Strange Paths to Immortality

Chen Jiuzhang's hands trembled over the fading entropy equation, the key's purple light flaring with unstable energy. "It's the only way," he said, voice cracking. "The equation can turn the entropy converter into a weapon—but I have to become its core."

"No!" Su Nian grabbed his arm, the vision of crystal - covered Earth still searing her mind. "There has to be another—"

A drone rammed into her, projecting a 幻象 of her village consumed by silver crystals. "This is your future," the mechanical voice intoned. "Submit or be perfected."

Luna raised a starlight shield, but the drones' beams were piercing it. "Jiuzhang, we don't have time! The Observers are already on Earth—those crystals in Su Nian's vision... they're converting people."

Zhang Chengying slammed a crystal shard into the pedestal, reactivating the equation. "I'll hold them off. Do what you need to do." He summoned a wall of crystal, but it began to turn silver under the drones' fire.

Chen Jiuzhang looked at his friends, then at the key fused to his palm. He remembered Wu Laogou's words: "Balance is not a prison, but a dance." He took a deep breath, channeling all his light and dark energy into the equation.

The pedestal erupted in a vortex of multicolored light, sucking Chen Jiuzhang in. His body began to dissolve into energy, the key expanding to form a reactor core. "Now, Lyra!" he shouted, voice echoing from the vortex.

Lyra typed furiously on her interface, redirecting the Gui Xu Secret Realm's residual entropy into the core. "Entropic wave ready—firing in three... two..."

Su Nian and Luna joined hands, pouring their magic into the reactor. Zhang Chengying's crystal wall collapsed, and drones swarmed in, but he jumped into the vortex, sacrificing himself to stabilize the wave. "For Earth!" he yelled, dissolving into energy.

The entropic wave fired, a torrent of unbalanced energy that tore through the drones. Their silver shells began to rust and crumble, unable to process the chaotic frequency. The lead drone shrieked, its form disintegrating into stardust.

But as the wave dissipated, Chen Jiuzhang's form emerged from the vortex, half - shadow and half - light. The key was now a part of his chest, pulsing with unstable energy. "It worked... but I'm..." He couldn't finish, as shadows began to crawl up his neck.

Luna placed a hand on his shoulder, starlight soothing the darkness. "You're still you. The wave destroyed the Observers' fleet, but their ground forces are on Earth."

Lyra showed them a live feed from her scanner: cities across Earth were being overgrown by silver crystals, their inhabitants frozen in crystalline stasis. "The main conversion hub is in the Himalayas—ancient architects' outpost."

Su Nian picked up Zhang Chengying's crystal shard, now cracked but still glowing. "Then we go to Earth. Finish this."

As they stepped through a portal formed by the key's energy, Chen Jiuzhang looked back at the ruined crystal city. The entropy converter had saved them, but at the cost of his humanity. And as they arrived on Earth, greeted by a sky filled with silver tendrils, he knew the final battle would require a sacrifice greater than any before.

The Dimension Observers had come to perfect the universe, but Chen Jiuzhang—half - man, half - entropy core—was the flaw in their order. And flaws, sometimes, are what save the world.