Time Merchant

Chapter 11: The Earth's Marrow Core

As Tower Bridge's bronze pipes coiled around the piers like giant pythons, the fluorescent blue circuits in Lin Xia's leg bone seared her nerves. Edwin clutched her wrist and sprinted into the subway, where the pocket watch's coordinates projected blood-red arrows on the tunnel walls—pointing to a tunnel sealed since the Blitz.

Gears breathed in the darkness.

Rail tracks had rusted into snake skins, with vine-like nerve bundles tangled between sleepers. With each step Lin Xia took, her leg bone circuits synced with the pulse, and bronze-colored veins crept up her thigh.

"Shi Gu's pumping London's earth marrow into you!" Edwin's metal-manipulating power ripped through the vines, revealing pocket watch-embedded pipes below. Fluorescent blue liquid swirled with phantoms of air-raid shelter children, their wails ground into energy by the pumps.

At the tunnel's end loomed a giant gate forged from Nazi eagle emblems and gears. Oil-scented incantations seeped through the cracks: "...With child sacrifices of time, we offer to the God of Perpetual Motion..." Lin Xia's mechanical spine suddenly activated on its own, hydraulic rods stabbing toward the lock like scorpion stingers—

"Mother's backdoor program!" She gritted her teeth to suppress the spine's rampage. "It's breaking the seal!"

The hiss of vacuum pumps echoed from inside. When they crashed into the circular control room, a horrifying sight met them:

Nine glass coffins hung from the center, each containing a child whose spine had been modified into a pocket watch. In the columnar reactor surrounded by the coffins, Lin Mingyue's semi-melted body floated in fluorescent blue liquid, nerve bundle conduits extending from her spine to all the glass coffins!

"Living core..." Edwin's nerve bundles coiled around the control panel. A cascade of data onscreen showed Lin Mingyue's nerves being forcibly extracted to sustain the expansion of time-space pipes.

"Mother—" The circuits in Lin Xia's leg bone flared with intense light. The instant the blue glow touched the reactor, Lin Mingyue's eyes snapped open!

First Strangulation: Maternal Defense Program

Lin Mingyue's pupils rolled back, and nerve bundle conduits shot forward like javelins. Edwin formed a liquid metal shield, but the conduits disintegrated and reassembled on contact, bypassing the defense to spear the lotus crystal over Lin Xia's heart!

"She doesn't recognize you!" Edwin tackled Lin Xia. The conduits brushed past, etching a projection of St. Mary's Orphanage in flames on the wall.

Lin Xia's mechanical spine reversely locked its joints. The backdoor program forced her to her knees, and the top of her spine split open into a launch port—targeting her mother in the reactor!

"No way!" Edwin plunged his hand into her spinal interface. Nerve bundles surged backward, flooding his consciousness:

Uterine incubation chamber

The nerve bundles of the two embryos intertwined for the first time;

Operating table

A tear fell on Lin Mingyue's scalpel as she implanted the bomb watch into her daughter's spine;

Present

The real Lin Mingyue in the reactor mouthed: "Cut my spine!"

Second Strangulation: Awakening of the Bronze Bloodline

The control room floor suddenly caved in. They fell into the lower machine room, where a flesh-and-blood mill made of gears loomed—children's corpses were conveyed into grinders, their bones melted down to cast new pocket watch parts.

"Welcome to the Shi Gu cafeteria." Dr. Irene's brain tissue floated in a central cultivation tank, nerve bundles controlling the meat grinders. "Lin Mingyue's maternal love makes excellent fuel—tripled the energy output of child sacrifices..."

Blue light suddenly surged from Lin Xia's leg bone. Earth marrow fluid gushed from her veins, and bronze patterns instantly covered her entire body! She transformed into a human-shaped energy entity, lunging at the cultivation tank. Wherever she passed, pocket watch parts melted and flowed backward, reconfiguring into children's severed limbs.

"You're becoming a new conduit!" Edwin's warning was drowned out by the explosion. Dr. Irene's brain nerves coiled around the bronze-transformed Lin Xia, dragging her toward the reactor base—where an empty nerve bundle socket waited, its shape matching her spine!

Third Strangulation: The Double-Edged Umbilical Cord

When Lin Xia's spinal interface was a mere three inches from the base, Edwin's vine-like nerve bundles coiled around her waist. His metal-manipulating power invaded backward along the bronze bloodline, striking embryonic nerve endings deep in her leg bone—the first knot they'd tangled into in the womb, forty years prior!

"Hold onto our origin!" He roared, channeling energy.

Womb memories surged along the nerve bundles:

Four nerve bundles in the amniotic fluid spontaneously weaved into a Chinese knot;

Lin Mingyue's hand stroking the knot through the incubation chamber;

The knot suddenly burst into blue light, materializing in the present as bronze chains!

The chains Entangled Lin Mingyue in the reactor. Lin Xia seized the chance to inject all her earth marrow fluid into her spine. The launch port spewed not a bomb, but fluorescent blue embryonic amniotic fluid!

The instant amniotic fluid flooded the control room, time-space froze.

All children's spinal watches in the glass coffins spun backward, pouring the siphoned nerve energy back into Lin Mingyue. Her withered body plumped up again, and nerve bundle conduits shed like snake skin.

"Cut... the cord..." She stroked her daughter's cheek through the reactor glass.

Lin Xia's bronze hand blade pierced the barrier. The moment her touched her mother's neck, the entire reactor collapsed into a pocket watch-sized black hole, devouring Dr. Irene's brain tissue and the machine room grinders completely.

Blood rain fell on Trafalgar Square.

Lin Xia knelt beneath Nelson's Column, cradling the unconscious Lin Mingyue. At the spinal interface on her mother's nape, fluorescent blue earth marrow fluid coagulated into a lotus-shaped crystal, resonating and glowing with the one over her daughter's heart.

Edwin pressed his palm against her bronzed back. Vine-like nerve bundles burrowed into the earth marrow circuits, channeling excess energy into his own body. Gear reliefs emerged on his skin, and mechanical blue light flickered in his pupils—transforming himself into her backup conduit to share the backlash.

From Tower Bridge came the mournful creak of gears grinding to a halt. The countdown froze forever at 【00:00:01】, and bronze pipes drooped into the Thames like dead snakes.

In the rain fog, the old woman's air-raid whistle lay in a puddle. A children's chorus drifted from its holes, singing London's Burning—the melody brushing past Lin Mingyue's trembling eyelashes.