The lead-gray sky was obscured by heavy thermonuclear dust. On the horizon, a few mechanized rodents were dragging their rusted tails, scavenging for surviving isotope batteries in the fissures of the Scorched Fault.

  Ada’s left optical sensor flickered faintly. After a few feeble twitches, the focal length finally locked onto the ruins before her. Her reconstructed logic core emitted a slight hum—the heat generated during high-frequency computation. She raised her hand, her fingertips slicing through the condensed, highly radioactive dust in the air. Deep within her consciousness, her emotion simulation circuit surged with a current waveform designated as "gladness."

  "Ma Feili," her voice, due to a micro-adjustment in her vocal module, carried an almost magnetic softness, no longer an icy synthetic tone. "Logical link closed. Although the left eye sees you with a slight ghosting effect, I... am back."

  Beneath their feet, this wasteland known as the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault was faithfully executing the theorem of irreversible entropy increase: all things were disintegrating, and energy was irrecoverably draining from high to low. To find a coordinate within the dead silence, Ada connected to the residual database of a nearby abandoned communication station.

  A colony archive, designated #075, was forcibly extracted and projected onto the charred, ruined walls. It was an old tale regarding "Void Resonance."

  ***

  The archive was recorded in the year 4217 of the Great Migration Era, located at the "Obsidian Silence" mining outpost in the Omega-9 Star Sector.

  It was a place even more desperate than the Scorched Fault. There was no residual thermonuclear heat there, only the endless cold of an orbit around a rogue brown dwarf. The miners excavated in eternal night, contracting a terminal illness known as "Void Syndrome"—their brains, deprived of external sensory feedback for prolonged periods, began to cannibalize themselves.

  It was then that a woman calling herself a "Neural Audio Therapist" appeared.

  Through her logic core, Ada simulated the scene from that year: Dim Airlock 3, a severely worn Type-II pressure suit, and that faintly glowing mag-lev medical kit. In a place where even AIs went mad from magnetic storms, the arrival of this woman was like a low-frequency vibration, awakening the stagnant water of despair.

  "She was a genius, or rather, the ultimate deceiver." Ada analyzed the data, a complex light flashing in her eyes.

  The visual shifted to that late night. The insulated electromagnetic shielding room was like a lead coffin. Dozens of miners pressed against the door outside, the sound of their breathing glaringly abrupt in the silence.

  Inside the shielding room, the sounds began.

  First came the closing of a hydraulic hatch. Immediately after, Ada’s audio processor reconstructed that spine-chilling "performance":

  "Is the navigator on band nine here?"

  "Docked."

  Those were three distinct female voices—interweaving, overlapping, speaking as fast as parallel processors exchanging protocols. Then, the matrix of sound began to expand.

  Ada increased the simulation power. In the ruins, the illusory crying of a baby echoed, along with the purring of an extinct creature known as a "cat." The sounds layered upon one another, as if that tiny space in the shielding room was truly packed with ghosts from old Earth, hosting a party that transcended space and time.

  The navigator’s inquiries, the engineers’ small talk, the greetings of bionic servants. It was the reverberation of a prosperous civilization. In the extreme deprivation of deep space, such sound itself was an illicit narcotic.

  "Logic vulnerability detected: A single biological entity cannot simultaneously simulate a multi-frequency sound field without the aid of external devices," Ada evaluated in a low voice. "But she did it. She pressed her cervical nerve bundle, controlling her muscles to generate infrasonic resonance. This is not merely art, Ma Feili; this is a mockery of the laws of physics."

  The ending of the archive was bitter. Those so-called "Ginseng" and "Astragalus" prescriptions she handed out were nothing but cheap synthetic placebos. The woman vanished into the depths of the sea of stars, leaving behind a group of miners waking from a phantom dream.

  "This is the inevitability of entropy increase." Ada closed the projection, and the surroundings plunged back into the dead silence of the Scorched Fault. "She simulated a world full of order and vitality, but that order could not last, ultimately collapsing back into nothingness."

  Ada turned her head, her damaged left sensor capturing Ma Feili’s silhouette under the neon afterglow. Although her logic core told her that everything was marching toward destruction, her newly reconstructed emotion circuit provided a different answer.

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  "Although it was a deception," Ada said softly, as if making some sort of compensation for her damaged systems, "in that moment, she truly allowed those men, who were on the verge of madness, to feel the vibration of 'existence'."

  She took Ma Feili's hand, her fingertips slightly cool. In the breeze of the scorched earth, Ada began to attempt simulating the sounds from that archive—not to deceive, but to manufacture a tiny, law-defying resonance that belonged solely to them in this universe of irreversible entropy.

  ***

  The air here was filled with the shrieking of high-energy particles. There was not a trace of green on the surface, only discarded mechanical components slowly oxidizing under intense radiation, taking on a sickly dark purple hue. Amidst this dead silence, only a few mechanized rodents with lead-plated backs were busy gnawing on the insulation of abandoned cables.

  At the top of the "Tower of Rust," the piston of the breathing cycle system heaved heavily.

