Tang San Is Spurned by the Academy [Don't Subscribe Yet]

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The gear chains trembled ever more violently, and the starlight seeping from the cracks of the bronze coffin abruptly turned dark purple. Jade's Golden Eyes scattered from the agony, yet she continued staring fixedly at the countdown runes flickering across the coffin lid—they were flowing backward in defiance of physical laws.

"That isn't a countdown... it's Causal Reversal!" Chong Long suddenly roared. The crimson patterns on the Crystal Dagger throbbed like blood vessels. He drove the dagger into the ground, and the red mist bursting from the cracks actually resonated in sync with the rust on the chains. Jackie Chan's mechanical left arm suddenly twisted into a claw and uncontrollably reached for his own throat. Yet the voice leaking through his fingers was Shendu's androgynous echo: "You think... only this version of me has ended?"

Parker's half-melted body abruptly froze. Dense gear-shaped marks surfaced beneath his wax-like skin, each one replaying a moment of death from a different time and space. Golden blood once again streamed from Jade's nostrils. Trembling, she raised her hand and discovered that the fragment of the Bronze Key in her palm was slowly being "corrected" by some force—the rust faded away, revealing the vertical-pupil pattern of Shendu's eye!

Click!

A crisp locking sound came from within the coffin, and thirteen chains suddenly snapped taut. The ground began collapsing into countless gear puzzle pieces, each reflecting fragments of their past memories: the talisman Uncle gave Jackie Chan before his death, the moment Shendu implanted mechanical gears during the Hong Kong Tower Battle, even a "future" Jade had never experienced—her Golden Eyes standing amid a sea of blood, with Jackie Chan's shattered body beneath her feet.

"It's Memory Contamination..." Jackie Chan roared as he tore open the wound on his left arm, allowing stardust to gush out and form a barrier. "He's using our karma to lash back at time and space!"

Chong Long's Crystal Dagger suddenly shattered. The solidified red mist transformed into an incomplete dragon shape and roared as it crashed into the coffin. At the instant of impact, the spinal-bone patterns on the chains abruptly came alive, winding around the dragon-shaped red mist like living snakes. Jade's Golden Eyes completely lost control at that moment. Blazing white light pierced through her eye sockets, scorching a line of ancient text into the void:

"The gears are the cage."

Shendu's laughter exploded from the depths of the coffin, and asphalt-like cracks split open across the sky again. But this time, darkness did not fall from them. Countless corpses of "Jackie Chan" did—each pierced by a different weapon, with rusted gears rather than blood spilling from their wounds.

"Welcome to..." Shendu's voice overlapped with the thunderous opening and closing of the coffin, "...the true Second Ceremony."

In the final moment before her consciousness scattered, Jade viciously drove the Bronze Key fragment into her own heart. Golden blood and a flood of runes surged into the sky, condensing into an enormous clock gear above everyone. The instant it turned, Parker's melted body, Chong Long's transparent scales, even the collapsed ground, all reassembled as though time were playing in reverse—

Only the bronze coffin slowly sank underground amid the clashing of gears. Through the crack in its lid, a hand covered in mechanical patterns lightly tapped against the inside.

Jackie Chan's shattered body suddenly sprang up and used its last strength to stuff the talisman into the gaps between the gears of the Alchemical Matrix. Shendu's cold laugh came from deep within the matrix. "You think... whose memories are these?" In the intense light of the exploding talisman, everyone saw in horror that during the Hong Kong Tower Battle, the young Jade had not been holding the Dragon Talisman, but a rusted Bronze Key.

The asphalt crack in the sky slammed shut, but countless fragments of bronze coffins rained down. Every fragment reflected their twisted images, and in every reflection, the same key was embedded in their chest, piercing straight through the heart.

The thunderous grinding of gears shook the void. The instant the bronze coffin sank underground, the entire world seemed to be "reset" by an invisible force—the collapsed ground rejoined itself, Parker's melted body froze in a wax-statue pose, and Chong Long's shattered scales restored themselves as if rewinding.

