants still dripping from the old man’s raincoat, his hands continuously weaving red woolen thread. Chen Mo noticed the gloves he was knitting were extremely small, the woolen thread unnaturally dark red, as if dyed with old menstrual blood.

“Zhou Yongnian, the village head.” The old man pointed at the stone statue with his knitting needle, its tip glinting with cold light in the rain-soaked night, “This ‘Blessing Mother’ is quite effective, last month the widow Wang just came to pray…” He suddenly leaned close to the car window, and Chen Mo smelled a strong scent of rust coming from the gaps in his teeth, “The police officer Chen is bringing the child—does he come to deliver a birth or attend a funeral?”

A muffled sound came from the trunk, and Xiao Man’s milk can rolled to his feet. As Chen Mo bent down to pick it up, he noticed a layer of dark red crystals forming at the bottom of the can, as if mixed with iron oxide powder. The steel stamp that should have indicated the production date now clearly read 1987. Suddenly, his digital watch began to count down, the red digits 23:07 jumping in the damp air, forming a strange duet with some mechanical sound—tick, tick, tick.

It was the sound he had heard in the delivery room when he was a detective, the countdown of the fetal heart monitor.

“It’s raining heavily, let’s go to the clinic first.” Zhou Yongnian pulled out a flashlight from his raincoat, the beam sweeping across the cornfields on both sides of the village path. Chen Mo’s pupils suddenly constricted as he glimpsed pale hands beating the leaves amidst the violently swaying stalks, the rhythmic slapping sounds coinciding perfectly with the countdown of an electronic watch. When the flashlight beam swept over a certain spot, he saw the backs of corn leaves covered densely with black and white ultrasound reports, the yellowed paper filled with images of baby girls.

When lifting Xiaoman, a dry leaf stuck to the back of the child’s neck. Chen Mo examined it closely with the car light; it wasn’t a leaf at all—it was half a dried placenta, with a few strands of golden hair tangled among its veins. Those strands suddenly writhed in the rain,钻进 his fingers like nematodes. He violently swung his wrist, but heard Xiaoman giggle, “Dad, it’s ticklish.”

The fluorescent tubes in the clinic buzzed, casting web-like shadows on Chen Mo’s face. He gripped Xiaoman’s scorching small hand, the child’s forehead temperature searing his nerves through his palm. Zhou Yongnian remained outside, continuing to knit gloves, the clacking of the knitting needles mixed with the sound of rain, like some ancient code. Chen Mo noticed the old man was always standing at the edge of the puddle, but the murky water reflected wasn’t a human shadow, but a tangled cluster of umbilical cords. The fluorescent tubes in the clinic buzzed, casting web-like shadows on Chen Mo’s face. He gripped Xiaoman’s scorching small hand, the child’s forehead temperature searing his nerves through his palm. Zhou Yongnian remained outside, continuing to knit gloves, the clacking of the knitting needles mixed with the sound of rain, like some ancient code. Chen Mo noticed the old man was always standing at the edge of the puddle, but the murky water reflected wasn’t a human shadow, but a tangled cluster of umbilical cords.

“39.2℃.” Lin Xia shook the mercury thermometer, her white coat sleeve revealing a bandaged wrist. As she turned to fetch the fever-reducing medicine, Chen Mo noticed a centipede-like suture scar on her neck, which moved strangely under the light. The clinic wall was 贴 ed with faded “Family Planning Propaganda Posters,” depicting a smiling mother with her abdomen torn open, revealing words altered with correction fluid: Every child is a quantum ghost.

The medicine cabinet’s glass reflected Lin Xia’s pale face: “Meilin has been open for over a month, I suggest physical cooling.” Her voice suddenly caught in her throat, as the bottom drawer was leaking dark yellow liquid. Chen Mo saw her Adam’s apple roll—this was a physiological reaction only a forensic expert would have when facing a decomposed body. The smell of disinfectant was mixed with the sweet rot of decaying fruit, and the infusion stand in the corner was 挂着 not saline, but a glass bottle filled with fetal hair.

A glass ampoule covered in mold spots rolled out of the drawer. Lin Xia picked it up with an autopsy knife, holding it up to the light. The cloudy liquid suddenly had fetal hair unfurl into the shape of a hand, leaving bloody fingerprints on the glass wall as it tapped against it. At the exact moment a thunderclap exploded outside the window, Chen Mo saw a pregnant woman in a gauze floral dress flash by the end of the corridor. Her swollen belly split open the “One is enough” slogan on the skirt, and her bare feet left muddy footprints on the tiles, each centered with a rusty birth control ring. Lin Xia’s autopsy knife clattered to the ground, the serial number on the handle twisting into “1987-23:07” in the shadows.

“The drug batch number is from 1997.” Lin Xia’s voice rose from the depths of the water, the tip of her autopsy knife pointing at the faded label on the ampoule, “This tetracycline has been banned for over twenty years.” She suddenly grabbed Chen Mo’s wrist, pressing the blade against the scar on his left arm, “Did your daughter’s milk formula have bone powder in it?”

The temperature in the clinic dropped sharply. Chen Mo felt something wet and cold press against the back of his neck. Turning, he saw the mother in the propaganda poster reaching out with a purple arm, as the correction fluid’s altered words began to seep dark red liquid. Xiao Man’s cries tore through the stagnant air. As he rushed back into the clinic, he saw his daughter stuffing her entire hand into her throat, a strand of golden hair dangling between her fingers.

“Don’t be afraid, Xiaoman!” The moment Chen Mo pried open the child’s mouth, a clump of damp fetal hair gushed from the throat, with metal fragments the size of a grain of rice sticking to the ends of the hair strands. When he wiped them with his sleeve, the metal fragments suddenly glowed red, projecting a holographic image—a ultrasound screen from thirty years ago, with the curled posture of the female infant identical to Xiaoman’s.

