The moment Lyra blinked into consciousness, her lungs filled with the scent of singed sandalwood and quantum ozone—a paradox only her hybrid heritage could parse. The operating chamber had been replaced by a Kun trigram biosphere, its walls throbbing like a womb made from forbidden biotech and Daoist mantras.
Lyra's eyelids fluttered open to the cold, metallic tang of Ming Dynasty bronze. She lay on a surgical table carved from jade, the air thick with the scent of incense and ionized ozone. Around her, the walls of the tomb pulsed with holographic projections of Vatican newsfeeds: "Rogue Surgeon Lyra Chen Wanted for Theft of Papal Clone Heart." Her wrists were bound by nano-chains etched with verses from the Tao Te Ching. "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao," the chains whispered, tightening with a subtle, agonizing pressure as she instinctively reached for her Purifier training.
The operating room, a bizarre fusion of ancient Chinese artistry and cyber-gothic technology, hummed with the low thrum of hidden machinery. Bas-relief carvings of dragons intertwined with fiber optic cables, and censers emitting sandalwood smoke stood beside laser scalpels. Her gaze fell upon her reflection in a polished bronze mirror – her face pale, her eyes reflecting the scrolling headlines that matched her DNA to a 13th-century Taoist alchemist's portrait. A digital watermark of a Vatican seal flickered across her forehead.
A cold dread coiled in her gut. This wasn't a prison; it was a stage.
Her wrists were shackled by chains humming with Qian hexagram seals, burning her Purifier blood every time her heartbeat synched with the weregod's.
"You're awake," Kael's voice split the air—half velvet scholar, half snarling blade.
Outside the biosphere, the battle had already begun.
The first Xun Trigram flying instrument broke through the chrysanthemum-laced incense veil. Lyra flinched as it exploded into lotus-shaped shrapnel, chanting digital sutras that twisted through the air like mechanical Bodhisattvas.
Kael's Tyrant surged forward, wielding his katana—etched with flowing Li trigram fire algorithms, its edge slicing through the next drone's prayer field.
"Move like thunder, strike like Heaven's decree!" he howled, each stroke forming blood sigils that blurred into calligraphy.
From the ceiling, a Vatican Zhen-locked orbital crossbow fired wooden missiles tipped with exorcist glyphs. Lyra rolled aside, grabbing a scalpel charged with Wolf King venom and Taoist mercury.
"This isn't surgery. It's acupuncture for gods."
Three steps back, and the Philosopher hacked into her Bagua-coded surgical spiders. The bots spun midair, weaving nanothreads of antimatter infused with Yijing algorithms.
"Trigram inversion successful. Uploading celestial DNA schema..." his voice murmured, calm as an abbey's last prayer before annihilation.
Kael's shadow split—one side shaped like a samurai wolf with glowing fangs, the other a scholar haloed by Analects text, holding an ethereal jade tablet. Their dual form cast a reflection shaped like a crucified Bodhisattva howling at an unseen moon.
From the Purifier ranks, an elite monk fired a railgun encoded with the Heart Sutra. Lyra caught the blast with a mirror shard etched in Luoshu spirals, reflecting it into the Kan Trigram null zone.
"You're praying with bullets. I'm cursing with scalpels. Let's compare miracles."
The climax hit like a cosmic joke.
Kael collapsed mid-strike, convulsing as the Philosopher overrode the Tyrant—blood foaming with Taoist formulas. Lyra dove, her palms triggering the emergency Yin-Yang pulse shock on his pacemaker. It rebooted his Taiji Core, but not before his DNA spilled across the chamber like a fractal revelation.
Her blood dripped onto the residue.
And screamed.
The I Ching screen exploded into the Pre-Heaven Eight Trigrams, mapping ancestral convergence. 49% match. Their lineages formed the mythical Heaven-Human Fusion Equation, forbidden since the fall of the Shang Dynasty.
A red glyph blinked in midair: [LYRA-XIII: Clone of Daoist Alchemist Codename "Heaven's Scalpel"]
Kael opened his eyes.
"Your blood," he rasped, "remembers how gods were sewn."
Final Line Punches
Lyra (pulling a peachwood grenade pin with her teeth): "Tell your bishop his cybernetic Judas drone still owes me rent."
Kael, arguing with himself again:
Tyrant: "I'll stitch Vatican scrolls into their intestines!"
Philosopher: "Improper waste of scripture. Apply Confucian restraint."
Next: Lyra must dissect a divine fetus encoded with hexagram entropy—while Kael's two shadows battle over who gets to kill her last.
Extra features:
Lyra to her clone: "My failed experiment? At least my cross was earned, not 3D-printed."
Kael's dual personalities in internal monologue:
Tyrant: "I will chop your hexagrams into QR codes!"
Philosopher: "According to Shannon's entropy theorem, that will only increase our level of disorder."