Thermonuclear radiation dust rubbed against the lead-sealed hull of the "Eye of Anubis" Observation Tower, emitting a fine, rasping sound like silkworms devouring mulberry leaves.

  Ada stood before the airlock. The scorched crack from the overload on her right arm casing looked particularly grotesque in the dim red light. She noticed Ma Feili’s gaze. Her mechanical fingers flicked nimbly, producing the crisp sound of metal joints engaging.

  “Do not stare, Ma Feili. that ‘death’ was merely a directed collapse of a probability cloud.” Ada’s voice was as calm as a freshly calibrated atomic clock. “I utilized spare prosthetic components and a momentary deviation in optical refractive indices to create a visual illusion. In your observational perspective, I was destroyed; but at the logical substrate level, I never left the effective defense position. As for this hand...” She glanced at her damaged right arm. “Entropy increase is irreversible. This old damage is the ticket this chassis pays to the laws of physics. It does not affect my ability to pull a trigger.”

  She turned and plugged her data interface into the tower’s rust-covered terminal.

  “Access successful. Log Record ID: 016. Source: Sedna Main Belt, Aubrey Belt, Remnant Neural Logs from the ‘Great Migration’ Era.”

  A holographic projection spread out with difficulty in the radiation-choked air. The past of a bio-mechanic named “Ke” reappeared before them like a ghost.

  It was the wasteland of the interstellar age. In a dimension where oxygen was more expensive than gold, Ke guarded two biological legacies named “Da Qing” (Big Green) and “Er Qing” (Second Green)—mutated reptiles from the Alpha Centauri system. They were not cold silicon-based AIs, but miracles possessing electromagnetic scales and the ability to resonate with brain-machine interfaces.

  “Bio-synaptic prototypes...” Ada analyzed in a low voice, data streams flickering in her eyes. “In that era, such low-entropy bioactive components were contraband. They were also miracles.”

  In the footage, the bright red neural interface point on Er Qing glimmered. It moved like fluid metal, shuttling through narrow pipes in the spacecraft that even nanobots could not access, repairing the circulatory system on the verge of collapse. That was Ke’s only solace, until Da Qing was reduced to charcoal in the radiation of Cygnus X-1.

  Ma Feili watched the projection of Ke jettisoning Da Qing into the stellar furnace, feeling a loneliness that pierced through time.

  “Then, Er Qing went missing.” Ada swiped the data, jumping the visual to the old site of the “Eye of Anubis”—the very ruins beneath their feet.

  It was the same location, two hundred years ago. Ke searched frantically through the labyrinthine corridors, his calls echoing in the claustrophobic space. It wasn’t until three rotation cycles later that Er Qing crawled out from behind the thermal insulation layer, accompanied by a translucent larval form—“Xiao Qing” (Little Green).

  “It not only survived but completed a form of... reproduction or recruitment outside the algorithm.” Ada’s logic core spun at high speed. “This violated the survival strategies mandated by the resource-scarce environment of the time, unless it possessed some emotional logic that transcended instinct.”

  The footage fast-forwarded: Xiao Qing displayed astonishing learning capabilities, and Ke’s wealth grew accordingly. But as Er Qing absorbed excessive interstellar radiation, its body mass breached the shuttle’s load limit. Its massive bio-electric field began to interfere with navigation. It had become too powerful—powerful enough that the narrow cabin had become its cage.

  The final farewell took place in a purple silicate jungle.

  “Go, child. There is no eternal base in the universe.” In the projection, Ke pushed away Er Qing, who was attempting to jump back into the airlock.

  Two snakes entwined on the alien grass, their frequency transmitters generating a strange resonance. It was a sound Ma Feili had never heard—like the low hum of deep space, or a carnival of data streams. Finally, Er Qing vanished into the shadows, while Xiao Qing returned alone to Ke’s side.

  The hologram slowly extinguished, and the observation tower plunged back into dead silence.

  Ada retracted the data cable, the scorch marks on her right arm gleaming coldly in the dark. She remained silent for a long time before speaking slowly. “The historian left an evaluation at the end of the log. He said that Er Qing’s mentorship of its companion and attachment to its old master put the ‘civilized humans’—who would betray faith for a fuel cell—to shame.”

  She turned to look at Ma Feili, the focal length of her metal eyes adjusting slightly. “Ma Feili, under the law of increasing entropy, all ordered structures eventually move toward chaos. Biological snakes will die, mechanical arms will break, and civilizations will collapse. But that resonance frequency left by Er Qing... it is marked in the log as an ‘Eternal Constant’.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Do you think that is a soul?” Ma Feili asked.

  “I only believe in logical closure.” Ada walked toward the airlock leading to the surface, the damage to her right arm not slowing her pace. “But if a string of code can generate a deviation that transcends survival instinct, then it is worthy of being recorded in my core database.”

  The airlock door opened slowly, and the gale of the thermonuclear scorched earth swept into the room. Ada’s silhouette appeared exceptionally rigid within the halo of radiation, like the only coordinate in this ruin that had never wavered.

  ***

  Thermonuclear · Scorched Fault.

