When the amber fruit of the metal tree cracked open, Su Wanqing was braiding her daughter Xiaoman's hair. Under the blood-colored moonlight, Dr. Lin's mechanical prosthetic eye was suspended in mid-air, its pupil projecting the coordinates of the global mechanical beast nests. Xiaoman suddenly reached out and grabbed the prosthetic eye, and the five-year-old girl's palm oozed the same metallic liquid as Chu Yun's.
"Mom, this is the marble Grandpa gave me." Xiao Man stuffed the prosthetic eye into her school bag and bounced off to school. Su WanQing touched the inside of her daughter's jacket to feel hot - the sweater with the cartoon rabbit was sewn with the remnants of the fuel rods that had been looted from the nuclear power plant seven years ago.
An eerie song emanates from the neighborhood kindergarten. Dr. Shen leans over the fence to eavesdrop, and the kids are singing in a mechanically synthesized voice: "Seven days and seven days, rust ate mommy's fingers..." When he tumbles into the playground, he finds that the swing chain is covered in bronze mold, and each piece of rust is a miniature version of a mechanical beast design.
Chu Yun is dismantling a rusty truck at an auto body shop, and bloodied mech gloves fall out of the hood - the size is clearly a child's model. When he tries to burn the glove, the flames suddenly condense into Xiao Man's face, "Uncle Chu, this is what Brother Lu Li left behind."
Xiao Man's class was visiting the Science and Technology Museum when the rainstorm warning sounded throughout the city. When Su WanQing arrived, the entire jellyfish exhibit was being revitalized. Mechanical jellyfish pierced through glass cases, their tentacles curling away from screaming children. Xiao Man stood in the center of the exhibition hall, electronic lines spreading from his neck to his cheeks, "Mom, they want to play hide-and-seek with me."
Dr. Shen splits the back door of the showroom with a fire axe and finds an underground warehouse stacked with frozen pods. Inside each capsule lay a child the same age as Xiao Man, with a label on his chest that read, "Spare player for the second game". When Chu Yun ripped off the jellyfish tentacles, the slime corroded the gears of his mechanical left leg.
When the last mechanical jellyfish was stuffed into the cryopod, the radio suddenly played a countdown, "Player Lu Li has awakened." Su Wanqing finds unfamiliar fingerprints on the console - an exact match to the sample from Dr. Lin's lab seven years ago.
When picking up Xiaoman from school, the girl points to the evening sun and says, "Brother Lu Li is fighting in the clouds." Su Evening Harvest looks up to see sword light flashing through the cracks in the clouds, the very same move the Void used back then. She touched the righteous eye in her daughter's school bag and felt a note: "Tomorrow morning, seven o'clock, see you at the river beach. --Lu Li"