The roots of the Magnolia Tree were frantically fleeing as the mechanical giant hand tore through the sky. Chu Yun held baby girl Xiao Man in his arms as he ran wildly across the surface of the steel water, the metallic earth behind him being crushed into scrap metal by the giant hand. The black shoots in the baby girl's pupils suddenly skyrocketed, forming a shield to block the falling mechanical debris.
"Find the anchor point..." The baby girl emitted an electronic sound and pressed her small hand on Chu Yun's brow. Hidden coordinates emerged from the flood of memories - buried in the center of the furnace was a block of gears engraved with runes, the very core device that stabilized the dimension. Dr. Lin's mechanical remnants suddenly blocked the path, his chest chip projecting a holographic warning, "Touching the anchor point will release the Primordial Virus!"
Chu Yun chopped off Dr. Lin's mechanical arm, and encrypted logs surfaced at the black blood spatter: the Original Virus is actually a self-help program that allows the mechanical universe to regain its free will. The Anchor Point Gear was entangled in twelve data chains, and with each severed one, a silhouette of a parallel universe flashed by-
Steampunk world collapses as Anchorpoint is unlocked
Cybercity plunges into chaos as the virus is unleashed
Baby girl suddenly convulses, black shoots burrowing out of her eyes, "Daddy, my body is rejecting it!" Cracks appeared in the shield, and the fingertips of the giant mechanical hand had penetrated the dimensional barrier. Chu Yun realized that fluorescent codes emerged from the baby girl's spine - she was the true dimensional anchor point.
The remnants of Dr. Lin's body suddenly blew itself up, and a wave of air lifted the data chains. The anchor point gears begin to reverse, releasing a tide of silver light. The baby girl floated in the tide of light, her skin peeling away inch by inch to reveal the black core pulsing inside. The mechanical giant hand took the opportunity to grab her ankle, cracking open the portal in its palm - inside the portal sat the elderly Chu Yun, pruning an alabaster bonsai.
"Hand over the core and I'll keep this universe." Elderly Chu Yun's voice resonated with the mechanical giant hand. Chu Yun swung his scissors at the giant hand, only to find that the scissors were adsorbed by the baby girl's core. Her body began to quantize and her voice fragmented, "Put me... Put me in the anchor point..."
The moment Chu Yun pressed the baby girl towards the anchor point gear, the tide of silver light turned into a monstrous wave. The mechanical giant hand was corroded and snapped, and screams came from outside the dimensional rift. The core of the baby girl fused with the gears, and a torrent of golden code surfaced on the surface of the earth - all mechanical creations suddenly came to a standstill, and flesh and blood lines grew on the gears.
The fruit at the top of the Magnolia Tree suddenly exploded, dropping out half of a broken pocket watch. When Chu Yun picked it up, the dial reflected a bizarre image:
The elderly Chu Yun was handing the same pocket watch to the ten-year-old Dr. Lin in some pure white room.
The countdown refreshed on the newborn earth:
Dimensional stability 12%... Primordial code awakening detected...
The baby girl's silhouette rises from the gears, data petals wrapped around her fingertips, "Daddy, we're being held in a bigger cage."
She points to the sky, where an infinite number of nested mechanical pupils emerge - each with a "Chu Yun" pruning the universe in its depths.