Enchanted Skies

Chapter 4 Bronze Apocalypse

The B-type yong bell of Marquis Yi's chimes hovered in vacuum, resonating with the long-lost “Great Martial” melody from 2400 years ago. Lin Shen attached bronze taotie-patterned electrodes to his temples, the chime's sonic waves suturing his fragmented consciousness into quantum fissures of “Han Xizai's Night Banquet”. Su Wan's peony birthmark now morphed into Sanxingdui gold scepter motifs, projecting hieroglyphic warnings on dark matter screens.

"Resonance frequency deviates 0.3Hz," Xuanji switched to Jiang Linchuan's voiceprint. "Suggest calibrating with Warring States crystal cup infrasound." Holograms showed British Museum's bronze sacred tree quantizing, its bronze sun discs entangling with Cairo's Tree of Life via fermions, bronze birds chanting “Book of the Dead” fragments.

Su ripped off EEG tubes connected to Western Zhou jade cong: "You knew Professor Jiang was alive." Her Tang gilded perfume sachet cracked open, revealing “Exploitation of the Works of Nature” metallurgy diagrams—security feeds showed Jiang engraving cloud-thunder patterns on Statue of Liberty's torch three hours prior.

Lin's spine erupted with gear-grinding sounds from Song astronomical clock. He pressed Su's hand onto the tiger-base bird drum: "Touch the bell's gold-inlaid inscriptions for truth." As her fingerprints overlapped King Hui of Chu's casting records, their consciousness plunged into quantum-enhanced Suizhou Tomb No.1.

Tomb murals disintegrated into Van Gogh's “Irises” beneath them, while the real chimes floated over New York's East River. Su saw Jiang standing on the largest bell's beast-shaped knob, his laser pen being the very Warring States silver-inlaid hook Su Wenlan carried when disappearing.

"The so-called alien beacon is actually..." Jiang's voice was shredded by quantum storms. When bronze bells struck altered zhi notes, Su's qipao exuded Sanxingdui bronze corrosion, while fractal geometries from Giza pyramids materialized on Lin's retinas.

Xuanji's tri-city alarm blared: "Bronze plague sync 91%, Yinxu oracle bone database undergoing entropy reduction!" Su's birthmark sprayed Liangzhu culture jade cong patterns with nanoscale black pottery particles. She realized her grandfather's jade ruler was a quantum key—its micro-carved “Book of Documents” characters perfectly matching sacred tree cracks.

"This isn't infection, it's awakening!" She inserted the ruler into the zun-pan vessel's dragon apertures. Instantly, chime surfaces hologrammed “Classic of Mountains and Seas” maps marking twelve prehistoric sites overlapping Mona Lisa's coordinates. Lin coughed blood with bronze patina, teeming with quantum sacred tree branches.

Tremors rocked London as sacred tree roots pierced quantum barriers, sprouting Mesopotamian cuneiform in Thames riverbed. Su's hairpin disassembled into Sanxingdui bronze divine birds, while Lin's pocket watch computed “Book of the Dead” Chapter 125 judgment codes.

Jiang's hologram reappeared atop quantumized Terracotta Army chariot: "Children, bronzes are the universe's oldest neural interfaces." His laser connected Lishan Mountain star patterns with sacred tree branches, forming Earth-enveloping Klein bottle topology.

As Su prepared to interrogate, Lin activated the neural resonator's self-destruct. Marquis Yi's bells disintegrated in ultrasonic vibrations, releasing quantum foam sealed during casting. In her final conscious moment, Su saw their DNA helices morphing into bronze taotie patterns, while Jiang's figure in 1937 New York footage was mending Mona Lisa's smile with Su family's Xiefang stitches.

Chapter 5 Mona Lisa's Umbilical Cord

Blood-red mycelium seeped from Tang Dynasty plaster in Mogao Cave 220. Su Wan knelt before “Illustrated Sutra of Bhaisajyaguru”, her scalpel tip glinting with eerie blue light from lapis lazuli irradiated by gamma rays. Lin Shen's quantum spectrometer revealed these “Qimin Yaoshu”-cultured fungi shared identical DNA topology with “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains” silk fibers.

"47 BPM," Lin gripped her bio-electrode covered wrist. "Slower than “Ode to the Goddess of the Luo”'s prosody." His fingers smeared with Northern Wei mural pigments traced her carotid, nanosensors showing her mitochondria secreting carbon-14 isotopes akin to “Admonitions Scroll” inksticks.

The cave quaked as Western Xia donor portraits pixelated. Xuanji's alert merged with Tower Bridge's collapse: "Global art-gene contamination 89%. “A Thousand Li” reset will overwrite human aesthetic cortex in 23 minutes." Su's birthmark oozed cobalt pus containing 2600 BC Mesopotamian cylinder seal holograms.

Lin tore open his anti-rad suit, revealing heart tissue matching “Mona Lisa”'s linen canvas. "Jiang encoded art antibodies in your genes." He pressed fungus culture into her birthmark, mycelium instantly forming “Treatise on Architectural Methods” joints. "First accept being Gu Kaizhi's biological vessel."

Su's hairpin pierced “Mount Wutai” mural, its body projecting alien beacon icosahedrons. As it absorbed quantum spores, she saw 387 AD Dunhuang night—Gu Kaizhi engraving “Nymph” cloud patterns into a pregnant belly with meteorite needles. The woman's fingerprints matched hers.

"49th iteration successful." Jiang's hologram declared from quantum Mausoleum. "Miss Su, you inherited Nuwa's genetic code for molding humans with “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams”." The Nine-Story Pagoda quantized as Su's scalpel auto-carved her ulna with Liangzhu cong patterns.

Lin coughed blood clots resembling “Early Spring” crab-claw strokes, his spine shards absorbing Dunhuang's gravitational waves. Su mended his retina with mycelium, finding “Exploitation” movable-type rearranging into Maya Tzolk'in calendar.

"Activate “A Thousand Li” with your blood!" He pushed Su toward quantizing Library Cave. Her scalpel sliced palm—blood drops collapsing “Bhaisajyaguru” into Klein bottle biocomputer. She decrypted British Museum's sacred tree vibrations—Samsung mask-encrypted civilization format commands.

As Su's blood merged with Wang Ximeng's azurite, all “Mona Lisa” replicas grew third eyes. Lin glimpsed Earth's atmosphere projecting “Han Xizai's Banquet”, Statue of Liberty morphing into Gu's cloud deity.

"Reset initiated." Xuanji vibrated with bronze inscription frequencies. Su's DNA helix unfurled into “Qingming Scroll”, base pairs matching Bianjing shop banners. Lin plugged neural interface into her cervical spine. In quantum flux, they witnessed humanity's primal art impulse—Peking Man's ochre mingling with alien quantum jets in Homo sapiens' frontal lobe.

Mogao Caves fully quantized—Su's qipao became flying apsara ribbons, Lin's pocket watch devouring Shakespeare folios. In resetting glare, Su murmured in Liangzhu divine lexicon: "Aesthetics are humanity's ultimate prison..."