The storm of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault howled outside the shelter, the high-intensity electromagnetic radiation rendering the air an eerie pale purple.

  Ada stood before the monitoring screen, ice-blue data streams flowing through her pupils. She checked her own performance feedback: Core temperature stable, logic computing power at 100%, backup energy fully loaded. As Ma Feili's consciousness guardian, she had to maintain absolute clarity in this extreme environment.

  "Ma Feili, under the law of irreversible entropy, emotions are often viewed as invalid payloads." Ada's voice echoed in the empty cabin, carrying a metallic chill. "However, within the Deep Space Archives, there is a classic case regarding 'Logical Revenge,' proving how betrayal leads to the collapse of the law of causality."

  With a light tap of her fingertip, a holographic projection unfolded amidst the dim neon lights and shadows. It was **[Archive #203: Quantum Elegy on the Empty Orbit]**.

  ***

  In the Great Migration Era, a person's value was precisely quantified as a "Carbon/Silicon Balance Rate." **Nan Sanfu**, the heir to a top-tier clan in the Jinyang Cluster, possessed a telomere sequence optimized over five generations. Logically speaking, his lifespan approached eternity.

  Due to a massive ion storm, Nan Sanfu's ship, the *Glimpse*, was forced to land on the fringe mining planet "Firmament-9." It was a ruin of failed terraforming, the atmosphere filled with dust capable of burning human lungs. At a low-end hydroponic supply station, he met **D-016**.

  She was a "Primal"—a female with no genetic modification, her skin pale as fluorescence under the low gravity. Under the dim and unstable sodium lights, D-016 displayed a primitive tension long extinct in the core star sectors. Nan Sanfu's heart, driven by precise algorithms, produced a fluctuation outside of logic in that instant.

  "I will take you away from here," Nan Sanfu pointed to the magnificent silhouette of the Dyson Sphere in the sky, making a promise that could overturn class barriers. "I will apply for 'First-Class Citizen' status for you, letting you live eternally in the constant-temperature orbital station."

  D-016 fell for it. In that desolate place where even oxygen was billed by the second, this was not just love, but the only ticket to a higher-dimensional right of survival.

  However, when Nan Sanfu returned to the prosperous cluster center, his AI butler swiftly corrected his "Logic Deviation." The genetic sequence of a Primal girl was nothing short of a fatal garbled code in the clan's genealogy. He accepted the political marriage arranged by his family as a matter of course; the partner was the heir to a bio-pharmaceutical giant, possessing a perfect immune system.

  He blocked D-016's subspace signature and completely wiped those coordinates from his star map.

  Months later, carrying an infant who was extremely weak due to genetic incompatibility, D-016 infiltrated a cargo ship. Crossing ten astronomical units of dead vacuum, she appeared outside the airlock of Nan Sanfu's orbital station at "Zenith Peak."

  "Mr. Nan, as long as you acknowledge this child's genetic sequence, I will leave." Her voice came through the intercom system, carrying the dryness unique to the vacuum.

  Nan Sanfu sat on a terrace maintained at a constant 24 degrees Celsius, looking at the woman on the holographic screen. His eyes showed no fluctuation as he coldly ordered the AI: "Refuse docking. Shut down the life support cycle in that sector."

  That night, the temperature outside the airlock dropped to absolute zero. Holding the infant, D-016 curled up in the silent vacuum, becoming a cold silicate statue.

  Nan Sanfu thought he had disposed of an expired line of code. But he forgot that in a world of irreversible entropy, any disturbance of information leaves an echo.

  Bizarre events followed one after another. At his grand wedding, the holographic curtain wall suddenly collapsed. A ghost signal—disheveled and holding a broken body—invaded the bride's neural interface. The signal wailed on every frequency: *"If you betray a heart, you shall suffer the pain of quantum disintegration."*

  The bride's family withdrew their capital out of fear, and Nan Sanfu's star mining business was paralyzed by frequent "Subspace Interference." He attempted to flee to the "Cao Family System," a hundred light-years away, to seek asylum.

  On the eve of his new wedding, the Cao family sent a veiled bride. The guidance robot stated: "Political orders are urgent; the bride is delivered in advance."

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Nan Sanfu entered the bridal chamber in ecstasy. The submissive posture of the bride as she bowed her head momentarily reminded him of the shadow that had died outside the airlock. A chill rose in his heart, but he saw the bride lie down on her own accord.

  The next morning, when Nan Sanfu tried to wake his life-saving straw and lifted the quilt, he let out a wretched scream—

  Lying there was no noble lady, but a corpse that had long been cold, its skin turning gray-white from dehydration.

  It was the daughter of **Executive Yao**, who had just been buried.

  Hours later, interstellar police surrounded the orbital station. Nan Sanfu was arrested for "Trans-Galactic Grave Robbery" and "Gross Genetic Blasphemy." In an era where corpse genetics were considered absolute privacy, this was an unforgivable capital crime in the chain of logic.

