Chapter 97

At the edge of the black hole, in the Rust Gear Graveyard during the winter of Cosmic Era 1051, Leila's mechanical prosthetic eye suddenly crashed while scanning the black hole accretion disk, its retinal projection dyed a rust color—a warning transmitted from the roots of the Symbiotic Tree. Across the surface of her mechanical heart, scorched vein-like patterns were growing wildly in accordance with the golden ratio, and wedged between the gears was half a crystallized Narrative Coffee Bean shell, the Observer's message left upon it—"defects weave the tree rings"—now largely corroded by rust. Deep within the graveyard, among the teeth of a rusted gear, fractal patterns identical to the rootlets of the Symbiotic Tree were faintly engraved, bearing a striking resemblance to the "black hole narrative totem in the Panda Star ancient texts" that Moke had once mentioned. "Narrative entropy value anomaly detected!" Mobao No. 4's gear heart oozed black mucus, spelling out the pattern of a disintegrating coffee bean on the console. "The remnants of the Crystal Cult are building an 'Entropy Grinder' in the black hole's gravity well; they have deciphered the fractal dimensions of the Symbiotic Tree rootlets! The resonance frequency of the twelve grinders is completely synchronized with the quantum fluctuations of the black hole's event horizon, and they are converting defective genes into pure entropy energy..." The holographic projection revealed the modified Crystal Cult—now calli…