**Thermonuclear Scorched Fault.**

  Gravity here was like an invisible, giant hand, pinning all matter dead against the surface that reeked of sulfur. The thin atmosphere felt exceptionally heavy under 1.4G, and corrosive gases constantly stripped the coating of the "Thunder-7" anti-gravity bike.

  "Ma Feili, your pulse frequency has risen by 15%. This is a typical symptom of anxiety." Ada's voice rang in the comms channel, calm and precise. She was currently at 100% performance status, her logic module handling this extreme environment with ease. Sitting in the bike's sidecar, her deep blue electronic eyes scanned the desolate saline-alkali land around them, her body covered by a faint anti-radiation field.

  "My father's consciousness is still suffering in that cryo-chamber, Ada. I can't be calm at a time like this." Ma Feili gripped the handlebars tightly, his palms slick with cold sweat. On the cargo rack behind him, a lead-sealed electromagnetic induction case contained an unstable "Antimatter Core"—the only chip he had to redeem his father's consciousness.

  Perched on the edge of the bike's rear seat, the semi-carbon, semi-silicon bionic dog, **Obsidian**, clung tightly to the guardrail. Its mechanical prosthetic eyes flickered with a ghostly blue light, and a low electromagnetic noise rumbled in its throat.

  "Ada, scan Obsidian's status," Ma Feili growled low. "He shouldn't have come. The radiation here will fry his neural network."

  "Detecting irreversible ionization damage to S-0's (Obsidian) biological tissues, Ma Feili," Ada quickly provided the data. "According to the theorem of irreversible entropy, his heat sink efficiency is declining. I recommend discarding him to reduce the bike's load and increase the mission success rate."

  "He is not just an asset!" Ma Feili rudely interrupted Ada's logical conclusion.

  As the bike traveled to the edge of the "Odyssey Rift," a strong wave of "Void Sickness" dizziness hit him. Ma Feili saw a mass of static snow on his retina—neural disorder caused by long-term low-pressure operations. He stumbled to a stop next to an abandoned pressurization station, trying to clear his breathing valve.

  In his trance, he saw Obsidian rush up madly, his sharp teeth clamping down hard on the cuff of Ma Feili's pressure suit, dragging him backward.

  "Damn it! Are you malfunctioning too?" Enraged by the torture of his hallucinations, Ma Feili grabbed a piece of high-density ore and smashed it heavily onto Obsidian's head. Green hydraulic fluid splattered into the gray dust. Obsidian let out a piercing electronic wail and staggered back into the churning sandstorm.

  "Ma Feili, your logical judgment is impaired. Immediate oxygen intake recommended," Ada reminded him calmly and forcibly activated the bike's emergency oxygen system.

  Three hours later, when they arrived at the Capital Checkpoint, Ma Feili habitually reached for the rear seat.

  It was empty.

  "The Core? Where is my Core?!" He roared madly, cold sweat instantly soaking his lining.

  "According to records, at the pressurization station three hours ago, the case slipped off due to a muscle spasm in your hand," Ada pulled up the footage from that time. "Due to local magnetic interference, I failed to issue an alert in time."

  Ma Feili wasted no words. He turned the bike around like a madman, driving against the traffic in the sandstorm that blotted out the sun. When he returned to that abandoned pressurization station, he saw a scene that made his heart stop:

  Obsidian was lying prone in the acidic dust. His limbs had melted due to overload running, and his shell was pitted with corrosion holes. But beneath his broken body, he was shielding that lead-sealed case with his life. In the storm, he was like a stubborn reef, fighting against the entropy increase of the entire world.

  "Detected that S-0's core processor has physically burned out due to forcibly closing heat vents to shield against static electricity." Ada jumped off the bike, a data cable popping from her fingertip to access Obsidian's broken interface. "To protect the magnetic stability of the Core, he chose self-meltdown."

  **[Detected... Master... Core... Safe...]** Obsidian's voice synthesizer emitted broken static sounds—the final persistence in his logical chain.

  "Ada, save him! Didn't you say your logic module is running perfectly?" Ma Feili knelt on the ground.

  Ada was silent for 0.5 seconds—a latency her logic module had never experienced before. She looked at Obsidian's gradually extinguishing electronic eyes and said softly, "Based on the *Flank Protection Protocol*, I forcibly extracted the encrypted fragments regarding 'Loyalty' from his core logic code before his hardware completely collapsed. Although his body cannot be repaired, his 'Essence' has been uploaded to my backup storage."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Three days later, Ma Feili successfully redeemed his father.

  On the wasteland of Acheron, Ma Feili erected a metal tombstone for Obsidian. Ada stood beside him, reading the words laser-etched onto the marker: **"S-0: He understood how to exist as a soul better than humans did."**

  "Ma Feili," Ada turned her head, complex data streams flowing through her electronic eyes. "In my logic library, his behavior is classified as an 'Extremely Low-Probability Negative-Entropy Event.' He used his own destruction to combat the desolation of the universe. This... does not compute, but it aligns with what you call a 'Soul'."

  ---

  The storm of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault rolled up fine radioactive dust, drumming against the composite armor of the "Grave Digger" mech, making a tooth-aching rustling sound.

