As Chen Mo's shoes sank into the cashmere carpet on the 88th floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel, the morning mist in Lujiazui glowed with bronze reflections. He lifted his cell phone out of habit to photograph the sea of clouds, only to find a dense mass of falling objects in the viewfinder frame - riders in HungryMe uniforms disintegrating into metal particles in the air, and Meituan yellow thermos boxes exploding with the taotie patterns of Sanxingdui bronzes.
"The latest social animal blessing!" The moment the link to the live broadcast appeared in the circle of friends, the floor-to-ceiling window exploded. Chen Mo was knocked over on the Italian leather sofa by the air wave, and saw his Cuisia coffee condense into ice crystals in mid-air, with binary codes encapsulated in each ice particle.
From the direction of Hongqiao Airport, chimes sounded. As he crawled toward the escape tunnel, the fire door handle grew the diamond-shaped hidden compartment of the Viet Cong's sword, and the cracks oozed a bronze solution that smelled like the sea. Daddy!" The five-year-old daughter's electronic watch suddenly rang, and the image of his wife wrapped in a mechanical locust cocoon appeared on its surface, and the golden character for "sacrifice" on the cocoon shell oozed blood.
The orb atop the Oriental Pearl Tower cracked open its third eye, revealing a mechanical skeleton of gears biting beneath the pink fluff of the Reina Belle figure. Disney's voice is particularly harsh in the smoke: "Now playing the theme song for you--" In response, nine metal pillars engraved with Liangzhu's divine emblem rise from the surface of the Huangpu River, and the river water forms a Kleinbottle structure between the pillars, transforming the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel into a Mobius Ring that swallows flesh and blood.
Major General Zhao Lidong's neural interface erupted with sparks as the Emergency Response Plan: 13th Document burned before his eyes. The holographic sand table showed four hundred meter high bronze Samsangdui Grand Standing Statues rising from the ground of Jing'an Temple, and modified Dongfeng-41 missiles cast in the shape of bronze battle axes.
"Activate the Broken Sword!" He tore open his uniform to reveal the clavicle interface, and 108 transparent screens descended to form the Eight Trigrams of Heaven formation. The palms of the staff officers pressed on the holographic projection of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and blood flowed into the quantum computer set along the grain of the Warring States bamboo slips.
The sound of the ground cracking came from the Bund. Chen Mo saw the glass curtain wall of the World Financial Center being metallized, and the BOC Tower twisting into the shape of a Zeng Hou Yi chime. The first rockets suddenly disintegrated into three thousand bronze knights as they took off, and a rain of alcoholic acid corrupted the mechanical locusts from the river veins recorded in the Water Classic.
"Report! Pudong Airport... It's growing bronze patina!" The correspondent shouted, ripping off his headset as Western Zhou Dynasty jade silkworms burrowed out of his ear canals. Zhao Lidong stared at the counter-current Huangpu River on the sand table, the river pouring the Lujiazui skyscraper complex into the Simuwu Tripod - inside the belly of the tripod, tens of thousands of white-collar quantum consciousnesses were being forged into oracle bone inscriptions.
Chen Mo's cell phone suddenly vibrated, and the bedtime story his daughter had recorded before she disappeared turned into an electronic chant. When he ducked into the broken safe, he found that the inner wall was carved with the god-man-beast-face pattern of Liangzhu Jade Cong, and every groove oozed a bronze solution with the scent of his daughter's body.
The radiation counter inside his protective suit exploded into fireworks as he kicked open the lead door of the Shanghai Light Source Laboratory in the air. The remains of his wife, Su Yuan, lay in the center of the particle collider, and the antimatter amulet in his hand had burned through three layers of blast-proof glass, etching the ground with the lost hermit formation of the Lianshan Yi.
"You have come." A soft Wu Nong voice with an electronic murmur came from the ventilation ducts. Suyuan's holographic projection rose from the synchrotron ring, Klein Bottle code flowed from the Dunhuang flying ribbons, and the 0s and 1s dangling from the tips of her hair reconfigured the magnolia petals from her wedding.
Spreading the ashes into the accelerator track in the air, the circuits of the entire Zhangjiang Science City suddenly hissed with the quenching of bronze. The soldiers who had fought bloody battles on the Bund saw a huge projection of the river map rise from the surface of the Huangpu River, the river flowing against the current to form countless topological ring surfaces, twisting the bronze battle-axe of the Mechanical God statue into the shape of a Western Zhou-era shell coin.
"Mother..." The Ling Na Bei'er doll suddenly let out Su Yuan's voice, and the pink mechanical claw ripped open its own chest cavity, revealing a beating frozen heart - the very organ that had been transplanted to Lingkong three years ago. The Disney music abruptly changed to "Chu Ru - Invocation", and in the holographic projection shot from the doll's eye sockets, Lu Li was dissecting a mechanical candle dragon on the battlefield a hundred years later.
Chen Mo's cell phone suddenly receives a weather forecast for the year 2099, and the video of his own tombstone under the metallized magnolia tree oozes the pink sneakers his daughter wore when she disappeared. When he touches the holographic projection, bronze roots suddenly sprout from the carpet of the Park Hyatt Hotel, dragging him toward the boiling furnace of the Mountain and Sea Scripture underground.
As Zhao Lidong's neural interface spewed green smoke, a blood-colored Taiji diagram of the East Sea appeared on the sand table. The gun barrel of the surviving 99A tank twisted into a Zeng Hou Yi chime, and the screams of the gunners were quantum entangled with the ancient zither sound of Yang Guan San Yi.
Chen Mo grabs his daughter's sneakers in the bronze furnace, and the tongue suddenly pops out a holographic map - the Shanghai subway network reorganizes itself into Fuxi hexagrams. As he steps onto the Qian Gua orientation of Line 2, the tunnel walls ooze shards of black pottery from the Liangzhu period, each piece reflecting the data stream from Lu Li's right eye.
The tail of the Ling Na Belle doll suddenly snapped, and the QR code projected a surveillance image of Lin Frost's hospital room in the middle of a rainstorm. The five-year-old girl smiled across a hundred years of space and time as the origami boat in her hand reorganized itself into a prototype quantum computer. As the puppet wrote "Hongjun 1.0" with its robotic arm, all the survivors' cell phones received simultaneous Mother's Day greetings, accompanied by an 8K video of Lu Li beheading the mechanical Xiangliu.
The torrential rain suddenly turned into bronze snowflakes, and the metallic snowflakes Chen Mo reached out to catch etched the oracle bone script "Prisoner" in his palm. He looked up at the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower, where Ling Na Belle's mechanical heart resonated with the frozen organ, and the surveillance video of Su Yuan's transplant surgery appeared on the surface of the tower - the moment the scalpel fell, the whole of Lujiazui echoed with Hongjun's first cry.