Chapter 20: The Elegy of the Roots
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The cold command echoed like the verdict of cosmic law within the subterranean command center of the Time Bureau, buried deep beneath the Alps. Thorn’s youthful, flawless face hovered on the main screen, his right eye a rotating crimson galaxy radiating an absolute, inhuman will. As the order “Global Harvest” was issued, the lighting in the entire circular command hall dimmed, leaving only the massive holographic map at the center—covered with countless branching timelines—as the sole source of light. The blue anchor points flickering upon it resembled stars awaiting slaughter.
A colossal hand, composed purely of crimson data streams, slowly materialized at the source of the timeline—a cold mathematical singularity symbolizing absolute order. It disregarded the direction of time and spatial barriers, exuding a suffocating oppression beyond physical laws as it brazenly reached out, grasping at the dazzling network of temporal anchor points scattered across the map like a starry river.
The invisible harvest began.
Greenwich Observatory. Little Key’s body remained frail, her near-translucent outline seeming to dissipate at any moment in the cool night breeze. She pressed her hand against the observatory’s ancient stonework, desperately trying to re-sense the faint pulse belonging to the Prime Meridian, seeking a chance to strike back. Suddenly, a piercing pain surged from the depths of her soul without warning! As if an invisible, icy hook had impaled the core of her existence, attempting to forcibly rip away her most essential connection to the time anchors.
“Ugh—!” she uttered a short cry of pain, her small body jerking as if struck by an electric current. The infinity mark on her wrist, symbolizing her identity as a Gardener, erupted in dazzling blue light, but this glow was violently drawn away by an overwhelming, irresistible suction! Her body rapidly grew thin and blurred before the naked eye, her consciousness caught in a violent vortex, her link to the observatory growing perilously fragile.
Cairo Obelisk. Hassan was directing children to construct a temporary resonance matrix from obsidian shards, attempting to stabilize the local temporal flow. His burly frame convulsed violently, his face instantly drained of color as if struck by an invisible hammer to the chest. The sand beneath his feet seemed to transform into quicksand, a powerful downward drag wrenching at him. Blue light flared from his arm in resistance, but it quickly dimmed under the crushing force of the crimson harvest. Falling to one knee, his muscular arms braced the ground with white-knuckled grip, a low, suppressed roar of agony escaping his throat as he fought against the force attempting to tear him from this land and the temporal node he guarded.
Tokyo Tower summit. Leon’s mobile control station had long since been shattered by Thorn’s crimson projection. He curled up amidst the broken instrument debris, his body scorched in multiple places by energy burns, his breath faint. When the harvest force descended, he was powerless to resist. The Gardener’s mark on his wrist flickered faintly before going dark. He felt as if his bones had been removed, his body collapsing onto the cold steel plate, eyes hollowly gazing at Tokyo’s chaotic night sky. Blood foamed at his lips as he murmured, “Edgar… we… did our best…” His presence was rapidly being erased, his figure fading like smoke.
Deep beneath New York. Lina hid in the shadows of an abandoned subway tunnel, surrounded by her rudimentary communication device pieced together from gears and discarded circuits. She tried to capture the faint, distant resonance signal of the Dandelion Network. Suddenly, an icy malevolence, as tangible as an ice spear, plunged into her consciousness! Her small frame trembled violently, curling into a ball as her teeth chattered. The connection she struggled to maintain with the residual mark on the London sewer switch was severed like a forcibly cut umbilical cord! Overwhelmed by loss and deprivation, she let out a piercing wail that echoed long in the empty, dark tunnel.
Deep within the Tower Bridge foundations in London. The once stone chamber was now ruins; massive rusted gear assemblies lay in shattered heaps like the bones of a giant beast. Severed cables hung in the darkness, occasionally sparking dangerous electric arcs. The miniature models representing the seven Gardeners had long since been crushed; only cold air and silence attested to the fierce battles that had taken place here. The harvest force swept through the ruins like an invisible storm, kicking up dust and erasing the last traces of residual energy. Here, nothing remained to harvest—only utter silence.
Temporal anchor points scattered across the globe—monumental like obelisks or humble as memory capsules buried beneath London’s newsstand basement—all emitted silent laments under Thorn’s crimson giant hand. The blue light dots on the holographic map extinguished in waves, like candles snuffed out. The network forming the roots of the temporal tree was being violently uprooted.
Ruins of the deep Tokyo laboratory.
The young Cain had barely regained a flicker of consciousness after the annihilation shockwave. Beneath his heavy protective helmet, his forehead throbbed painfully, his vision darkening. Yet a new perception network covering the entire city—the Dandelion Network—was like newly opened eyes, forcibly implanting Tokyo’s “pulse” into his mind.
He “saw” the terrifying crimson harvest hand on the timeline map.
He “heard” the anguished cries of his comrades transmitted across time and space.
