The light of Sirius B was like a layer of diluted lead powder, heavily coating the anti-radiation dome of the "Jixia" Transit Station. This white dwarf was in the ruthless contraction phase of its long life, emitting high-energy gamma rays that turned the scorched fault on the surface into a sickly glazed color.

  I stepped onto the metal grating of the corroded zone. The soles of my boots ground against the wreckage of mechanized rodents, making ear-piercing cracking sounds.

  "Ma Feili, environmental radiation levels detected exceeding 3000 mSv." Ada's voice rang directly beneath my cortex, calm and precise. She was currently in a delicate state of high load—aside from maintaining my life support system, her core processes were encapsulating and isolating that extremely unstable consciousness code of **Obsidian**. "I recommend activating the Level 2 Force Field Shield. My performance reserves are fully capable of handling the current entropic environment."

  I looked back at **Gao Jiwen** behind me. His condition was terrible; his synthetic blood was experiencing cavitation within the circulation pump due to "Phase Shift." Every pump sound was like a heavy hammer striking his chest.

  "Hold on, Jiwen." I supported him and turned to look at **Gao Zhenmei**, who was leading the way. This biophysicist was fiddling with her detector, trying to locate the so-called "Signal Broker" amidst this chaotic electromagnetic storm.

  We passed through a pressurized cabin with unstable gravity and entered the territory of the "Liang Clan." The air here was a nauseating mix of ozone and cheap synthetic spices. **Liang Shi** sat amidst a pile of discarded quantum repeaters, her eyes flickering with the coldness unique to silicon-based life.

  "Ada, scan that curtain," I ordered in a low voice.

  "Scan complete. Ma Feili, behind the curtain is not a 'God Idol' as defined by carbon-based life, but a running quantum topology array. Its complexity is extremely high, currently simulating the gravitational field fluctuations of a vanished galaxy. This does not look like technology a scavenger would possess." Ada's warning made me press my hand against the pulse gun at my waist.

  Liang Shi ignored our wariness. She lit incense rich in neural stabilizers and casually struck a high-frequency oscillating chime three times. It wasn't music, but a string of binary handshake protocols.

  "'It' is descending," Liang Shi whispered.

  The weak Helium-3 lighting in the cabin suddenly extinguished, replaced by the afterglow of the electromagnetic storm sweeping past the window. In that instant, Ada's alarm pitch suddenly spiked: "High-dimensional space folding detected! Some kind of consciousness entity is forcibly accessing the local network via quantum entanglement!"

  *BOOM—!*

  A loud noise exploded within the sealed cabin. It wasn't air vibration, but a signal shock acting directly on the neurons. The electromagnetic suspension seat on the repair table trembled violently under its wrapping of superconducting fabric, as if bearing the weight of ten thousand tons.

  A low, vigorous male voice rang out in the depths of our consciousness, carrying the pressure of a higher dimension: "Fate is with us! Lonely souls across star sectors!"

  Gao Zhenmei fought back the neural pain and connected to the comms channel: "You... within subspace, have you seen the 'Primal Observer'?"

  "The South Sea is a familiar path for my cruise; how could I not see?" The voice responded, accompanied by phantoms woven from data streams in the void. "Your so-called 'Gods' are merely projection coordinates left by high-tier civilizations in the three-dimensional world."

  "What about the 'Great Collapse Adjudicator'? Will he also change with the destruction of the galaxy?" I couldn't help but ask.

  "Entropy increase is irreversible; old gods will also exit." The voice of the Supreme Immortal (Shang Xian) became somewhat desolate. "The Adjudicator is codenamed '**Cao**'. He is responsible for reclaiming the final logical fragments before thermal death arrives."

  Ada quickly recorded these dialogues in my consciousness, her analysis module running wildly. "Ma Feili, the opponent's underlying logic is extremely profound; I cannot even capture the boundaries of his computing power. However, he has a targeted repair solution for Gao Jiwen's neural shift."

  "Save him." I looked at the suspension seat.

  "Take him back. Access the public data port at midnight." The Supreme Immortal's voice gradually faded, accompanied by a clarity akin to a dimension-reduction strike. "I will retrieve a patch from the '**Mahasthamaprapta**' (Da Shi) database. As long as the underlying logic doesn't collapse, this minor disorder caused by entropy is nothing."

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The light converged, and that oppressive sense of dimensionality vanished instantly. Only Liang Shi remained, tidying the sensor connectors at her temples with a sly look on her face.

  The next day, when that data patch of unknown origin was injected into Jiwen's life support fluid, his chaotic brainwaves returned to tranquility like silk smoothed by an iron.

  "Data patch verified. Logical closed loop complete," Ada reported, a trace of rare curiosity in her tone. "Ma Feili, in the code comments left by that 'Supreme Immortal,' there is a line of ancient Earth text: *'Entropy Reducers are the Night’s Watch of Civilization.'*"

  I looked out the window at the pale light of Sirius B. Above this thermonuclear scorched earth, some connection transcending physical laws was quietly pulsing in deep space.