Lin Xia picked up the metal fragment and held it up to the light. The circuit board patterns reflected in her pupils as a QR code: “This is a miniature emitter produced in the 1990s by the Soviet Union.” Suddenly, the hem of her white lab coat fluttered without wind, revealing a silver pistol tied to her thigh, “Officer Chen, has your daughter recently come into contact with…”

Before she could finish speaking, the entire medicine cabinet collapsed with a crash. Hundreds of glass ampoules shattered on the tile floor, with the yellowish-brown liquid forming streams, each ripple floating with the features of a fetus. As Chen Mo picked up Xiaoman and backed away, he stepped on an ultrasound report, the yellowed image of which was changing: the umbilical cord of the female infant suddenly pierced through the screen, wrapping around his ankle. The moment she finished speaking, the entire medicine cabinet collapsed with a crash. Hundreds of glass ampoules shattered on the tile floor, with the yellowish-brown liquid forming streams, each ripple floating with the features of a fetus. As Chen Mo picked up Xiaoman and backed away, he stepped on an ultrasound report, the yellowed image of which was changing: the umbilical cord of the female infant suddenly pierced through the screen, wrapping around his ankle.

“23:07.” Lin Xia stared at the wall clock that had stopped, its second hand rotating counterclockwise. “All death records are from this time.” She lifted the bed sheet of the on-duty bed, and the mold spots formed numbers on the mattress, repeating this fatal moment. Suddenly, Chen Mo’s phone vibrated, thirty unread WeChat messages exploded on the screen, with the latest voice message 传来 the sound of forceps colliding.

Dripping with blood, Zhou Yongnian appeared at the doorway, holding a knitting needle. The knitted infant gloves were wriggling in his palm, with fine cracks at the knuckles revealing teeth. “Officer Chen, it’s time to feed the baby milk at night,” he smiled, showing the corn kernels embedded in his gums. “Use water from 1997 to mix it, that’s the most authentic taste.”

Chen Mo crashed through the window and leaped into the rain curtain. Hail-like raindrops hammered his face as he saw the SUV’s roof dented and deformed, as if trampled by a giant. Xiao Man’s breath was on his ear, carrying the 特有的腥甜 of 奶粉. When he touched the door handle, his fingertips felt a sticky sensation—hundreds of umbilical cords were seeping from the car seams, coiling into giant cocoons around the tires.

“Mommy, the doll is singing,” Xiao Man suddenly pointed to the cornfield. Chen Mo heard a child’s version of “Lullaby” seeping from the ground, but the pitch was twisted like a reversed tape. He drew his gun and chambered a round, but the 9mm bullets in the magazine had somehow turned into rusty birth control rings. The moment the car key was inserted, all dashboard indicators turned blood red, and the car radio automatically played news from thirty years ago:

“Murky Village became the first model village for zero extra births in the province… Comrade Zhou Yongnian innovatively implemented the ‘Quantum Fertility Method’…” Amid the crackling static, a baby was giggling. Chen Mo’s temple was throbbing as he remembered the size of that bloody fingerprint in the file—it wasn’t an adult’s.

In the rearview mirror, Zhou Yongnian was still weaving gloves, the red yarn already covering the entire village path. When Chen Mo stepped on the gas pedal hard and crashed through the barricade, the fender produced a crisp sound as if bones were being crushed. A 奶粉罐 tipped over from the back seat, and the bluish-gray powder spread through the car, forming a fog where Su Man’s last message appeared:

“The sacrifice scene in the ancestral hall murals uses the molecular formula of our antidepressant drug.”

As the wipers cleared the blood mist, Chen Mo saw the asphalt road transform into a birth canal lined with afterbirth membranes. The GPS screen began counting down, the red digits of 23:07 overlapping with the beeping sound of a fetal heart monitor, while Xiao Man’s crying gradually turned into a chorus of thirty infants. Suddenly, the rearview mirror reflected a terrifying scene: Lin Xia stood at the window of the health clinic on the second floor, using a dissection knife to cut her wrist, blood droplets solidifying in the rain into glowing circuit boards.

The cornfield boiled at this moment. Thirty women with swollen bellies broke through the earth, their decayed hands patting their pregnant bellies, each corpse hanging a metal plaque reading “Honorable Certificate of Family Planning.” When lightning illuminated the night sky, Chen Mo saw identical third eyes floating in their hollow eye sockets, just like the statue at the village entrance—the pupils of which spun with the ID photos of the three main characters.

Chapter Two: Pregnancy Formula Expiring in Thirty Years The supermarket shelves twisted into biological passageways before Su Man’s eyes.

As she pushed open the glass door of “Misty Conceal Convenience Store,” the doorbell emitted a shrill scream like a uterine contraction monitor. The 奶粉罐 on the shelves were slowly 蠕动, and the smiling pregnant woman printed on the aluminum packaging papers suddenly blinked. Su Man reached into her platinum bag for the antidepressant bottle, and her missing pinky finger began to ache illusorily—this was a symptom that only appeared whenever she encountered anything related to that secret laboratory.

“Welcome.” The old woman behind the counter lifted her head, her glasses chain adorned with seven silver longevity locks. She was using a syringe to inject a dark red liquid into a mineral water bottle, and at the moment the needle was lifted, Su Man saw the logo of her own company printed on the bottle label.

The hum of the freezer mixed with the cooing of an infant. Su Man’s high heels sunk into some kind of gelatinous floor, and as she pulled out the heels, the viscous liquid stretched out into threads three feet long. On the third shelf, in the maternity formula section, all the cans had a production date of July 15, 1987, with an expiration date 栏 printed with a blood-hand impression of “Never Expiring.”

“It’s a special product from our village,” the old woman suddenly appeared behind her, the needle of the syringe against Su Man’s waist, “cultivated with stem cells from miscarried placentas.” Her hand, covered in age spots, pointed at the cans, and the bellies of the pregnant women on the packaging suddenly swelled, tearing the wrapping paper with cracks like stretch marks.

