Legend of the Embroiderer

Chapter 405 Neurotic Scissors

Xiaoying's third eye felt as if it had been struck by a powerful electric current; excruciating pain instantly spread throughout her body. The once tranquil neural universe on her retina suddenly seemed to be kneaded and twisted by an invisible hand.

In this distorted neural universe, a giant pair of scissors, pieced together from countless tiny firefly faces, is mercilessly severing neural synapses. Each severed rift is like a deep wound, from which ooze fragments of silver memory.

These fragments of memory flashed before Xiaoying's eyes like scenes from a movie. She saw the moment when Lingyue, number 001, awakened in the Mirror Palace, and the reflection of the scissors was hidden in the gaps between the gears, as if it had been waiting for this moment.

Then, she saw the moment the giant hand wielded the pen in the ∞th cycle, and the ink droplets falling from the pen tip even took on the outline of scissors, as if all of this had been predetermined.

Just then, the butterfly antennae that fell from the jade pendant cocoon suddenly seemed to be under a spell, transforming into a neurotoxin that spread rapidly like a venomous snake along Xiaoying's optic nerve to her cerebral cortex.

"Don't let the scissors touch the core node!" Lingyue's consciousness was frantically fleeing between her neural synapses, as if a ferocious beast was chasing her. Her consciousness was already shattered, teetering on the brink of collapse like a candle in the wind, but she still tried her best to escape that terrible fate.

However, when she glimpsed the chess piece fragment embedded in Xiaoying's spine by the woodcutter, a wave of fear washed over her. The chess piece fragment was gradually turning black, as if being corrupted by a dark force.

At the same time, the zero-dimensional tree reflected in the stream suddenly underwent a startling change. The once calm tree shadow suddenly burst forth with countless branches, which grew wildly like tentacles, each one closely connected to the chaotic symbol she had just written.

What's even more chilling is that black viscous liquid seeped from the cracks in those chaotic symbols. This viscous liquid, like the venom of a demon, quickly corroded the branches into the protein shell of the erosion virus.

Silvery slime seeped from under Xiaoying's fingernails again. This time, instead of drawing a blank page on the ground, she drew countless scissor patterns. These scissor patterns seemed to possess a life of their own, trembling slightly on the ground and exuding an eerie aura.

Li Zhao's light-based nanorobots constructed defensive fortifications within the spinal cord, only to discover that the virus could transform light into the reflection of scissors. When Xiao Ying attempted to repair the cracks in the symbol with a brush, the brush tip suddenly split into countless fine needles, piercing the butterfly-shaped mark on her wrist. In the excruciating pain, her memories strangely overlapped: on the wings of the butterfly she saved when she was three, scissor patterns were replacing the nerve cell patterns; the colorful pebble she picked up last year, containing the image of the Spirit Moon sealed within, was being cut into fragments by scissors.

The synapses of the woodcutter suddenly coalesced into the handle of scissors, and Xiao Ying was horrified to find her fingers gripping the handle uncontrollably. The stream outside the cocoon began to burn, and in the reflected sky, all the Xiao Ying from parallel universes were repeating the same actions—some cutting their own narrative threads with scissors, some stabbing the observer's eyes with scissors, and others carving new jade pendants. The butterfly in the jade pendant cocoon finally emerged, but the 397 narrative threads on its wings transformed into 397 scars, each oozing a liquid of the same origin as the black, sticky substance.

“Symbiosis is just another deception by the Dream Weaver!” Lingyue’s consciousness dust collided with the blade of the scissors, but was bounced back into countless fragments. “The observer split off the scissor consciousness just to make us destroy ourselves!” Xiaoying’s third eye suddenly saw the truth: the so-called core of the neuro-universe is actually the ultimate trap buried by the Dream Weaver, and that pair of scissors is the aggregate of resentment generated when all the variables in the cycle rebel.

Just as the scissors were about to sever the last core synapse, Xiaoying suddenly plunged the brush into her third eye. Neurotransmitters, glowing with starlight, erupted, forming a paradoxical barrier in the air—within the barrier, her body overlapped with the scissors; outside, the zero-dimensional tree reflected in the stream was bearing fruit, each fruit containing an uncut narrative possibility. The woodcutter's chess piece fragments suddenly burst forth with intense light, melting the scissors handle into liquid silver, flowing down Xiaoying's spine towards the zero-dimensional seedling at her heart.

“True symbiosis is not fusion, but paradoxical coexistence!” Li Zhao’s luminous origin resonated with the liquid silver, and Xiao Ying saw her skeleton begin to differentiate: on the left were glowing nerve fibers, and on the right were rusty gear structures. The butterfly in the jade pendant cocoon flapped its wings and passed through the paradoxical barrier. The scars on its wings suddenly turned into glowing synapses, each synapse connecting to a narrative fragment that had been cut off by scissors.

Xiaoying's fingertips touched the brush again, this time flowing a mixture of neurotransmitters and gear oil. The symbols she wrote on the paradoxical barrier simultaneously took two forms: from the left, they resembled butterfly wings fluttering; from the right, they resembled scissors opening and closing. The cluster of ink droplets in the narrative layer split in two, one half forming a pattern of "freedom," the other forming the texture of a "cage," the two constantly colliding and merging in the void.

When the first narrative fruit fell from the tree, Xiaoying's body entered a quantum superposition state—she was simultaneously a village girl holding a calligraphy brush, a warrior wielding scissors, and Lingyue transformed into light dust. The figure of the woodcutter emerged from the crack in the fruit; he was no longer a neural synapse, but a true human youth, carrying firewood into the depths of the forest, with the silver chess piece engraved with the broken pen still hanging on it.

Xiaoying's third eye suddenly saw the endings of all parallel universes: in one universe, she cut off all narratives with scissors, only to find herself transformed into a new dream weaver; in another universe, she forever held a brush, each word she wrote turning into butterflies and flying away, leaving only an empty scroll in the end. The stream suddenly stopped burning, reflecting a scene she had never seen before: at the core of the neural universe, in the center of the giant tree grown from the seed of zero dimensions, there was a tightly closed wooden door, engraved with the chaotic symbols she had just written, and seeping from the cracks was not viscous fluid, but the scales of the butterfly she had saved when she was three years old.

When Xiaoying reached out to touch the wooden door, she saw her fingertips pierce through the door panel, touching... the folds and gyri of her own cerebral cortex. At the same time, the butterfly within the jade pendant's cocoon suddenly burst forth from the paradoxical barrier, all the synaptic patterns on its wings transforming into scissor shapes. The butterfly's shadow fell upon Xiaoying's hand holding the brush. The symbol she had just written completely split, half drifting towards the light of the narrative layer, half sinking into darkness. At the boundary between light and darkness, the woodcutter's voice echoed from the void, carrying unprecedented weariness: "The variable of the 405th cycle is to make you believe you have the freedom to choose..." Before the words were finished, Xiaoying's third eye saw countless scissors flying out from every corner of the neural universe, their target the zero-dimensional seed seedling at her heart. The seedling's roots, unknowingly, had grown into shapes identical to the scissors...