The moment the scissors pierced into his palm, Chu Yun's mechanical right eye burst into blue light. The seeds suspended in the mechanical giant's hand suddenly cracked open, releasing a black mist of light-each grain of light dust was wrapped in the mournful cry of a pruned universe. The lab's remaining electronics went on a collective rampage, projecting billions of lines of flowing genetic code on the walls.
"Protocol candidate, please complete authentication." Golden lines emerged on the surface of the mechanical giant hand, and the lines formed Chu Yun's face. The quantum remnants of the baby girl before she dissipated suddenly gathered and formed a translucent shield, "Dad... The seed is tampering with your genetic chain!"
Chu Yun looked down and realized that his veins were being dyed silver, and the outlines of mechanical gears protruded under his skin. The alabaster stump suddenly burst, its roots wrapping around his waist and abdomen, yanking him towards the Seed's core.
Inside the seed was pure black space, and in the center stood a double helix structure torture rack. As Chu Yun was bound by genetic chains, clones of successive generations of Xiao Man surfaced on the torture rack - each connected to an infusion tube, with Chu Yun's memory data flowing through the pipes.
"This is the final test." The mechanical giant hand's voice came out from the torture rack, "Kill all variables and become the perfect gardener." Chu Yun's mechanical right eye automatically locked onto the clone, and the kill success rate popped up in his vision: 100%. The remnants of the baby girl suddenly materialized, the photon blade cutting through the chains, "Look at the back of the torture rack!"
On the back was engraved a log in blood: candidate Chu Yun, 49th awakening failed, execution variable Xiaoman-49. Attached to the end of the log is a hologram - Chu Yun personally stabbed the scissors into the heart of the young girl Xiao Man.
The execution frame suddenly activates, and the clones of Xiao Man open their mechanical eyes and gather around with scissors in hand. Chu Yun's mechanical arm lifted uncontrollably, and light blades popped out of his palm. The remnants of the baby girl slammed into the torture rack, the black blood spray revealing a crack in the canopy - beyond the crack was a pure white room, where the elderly Chu Yun was handing seeds to the five-year-old Dr. Lin.
"You're the first variable!" The remnants of the baby girl hissed before dissipating. Chu Yun's light blade suddenly turned around and pierced his own mechanical right eye. Blue blood splattered on the torture rack, and all the clones suddenly stiffened as their mechanical eyes simultaneously shed tears of blood.
The seed exploded with a mournful cry, and the mechanical giant hand dissipated into particles of light. Chu Yun knelt in the ruins, his left eye regained its light, and a black shoot throbbed in his right eye socket. A shimmering hourglass rose from the wreckage of the Magnolia stump, and the grains of sand formed the silhouette of Xiao Man: "Go find me in the hourglass..."
A golden curtain of rain suddenly descended on the laboratory, the raindrops spelling out new instructions on the ground:
Protocol Candidate Chu Yun, promoted to Overseer
New mission: prune thirty layers of the Upper Universe
As Chu Yun picked up the hourglass, horrifying images surfaced in the reflection-
At the core of each layer of the universe sat "himself", who was injecting a baby with a microchip.
The mechanical remains at the bottom of the hourglass suddenly coalesced into a door, and the sound of a baby girl crying came from inside the door. As Chu Yun gripped his light blade and stepped in, Zero's electronic voice sounded behind him, "Congratulations, you have finally qualified."
In the last instant before the doorway closed, Chu Yun glimpsed that his right eye shoot had blossomed into an alabaster orchid - the back of the petals were engraved with the Omega symbol, and at the stamen sat the smiling embryo that was handing the scissors to his five-year-old self.