Su Man’s temples throbbed. When she touched the nearest can of formula, a human face outline emerged on the metal surface—it was the likeness of a shareholder from this morning’s boardroom video conference. The can’s temperature rose sharply, and she snatched her hand back, her fingertip already blistered, the pain accompanied by a strange sense of pleasure, like the instant euphoria of an antidepressant injection.

Her phone vibrated in her bag. As Su Man unlocked the screen, thirty unread messages from Chen Mo were automatically deleting, the last one disappearing being a photo of the Zhang family temple mural—a ritual painting drawn with the molecular formula of her medication. The old woman’s breath fanned her ear, carrying the smell of formaldehyde: “Su President, would you like to try it? The experimental equipment donated by your father is still in the village health clinic’s basement.”

The freezer glass suddenly shattered. Glass ampoules swarmed out from the cold air, leaving bloody trails rolling across the tile floor. Su Man kicked aside an ampoule bottle at her feet, discovering the label printed with the code “X-23” of the antidepressant she had developed, with the expiration date glaringly marked as 1987. When she looked up, all the milk powder cans on the shelves turned toward her, the pregnant woman’s image having its mouth torn into a black hole, pouring out cries wrapped in the amniotic membrane.

“You’re using my medicine for sacrifice?” Su Man grabbed the nearest milk powder can and hurled it at the freezer. The aluminum can dented the freezer’s surface, but what gushed out was not powder, but viscous amniotic fluid. The old woman’s laughter became sharp as she ripped open her collar, revealing an electronic interface on her neck. Several data cables were plugged into her pale skin.

The monitor screen suddenly flickered with snowflakes. In the 1987 surveillance footage, the young version of Zhou Yongnian in a white lab coat was operating some kind of instrument. The fetus’s umbilical cord suspended in the glass chamber was connected to an old computer. Su Man recognized the IBM mainframe bearing her father’s company logo, and to her shock, the fetus’s face bore a seven-point resemblance to hers.

“This is the first batch of quantum babies.” The old woman’s nails dug into Su Man’s wrist, the missing little finger position sending a piercing pain. “The eugenics project your father funded back then turned the miscarriages into…” Her voice suddenly turned into electromagnetic interference noise, and the surveillance footage switched to a live feed—Chen Mo’s SUV was being entangled by a giant umbilical cord in the cornfield.

The cash register suddenly pulled out its drawer. Su Man saw a pile of rusty intrauterine devices in the change slot, and the receipt was scrolling “Consumption Item: Maternal Rental for 48 Hours.” The old woman’s wig fell off, revealing a microcircuit board implanted in her scalp, with those flashing LED lights forming a QR code pattern.

“The game has begun.” She tore off her own face skin, and beneath the silicone mask was the face of a thirty-year-old woman, with a centipede-like cesarean scar on her abdomen, “At 23:07 on July 15, 1987, your cells were stored…” Before she could finish, Su Man’s platinum bag hit her solar plexus, and the stun gun hidden in the lining exploded with blue sparks.

The shelves began to tilt. The milk powder cans pressed forward like uterine contractions, and Su Man crawled through the slimy passage. Her silk stockings were entangled by the umbilical cord sticking out of the ground, and those purplish-red tubular structures were converting her red blood cells into binary code. When she touched the fire hydrant, she suddenly remembered what Chen Mo had said about the location of the ancestral hall.

Fluorescent red thread flashed outside the glass curtain wall. Su Man swung the fire hydrant to shatter the glass, and a cold wind filled her nostrils with corn silk. As she leaped out the window, a sticky explosion sound came from behind her—the entire supermarket was collapsing into a giant uterus, the shelves turning into a vascularized meat wall, and the milk powder cans swelling like tumors on the surface.

The asphalt underfoot transformed into placental tissue. With each step Su Man took in her high heels, the ground oozed a viscous fluid mixed with vernix caseosa. The bronze bells hanging from the eaves of the ancestral hall began to tremble, and the surfaces of the 108 bells revealed reliefs of different pregnant women. As she reached for her phone to take a photo, the lens automatically focused on the interior of the bells—each bronze container curled a glowing fetus, connected by umbilical cords to the lightning rod on the roof of the ancestral hall.

“Su Manager arrived twenty years earlier than the agreed time.”

A hoarse male voice came from the shadows of the ancestral hall. Zhou Yongnian leaned against the weathered vermilion pillars, his hands already weaving an infant’s body suit from red woolen thread, with Su Man’s ID number embroidered in gold thread at the collar. Beneath his raincoat, dozens of electronic placentas dangled, their blue indicator lights flashing in sync with the tremor of the bronze bells in the ancestral hall.

Black blood suddenly gushed from Su Man’s amputated finger. When the blood droplets landed on the placental membrane on the ground, the translucent substance suddenly multiplied into mirrors, reflecting a scene from the laboratory in 1987: her father in a protective suit placing a miscarried fetus into a culture chamber, while young Zhou Yongnian held a notebook, the “X-23” on it coinciding with the number of her antidepressant drug development.

“You’re using my medicine to maintain the quantum state fetus?” Su Man snapped the platinum chain of her bag, revealing a hidden submachine gun, “My father funded the eugenics project back then, it has nothing to do with me.”

The bronze bells suddenly froze in place. Zhou Yongnian ripped open the half-finished jumpsuit, revealing densely packed chips inside the lining: “What Su Laoshi donated wasn’t just money.” He pressed the remote hidden in his sleeve, and the ancestral hall plaque “Filial Piety and Fraternal Love” suddenly flipped, revealing an electronic screen on the back—in thirty surveillance feeds, all showing Xiao Man sleeping from different angles.

Su Man’s gun barrel trembled slightly. The third surveillance feed suddenly zoomed in, the barcode on the girl’s nape being decoded into a password for the pharmaceutical company’s database. “The daughter of Officer Chen is Container No. 29,” Zhou Yongnian licked the bloodstain at the tip of his knitting needle, “Your cells are the final maternal body.”