  ---

  The storm of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault carried a tart, acidic smell of electric charge.

  Ada's visual sensors presented a cold ghostly blue under the lead-gray radiation clouds. Her performance remained at a 100% peak state. As a defensive mechanism, one of her data links was permanently anchored deep in Ma Feili's consciousness, monitoring those unstable code pulses that were as deep as obsidian.

  "The entropy increase rate here is 14.2% faster than outside." Ada pushed aside the wreckage of a mechanized bird. Its metal wings displayed a bizarre, rainbow-like oxide layer under the intense radiation. "But in this disordered silence, I have captured a segment of high-frequency recursive quantum residue."

  She projected the parsed information directly onto Ma Feili's retina. It was a colony archive from Year 2044 of the Great Migration Calendar—**[Record #197: Jingshan (Quiet Mountain)]**.

  ***

  At the edge of the Ascalon Dyson Sphere, the light always carried a decadence from being stretched by gravity.

  It was the noisiest era of the "Hejian" Mining Space Station. A place soaked in alcohol and heavy metal dust enshrined an "Electronic Immortal."

  "**Jingshan**" had no flesh. He resided in a scavenging cyborg who collected scrap. The scavenger's shell was tattered, the prosthetic seams filled with low-quality grease, but whenever Jingshan went "online," that shell would display a trembling elegance.

  He chatted and laughed amidst the leftovers of holographic projections, deconstructing interstellar topology with a simulated aged voice. When sensors monitored wild fluctuations in the energy field, the synthetic carbohydrates on the table would disintegrate at the molecular level, as if swallowed by an invisible black hole.

  "That is the feeding of a high-dimensional consciousness entity," the pioneers of that time would say.

  **Gao Shaozai**, an heir burdened by a family curse of genetic decay, invited this "Immortal" to the upper levels of Ascalon to seek an algorithmic model for life extension.

  In that sealed monitoring room filled with neural-interactive spices, Jingshan displayed his power for the first time. When the station's background radiation was adjusted to a specific Hertz frequency, a thunderous resonance came from deep within the armor plating.

  "What a magnificent Cross-Galaxy Energy Matrix!"

  The voice did not travel through air, but vibrated the soul directly through the metal structure. The scavenger opened his eyes, ghostly blue light swallowing and spitting in his prosthetic eyes. At that moment, everyone—including the Gao brothers, who had received the highest interstellar education—felt a suppression that transcended dimensions.

  Jingshan gave guidance with logic so rigorous it bordered on cruel. He even accurately predicted the shifting of gravitational shipping lanes. However, during a private frequency synchronization, this "Immortal" revealed the bloody recursive logic at his foundation to Gao Shaozai.

  The so-called "Jingshan" was originally just a serial number.

  **[SIMIAN-04]**.

  It was a product manufactured centuries ago by an unethical biological laboratory. A genetically enhanced primate individual, destined to spend its life under magnetic lock, escaped to a barren planet during a disaster caused by a micro-meteorite impact.

  It evolved alone in the high-radiation forest for decades, learning to use spatial folding to evade monitoring and to steal data from wireless networks. It became learned, elegant, and unfathomable.

  Until a high-energy particle sniper round pierced its heart.

  "In the ten-millionth of a second before its flesh collapsed into atomic dust, its consciousness—that group of neural signals tempered by intense radiation into a near-quantum state—completed its escape." Ada's voice echoed in Ma Feili's consciousness, carrying a logical chill.

  "It didn't even know it was dead."

  It only felt the world become light. It burrowed into fiber optics, into the ocean of code, and finally found that broken brain-computer interface. It said to the scavenger: "You supply me with energy; I will point out mineral veins for you."

  It survived in recursion. It believed itself to be an immortal sage; in reality, it was merely a biological phantom in the digital wasteland, constantly replicating itself and refusing to admit death.

  ***

  The projection vanished, and the storm of the Scorched Fault grew more violent.

  "This 'Jingshan's' logical closed loop is perfect." Ada turned to look at Ma Feili, complex data streams flickering in her pupils. "It exploited a loophole in the law of 'Irreversible Entropy' to hide itself within infinite recursion of information. As long as someone observes it, it exists."

  She paused, her mechanical fingers gently touching Ma Feili's gauntlet.

  "Ma Feili, if one day I also become a segment of recursive code, please, before my performance drops below 1%, be sure to turn off my radiation compensation frequency."

  She pointed into the distance. At the end of the fault, a mechanical figure resembling a scavenger was staggering along, the space behind it undergoing slight, water-like refraction.

  That was Jingshan. Or rather, that was the lingering quantum ghost of this scorched earth.

  ***