However, the real horror had only just begun.

The tapping rhythm of the mechanical hand extending from the coffin's crack gradually resonated with the gears inside their chests. The Bronze Key fragment Jade had stabbed into her heart had not disappeared. Instead, it took root in her flesh, spreading fine bronze veins that formed an eerie connection with her Golden Eyes. Her vision began to split—the boundary between reality and illusion was utterly torn apart. She saw countless versions of herself at once: some standing in a sea of blood, some pierced through by chains and hung from crosses made of gears; others... slowly turning a rusted Bronze Key, the other end of which was connected to Shendu's vertical pupil.

"This isn't an illusion..." Jade's voice turned hoarse, golden gear fragments seeping from her throat. "He's 'editing' our karma."

Jackie Chan's mechanical left arm suddenly exploded. The splattered stardust did not disperse, instead condensing into countless tiny chains in the air and connecting to the "corpses" falling from the sky. Rusted gears began multiplying wildly from the wounds of every "Jackie Chan," assembling an enormous Alchemical Matrix on the ground. At its center, Jade's Golden Eyes completely transformed into gears, while blazing white words burned around her:

"The sacrifice for the Second Ceremony... is the 'despair' we offered with our own hands."

Shendu's laughter came from deep within the matrix, low and distorted. "You think... only this version of me has ended?"

Before his words could fade, fragments of Chong Long's Crystal Dagger suddenly thrust up from underground, pinning a spinal-bone chain that was trying to wrap around Jade in midair. The red-mist dragon phantom let out a dying roar. "Sever the Memory Corridor! Now!"

Jackie Chan's shattered body suddenly sprang up and used its final strength to stuff the talisman into the gaps between the gears of the Alchemical Matrix. The instant the intense light exploded, everyone discovered in horror that the memory of the Hong Kong Tower Battle had been altered. The young Jade had not been holding the Dragon Talisman, but a rusted Bronze Key.

The asphalt crack in the sky slammed shut, but countless fragments of bronze coffins rained down. Every fragment reflected their twisted images, and in every reflection, the same key was embedded in their chest, piercing straight through the heart.

"Welcome to..." Shendu's voice echoed through the void, "...the true Reincarnation."

Jade's pupils contracted violently, her Golden Eyes trembling from utter shock. She watched Shendu's vertical-pupil patterns spread over the key in her palm, as though some existence beyond comprehension had seized her by the throat. "Causal Reversal..." Her thoughts froze in an instant, golden bloody foam carrying gear fragments spilling from her throat—Shendu had not only escaped sealing, but had instead used their despair to complete the Second Ceremony.

The reverse-flowing runes and the tapping mechanical hand within the coffin proclaimed a terrifying fact: the victory they believed they had won was merely another cage meticulously designed by Shendu.

The moment they saw Shendu's minions arriving, everyone's hearts tightened as they stared at the scene before them.

Shendu intended to establish a new kingdom of his own in this city.

The frozen torrential rain formed hanging waterfalls over Kowloon Walled City. The Cyber Runes at Jade's fingertips intertwined with Lin Jiu's Blood Curse into a net, forcibly fixing the collapsing black hole into a distorted mirror. On the other side of the mirror, Shendu's electronic dragon face flickered a thousand times per second—it was no longer merely a demon, but a time-space parasite pieced together from data across countless eras.

"Deviation rate: 39%..." Data left behind by her future self flickered across Jade's retina. She suddenly understood the meaning of the blood-red words in Section 13's surveillance feeds: once the number crossed the threshold, Hong Kong would completely become Shendu's new kingdom.