The amniotic membrane on the ground suddenly rose. As Su Man leaped backward, a glass incubator emerged from where she stood, the fetus floating in formaldehyde solution opened its eyes—the irises spun with the stock code of the pharmaceutical company. The miniature device implanted in the fetus’s neck was transmitting a signal, and Su Man’s phone automatically switched to the experimental log video from thirty years ago.

“July 15, 1987, the 23rd quantum entanglement experiment.” The father in the video was wearing a gas mask, “placing the product of conception into the…” The explosion suddenly cut off the recording, but Su Man could clearly see the machine in the background—it was the strange device now placed in the center of the ancestral hall, wrapped in umbilical cords and fiber optics.

The copper bell began to play “Lullaby.” Thirty pregnant women emerged from the shadows behind Zhou Yongnian, their abdomens transparent like glass, each uterus floating with glowing circuit boards. Su Man’s phantom pain in her missing finger reached its peak, and at the moment she pulled the trigger, the bullet passed through the pregnant women, creating quantum ripples—the women were all holograms.

“The rules of the game are simple.” Zhou Yongnian waved a knitting needle, and the ancestral hall doors burst open, “Find the true 30th container, and you can close the quantum uterus.” On the altar behind him, thirty cans of formula were leaking a liquid like cerebrospinal fluid, the photos on the cans rapidly switching—finally settling on a photo of Su Man’s childhood.

The rain suddenly turned to blood rain. When Su Man rushed into the ancestral hall, she found the pillars covered in talismans made of ultrasound reports. The red candles on the altar were made of solidified amniotic fluid, and the candlelight swam with shadowy black figures shaped like DNA chains. When she reached out to touch the middlemost can of formula, the metal shell suddenly softened, taking on the texture of infant skin.

The tank cracked open, revealing translucent fingers. Su Man smashed the tank with the gun butt, and amidst the splashing liquid, a digital placenta hovered. The screen displayed “Maternal Match Rate 98.7%”. The ground of the ancestral hall began to sink, exposing the massive array of cultivation pods below—each pod contained a Su Man clone of a different age, connected to the central quantum computer by umbilical cords.

“This is your father’s gift,” Zhou Yongnian’s voice echoed from all directions. “He said a single daughter needs thirty backups.” The pods suddenly activated collectively, and the clones’ eyes simultaneously turned toward Su Man. Fiber-optic tentacles extended from where their missing right pinky should have been.

Su Man’s platinum bag suddenly vibrated. The location shared by Chen Mo showed he was in the center of the cornfield, but his movement trajectory displayed a probability cloud pattern like atomic orbits. When she tapped the voice message, she heard thirty infants speaking in their own voices: “Mom, it’s time to feed.”

All the 奶粉罐 on the altar exploded. Amid the flood of amniotic fluid, Su Man grabbed the floating digital placenta and activated the hidden interface with the blood from her severed finger. The holographic projection showed a diagram of the underground structure of Wuyin Village—the health clinic, ancestral hall, and cornfield formed a circular orbit of a particle accelerator, and the stone statue at the village entrance was a massive emitter.

The miscarried fetuses all survive in the quantum realm. Zhou Yongnian’s image appeared in the blood rain, “They need thirty bodies to complete the collapse.” The ancestral hall plaque suddenly flipped, revealing a biological server behind it, with each spirit tablet being a preserved fetal brain.

The moment Su Man rushed into the cellar of the ancestral hall, the entire building began to quantumize. As her body passed through the wooden door, she felt the excruciating pain of particle decomposition, with a lingering afterimage of her father’s youth on her retina: “Manman, you will become the most perfect incubator…”

There were thirty glass jars arranged in the cellar. The first twenty-nine were labeled with the names of missing children, while the thirtieth empty jar’s label was slowly oozing blood, gradually revealing Su Man’s name. When she raised the gun butt to smash the empty jar, her phone suddenly received an alert from the pharmaceutical company’s server—the antidepressant ingredients were fusing with the quantum fetal DNA.

The cracks in the glass jars spread like stretch marks. When Su Man’s drop of severed finger blood landed on the thirtieth empty jar, formaldehyde suddenly boiled, revealing her father’s handwritten notes from thirty years ago: “July 15th, 23:07, Manman’s stem cells successfully fused with the quantum embryo.” The phone’s alarm grew sharper as she saw her developed antidepressant molecules reorganizing in the surveillance footage—forming a double helix structure wrapped in a umbilical cord.

The cellar walls were seeping amniotic fluid. As Su Man turned, she knocked over a glass jar, and the chilled fetal brain rolled to her feet, synapses flickering with the patent code of a pharmaceutical company. When she crushed the brain with her stiletto heel, all the jars suddenly glowed red, and the cries of twenty-nine fetuses exploded directly into her cranium through bone conduction.

“Mom… Mom…”

The electronic-sounding 呼唤 had Su Man kneeling to the ground. The antidepressant bottle in her platinum bag popped open automatically, and the pills spelled out “X-23” on the floor. She picked up the pills, shoved them in her mouth, and the bitter taste exploded into a data stream on her tongue—her retina displayed the structure of the underground lab, and the ventilation ducts above her pulsed like umbilical cords.

The hum of a quantum computer came from the depths of the cellar. Su Man moved forward, her hands tracing the damp walls, her flashlight beam revealing graffiti on the wall: countless stick figures of pregnant women marked with red crosses, each cross center embedded with a microchip. When she touched the nearest chip, a sound from 1987 suddenly pierced her eardrum:

“Must destroy all female infants… Quantum collapse requires a pure maternal body…”

It was the father’s voice. Suman’s stomach churned, spitting out black bile mixed with circuit fragments. The flashlight beam swept around the corner, revealing the machine wrapped in umbilical cords—a hadron collider from thirty years ago, repurposed into a uterus shape, with keyboards stained with vernix caseosa scattered on the control panel.

The screen suddenly lit up automatically. The monitoring feed split in two: on the left, Chen Mo’s SUV entangled with the umbilical cord in the cornfield; on the right, Lin Xia dissecting her own wrist in the health clinic. Zhou Yongnian’s face appeared in the center of the screen, his pupils rotating with the DNA sequences of the three main characters.

