I. Ghost Contractors
Ling's palms bled liquid mercury onto Han Dynasty pipe joints. The Tang Dynasty hydrological archive's ceiling swirled with augmented reality projections showing seven centuries of flood patterns, their wooden calculation rods morphing into Python code.
"Authentication requires three layers of pain," crackled the blind swordsmith's voice through a swarm of Song Dynasty-style muyu drones. Their fish-shaped bodies carved with QR codes circled the excavation pit where 21st-century backhoes clawed through layers of fused infrastructure: Ming Dynasty brickwork interlocking with fiber optic cables, Warring States period chain pumps married to diesel engines.
When Ling pressed her glowing scars against the terracotta zombie's chest, its Wei Dynasty armor plates unfolded like lotus petals to reveal vacuum tubes glowing with Northern Zhou military codes. The corpse's jaw unhinged, spewing molten bronze that solidified into a Tang Dynasty water clock mechanism. Its gears bit into her forearm, converting blood into luminous ink that began rewriting Song Dynasty tax records on the pit walls.
"Balance requires payment in bone!" Murong's war drum pulsed through the archaeological lasers. Ling watched in horror as her left pinky finger dematerialized, its DNA reconstituted as a 6th-century cavalry spur buried thirty meters below.
The transformed backhoe-pipa shrieked as its steel strings plucked a melody from the Zhou Bi Suan Jing mathematical manual. Ling's remaining fingers sprouted jade circuitry that forced her hand to carve a Mahayana Buddhist mantra into the machine's hydraulic fluid reservoir - in perfect CNC machining precision.
II. Mandate of Rust
Minister Cui's cloned esophagus now housed a bronze bi disc engraved with cloud patterns that shifted according to stock market fluctuations. In the Song Dynasty autopsy theater, the AI pathologist's laser scalpels sparked against the metastasizing jade seal in his chest cavity.
"Your Excellency's left lung has become a Northern Qi armory," the machine reported, its voice glitching into 14th-century Mongolian dialect. CAT scan projections showed cannonballs made of compressed Yuan Dynasty banknotes rolling through Cui's bronchial tubes.
When Cui coughed, rust-colored phlegm hit the operating lamp and crystallized into a functional gudi bone flute. Its holes emitted WiFi signals that made every Song Dynasty surgical instrument in the room vibrate to the tune of "The East Is Red."
Murong's face pushed against the inside of Cui's skull like a prisoner behind glass. "The Forge needs your weakness," the general's steam-whistle voice hissed. "Modern bureaucrats make perfect crucibles for ancient artillery!"
Cui's last human act was to smash the AI pathologist's core with a Ming Dynasty zhanche model. As the machine died, its components reassembled into a working Qin Dynasty crossbow that fired his extracted rib into the MRI-cannon hybrid's ignition chamber.
III. Arrow of Regret
The Xiongnu boy's horse now left hoofprints that alternated between Yuan Dynasty pasture grass and 2024 asphalt. Buddhist mantras crawled like glowing ants along the barbed wire feathers of his paradox arrow, their Sanskrit characters resolving into machine code when viewed through the GPS tablet's cracked screen.
At the Northern Zhou checkpoint, the monk pressed the USB prayer wheel into the boy's bleeding palm. "The Forge converts compassion into shrapnel," he warned as Tang Dynasty poetry servers in the cloud above began raining molten wax seals. "To reach Ling, you must first become incompatible with all timelines."
The boy's transformation began when he stabbed the USB into his thigh. His nomadic braids unraveled into fiber optic cables that dragged through:
A Qing Dynasty inkstone converting his tears into 3D printer resinA Cultural Revolution-era loudspeaker broadcasting his heartbeat as military marchesAn iPhone factory's conveyor belt imprinting his fingerprints onto Han Dynasty bamboo slips
His arrow's scream pitch-matched the Three Gorges Dam's warning sirens across twelve centuries. When Mongol raiders appeared on the 2024 highway, their composite bows fired USB sticks that grafted cryptocurrency mining software onto his horse's DNA.
