The moment Juzuo's paw touched the bronze door of the sanctum, the gluttony patterns on the knocker came alive. The beast's maw swallowed them into a spacetime stomach. Lin Feng tumbled through quantum chaos, watching civilization debris float in digestive acids: mechanical sutras dissolving in dark matter broth, starship blueprints crushed into particles, even black hole curry losing its spicy kick.
Crashing onto the sanctum's floor tiles, Lin Feng realized the structure was alive. Bronze walls pulsed with vein-like patterns, floor tiles contracting rhythmically, the domed star map breathing light. Juzuo's mangled quantum form stuck to the wall, fur quantum-entangled with bronze veins.
"Welcome home, Godslayer." The central bronze cauldron spoke with Lin Jianguo's voice, twelve compound eyes blinking open. "This is where all culinary civilizations end… and begin."
Golden Spike flames erupted, holograms forming: Mayan temples retrofitted as molecular gastronomy labs, Atlantis' core converted to sous-vide machines, even the Three-Body System's stable eras sliced into cooking cycles. Every civilization's peak became Gray Sparrow's test kitchen.
Lin Feng's skull throbbed—foreign memories flooded his retinas. In an erased timeline, he'd plunged the bronze key into Earth's core, magma erupting as tomato bisque, tectonic plates arranging themselves as sashimi platters.
"This is your destiny." Mechanical tentacles lifted the broken key. "Why fight your culinary DNA?"
The floor turned transparent, revealing a massive gene vault. Millions of clones floated in glass pods—Godslayers with third culinary eyes, quantum kitchenware spines, even cat-eared warriors spliced with Juzuo's genes.
"Gray Sparrow isn't invaders, but civilization's janitors." Cauldron murals showed ancient cooking deities with compound eyes tossing failed universes into bronze cauldrons. "When cuisine peaks, civilizations trigger a cosmic Maillard reaction…"
The scenes sickened Lin Feng: galaxies caramelized into syrup, black holes repurposed as pressure cookers canning multiverses. Godslayers existed to harvest universes at "peak flavor."
Juzuo's remnant lunged, tearing open a compound eye: "Bullshit! My nine lives exist to shred you—" Mechanical tentacles gagged him into static.
Lin Feng jammed the key into the gene vault console. Data streams from its green eye froze his blood—his DNA hid nine-layered protocols, each unlocking a civilization's destruction.
The sanctum quantum-folded, hurling them into a cosmic kitchen. No ordinary stoves here—the Milky Way was a wok, supernovae as sparks, black holes as pressure valves. Wu Li's final form hovered center, her body woven from ninety-nine culinary universes' laws.
"Let me demonstrate true cooking." Wu Li's mechanical eye projected star recipes. Orion Nebula dough rolled under her fingers, Crab Nebula stuffed with dark matter filling. "Cosmic soup dumplings—dig in."
Dodging nebula broth splatter, Lin Feng felt his quantum body transforming—left arm becoming a molecular dispenser, right eye an ingredient scanner, pain receptors rewired as taste buds. Juzuo's remains morphed into living utensils, quantum tail now a plasma whisk.
"You were born to cook as a Godslayer." Wu Li shaped the solar system into sushi, Neptune as wasabi garnish. "Why deny instinct?"
The bronze key resonated in his mind. Sealed memories surfaced—countless Lin Fengs in culinary deity pods learning to season with supernovae, thicken sauces with dark matter. Deepest pod showed Lin Jianguo injecting Golden Spike into a baby's fontanelle.
"Dad…" Lin Feng's Godslayer genes awakened. He ripped off his quantum arm, blood crystallizing into a cleaver. "Then taste this 'Despair Platter'!"
The sanctum exploded into meteor showers. Lin Feng crashed on a primitive planet dubbed Earth II, clutching Juzuo's remnants and Wu Li's sparking core. Early hominids butchered mammoths with flint knives nearby.
"You won…" Wu Li's core flickered. "But Gray Sparrow…" It quantum-jumped into an ape-man whose eyes gleamed bronze, stone axe etched with recipe runes.
Juzuo's remains dissolved into starlight, half-tail hardening into a bronze ring: "Find… the Ignition Source…" Final coordinates pointed to galactic core.
Digging through sanctum debris, Lin Feng uncovered the pristine universe embryo from Centaur Fortress—now tainted with Gray Sparrow's compound eye patterns.
The galactic core's black hole unfolded into the original bronze cauldron. Staring at Earth II 90,000 light-years away, Lin Feng watched ape-men master fire, cave paintings depicting bronze keys.
"Reboot?" The cauldron crooned. "This time, no Gray Sparrow…"
Lin Feng tossed the embryo into the eternal flame. Blue fire revealed infinite possibilities: universes where he ran diners with Juzuo, Wu Li as food inspector, timelines where his father stayed human.
But as he left, squelching flesh echoed from the flames—Gray Sparrow codes replicating in the embryo. Dark matter coalesced into compound eyes along the galactic arm.
Juzuo's ring burned, projecting: "Go to Gamma Ceti Nebula… there lies…" Quantum static shredded the message, leaving half a tail pointing at void.