“Seven minutes left,” his voice echoed with the beeping of a delivery room monitor. “When the quantum entanglement at 23:07 reaches its peak, the aborted fetus from thirty years ago will…” The screen suddenly switched to an ultrasound image, the outline of the female infant rising from the screen, transforming into a 3D projection that grabbed Suman’s collar.

Su Man’s platinum bag slammed into the projection, piercing through the phantom and shattering the glass dome of the console. Soaked in nutrient fluid inside was her missing right pinky finger—the section of the severed limb extended optical fibers, connecting to the collider’s core. When she reached out to touch it, memories from thirty years ago surged in like electric current:

Seven-year-old her lying on the operating table, her father injecting some glowing liquid into her veins. “Man Man will become the perfect incubator…” Zhou Yongnian, wearing a gas mask, recorded the data, while outside the glass window, thirty pregnant women were turning to ash in the bright light.

The basement began to shake. Su Man ripped the optical fibers and jammed them into the stump of her finger, gaining control of the quantum computer in the process of intense pain. The holographic interface unfolded before her eyes, showing the surface of the Misty Village forming a giant Mandelbrot pattern—each turning point of the iteration was the last known location of missing children.

“Warning: Quantum uterus countdown initiated, five minutes remaining.”

In the sound of the alarm, Su Man rushed to the collider’s control console. Her blood automatically typed the pharmaceutical company’s database password on the keyboard, and the screen popped up with the fetal consciousness upload progress bar—reaching 97%. As the last three clones crawled out of the culture chamber, she pulled out the electronic placenta that was still being infused and inserted the catheter into her carotid artery.

“Mom, it’s my turn to terminate the experiment this time.”

The moment the plasma surged into the quantum computer, all the monitoring screens began to distort. Chen Mo’s SUV broke through the cornfield encirclement, the headlights illuminating the bloody light column rising from the direction of the ancestral hall; Lin Xia cut the umbilical cord wrapped around herself with an autopsy knife, rushing toward the village entrance statue covered in glowing QR codes; while the red thread in Zhou Yongnian’s hand suddenly burst into flames, revealing the spirits of thirty pregnant women within the flames.

Su Man’s retina began to display a binary rain. When she initiated the collider’s self-destruction program, a placenta-like ceiling fell from the basement ceiling, enveloping her inside a biological chamber. Three minutes left on the countdown, antidepressants and quantum fetal DNA merged in her bloodstream, and glowing tentacles grew where her missing pinky finger used to be, piercing the console’s core.

“Mom… don’t…”

The voices of twenty-nine fetuses suddenly became clear. Su Man saw her abdomen swell, and glowing circuit patterns 浮现 ed beneath her skin. She grabbed the surgical knife and cut open her belly, but what she pulled out wasn’t internal organs, but an electronic uterus wrapped in fiber optics—the screen was playing the moment her father pressed the stop button in 1987.

A quantum storm swept through the cellar. When Su Man threw the electronic uterus at the collider, time suddenly froze. Zhou Yongnian appeared in the quantum field of fission, his body decomposing into red yarn, the yarn ends connected to the umbilical cords of each missing child.

“You are the true container number 30.” His voice was filled with electromagnetic interference, “Since 1987…”

The shockwave of the self-destruct program swallowed the rest of the sentence. In the bright light, Suman saw the misty village overlapping thirty times in time and space: the work team of 1987 was burning the bodies of female infants, villagers of 1997 were kneeling before the stone statues, and in the cornfield of the present, the figures of the three main characters were flickering in quantum entanglement.

When the electronic clock sounded at 23:07, Suman gave birth to a luminescent entity in agony—infant made of antidepressant molecules, with the entire commercial secrets of the pharmaceutical group spinning in its pupils. At the moment she bit through the quantum umbilical cord, all the glass jars simultaneously exploded, thirty streams of blood intertwined above the ancestral hall to form a DNA chain.

Chapter 3 Embryo Amulets

When Lin Xia’s scalpel cut through the seventh layer of subcutaneous tissue, the deceased’s stomach suddenly emitted 婴儿啼哭. The fluorescent tubes in the morgue flickered sputteringly, casting web-like shadows under the shadowless lights. The female corpse on the stainless steel table had a slightly protruding abdomen, with lividity 呈现出 an eerie pinkish hue, as if someone had injected diluted strawberry milkshake into the blood vessels. The old wound on Lin Xia’s wrist began to ooze blood, the bandage stained with patterns resembling a QR code—this was the symptom that appeared whenever she touched a corpse connected to that rainy night. “Death time 23:07.” she murmured into the recorder, using the blade tip to lift the adhered peritoneum. As the forceps probed the abdominal cavity, her fingertips trembled with an electric shock-like sensation—not the bioelectricity a corpse should have. Hidden in the folds of the uterine wall was a glass ampule covered in mucus, with fetal hair forming a Möbius loop shape in the pale yellow liquid.

Suddenly, the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing came from the changing room. Lin Xia hid the ampule in her breast pocket and, as she turned, noticed a corn leaf stuck to the hem of her white coat, with amniotic fluid seeping between the veins. In the shadows under the autopsy table, something was mimicking her breathing rate.

“Who?” she raised the autopsy knife, its blade casting thirty overlapping shadows on the wall. The indicator lights on the refrigerators suddenly turned all red, the temperature display jumping to “1987.7.15”. As Lin Xia backed away, she bumped into the instrument trolley, the surgical scissors and rib clamps clattering to the ground, striking out the rhythm of “Lullaby” in the silence.

The door 缝 of the morgue began to seep red yarn. Lin Xia used a hemostat to grip the doorknob, finding the metal surface coated with a layer of wax. She turned and ran toward the emergency exit, but the fire door transformed into a double-spring delivery room door, with frosted glass marked by thirty palm-sized bloodstains.

“Dr. Lin, why are you working late?”