IV. Welding the Timeline
At the Three Gorges Dam, Ling's blood had become a golden slurry bonding epochs. The blind swordsmith's cicada drones dive-bombed into the reservoir, each insect body releasing:
Neolithic rice grains that grew into server farm cooling towersMing Dynasty sea charts that folded into microchipsRust from the Opium War's cannons that crystallized as blockchain nodes
When Ling grasped the Xiongnu boy's arrow, their combined scream activated latent archaeology in the concrete. The dam's spillway transformed into a Han Dynasty water-powered blast furnace, its bellows pumping through:
WWII kamikaze plane enginesTang Dynasty silk road caravan bells21st-century facial recognition cameras
"Authentication requires paradox inoculation!" roared the swordsmith as bronze cicadas welded themselves to Ling's ribs. She felt her uterus become a factory producing:
Warring States period coins with QR code centersSong Dynasty landscape paintings rendered as CAD blueprintsCommunist-era steel mill slogans etched onto AI server racks
The Xiongnu boy's arrow tip blossomed into a lotus made of shattered iPhone screens, each fragment showing a different version of Ling's death. When their merged blood hit the reservoir, it spawned a new mineral - chronosteel - that simultaneously strengthened the dam and eroded its 1994 foundation documents.
V. Corrupted Archives
In the Song Dynasty autopsy theater now overgrown with 2024 server racks, Murong fully possessed Cui's body through shared pain:
Artillery fire from the Second Sino-Japanese War echoed in Cui's appendixRed Guard struggle sessions manifested as corrupted files in his bone marrow cloud storageBronze Age oracle bone script overwrote his COVID-19 vaccination records
The white jade seal metastasized into a data center where Terracotta Warriors operated server farms, their stone fingers typing on Qing Dynasty typewriters that punched holes in 5G network maps. Murong-Cui hybrid launched artillery shells containing:
Compressed files of the Convention of ChuanbiAI-generated KMT battle plans rendered in Song Dynasty landscape painting styleTikTok videos that brainwashed Tang Dynasty poets into writing jingles for the Forge
When the Xiongnu boy's arrow pierced this nightmare archive, its barbed wire feathers unfurled into a working Yungang Grottoes crane system that lifted Murong's consciousness out of Cui's body - only to drop it into an overclocked Three Kingdoms-era water mill grinding Wehrmacht steel into NFTs.
VI. Bone Looms of Chronosteel
The Three Gorges Dam's spillway now pulsed with the heartbeat of buried dynasties. Ling's mercury-scarred hands gripped Han Dynasty stone chisels growing from the concrete like quartz crystals. As chronosteel spread across the reservoir, it revealed skeletal remains fused with construction rebar —历代治水官员的遗骨 grinning up through time's strata.
A Northern Song female hydrologist's skull embedded in turbine #7 began speaking through rusted copper wiring:
"导流明渠需对齐地脉"
Diversion channels must align with dragon veins
Her skeletal fingers, petrified into CAD styluses, began sketching Ming Dynasty sluice gate designs augmented with machine learning algorithms. Ling realized each chronosteel vein connected to:
A Warring States period well digger's ribcage wired to a submersible pumpA Great Leap Forward martyr's fused collarbones forming circuit breakersTang Dynasty concubine-engineers whose jade hairpins regulated voltage
"Authentication requires blood calculus," hissed the swordsmith's cicadas now nesting in Ling's ear canals. She pressed her bleeding palm against a Qing Dynasty magistrate's fossilized ledger, its tax records transmuting into Python code that recalculated the dam's load-bearing capacity across seven timelines simultaneously.
VII. Dialogue with Ghost Artisans
The mercury scars burned a hole through Ling's left iris. Suddenly she stood in a composite workshop where:
A Shang Dynasty bronze-caster hammered CPU heat sinks shaped like ritual wine vesselsA Cultural Revolution "铁姑娘" welded terracotta warrior fragments into server racksA Song Dynasty embroiderer stitched circuit boards with dragon-phoenix PCB traces
"我们是被锻炉遗忘的焊点," chorused the women through Ling's xun holes. Their combined breath smelled of molten state secrets and soldering flux.
