New green shoots pierced the remnants of the Blue Rose Tree, spreading their leaves across the ruins of the universe.
Bai Mei crouched in the scorched earth, his fingertips brushing the tender leaves. Their patterns were not plant veins, but flowing Klein Bottle Totems.
Hirata's voice came from behind him, carrying the distinctive hum of the Nano-swarm. "Overnight, they covered the ruins of seventeen universes... including the remains of Tsukishiro's laboratory."
Bai Mei clenched the silver ring left behind by Mirror Horikita. The ring suddenly grew hot, projecting a holographic star map. Across every star region covered by the new shoots, fluorescent markers appeared, bearing the same origin as the Lantern Keeper's lantern.
"This isn't natural growth." He crushed one of the shoots, and its sap congealed in his palm into a tiny Mechanical Rose. "Someone's using the ruins of our war to cultivate some kind of... order."
Hirata's swarm body floated in the Seventh Universe's central hub. Inside the nest built by the Nano-swarm, faces appeared on the inner walls. The consciousnesses of the dead, consumed through symbiosis, were beginning to awaken.
The clearest face belonged to γ-000 from Tsukishiro's laboratory. Black fluid seeped from his mechanical pupils. "The ultimate form of a symbiote is for all consciousness to perish equally within the swarm."
"Shut up!" Hirata's tendrils pierced the face, but the black fluid began corroding him in turn. The nest suddenly contracted, crushing him into its central chamber. There, Hirata's original consciousness, not yet fully digested, lay curled up, using its last brain cells to write the Codex of Possibilities 2.0.
"Run..." The original consciousness's fingers had already turned into insect limbs. "They're going to erase all individuality..."
The nest's outer wall suddenly ruptured, and Bai Mei's Stardust Dagger split open the cocoon. The Sprout Vine seized the chance to burrow inside, planting emerald patterns in Hirata's compound eyes. "Come with me. These new shoots can suppress the swarm consciousness!"
After crossing twelve layers of cosmic barriers, Bai Mei found the Lantern Keeper in a rift in the void.
The Lantern Keeper was scattering fluorescent spores toward a nascent nebula. Each spore encased a quantum fragment of Kiyotaka.
"What exactly are you creating?" Bai Mei's silver ring scorched the void.
The Lantern Keeper pushed back his hood, revealing a face identical to Bai Mei's as a boy. "Remember γ-000 in the Cage of Entropy? These are reincarnations of fragments of his consciousness."
He flicked a finger, shattering a spore. Inside, an embryo opened Tsukishiro's mechanical compound eyes. "True balance requires good and evil to share the same origin."
The Sprout Vine suddenly lashed out, wrapping around the Lantern Keeper's throat. Only then did Bai Mei realize that the roots stretching from beneath the Lantern Keeper's feet originated in the remains of the Blue Rose Tree. Tsukishiro's obsession with order had never died; it had merely found a new host.
"Why do you think Kiyotaka chose me?" The Lantern Keeper's skin cracked, revealing Mechanical Roses writhing beneath it. "He knew all along that every Sower would eventually become the next Tsukishiro..."
Horikita's spirit coalesced among the new shoots. Her translucent hand rested on Bai Mei's shoulder, and her Bio-chip resonated with the shoots. "The rebels of the Seventh Universe are forming the 'Twin Tribunal' to put every being involved in the reboot of the universe on trial."
In the holographic projection, representatives from twelve universes sat around the Circular Court.
The chief judge removed her hood. It was Mirror Horikita, who should have perished. Hirata's swarm core was embedded in her left eye, and the Sprout Vine wound around her right arm.
"Defendant Bai Mei, you are charged with 'matricide,' 'the annihilation of civilizations,' and..." Her mechanical eye fixed on the Lantern Keeper in the void. "'Allowing the revival of order.'"
Bai Mei's silver ring suddenly burst with light, shattering Mirror Horikita's gavel.
The floor of the Sprout Tribunal split open, and countless γ-series clones crawled out of the abyss, each with a silver-ring Totem identical to Bai Mei's branded on their chest.
"The evidence is conclusive," γ-419 said, raising a rotting arm. "We're the 'old humanity' you abandoned."
Roots descended from the tribunal's dome and pierced Bai Mei's limbs. Hirata's swarm body suddenly shielded him, as the Nano-swarm and the new shoots devoured each other in a brutal struggle. "Go! To the Room of Pure White, and awaken the true..."
Before he could finish, the roots had pierced his core. The swarm scattered in every direction, and in his final moment, Hirata's original consciousness fired a data chip into Bai Mei's forehead. It contained the ultimate clause of the Codex of Possibilities 2.0:
"When good and evil share the same origin, the only salvation is to admit that we are all sinners."
Bai Mei tore open space and leapt into the Room of Pure White. The shoots of the black seed had grown into a towering tree.
A hundred thousand cultivation pods hung from its canopy, each holding a sleeping version of himself at fifteen.
"Welcome home," Tsukishiro's voice came from the roots. "My dear vessels."
The great tree's roots suddenly came alive as tendrils, dragging Bai Mei down into the earth.
In the boiling quantum fluid, he saw the universe's most primordial darkness: Tsukishiro was nothing more than an experimental subject discarded by some advanced civilization, while Kiyotaka was the first to awaken as a "Seed of Original Sin."
"The Sower eventually becomes nourishment. That is the eternal cycle." Tsukishiro's mechanical body reassembled in the fluid. "But you can choose—to become the god of a new cycle, or..."
Bai Mei plunged his silver ring into the heart of the great tree. The Sprout Totem surged backward, spreading through his body. "I choose... to become the first sinner to break the cycle."
The Room of Pure White began to collapse, and every clone in the cultivation pods opened their eyes at once. Their pupils were no longer clear, but burned with the same fluorescent glow as the Lantern Keeper's.
Horikita's spirit took solid form in the void and caught the falling silver ring. A final message from Hirata appeared on its face:
"New shoots aren't hope. They're a more sophisticated cage—but someone will always keep sowing."
At the edge of the sea of stars, the surviving Lantern Keeper raised his damaged lantern. In its flame, Bai Mei's quantum fragments were gathering, while above the ruins of the Sprout Tribunal, a hundred thousand fluorescent clones gazed up at the same sky.
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