He “felt” the violent tremors transmitted from the deep blue core beneath his feet (the remnant consciousness of Cain symbiotically linked with Pandora)—the brutal tearing sensation relayed back from countless ordinary nodes connected to the Dandelion Network (keys, medicine bottles, coins, leaves…) forcibly severed by the harvest force.
“Stop!” The roar did not come from his throat but from his raging consciousness, which, through the newly established Dandelion Network, slammed fiercely against the crimson giant hand hovering at the timeline’s source.
His mental assault was like a stone cast into the sea, instantly swallowed and obliterated by the crimson data stream representing absolute order and cold harvest. Not even a ripple was stirred. The massive backlash surged through the network, crashing violently against his conscious core, blacking his vision and nearly causing him to faint again. His body trembled uncontrollably in the protective suit, cold sweat soaking the lining. This was a futile struggle like an ant shaking a tree.
Despair engulfed him like an icy tide. Thorn’s power was a dimension-level crushing force beyond his imagination!
Yet, in this suffocating abyss of despair, a clear pulse filled with resolute intent emanated from the violently trembling deep blue core beneath his feet. The pulse’s essence was not words but a set of highly compressed spatiotemporal coordinates and an extraordinarily complex energy resonance frequency—the only theoretical “loophole” Cain’s last remaining will had discovered after Pandora symbiote’s deep analysis of the Dandelion Network’s structure! A minuscule temporal branch, like a capillary, temporarily overlooked by Thorn’s merciless efficiency.
Coordinates pointed to: deep underground New York, the abandoned subway tunnel where Lina hid!
Frequency: precisely matching the resonance frequency of the rudimentary gear device Lina carried!
“Lina! Resonator! Coordinates XXXX! Frequency Omega-7!” Young Cain poured the last of his soul’s strength into transmitting this data through the Dandelion Network, hurling it like a stone into the water toward the consciousness node in New York that was being torn apart and painfully curled in agony.
Underground New York. Abandoned subway tunnel.
Lina curled up in the shadow beside the cold rails, pain from her soul’s rupture clouding her awareness. Just as she felt herself about to be completely extracted and dissolve into nothingness, a violent yet crystal-clear pulse of thought struck her chaotic consciousness like a lifeline thrown in the dark.
“Coordinates XXXX! Frequency Omega-7!”
It was Cain! No, it was that young Cain, his voice filled with resolve and a trace of pleading she had never heard before!
Lina’s unfocused pupils suddenly sharpened! Her survival instinct and the call from her comrade overwhelmed all pain! Her oil- and blood-stained hand, like a dying person clutching a last straw, frantically searched among the debris around her and found it! The scratched gear resonator modified from an abandoned pocket watch core!
No time to think! No time to calibrate! Relying on countless failed attempts and the explosive force of this last gamble, she pressed the resonator firmly against the cold tunnel wall! The coordinates were already imprinted in the pulse, frequency Omega-7! She summoned her last mental strength, forcing the resonator’s output power far beyond its design limits!
Buzz—!!!
A piercing hum beyond human hearing erupted from the gear in Lina’s hand! The sound amplified, reflected, and layered infinitely within the narrow tunnel! The resonator instantly overloaded, sparking blinding electric arcs and emitting acrid smoke that burned Lina’s palm! Yet she held on as if holding on to life itself!
This forcibly triggered, destructively noise-laden resonance frequency precisely struck the coordinate Cain had sent! It was not a spatial coordinate but a nearly ignored, extremely subtle branch node on the timeline!
Like forcing a twisted, high-frequency vibrating inferior iron nail into the finely tuned mechanism of a colossal gear assembly!
Boom!
An invisible, violent ripple of space radiated outward from that point in the New York subway tunnel, surging upstream along the subtle temporal branch like a supernova explosion toward the timeline source—the singularity at Thorn’s crimson giant hand!
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Time Bureau command hall.
On the central holographic map, the crimson data torrent representing the harvest surged forward, extinguishing blue anchor lights like a storm. Suddenly, near a faint spot in the New York area—so inconspicuous it was not even registered as a valid anchor point—a violent, chaotic energy turbulence erupted without warning! This chaotic stream, like a super lightning bolt in a cosmic storm, tore along a subtle timeline branch that should have been covered by the harvest hand but existed as a redundant path, striking with incredible speed and force toward the core singularity at the map’s source!
“Warning! High-intensity spacetime turbulence detected! Source: NY-7 redundant branch! Target: core singularity! Energy mode… chaotic disorder! Logical structure… unresolvable! Threat level… overflow!” The shrill alarm drowned out all system prompts as red lights flashed wildly throughout the command hall.