Zhou Yongnian’s voice came from the ventilation duct, mixed with the hum of the uterine contraction monitor. Lin Xia’s wristwatch started to reverse, the red digits of 23:07 burning a mark into her skin. She pulled out the miniature gun hidden in her shoe heel, but the bullets had turned into cotton swabs soaked with gauze.

The refrigerated cabinet suddenly popped open. Seven female corpses sat up like marionettes, their cesarean scars splitting open simultaneously, revealing electronic placentas woven with fiber optics inside. Lin Xia’s temples throbbed violently; she recognized these corpses as the victims of missing person cases in the past three years—the medical examiner’s files clearly recorded them as traffic accident victims.

“Baby hair is a quantum antenna.” Zhou Yongnian’s projection appeared behind the crowd of corpses, the red thread he was weaving connected to the umbilical cords of the female corpses, “Back then you couldn’t save that child, now you can make a new choice.” His needle pointed at Lin Xia’s abdomen, the surgical suit suddenly tensed as if an invisible hand were measuring the pelvic dimensions.

Lin Xia broke through the window and leaped into the rainstorm. The medical rubber gloves slipped on the escape ladder, blood beads from her palm tracing an embryo shape on the rust. When she fell into the garbage disposal room, the vial in her arms suddenly heated up, the baby hair piercing through the glass and leaving a binary code on her back.

“Found… us…”

The electronic synthetic voice called out, mixed with the sound of rain. After Lin Xia’s pupils adapted to the darkness, she saw thirty biological waste bins pulsing, each marked with the recycling logo of a pharmaceutical company. When she lifted the lid of the nearest bin, a pile of rotten gauze buried an old ultrasound machine, the screen showing a surveillance footage from 1987:

The person in the white coat is administering medication to a pregnant woman, while the face of that pregnant woman—matches the young appearance of the seventh body in the morgue right now.

The phone vibrated in the pocket. In the photo sent by Chen Mo, the inner wall of Xiao Man’s 奶粉罐 was painted with blood to form a DNA double helix. Su Man’s voice message interfered with quantum noise: “Every vial is a quantum beacon…” The sudden collision sound of the forceps inserted made Lin Xia’s ears ring, and black blood mixed with circuit fragments surged from her nose.

The iron door of the trash room suddenly 凹陷. Lin Xia grabbed the rusty IV stand, seeing the convex mark of an infant’s head appear on the door panel. The vials of fetal hair began to resonate, the glass surface 浮现出雾隐村地图, all the missing case locations forming a circular orbit like a particle collider.

“I guess I’m part of the loop.” She crushed the vial, the fetal hair 钻进 her wrist scar to reconstruct the nerves. When the pain reached its peak, memories from 1987 surged forward:

On a stormy night, the health clinic, I was forced to administer abortion drugs to thirty pregnant women. The 胎毛 of those female fetuses were placed into ampoules, and Zhou Yongnian strung the glass bottles together with red wool thread to form a quantum array. In the deepest memory, there was a pregnant woman with the logo of the pharmaceutical company tattooed on her abdomen, who inserted a microchip into her hand before giving birth.

Scaly friction sounds came from the ventilation ducts. Lin Xia lifted the ceiling panel and climbed into the corridor filled with the smell of formaldehyde. While crawling, her elbow pressed on a bundle of ultrasound reports, the yellowed images showing the female fetus writing “Save Mom” with the umbilical cord on the paper.

The end of the pipe led to the incinerator. Lin Xia kicked open the iron wire mesh and saw a pile of unborn fetuses waiting to be burned in the furnace, each small hand tied with a coded bracelet. When she touched the nearest bracelet, a holographic projection showed her father’s face: “X-23 project, 108th experiment, quantum rebirth protocol activated.”

Fresh blood suddenly seeped from the furnace wall. As Lin Xia turned around, thirty electronic placentas floated out of the shadows, the blue indicator lights forming her former employee number. The 胎毛 drilled out from her wrist wound, forming DNA chain-like antennas in the air, receiving quantum signals from the stone statue at the village entrance.

“You finally got through.” Zhou Yongnian’s voice came from the incinerator chimney, “The No. 7 sample you secretly kept back then, it’s time to return it to its rightful owner.” The ventilation ducts began to narrow, squeezing the oxygen out of Lin Xia’s lungs, as images of Xiaoman twitching in the back seat of an SUV flashed before her retinas.

Lin Xia cut open her trachea with an autopsy knife. In the whirlwind of images before suffocation, she saw herself burying an ampule into the foundation of the clinic wall—the very one in her pocket now. As the blade pierced her chest, fetal hair suddenly burst into bright light, etching a map of the underground network of Wuyin Village onto her skin.

“Third brick from the east of the incineration room.” The voice of a pregnant woman echoed in her memory, “There’s a termination code in the chip.”

Lin Xia’s blood traced the pattern of pregnancy marks in the brick 缝. The moment the compartment popped open, the edges of the microchip pierced her fingertip, and the quantum key from thirty years ago traveled through her bloodstream straight to her brain. The incinerator control console suddenly activated, and an old-fashioned CRT screen flickered, showing the figure of Suman in the ancestral hall.

“Warning: Quantum delivery procedure initiated.”

The furnace’s steel insides began to tremble. Lin Xia inserted the blood-stained chip into the crack in the console, and the old-fashioned keyboard suddenly sprouted fuzzy keypads. When her blood droplet fell into the ESC key groove, the display showed the termination code she had manually written thirty years ago—the program she had typed with tears that night, now taking root and growing in the quantum realm.

“Warning: Maternal consciousness is overlaying the system.”

The mechanical voice transformed into a wail of a pregnant woman. Lin Xia’s wristwatch countdown stopped at 23:07, and the glass of the watch face seeped amniotic fluid. The furnace observation window suddenly reflected Zhou Yongnian’s face; his pupils split into countless glowing ampoules, each containing the image of her miscarried fetus.

“The 7th sample you hid back then,” his voice rumbled like a crematorium, “is reborn in the veins of Chen Mo’s daughter.” The fetus corpse inside the furnace suddenly opened its electronic eyes, blue laser beams interweaving into a 3D projection of Xiaoman, as the barcode on the girl’s nape transformed into the stock code of the pharmaceutical company.