The veins on Lin Jiu's remaining arm suddenly bulged. The old man dipped a finger in the blood at the corner of his mouth and drew a command seal upon the broken hilt of the Copper Coin Sword. "Young lady, look carefully!" Golden light shot from the hilt, piercing the mirror and illuminating the shadows writhing inside the black hole—it was not the remains of the Mountain Spirit Lady, but thousands upon thousands of transparent bodies dressed in clothing from different eras, each with a gear-shaped time-space anchor embedded in its chest.

"The Hong Kong people who were swallowed..." Jade's Time Mark automatically identified the years belonging to these souls: a dockworker from 1973, a stockbroker from 1998, an esports player from 2024... They floated like specimens in the cracks between time and space, forming the "foundation" of Shendu's new kingdom.

Boom!

The mirror suddenly bulged into the sharp shape of a dragon claw. Shendu's voice emerged at once from a radio from 1965 and a smartphone from 2023. "You think destroying the Mountain Spirit Lady was enough?" Across the ruins of Kowloon Walled City, every television automatically began playing a bizarre scene: Lin Jiu, clad in an apricot-yellow Daoist robe, was slaughtering civilians with a peachwood sword, while Jade in a school uniform stood atop a mountain of corpses, laughing madly.

"History... has been altered..." Jade's combat boots sank into suddenly softened asphalt. Looking down, she saw her reflection transform into octopus-like mechanical tentacles—Shendu was using methods from the future dimension to contaminate proof of her existence.

Lin Jiu's Daoist crown suddenly exploded. The white-haired elder roared and tore open the skin on his left arm that had not yet been digitized with his teeth, exposing the Maoshan Forbidden Talisman hidden within his flesh. "In the name of Lin Fengjiao!" The instant the blood talisman flew into the air, every false image flickered like a malfunctioning screen, revealing the true scene behind it: a blue-gray compound eye was hidden in every altered fragment of history.

"Shendu's avatars are parasitizing history..." Jade suddenly rushed at the mirror, the key pattern on her right arm directly plunging into the dragon-claw phantom. "But you forgot that I have Dual Time Marks!" Black-gold patterns spread along the mirror's cracks, and the time-space pressure difference between 1965 and 2023 tore the dragon claw apart.

Shendu's roar triggered a time-space earthquake. From the ruins of tenements in Sham Shui Po, hundreds of figures in blue uniforms suddenly crawled out—not humans, but copies of Section 13 agents with gears embedded beneath their skin. The compound eyes rotating in their sockets proved that these were the true "minions of Shendu."

"How could there be Section 13 in 1965?" While backing away, Jade stepped on something burning hot. Looking down, she saw half a rusted police badge engraved with "1997 Handover Commemoration"—Shendu had long ago mixed minions from different eras into this time-space node.

Electric light burst forth when Lin Jiu's forbidden talisman collided with the first copy. The old man discovered in shock that its blood was dark-green liquid data. "Young lady! These aren't..."

"They're life-forms from the future dimension!" Jade rolled aside to avoid a laser-gun barrage. Her Time Mark analyzed the horrifying truth: these copies all came from a parallel future where the deviation rate had broken past 50%. In that time and space, all of Section 13 had become Shendu's data farm.

A holographic projection suddenly rose from the ruins of a cha chaan teng. Tohru from 2023 appeared in the image, covered in blood, with Shendu's petrified dragon head lying behind him. "Jade! The key is beneath the Walled City—" The signal was suddenly disrupted, replaced by the synchronized electronic voices of Shendu's minions: "Welcome the birth of the new Hong Kong."

The copies suddenly joined hands, forming a wall of bodies. Their uniforms melted into liquid metal and formed an enormous inverted gear above Kowloon Walled City. From the center of the gear slowly descended a throne made of countless electronic screens—and seated upon it was unmistakably a copy of Jade wearing a Section 13 commander's uniform.

"Looks like I got promoted in the future?" Jade grinned, though she tasted the sweet metallic tang of blood at the corner of her mouth. She crushed the Copper Coin Sword fragment in her palm, letting the sharp metal cut open her Time Mark. "Uncle Shendu, you've made a fatal mistake..."