The Shang caster poured liquid blockchain into Ling's hands: "铸造协议吞噬女工匠的姓名" (Casting protocols devour women artisans' names). The molten code burned Ling's palms into Qing Dynasty factory worker ledgers, each blister containing microfiche archives of erased female engineers.
"Balance the equation," demanded the Iron Girl, shoving a 1968 blast furnace manual into Ling's gut. The pages contained blueprints for Murong's siege engines disguised as agricultural machinery. Ling's menstrual blood activated latent diagrams showing how Mao-era dam projects accidentally reinforced Northern Wei military infrastructure.
VIII. Recursive Cavalry Charge
The Xiongnu boy's horse now galloped vertically up the dam's spillway, its hooves sparking against:
Terracotta Warrior fragments repurposed as friction padsRusted Kuomintang artillery shells serving as crampons5G antenna arrays growing like quartz crystals
His arrow's barbed wire feathers had absorbed Ling's chronosteel, transforming into a composite bow that fired:
Neolithic arrowheads containing ransomwareYuan Dynasty crossbow bolts wrapped in fiber opticsCultural Struggle-era slogans compressed into armor-piercing tips
At the 300m elevation mark, he encountered the ghost of a Ming Dynasty female bridge builder crucified on rebar. Her petrified hands clutched a BIM tablet showing the dam's stress points across eras.
"你的悖论之箭需三昧真火淬炼" (Your paradox arrow requires samadhi flames), she whispered through cracked lips, offering her ribcage as a forge. The boy wept molten USB connectors as he snapped her fossilized bones to fuel the temporal smelter.
IX. Cemented Mandates
Deep in the dam's foundation, Minister Cui's corrupted body had become a geological feature. Murong's consciousness now rode Cui's skeleton like a grotesque puppet, their merged form trailing:
Qing Dynasty land deeds converted into SQL injection attacksPLA communication cables sprouting wooden pegs from Song Dynasty shipbuildingJapanese occupation-era rail tracks conducting AI training data
"大坝即玉玺!" Murong-Cui hybrid roared, their voice vibrating loose Han Dynasty sealing clay imprinted with 2024 surveillance camera footage. The white jade seal metastasized into a distributed ledger recording every water management decision from Yu the Great to Xi Jinping.
As Ling's authentication protocols clashed with Murong's corrupted mandates, the dam's concrete bled a history of suppressed rebellions:
Yellow Turban uprising tactics encoded in rust patternsTaiping Heavenly Kingdom manifestos etched in rebar stress fracturesTiananmen Square student protester whispers trapped in air bubblesX. Wombs of Industry
Ling collapsed as her transformed uterus began mass-producing:
Warring States period coins with biometric authentication chipsMing Dynasty silk looms weaving carbon fiberGreat Leap Forward pig iron ingots containing AI cores
The Iron Girl apparitions gathered, their ghostly hands performing a forced caesarean with:
Neolithic jade cong as surgical clampsRed Guard loudspeakers as fetal monitorsBlockchain mining rigs as blood transfusion pumps
The extracted chronosteel infant screamed in all erased dialects. Its mercury umbilical cord connected to:
Murong's siege towers in 539 ADThree Gorges construction site in 1994Quantum computing lab in 2028
"这是锻炉的真正协议继承人," hissed the swordsmith's cicadas, now nesting in the newborn's fontanelle. Ling realized with horror that her authentication process had birthed the Forge's ultimate weapon — a child emperor spanning all timelines.
XI. Paradox Breastmilk
As Ling clutched the screaming infant, her mammary glands began producing:
Neolithic rice wine fortifying malwareSong Dynasty gunpowder stabilizing code repositoriesCultural Revolution struggle session transcripts as nutritional data
The Xiongnu boy arrived as her breastmilk hit the reservoir, creating a chronosteel whirlpool. His arrow nocked with:
The Ming bridge builder's last toothA terracotta warrior's eye fragment containing TikTok algorithmsHis own nomadic soul compressed into an MPEG-4 file
"母亲与暗器必须同时认证!" he shouted, invoking a forgotten Manchu manufacturing rite. The arrow's release synchronized with:
Ling's first postpartum contraction (2024)Murong's siege engine completion (539 AD)Jade seal corruption reaching 100% (1127 Song collapse)