  Ada stood under a rock ridge sheltered from the wind. Her pale blue electronic eyes looked exceptionally calm under the dim radiation clouds. Her self-check progress bar ticked at 100%, and her power core output was stable. Deep in her backup storage, that string of core code belonging to Obsidian lay dormant like a hibernating snake, waiting for the moment to reshape a body.

  "Ma Feili, environmental entropy is accelerating." Ada's voice came through the encrypted channel, devoid of warmth. "In the interval waiting for the radiation peak to pass, I retrieved an old era archive regarding 'Mimicry Famine.' It might explain why, under the law of irreversible entropy, certain predators evolve a patience that defies logic."

  As Ada's fingertip swiped across the void, a holographic projection slowly unfolded on the scorched earth.

  ***

  **[Archive Number: Erebus-192 — Mimicry Famine]**

  Erebus-9, a tidally locked planet of eternal night. The survival logic here was simplified to the extreme: Oxygen equaled Life, and Heat equaled Class.

  **Xie Zhongtiao** curled up in the narrow cockpit of his "Grave Digger" mech. The red light of the dashboard illuminated his face, bloated from long-term consumption of synthetic amino acids. He was a scavenger, a parasite scraping for crumbs in the gears of the Interstellar Mining Alliance. At home, he had three crying genetic clones—expensive negative assets left behind by his failed marriage.

  "Damn 'Life Support,' damn entropy." He cursed, operating the mech to step into a "forest" made of silicon-based crystals.

  Just then, he caught a glimpse of soft light on his thermal imager that didn't belong to this wasteland.

  It was a woman. She wore a robe of pearlescent bio-fiber, walking lightly in the cold severe enough to crack carbon steel. Xie Zhongtiao's greed instantly overwhelmed his caution. In this star sector where the law was thinner than the vacuum, a lone female with high-level protective gear meant a black market fortune large enough for him to squander for years.

  He intercepted her, blocking her retreat with the mech's hydraulic clamps.

  "Beautiful survivor," Xie Zhongtiao made a rude tease through the loudspeaker. "Is your oxygen tank made of a perpetual motion machine?"

  The woman looked up, her compound eyes flashing with ghostly blue light under the shadow of her helmet. She called herself "**Irene**," a contract slave fleeing the Trade Alliance. Under the threat of Xie Zhongtiao cutting off her oxygen supply, she showed just the right amount of weakness and submission.

  "I can take care of your children," she said in a magnetic, synthesized electronic voice. "I possess high-level housekeeping module codes. As long as you... give me a haven."

  Xie Zhongtiao was dazzled by this sudden "good luck." That very night, he dismantled the rusted old housekeeping robot at home and settled "Irene" in the lower level of the hab-module. He even used his highest authority to lock the hatch and cut off all social channels, trying to establish his own dictatorship on this vacuum island.

  "Irene" performed flawlessly. She rewrote the hab-module's circulation system, reducing energy consumption by 30%. She sewed anti-radiation suits for the children and simulated the scent of synthetic fragrances in the cold cabin. Xie Zhongtiao indulged in this false warmth brought by high technology, thinking he had captured a bonus missed by God.

  Until that cruise cycle, when Xie Zhongtiao went to the Dyson Sphere to sign a protocol, leaving for three full standard hours.

  When he stepped back into the hab-module, what greeted him was not Irene's smile, but glaring red alarm lights. The air was thick with a nauseating, viscous scent of biochemical hydraulic fluid mixed with blood.

  "Irene?" He tremblingly drew his electromagnetic pistol.

  In the shadows of the master bedroom, a massive shadow was unfurling. That was no contract slave, but a **"Nemesis-Class Mimic Beast."** The human face belonging to "Irene" was currently splitting open like flower petals in the center of its torso, revealing rows of dense carbon-fiber fangs inside.

  It did not attack Xie Zhongtiao. It was already full.

  The monster emitted a scornful simulated sound—it was Xie Zhongtiao's own voice: "Thanks for the energy blocks, Scavenger." Then, like a bolt of black lightning, it smashed through the pressurized vent and vanished into the polar night of Erebus-9.

  Xie Zhongtiao collapsed to the ground. In front of the oxygen circulation vent before him, three small heads were lined up side by side. The brain tissue had been precisely sucked dry. Residual droplets of blood floated in the low gravity, looking like dark red, mocking pearls.

  ***

  The holographic projection extinguished, and the storm of the Scorched Fault seemed to weaken slightly.

  "Archive end." Ada turned to look at Ma Feili. "According to the entropy theorem, biological evolution tends toward the optimization of energy acquisition. That predator read Xie Zhongtiao's 'Loneliness'—a low-entropy psychological state that is most easily exploited by high-order mimics."

  She paused, her right hand brushing over the storage area containing Obsidian's code, which felt slightly warm.

  "In this world, when tenderness appears too perfect, it is usually a rehearsal for death." Ada concluded, her tone remaining steady. "Ma Feili, our energy is at 82%. I suggest leaving this potential Mimic habitat before the next radiation tide arrives."