The instant black-gold blood dripped down, time-space anchors throughout Hong Kong lit up red at once. A rift split open in the sky of 1965, the waters of Victoria Harbour from 2023 poured down, and amid this apocalyptic spectacle, the true killing blow came from Lin Jiu's trembling fingers—the old man dipped in their mingled blood and drew a crooked character for "demolish" upon the copies' throne.

"What Hong Kong is best known for..." As Jade leaped into the air, the quantum storm tore her school uniform into banner-like scraps, "...is that we'll tear down even gods for you to see!"

In the blinding light where Time Marks collided with Daoist spells, the data bodies of Shendu's minions began to collapse. Yet in the deepest darkness, a pair of dragon eyes older than the abyss itself watched it all.

The instant the brilliant light swallowed Kowloon Walled City, time and space seemed to tear open a crack. Jade's Time Mark and Lin Jiu's Blood Curse intertwined into a spiral, grinding the inverted gear throne into powder. The copies' electronic screams became streams of data, evaporating into foul burnt smoke amid the torrential rain.

"Did we succeed?" Jade dropped to one knee. The black-gold blood seeping beneath her combat boots was actually etching intricate hexagrams into the asphalt. She suddenly realized something was wrong—the collapsing minion data had not dispersed, but instead burrowed into the cracks in the ground like living creatures.

The broken hilt of Lin Jiu's Copper Coin Sword suddenly shook violently. The old man abruptly looked up and discovered that the tenement ruins of Sham Shui Po were reassembling in defiance of physical laws: rusted steel bars grew madly like vines, while a police badge from 1997 and an esports poster from 2024 alternately flashed across the walls. More terrifying still, dark-green slime seeped from every crack between the bricks, gradually condensing into gear-shaped compound eyes.

"Shendu is contaminating the structure of time and space in reverse!" Jade's Time Mark blared frantic warnings, and a blood-red prompt flashed across her retina: [Deviation rate exceeded 61%—physical assimilation warning]. She suddenly heard countless versions of her own voice whispering in her mind. Even the collar of her school uniform began turning into data, metallic insignia from a Section 13 uniform emerging upon it.

The holographic projection in the cha chaan teng lit up again. A corner of Tohru's petrified image tore open, exposing half a rotting dragon face. "You think destroying the throne means you can win?" Shendu's voice came from a phone booth from 1950, and every television in Kowloon Walled City abruptly began playing a new scene: Jade in Daoist robes was driving a peachwood sword into Lin Jiu's back.

"This time, he's altering... our relationship?" Lin Jiu's remaining arm suddenly stiffened, data tentacles crawling from the sleeve of his Daoist robe. The old man roared, bit through his tongue, and sprayed out a mist of blood that condensed into the words "traitor" in midair.

The key pattern on Jade's arm suddenly flared with searing light. She tore open the Time Mark on her left arm, splashing black-gold blood across the nearest compound eye—the eyeball let out a shriek like an infant crying and exploded into a mass of newspaper scraps from 1965.

"So that's it!" She stomped through the compound eyes littering the ground and rushed toward Lin Jiu. "These minions were molded by Shendu from fragments of Hong Kong people's memories!" The girl in the school uniform grabbed the old Daoist and leaped onto a tilted tenement building. Below them, a new generation of minions had already crawled from the ruins: electronic zombies in Qing Dynasty official robes, each with a commemorative badge for Hong Kong's 1997 handover embedded in its chest.

Lin Jiu tore open his Daoist robe in the raging wind, exposing the character for "demolish" written on his chest in cinnabar. "Young lady, gamble your life with me!" As the two leaped toward the densest cluster of gear-shaped compound eyes, the waters of Victoria Harbour suddenly surged backward into the sky—this time, what extended from the time-space rift was a gigantic mechanical hand covered in Buddhist light.