Lin Xia’s scalpel pierced the console. The fetal hair buttons 疯狂 ly jumped, branding binary burns onto her skin. When the termination code finally executed, the entire incinerator turned into a transparent uterus, the walls 浮现出 scenes of that rainy night in 1987: young Lin Xia holding the 7th ampule, burying a time capsule in the basement of the health clinic.

A quantum storm gushed out from the furnace mouth. Lin Xia’s nurse uniform turned to ash, revealing her arm covered in old needle holes—the traces of the X-23 drug injection were now glowing. She leaped into the burning furnace, the fetal hair reassembling into a protective membrane in the flames, as the explosion of thirty electronic placentas propelled her into a temporal rift.

When she landed in the corridor of the health clinic, Lin Xia’s watch showed July 15, 1987, 23:07. The scent of disinfectant mixed with the smell of burnt flesh, and she saw young Lin Xia trembling in front of the operating room door. Passing through the quantumized walls, the present-day scalpel overlapped with the past 注射器, piercing into the swollen abdomen of the pregnant woman.

“Stop!” Lin Xia grabbed the wrist of her younger self. The pupils of the two generations of forensic pathologists reflected double irises under the shadowless light. Fetal hair 钻 out from the temporal rift, wrapping around the medication about to be pushed into the vein. The pregnant woman on the operating table suddenly sat up, an electronic umbilical cord extending from the split in her abdomen, piercing the circuit board on the ceiling.

Zhou Yongnian broke through the door, wearing a polyester Zhongshan suit from 1987, with a red yarn in his hand connected to the call bells of thirty wards. “Lin nurse, this is the organization’s decision.” The chain of his pocket watch was tied with a birth control ring, the surface 刻着 23:07, “Quantum eugenics requires absolute obedience.”

Lin Xia’s fetal hair protective membrane began to peel. She snatched the chip from the pregnant woman’s hand—the very one found in the incinerator—and inserted it into the carotid artery of her younger self. The two Lin Xias from different timelines convulsed simultaneously, memory data streams colliding in the quantum field, turning the operating room lights blood-red.

“No!” Zhou Yongnian’s pocket watch exploded into a rain of gears. The fetus in the pregnant woman’s abdomen extended a translucent arm, grabbing the red yarn from 1987 and tearing it violently. The corridor of the health clinic began to collapse, the temporal rift blooming in front of Lin Xia’s eyes in the shape of a birth canal.

The disinfectant from 1987 blended with the formaldehyde of the present in a quantum storm, casting crystalized corridor walls. Lin Xia saw two versions of herself trembling in quantum superposition—the nurse’s uniform from the past drenched in cold sweat, the current anatomy lab coat soaked in fetal blood. The electronic umbilical cord extending from the pregnant woman’s belly suddenly split, one pricking into Zhou Yongnian’s left eye, the other wrapping around Lin Xia’s ankle.

“The closed loop is almost complete!” Zhou Yongnian from 1987 covered his eye socket spewing cerebrospinal fluid, the red yarn in his hand quantumizing, “Thirty years from now… you will do it with your own hands…” His warning was torn apart by temporal and spatial tremors, the pocket watch gears embedding into the wall, each tooth mark seeping 过期 thirty years of amniotic fluid.

Lin Xia grabbed the pregnant woman’s wrist, the chip conducting data streams between their skin. When the termination code was finally injected into the fetus, the entire health clinic began pixelating, the tile floor 浮现出无数个"23:07" fluorescent codes. The pregnant woman’s abdomen suddenly became transparent, Lin Xia seeing the glowing vials suspended in the electronic uterus—exactly the one she discovered on the anatomy table in the present.

“Grab… the time anchor…”

The pregnant woman’s vocal cords vibrated, producing the reverberation of two spaces and times. Lin Xia reached her hand into the quantized abdomen, her fingertips piercing through thirty years of temporal dust, grasping the ampoule of fetal hair that was both cause and effect. The moment the glass bottle left the mother’s body, the 1987 health clinic dimmed like an old television, and the flames of the present-day incinerator gushed into the temporal rift.

Lin Xia fell into the wave of fire. The fetal hair protective membrane burned to ashes, revealing the old scars on her back—this was the childhood trauma she had never mentioned to Chen Mo. As the scorching metal ground hit her shoulder blades, she heard herself from two eras scream simultaneously, the sound waves coalescing into a new temporal vortex in the quantum field.

The alarm of the present-day health clinic echoed to the heavens. Lin Xia crawled out of the incinerator ashes, the fetal hair in her wrist scar reassembling DNA chains. She looked at the broken observation window, where Zhou Yongnian from 1987 was staring back at her through the flames, his intact right eye weeping blood, forming a glowing QR code on the ground of the present.

The female corpse on the autopsy table suddenly sat up. Lin Xia’s ampoule of fetal hair began to resonate, the electronic placenta on the corpse’s abdomen blasting blue light, projecting a holographic map of Wuyin Village into the air. Seven red points flashed on the ground, connecting to form the pattern of the Big Dipper—each coordinate was the place where she had buried the ampoule back then.

“Mom…”

The vocal cords of the female corpse vibrated with the chorus of thirty infants. Lin Xia’s nurse badge slipped from her collar, the metallic surface reflecting instead the access card for the pharmaceutical company’s laboratory. As she picked up the card, a mechanical hum echoed from below, and the entire sanatorium began to sink toward the Earth’s core.

The phone rang amidst the ashes. In the video message from Chen Mo, Xiao Man was convulsing in the back seat of the SUV, each of the girl’s veins revealing the contours of vials. Su Man’s location signal shifted from the ancestral hall to the underground laboratory of the pharmaceutical company, the movement 轨迹 tracing a DNA double helix on the quantum map.

