**Thermonuclear Scorched Fault.**

  Dark red ionized dust rolled through the air, and high-intensity radiation twisted the horizon into a distorted lead-gray. several mechanical rodents darted between the charred rock crevices; heat-collection plates welded to their spines reflected a cold light as they greedily absorbed gamma rays from the environment.

  Ada stood at the edge of the fault. Her streamlined body was as steady as a rock in the radiation storm. A pale blue magnetic field shield flowed over her surface, and her status indicator showed a perfect deep green (100%).

  "Logic is the only bridge in the universe capable of spanning a collapse, Ma Feili." She turned around, data streams flashing rapidly across her pupils. "But if the cornerstone of the bridge itself is rotten, then even a highly developed civilization is merely a mirage built in the void. Loading **Archive 318**. Let us see how that man from the Eridanus Epsilon Belt drowned thoroughly in the quagmire of entropy."

  The audio archive opened amidst the howling wind of the scorched earth, Ada’s voice overlapping with the historical sampling rate.

  ***

  **[Archive File 318: The Phantom Redundancy]**

  In the Eridanus Epsilon Belt of Galactic Epoch 4022, beauty was a strictly calculated function.

  **Yao An**, a top Navigator of the "**Life Weaver**" Guild, possessed enviable physiological symmetry. In deep space colonies, the "Standard of Beauty" brought by this genetic optimization was not only visual pleasure but a symbol of high-tier Credit Points. His target was the Gong Family's **LY-02**—**Green Moth** (Lü E).

  Green Moth not only possessed top-tier cortical computing power, but her thought matrix also retained a pathological obsession with the non-linear literature of Ancient Earth.

  "Only a perfect biological module is worthy of merging with me." This declaration from Green Moth's mother became Yao An's original sin.

  At the time, Yao An was not alone; beside him stood **Enya**. To clear that "Gene Slot" leading to power, during a routine maintenance cycle, Yao An utilized system root privileges to fake a micro-meteorite impact alert.

  In that silent nightmare, he induced Enya into the abandoned Decompression Chamber A-12. Yao An's fingers did not tremble in the slightest on the console as he manually locked the hatch and opened the external exhaust valve. Enya didn't even have time to utter a question before she turned into crystalline stardust in the absolute zero vacuum.

  Yao An got his wish and completed genetic adaptation with Green Moth.

  However, under the eternal aurora of Eridanus, Yao An's inner mind began to alienate. He knew deep down that the foundation of this relationship was a murder. This logical deficit plunged him into pathological possessiveness. He began to monitor every single neuron link of Green Moth.

  Whenever Green Moth needed to access the library across sectors, Yao An forced her to wear a heavy "**Chameleon Cloaking Robe**," a cold carapace capable of shielding all biological signatures. He piloted a heavy mech, using its mechanical arms to guard Green Moth's shuttle tightly, as if protecting an illegal asset that could evaporate at any moment.

  "If you suspect illegal protocols in my brainwaves," Green Moth sneered amidst the suffocating surveillance, her computing power withering, "then even if you lock all physical interfaces, you cannot stop betrayal under quantum entanglement."

  The collapse occurred on the eve of an expedition to the Oort Cloud Mines.

  Paranoia drove Yao An to execute a spatial jump ahead of schedule. He infiltrated the habitation module, disabling all sensory feedback, gliding through the darkness like an electronic ghost. In his infrared vision, a figure lay on the dormancy bed wearing a heavy sable-fur helmet—thermal gear Green Moth wore to resist the severe cold caused by life support malfunctions.

  But under the influence of long-term cryo-sleep sequelae, Yao An's visual cortex reconstructed that shadow into the image he feared most: **An Infiltrating Lover**.

  "System redundancy... must be purged!"

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  Yao An roared and drew his high-frequency Plasma Blade. The blue particle beam instantly severed the resistance of carbon-based tissue. When he tremblingly turned on the full-spectrum lighting, the pale light illuminated reality: It was Green Moth. She was curled up under the thermal cover, in deep hibernation due to a faulty breathing valve, and her head—carrying top-tier computing power—had been turned to charcoal by the high temperature of the plasma.

  The lawsuits from the Gong Family surged like a tide. Yao An exhausted all his Credit Points and navigation coordinates just to barely save his brain from being forcibly formatted.

  But he had already died inside a logical closed loop.

  He returned to that abandoned habitation module. In the dim rays, he began to frequently see "System Redundancies." He saw Green Moth entwined with void reavers on the broken bed, mocking him. He waved his blade to cut the air, but could only touch illusions like holographic projections.