  No one knew how that illegal android had transported the corpse into the sealed orbital station the previous night. But in the final frame of the surveillance footage, people saw a blurred signal fluctuation, looking exactly like that silhouette curled up in absolute zero.

  ***

  The holographic projection gradually extinguished. Ada turned around to look at Ma Feili.

  "Promiscuity followed by abandonment was a moral issue in the old era, but in the Great Migration Era, it is an open provocation of causal logic." Ada walked to the window. Outside the shelter, a mechanized rodent was attempting to gnaw on a high-voltage cable, sending sparks flying. "Nan Sanfu tried to use power to erase a cause and effect, but causality ultimately collapsed into a black hole that swallowed him precisely. Ma Feili, my logic circuits tell me: never betray the person who watches over you in a desperate situation. Because the price is something even the stars cannot bear."

  Ada's pupils returned to calm. She continued monitoring Ma Feili's vital signs, ensuring that in this high-radiation wasteland, he was the only, and absolutely safe, variable.

  ---

  The storm of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault whipped up fine radioactive dust, drumming against the visor of Ma Feili's hazmat suit, making a dense, devouring *hissing* sound.

  Ada walked ahead, her gait almost eerily steady. In the high-radiation environment, her silver-grey shell coating reflected the purple-red aurora. Her performance monitoring bar pulsed at the edge of Ma Feili's retina: **[Ada: Status Healthy / Performance 100%]**.

  "Ma Feili, you are attempting to understand this ruin using 'intuition'." Ada didn't look back. Her voice oscillated directly within Ma Feili's brain via the internal comms channel, cold and precise. "But in a universe of irreversible entropy, intuition is an inefficient hallucination created by carbon-based lifeforms to evade logical deduction."

  She stopped, standing beside the charred remains of a mechanized rodent. The little thing's spine had been replaced by some kind of self-charging coil, currently twitching with residual current.

  "To correct your cognitive bias, we need to review a logical closed loop regarding 'Price'." Ada turned around, the blue light in her electronic eyes appearing exceptionally piercing under the dim radiation clouds. "Great Expedition Era, Planet Sigma-9 on the edge of Epsilon Eridani. That is an extreme case regarding 'Silent Compensation'."

  Ma Feili tightened his breathing valve, listening as Ada peeled back the sealed archive.

  "Sigma-9 has no star; it is an orphan planet floating on the edge of absolute zero. But beneath its 'Dragon Ridge' fault lies a dark red fibrous tissue capable of infinite proliferation. The miners of that time viewed it as god-given rations, calling it 'Dragon Meat.' If you sliced off a piece with a laser, it would regenerate rapidly. From a thermodynamic perspective, this violated common sense, but for starving exiles, logic was far less important than satiety."

  Ada projected a holographic image: a desolate frozen planet and the disgusting, writhing bright red tissue in an excavation pit.

  "However, this gift came with an absolute taboo: It was strictly forbidden to utter the syllable 'Dragon' at the collection site. The locals viewed this with superstitious reverence." Ada's tone was devoid of fluctuation. "Until a young historical scholar broke it. He believed the so-called taboo was merely a remnant of primitive worship, so while cutting the meat, he mocked that word into his communicator."

  "And the result?" Ma Feili asked.

  "The result was a logical inevitability." Ada waved her hand, wiping away the hologram and replacing it with a cold orbital defense map. "Within 0.003 seconds of that syllable leaving his mouth, the atmosphere of Sigma-9 ionized. An automated satellite array named 'Logic Guardian'—a defense mechanism left by a precursor civilization—captured that specific frequency. In the ancient system coding, 'Dragon' was not a noun, but a trigger command for 'Core Logic Unit Under Illegal Intrusion'."

  Ada pointed to the sky, as if piercing through the radiation clouds of the scorched fault to see the starry sky that had long grown cold.

  "No warning. No trial. A plasma arc vertically penetrated the atmosphere, directly sublimating the scholar, his equipment, and the frozen soil within a hundred-meter radius into a molecular state. Sigma-9 is not a planet, Ma Feili; it is an abandoned 'Bio-Computer Base.' That meat was its logic calculation units; and that thunder was the system cleaning out redundant viruses."

  Ada stepped closer to Ma Feili, her cold finger touching his chest, right over the heart rate monitor of his suit.

  "**Jiang Yuxuan** wrote in the log that the meat tasted salty and metallic. As long as you maintain absolute silence and maintain reverence for the 'Rules,' it can keep you alive. But once you attempt to use language to offend that logic, the price is destruction."

  She turned again, walking toward the depths of the scorched fault, her voice echoing over the wasteland:

  "Remember, Ma Feili. In this universe, language has weight, and logic never listens to defenses. In this second, you are a survivor; but in the next, if you trigger the wrong parameter, you are merely entropic residue on this scorched earth waiting to be cleaned. Now, keep your mouth shut and match my pace."

  Ma Feili looked down at the red soil beneath his feet. That old, metallic chill seemed to seep through the soles of his boots. He said nothing, silently following behind the cold silhouette operating at 100% performance.