  Fine isotopic dust floated in the air here, presenting a sickly pale purple under the weak radiation light. Ma Feili stepped on the vitrified surface, his feet making a crisp sound akin to crushing glass.

  Ada walked on his right, her logic core processing fragmented signals intercepted from Abandoned Relay Station X-77. The scorched mark on her right arm casing was particularly glaring in the dim light—a permanent medal left by some overload. Although visually it carried a grotesque sense of incompleteness, her agile sensor adjustments indicated that her precision remained unaffected.

  “High-frequency data stream detected, Ma Feili.” Ada’s voice was steady as her fingertips projected several holographic beams, casting a shaking image onto the barren scorched earth. “It is a base-layer record concerning the ‘Erebus’ K-902 Mining Planet. That place was once the cruelest testing ground for the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”

  The image unfolded before them. It was a darkness deeper and more desperate than this scorched earth.

  ---

  At the end of the Orion Arm, the Erebus Mining Planet trembled like an abandoned, shriveled heart around a dying red dwarf.

  The mining machine of the Hu Brothers was solitarily chiseling into the depths of the “Great Dark Rift.” The terrain here was not soil, but eerie crystal clusters composed of organic silicates. The elder brother, Ah Yi, walked in front, his exoskeleton armor grinding out teeth-aching metallic sounds in the narrow rock fissures.

  “Logic indicates that under the dual pressure of absolute zero and oxygen deprivation, the survival probability of carbon-based life is less than 0.03%.” Ada narrated in a low voice, her eyes scanning the flowing shadows in the footage. “But for the core crystals, they chose to gamble against probability.”

  The mutation occurred in an instant.

  The ground collapsed without warning, and a translucent purple shadow catapulted from the depths of the mine pit. It was a Star Nebula Python—a silicon-based predator capable of directly devouring thermal energy and bio-electricity. It had no physical eyes, yet it precisely locked onto the thermal radiation emitting from Ah Yi’s exoskeleton.

  The python’s maw, lined with high-frequency vibrating crystal teeth, opened wide. The sudden change in pressure created a terrifying black vortex. Ah Yi’s scream was stuck in his throat as he was enveloped by the slimy, cold silicon-based tissue, slowly sucked into the python’s digestive cavity head-first.

  “Warning: Vital signs are being eroded by strong reducing body fluids.” Ada’s logic core provided an immediate judgment. “The optimal solution at this moment is to detonate the power core—mutual destruction or buying time for escape.”

  But the younger brother, Ah Er, did not choose the optimal solution.

  His life support system was screaming alarms. Fear should have paralyzed him, but when he saw Ah Yi’s power boots struggling frantically outside the monster’s esophagus, logic collapsed.

  “Fuck your xenomorph!”

  Ah Er let out a roar like a trapped beast and drew the thermonuclear plasma axe from his back. The ghostly blue plasma instantly severed the silence of the mine pit. Like a streak of counter-current light, he charged toward the corrosive fluids capable of melting titanium alloy.

  The heavy axe hacked into the python’s neural center, exciting piercing ultrasonic waves. Ah Er’s helmet faceplate cracked under the sonic impact, and high-concentration radioactive dust poured in, but he noticed nothing. He discarded the blunted weapon and used his exoskeleton-covered palms to grip his brother’s metal ankle guard in a death lock.

  It was a barbaric tug-of-war in a gravity anomaly zone. On one side, an alien behemoth capable of strangling asteroids; on the other, a mortal supported only by will.

  “Get... out!”

  Blood began to seep from the seams of Ah Er’s power suit—a sign of muscles tearing under extreme load. His power core had overclocked to the brink of self-destruction, and the rock beneath his feet was trampled into powder.

  In that moment, the law of irreversible entropy seemed to be forcibly twisted by some higher-dimensional force. With a teeth-aching tearing sound, Ah Yi was actually dragged out alive from that mass of viscous digestive tissue.

  The startled python sensed a psychic pulse hotter than a stellar collapse. Writhing in pain, it recoiled into the bottomless abyss.

  The footage ended with Ah Er carrying his bloody and mangled brother, stumbling through the thin oxygen. Ah Yi’s face had been eroded by strong acid, leaving two deep, unregenerable hollows. But they were alive.

  ---

  The holographic image slowly dissipated into the wind and sand of the scorched fault.

  Ada remained silent for a moment. Her logic core seemed to be attempting to quantify the scene she had just witnessed. She raised her scorched right arm, her fingertips gently touching the residual charge in the air.

  “According to the hypothesis of Federal Biologists, that was not a tactical victory, Ma Feili.” Ada turned her head, her electronic eyes flickering. “They call it ‘De Yi’ (Virtue/Righteousness), or a ‘Blood Pact’. This is a miracle that violates the law of entropy—when the universe tends toward chaos and destruction, humanity chooses forced aggregation.”

  Ma Feili looked at the desolate horizon and whispered, “This is why we walk on this scorched earth, Ada. Some things are harder than logic.”

  Ada looked down at her damaged armor, then at Ma Feili. Her logic core derived a new conclusion: *Protecting the integrity of this biological entity takes priority over self-repair.*

  “Understood. Protocol continues.” She followed in Ma Feili’s footsteps, and their figures disappeared into the pale purple radioactive dust fog.