Lin Xia crashed through the safety door leading underground. The stair railings were entwined with fresh umbilical cords, viscous amniotic fluid flowing down the steps. When she reached the deepest level of the cellar, the glass dome of the cryopreservation chamber was seeping blood. Inside, thirty Lin Xia clones simultaneously opened their eyes, each chest bearing the designation “X-23-7.”

The console’s display suddenly lit up. The 1987 experiment log played automatically: “Sample No. 7 (Lin Xia) exhibits quantum observer traits… Suggest extracting ova…” Lin Xia’s nails dug into the console, leaving bloody pregnancy marks on the resin surface.

The ampoule of fetal hair suddenly 悬浮. The liquid inside the glass bottle evaporated into nebular matter, forming a Möbius strip above the cryogenic chamber. When Lin Xia reached out to touch the ring, all the clones simultaneously opened their mouths: “We are the thirty possibilities of your miscarriage.”

The underground laboratory began to shake. Lin Xia ripped the IV tube from the clone pod, the pale blue nutrient liquid solidifying in the air into a shape of a surgical knife. She threw the ampoule at the main console screen, the quantumized glass fragments piercing through time and space, with the 1987 experiment data rushing into the present like a flood.

“Warning: Maternal contamination has reached critical levels.”

The mechanical sound was covered by the laughter of an infant. Lin Xia saw her reflection split on the surface of the cryopod, each mirror holding ampoules from different years. When she gripped the surgical knife and plunged it toward her heart, all the clones suddenly exploded, and the electronic placenta formed a shield in the air.

“Are you going to kill us thirty times?”

The chorus of the clones echoed in the laboratory. Lin Xia’s lanugo gushed from the wound, weaving into the neural network of a quantum computer in the air. When her brain waves connected to the network, she finally saw the truth of the Misty Village—the entire village was a massive particle collider, and every villager was a living sensor for the observation experiment.

A scream came from underground. Lin Xia crashed through the concrete wall following the sound source, breaking into a secret chamber filled with liquid crystal wombs. Su Man was being hung in the air by thirty optical fiber umbilical cords, and the quantum tentacles growing from her severed fingers were rewriting the pharmaceutical company’s database.

“Lin Xia! Destroy the main ganglia!”

Su Man’s scream mixed with electronic noise. Lin Xia’s fetal hair surgical knife pierced the nearest liquid crystal uterus, the clone spasmed in the culture fluid, and the cornfield in this world collapsed into a circular pit. When the seventh uterus was destroyed, the sky in the direction of the ancestral hall cracked with quantum gaps, and Chen Mo, holding Xiao Man, fell from the rainstorm of 1987. The 奶粉罐 in Xiao Man’s arms exploded, and the bluish-gray powder solidified into the self of thirty years ago— that curled in the corner of the laboratory, stuffing paper into the vials as an intern nurse.

“Dr. Lin! Catch the child!”

Chen Mo’s roar pierced through the spacetime barrier. When Lin Xia leaped, she shattered the liquid crystal uterus, quantumized amniotic fluid wrapped her body, and the fetal hair reformed into an optical camouflage in the fluid. As she caught Xiao Man, the barcode on the girl’s nape suddenly projected a holographic keyboard, with floating keys representing thirty different July 15ths of different years.

“By 1987…” Chen Mo’s SUV burned at the edge of the Quantum Pit, “That’s the anchor!”

Lin Xia’s fingers swept through the hologram. When her fingertips touched the 1987 button, Xiao Man suddenly opened his third eye—the pupil spun with the surveillance footage from the basement of the health clinic: young Lin Xia hiding the chip in the wall tile, while the blood of Su Man’s severed finger seeped from the crack.

Spacetime began to collapse. Lin Xia, holding Xiao Man, fell into the wreckage of the liquid crystal uterus, electronic umbilical cords like spiderwebs entangling their limbs. Su Man’s quantum tentacles suddenly pierced Lin Xia’s temple, with the memory data streams of the three women colliding in the neural synapses:

The chip Lin Xia hid in 1987, the stop button pressed by Su Man’s father in 1997, and the parenting manual torn open by Chen Mo in the burning SUV—inside the pages were thirty photos of missing children, each backside printed with the molecular formula of X-23.

“This is the true sacrificial ritual.” Zhou Yongnian’s voice seeped out from all electronic devices, “The Trinity Mother Body…”

Lin Xia’s fetal hair surgical knife suddenly glowed. She cut the quantum umbilical cord wrapped around Xiaoman, and the girl’s cry suddenly turned into a lullaby in thirty languages. At the moment the blade pierced the main ganglion, all the clone pods in the underground laboratory collectively exploded, and electronic amniotic fluid flooded all the displays.

Su Man broke free from the fiber optic cocoon, and the blood spraying from the amputated finger was no longer blood, but glowing quantum code. Her platinum bag became a weapon, firing thirty micro-missiles, each warhead loaded with neurotoxins purified from antidepressants.

“Catch this!” Su Man threw the electronic uterus to Lin Xia, “Pierce the core with the ampoule!”

The moment the fetal hair ampoule collided with the electronic uterus, time and space suddenly froze. Lin Xia saw her 1987 self holding the No. 7 ampoule, burying a time capsule in the pouring rain; Chen Mo of the present world crashed a burning SUV into the village’s stone statue; Su Man of the future reassembled the pharmaceutical group’s database in the quantum cloud — the three temporal flashpoints formed a Möbius loop.

As the glass bottle pierced the core, amidst the explosive glare, the true form of Zhou Yongnian appeared: a quantum puppet woven from 300,000 strands of red hair, with each strand tip connected to the umbilical cord of a miscarried fetus. His body disintegrated in the data stream, revealing a rotating black hole within his abdomen — it was the quantum state collective of all missing children.

“Game… restarting…” Zhou Yongnian’s afterimage murmured before fading, “Thirty years later…”

Lin Xia embraced Xiaoman in the shockwave. As they fell into the temporal rift, the girl’s third eye suddenly wept, tears coalescing in the void into a new ampoule bottle — the fetal hair floating inside formed the numerals “2037.”