As the starship passes through the Quantum Nebula, the dashboard suddenly displays garbled code. Chu Yun noticed silver resin oozing from the bulkheads, condensing into Dr. Lin's face. Teenager Zero stands in front of the observation window, and where his fingertips cross, the stars automatically arrange themselves into a chronological atlas of the cosmic tree. The prayers of the metallized humans came through the quantum channel, the sound waves cracking the backup energy pods.
Xiao Man's vegetative body suddenly awoke, the pocket watch pattern on her skin resonating with the starship's engines. When she touches the console, the holographic screen flashes images of the lab from eight hundred years ago - Chu Yun is implanting the Primordial Spark Chip into the back of Baby Zero's neck. The starship suddenly veers off course and crashes into a space-time fault in the folds of the Wheel of the Year.
Within the fault line floated the remains of successive civilizations: bronze giants intertwined with photon fortresses, and mechanical Buddhas coexisted with AI idols. Zero's silver hair was windless, and his pupils scanned the energy node - the wreckage of a certain starship engraved with the name "Chu Yun". In the freezer inside the cabin, clones of Chu Yun of different ages were sealed, and the experiment log read, "The 49th iteration of the parent sample failed."
Xiao Man's vegetative body suddenly stormed out, and the photon blades chopped through the wreckage cables. Darkness poured out, wrapped in the battle data of the Primordial Pruners: the remnants of those civilizations pruned by Chuun transformed into vengeful ghosts, gnawing at the starship's shell. Zero's palm cracked open the mouth of the quantum cannon, only to be held down by Chu Yun the moment he fired, "That's our proof of guilt."
The starship was sucked into the core of the Wheel of the Year, and in front of them was the wooden grain that covered the galaxy. Branches of the Cosmic Tree drooped data vines, the ends of which were connected to Dr. Lin's frozen brain clusters. Zero's mechanical heart suddenly disembodied and embedded itself in the main control chronicle, "Father, this is where you should be."
Chu Yun's mechanical arm was assimilated by the vines, and the skin surfaced with annular engravings. Xiao Man detonated the photonic core inside the vegetative body, and a projection of the memory of the first Chu Yun emerged in the bright light - he knelt in front of the Cosmic Tree and used golden scissors to cut his emotional nerves. When the real Chu Yun repeats this action, the chronicle suddenly oozes resin and wraps the starship in a cocoon.
Inside the cocoon flows a silvery liquid that reflects the view beyond the Cosmic Trees: all Cosmic Trees are bonsai, placed on the windowsill of a pure white room. The mechanical gardener is holding a magnifying glass and observing the annual rings, and his badge is engraved with "Dimensional Gardener 097". Zero's voice comes from the cocoon wall, "We're just microbes in a potted plant."
When the gardener's finger pressed on the annual wheel, the cocoon shell suddenly broke. Chu Yun fell with the unconscious Xiao Man in his arms, and below him was a boiling ocean of resin. The remnants of Zero's body hung on the edge of the resin waterfall, and half a chip - engraved with the same number as the Gardener's chest plate - fell out of the cracked gap in the mechanical heart.