Before them stood an enormous womb, over a hundred thousand kilometers in diameter. Its walls were condensed from pure definitions, translucent as a thin layer of skin, revealing the structures within.
Harmonic Leaping Note scanned it with her last functioning harmonic, her face pale as paper. She projected the image into every member's consciousness:
Inside the womb, an enormous embryonic being floated at the center. It was already the size of an adult, curled up like a fetus inside its mother. But its surface was not skin. It was covered in the definition symbols of countless universes-time, space, color, sound, emotion, memory. Each symbol flickered slowly, and every flicker meant that a definition had been "digested."
The embryo's umbilical cord connected to the womb wall, its other end extending deep into the Definition Sea. Harmonic Leaping Note traced the cord and discovered that it branched into countless tributaries, each connected to a universe's Definition System.
The Ember Era's Definition System was among them.
The embryo was draining the Ember Era's definitions.
Harmonic Leaping Note gritted her teeth, forcing her emotions under control. "Devouring Progeny, developmental progress... seventy percent."
The Iron Curtain Sovereign stared at the umbilical cord connected to the Iron Curtain Universe, his eyes filled with terror and fury. That cord was thicker than all the others. Most of the definitions the Iron Curtain Universe had plundered over endless eras had been fed to this monster through it.
"We've been... raising it all along?" His voice was hoarse.
"Not raising it." Lin Ye walked up to the womb wall and reached out to touch the translucent membrane of definitions. "It's parasitism. It parasitizes the Definition Mother, using her to connect to every universe. The definitions you plundered were merely dessert on its menu. The main course is the Definition