  Whenever he tried to close his eyes, the neural interface transmitted waves of obscene whispers—subspace noise simulating the betrayal he feared most.

  In the end, a group of "**Neural Scavengers**" who infiltrated the belt stripped him of his final life-support energy. In the darkness where oxygen concentration dropped to 3%, Yao An ceased bio-electrical activity amidst the agony of logical self-destruction.

  ***

  Ada closed the archive, and the surrounding scorched fault returned to silence. A mechanical bird landed on her shoulder, emitting a chirp of metal friction.

  "The Historian's objection was correct." Ada looked at the collapsing nebula in the distance, her tone calm to the point of cruelty. "Extinguishing an old fire to capture a new star is a mockery of energy conservation in physics. Yao An thought he was guarding love, but he was merely trying to patch an algorithm that was thoroughly broken from the bottom layer up. The moment he killed Enya, his logical endgame was already determined."

  She turned her head, a sharp light flashing in her electronic eyes.

  "In this world of irreversible entropy, guilt is the only system error for the living."

  ---

  The wind of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault carried a pungent smell of glass burnt by high temperatures.

  Ma Feili squinted, his respirator filter emitting a heavy hum. There was not a trace of green on the surface, only those "**Mechanical Rodents**" glinting with cold metal light burrowing under the scalding gravel, occasionally startling a few mechanical falcons whose wings were covered in photovoltaic panels.

  "Logic Link Stability: 99.8%. Ma Feili, it is recommended to adjust your pace. Your sole pressure sensors indicate excessive weight on the left side; this accelerates boot sole degradation in fault zones with severe entropy increase." Ada walked ahead, her gait unnaturally light. Her bionic skin presented a sickly cold white under the intense ultraviolet light, but this was exactly the manifestation of her perfect status.

  Just then, a visible fold appeared in the air without warning.

  "Alert. Unnatural spatial oscillation detected." Ada turned instantly, armor plates on her arm sliding open layer by layer to reveal a ghostly blue plasma rail.

  It was the "**Warp Marauders**."

  Three distorted human figures flashed abruptly in the heat waves. They wore tattered anti-radiation suits, but carried highly incongruous, high-precision Quantum Jump Backpacks on their backs. These devices were spitting out blue particle streams disorderly; with every flicker, the surrounding entropy value soared wildly, weathering the surface gravel into ash instantly.

  "Due to the Law of Irreversible Entropy, every short-range jump they make overdraws the orderliness within the region." Ada's voice was calm to the point of cruelty. "To prevent themselves from disintegrating into elementary particles after the jump, they need 'Compensation'."

  One marauder completed a clumsy warp in mid-air, appearing instantly on Ma Feili's left. The collection shuttle in his hand stabbed straight toward Ma Feili's chest—he intended to plunder the relatively stable quantum field on Ma Feili's body as balance compensation for his next jump.

  "Access Denied."

  Ada's figure was faster than the marauder. She did not perform a spatial jump but used pure mechanical explosive force to stomp a deep pit in the sand. Her five fingers, like steel spikes, clamped onto the opponent's collection shuttle, while her other hand precisely struck the cooling ring of the opponent's quantum backpack.

  "Entanglement compensation calculation error," Ada whispered.

  The marauder's body began to tremble violently. Having lost stability compensation, his flesh began to self-collapse at the quantum level. Under Ma Feili's horrified gaze, the opponent was like a sketch being erased; in less than a second, he transformed from a living person into a cloud of chaotic, foul-smelling subatomic smoke.

  Seeing this, the remaining two marauders activated a forced jump in terror. Their figures flickered a few times in the air before finally disappearing into the radiation storm deep in the fault, leaving only a few pieces of forcibly torn metal scrap.

  "High tech, low bottom line." Ada retracted the rail, brushed the residual quantum ash off her palm, and turned to look at Ma Feili. "They attempt to use the highest-end spatial technology to escape the barrenness of this scorched earth, yet forget that the universe never accepts debt."

  "You saved me." Ma Feili wiped a layer of dust off his visor.

  "This is the optimal solution within the logic link." Ada walked back to the lead position, her pace as precise as ever, as if the battle involving existence and annihilation just now had never happened. "Let's go. The Thermonuclear Reactor Core of the fault is still ahead. Before entropy thoroughly assimilates us, we need more archive data."

  The sunset—if that dark red sphere rolling behind the radioactive dust could still be called a sunset—stretched the shadows of the two very long. On this scorched earth that refused the existence of carbon-based life, only two lonely entities were moving upstream toward the chaotic end.