The image of Thorn floating on the main screen, his youthful, perfect, godlike sculpted face, showed for the first time a subtle flicker—not fear, but like a momentary “glitch” when a precision instrument encounters an incomprehensible variable. The rotation speed of the crimson galaxy in his right eye suddenly spiked as he tried to analyze and suppress this sudden chaotic assault.
However, the resonance turbulence forcibly triggered by Lina at the cost of her life was not an orderly energy attack but pure, extreme chaos! It was like a drop of scalding, impurity-laden oil falling into a cold, precise mechanical heart!
Sizzle—!
The crimson data flow hand abruptly stalled the instant it touched the core singularity! The data torrent representing absolute order was forcibly invaded and corrupted by this chaotic turbulence! A subtle yet glaring black garbled code appeared like a plague inside the crimson giant hand, representing “error” and “loss of control,” spreading swiftly!
The giant hand’s movement faltered with a deadly imperceptible delay!
Tokyo laboratory ruins.
In the infinitesimal moment Thorn’s harvest hand was delayed by the chaotic turbulence erupting in New York!
The deep blue core formed by Cain’s remnant will and the Pandora symbiote seized the fleeting chance bought by Lina’s sacrifice! It ceased resisting the overwhelming harvest force and instead compressed and transformed all its energy in a supremely intricate, nearly self-destructive manner!
Hum!
The fractal nest of golden mycelium encasing the core suddenly collapsed inward, like a star undergoing gravitational collapse toward its death! All matter and energy were forcibly squeezed into the deep blue orb at the core!
The orb’s light instantly extinguished—not dimmed, but condensed to the extreme—forming an absolute dark point: a miniature “seed singularity” containing terrifying energy and information!
Immediately, this dark singularity exploded along the golden filaments of the Dandelion Network connecting countless ordinary nodes throughout Tokyo with a superluminal speed of thought!
This was not energy diffusion but information “seeding”!
An unimaginably vast information torrent, fusing all of Cain’s memories, emotions, will, and Pandora virus’s instinctive affinity for life’s emotions, compressed into countless tiny “consciousness seeds,” was precisely injected into every ordinary node connected to each Dandelion filament!
The copper key in a pocket suddenly grew scorching hot, as if a galaxy were spinning inside;
A plastic medicine bottle on a Ginza street vibrated slightly, its cartoon pattern glowing faintly;
A badge on a laboratory ventilation duct revealed golden veins;
Ginkgo leaves on a park bench pulsed with deep blue light;
The edge of a coin at a convenience store checkout shimmered with ripples;
Sweat stains on elevator buttons evaporated into barely perceptible mist…
Within Tokyo, every ordinary item “seeded” became a miniature “consciousness storage” and “emotional resonance device”!
At this moment, the entire Dandelion Network underwent a fundamental transformation! It was no longer merely a symbiotic network to channel and soothe emotions; it became a living web of memory and consciousness across the city, bearing Cain’s existence imprint—a “backup of existence” forged from the everyday objects of countless ordinary people, resisting temporal erasure!
Thorn’s crimson harvest hand crushed over Tokyo’s skies, attempting to strip the core. But what it grasped was no longer a single powerful energy source but countless microscopic nodes scattered across the city, each carrying fragments of Cain’s consciousness—like trying to grasp smoke with a palm!
“Target existence form… dispersed… particulate… unable to effectively harvest!” The Time Bureau system issued a puzzled alert. The harvest command in Tokyo faced an unprecedented logical dilemma!
Greenwich Observatory.
Just as Little Key’s consciousness was on the verge of complete extraction, her body about to utterly dissipate!
The copper button she had long treasured, engraved with the Greenwich Observatory emblem and sewn inside the faded old coat Edgar had made for her, suddenly became scorching hot! A massive, familiar information flow mixed with Cain’s last resolute will surged like a warm tide into her collapsing conscious core!
This was not an injection of energy but an “anchoring” of existence! Cain, through the Dandelion Network, had forcibly “seeded” part of his existence onto the most ordinary object beside her, providing her with a final foothold against the harvest!
“Uncle Cain…” Little Key’s unfocused pupils instantly sharpened! A power born from Edgar’s teachings, a love of the stars, and Cain’s unyielding will exploded within her small body! She no longer struggled in vain against the soul-ripping hook but suddenly threw open her arms, leaning back and summoning all her life force to slam her consciousness, along with the information carried by the scorching copper button, fiercely against the Prime Meridian coordinate representing Earth’s spatiotemporal origin beneath her feet!
“Grandpa Edgar! Guide me!” she shouted with her soul.
Buzz—!!!
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A beam of silver-white light far more concentrated and pure than before, containing spatiotemporal origin information and Edgar’s residual imprint, shot not toward the enemy but vertically into the boundless cosmic depths, centered on Greenwich Observatory!
This beam was like a precise coordinate beacon, a lighthouse pointing to the source of time!