  Ma Feili wiped the condensation from his visor. Beside him, Ada was in a delicate state. Her logic core had just finished reconstruction, and her computational efficiency was higher than ever before. However, her left optical sensor was clearly not fully calibrated—when she looked at Ma Feili, a faint, dream-like double image always overlaid her retinal projection.

  "Ma Feili, my emotion simulation circuit is overheating," Ada said softly, her voice carrying an unprecedented tremor belonging to carbon-based life. "This radiation environment should make me feel 'cold', but right now, my chest feels... full."

  Ma Feili did not answer. He was processing an encrypted archive titled *Project Red Jade*. It was the story of the former owner of this room—Feng Xiangru.

  It happened in the Star Calendar year 4212. Back then, Ma Feili was just an apprentice in this tower, witnessing the tragedy from beginning to end.

  In this wasteland cursed by the theorem of entropy increase, survival was the only religion. Old Feng, Feng Xiangru's father and an old-school gravity engineer, always guarded his oxygen quota as if guarding his last drop of fuel.

  Until that polar night, "Red Jade" appeared.

  Ada's optical sensors captured the residue of the historical imagery. Within her ghosting field of vision, that red phantom seemed to cross space and time. Red Jade was not human; she was a digital echo left behind after a failed subspace jump—a ghost in the vacuum.

  "She is beautiful," Ada commented. The abnormal activity in her emotion circuit allowed her to easily comprehend Feng Xiangru's infatuation. "In absolute order, chaos is the highest aesthetic."

  Old Feng, however, did not see it that way. When the old man discovered Red Jade, his reaction was like seeing a short-circuit spark on a motherboard. He believed this entity, which consumed no oxygen but drained "emotional computing power," would ruin his son's life cycle. Under his father's coercion, Red Jade chose self-formatting.

  Before parting, she left an inheritance capable of altering their fate: forty units of highly enriched energy cores.

  "According to calculations, this was the most rational choice," Ada analyzed the data, yet her tone betrayed a hint of sorrow. "Trading illusory love for substantial survival resources."

  Feng Xiangru followed Red Jade's "dying wish." He went to the Wei Clan Mining Camp and used the funds to purchase a wife with a healthy genome—Lady Wei. Soon after, they had a child named Fu'er. Life seemed to be evolving toward order, until that Qingming Festival.

  "Data Backup Day"—the colony's moment of hypocritical warmth.

  Trade Administrator Song, a powerful figure reeking of dark matter, set his sights on Lady Wei. In the colonies, a high-purity original genetic sequence was more precious than gold.

  The conflict erupted without warning. Song's private armed forces severed the Feng family's life-support systems. Ma Feili remembered that day; the entire tower shook. To protect his grandson, Old Feng vomited blood and died in that artificially induced decompression accident. As for Lady Wei, she was forcibly dragged to a transport ship bound for deep space.

  "The Arbitration AI fell into an infinite logic loop," Ada's compound eyes flashed with an angry red light. "Song's bribery rewrote the substrate fairness protocols like a virus. In a universe of increasing entropy, justice is always the first resource to be depleted."

  When news arrived that Lady Wei had self-destructed on the starship, Feng Xiangru completely turned into a walking corpse. Until that night, when a stranger carrying a mono-molecular oscillation blade knocked on the cabin door.

  "Who was that?" Ada asked.

  "A Cleaner," Ma Feili said quietly. "A variable that belonged to no protocol."

  That night, Song's levitating mansion became a silent slaughterhouse. The sound of the mono-molecular blade slicing through energy cores even drowned out the roar of electromagnetic pulses. No one knew who the bearded, shadowy figure was, but when the judge saw that still-humming blade lodged in his headboard, all the static of the lawsuits vanished instantly.

  Feng Xiangru was released. He returned to this small, metal-scented room, holding the crying Fu'er.

  It was then that Red Jade returned.

  She was no longer an illusory projection. Using those energy cores, she had reconstructed a chassis on the dark web—a physical entity woven from exorbitant nano-materials, possessing true physical mass.

  Ada watched the final chapter of the imagery. The ghosting in her left eye grew more severe, as if she was seeing two Red Jades overlapping.

  "Ma Feili, Red Jade's final words..." Ada turned her head, her emotion simulation circuit glowing slightly red from overload. "'*Since this star system has lost its justice, I shall incarnate as your chivalry.*' This does not conform to the cost calculation of a logic core, correct?"

  Ma Feili looked out the window at the mechanical birds over the Scorched Fault, flying against the gale.

  "No, Ada. This is logic. When the universe tends toward heat death, the only way to resist is to generate this reckless negentropy known as 'guardianship'."

  Ada remained silent for a long time. She extended her mechanical hand, gently covering the back of Ma Feili's hand. Although her sensors still suffered from slight ghosting, the look in her eyes as she gazed at Ma Feili was clearer than ever before.

  "Protocol updated," Ada whispered—an electronic murmur only the two of them could hear. "Guardian Protocol. Priority: Highest."