It pierced through Thorn’s temporal fog and the crimson interference of the harvest hand, clearly marking the “now” in the vast, chaotic temporal map—the moment when the Dandelion Network completed the consciousness seeding and Cain’s existence achieved distributed backup!
This beam was not an attack but a “navigation”!
Time Bureau command hall.
Thorn’s crimson giant hand had just barely suppressed the pollution from the chaotic turbulence in New York and was about to stabilize the harvest process. The pure silver-white beam shot from Greenwich stabbed like a red-hot steel needle into the core area of the holographic time map!
The beam itself bore no attack power, yet the information it carried detonated like an informational bomb within Thorn’s universe of absolute order!
It unmistakably pinpointed a “time point” deliberately blurred by Thorn’s “reverse growth equation” and accelerated rewinding—a “now” full of variables: the birth moment of the Dandelion Era!
“High-dimensional spacetime coordinate beacon detected! Pointing to… current timeline branch… core node… ‘Dandelion Network consciousness seeding completion state’… logical conflict! Logical conflict!” The system alarm grew sharp and chaotic.
On Thorn’s young, perfect face, the brief “glitch” instantly turned into an unmistakable shock! The crimson galaxy in his right eye spun wildly and flickered, even showing a fleeting data snow pattern! This beam was not an attack on his power but forcibly “pinned” the accelerated timeline rewind he had meticulously driven—intended to erase all variables—to the current, variable-filled “now”!
The reverse growth equation’s Δt = –71 rewinding process was forcibly interfered with and stalled by this precise coordinate beacon! Like a high-speed train forcibly engaged with an emergency brake! The speed of temporal rollback sharply slowed!
What enraged Thorn’s core logic even more was that the beam’s source was one of his personally “harvested” targets—the little girl who should have been easily erased! She still harbored Edgar’s legacy, capable of precisely locating the temporal origin!
“Target ‘Key’… priority elevated to highest! Forced physical recall! Immediately!” Thorn’s cold voice carried unmistakable urgency for the first time. He had to personally obtain what Edgar had hidden within Little Key! That was both a threat and the key to ultimate temporal dominion!
Following his command, a far stronger, more precise crimson force—like a cosmic spear—instantly crossed time and space, ignoring the faint anchoring power of the copper button on Little Key, brutally stabbing toward her location! This time, it was no longer to strip but to forcibly drag her entire existence from Greenwich Observatory to the Time Bureau core!
Little Key’s recently erupted power ebbed like a tide. The immense suction lifted her feet off the ground, her body uncontrollably suspended, flying toward a suddenly torn crimson vortex in the void! Terror filled her eyes, yet she was powerless to resist!
“No—!” A piercing roar shattered the air above Greenwich—not from Little Key but another direction!
A burning figure, like a falling meteor, charged with reckless fury, crashing fiercely into the crimson spear reaching for Little Key!
It was Leon!
Somehow breaking free from the Tokyo Tower summit’s restraints, drenched in blood and with many parts of his body unnaturally translucent, he had clearly paid an unimaginable price to forcibly teleport here. His eyes burned with madness as he spread his arms wide, clutching the crimson spear with his shattered body!
“Get away! Don’t touch her!” Leon’s roar was hoarse and desperate. The moment his body touched the spear, it began to dissolve and vaporize violently, like metal thrown into strong acid! But he held on with his vanishing existence, buying Little Key less than half a second!
That half second!
Little Key was violently flung by the massive energy shockwave, crashing into an ancient stone pillar of the observatory. Pain blackened her vision, but she momentarily escaped the spear’s direct lock. Raising her head, she saw Leon’s final gaze before he completely vaporized in the crimson light—no pain, only relieved release and a trace of… trust?
“Uncle Leon—!” Little Key screamed, heart-wrenching.
The crimson spear lost its target and slowly retracted into the vortex. The Time Bureau’s forced recall was forcibly interrupted by Leon’s sacrifice. The crimson vortex closed, leaving only the cold night wind and Little Key’s despairing cries over Greenwich.
She curled up on the cold stone floor, tears blurring her sight. Her left palm clenched the copper button that had saved her life and was still burning hot. Her right hand instinctively covered her left eye. At the life-or-death moment when the spear locked on her, something deep within her left eye seemed forcibly activated. Sharp, needle-like phantom pains radiated from deep within the eyeball.
She removed her hand and gazed blankly at the blurry stars in the night sky. Through her tears, a fleeting, intricate glow of deep blue—like interwoven circuit board traces—flickered briefly in her left pupil. At the core of that light, a faint silhouette emerged: an elderly man wearing a bowler hat—Edgar!
Edgar’s legacy was not hidden in an object.
It had always been within Little Key’s eye.
Or more precisely, buried deep in the temporal sensory organ connected to her left eye, originating from Edgar.
The “Key” Thorn sought was herself.