In the orange atmosphere of the **Thermonuclear Scorched Fault**, ionized charges slithered like snakes across the cracked surface.

  Ma Feili closed the holographic projection. The final frame of **Archive Record #343**—the gruesome grin of the scavenger named Karren in a liquid methane ocean—dissolved into fragments of blue light and sank into his terminal.

  "Archive parsing complete." Ada stood by his side, the joints of her mechanical prosthesis clicking faintly in the hot breeze. She was in excellent condition; the indicator light of her core logic nucleus displayed a stable ghostly blue. Massive data streams, just processed, flowed through her bionic eyes. "Ma Feili, according to the *Theorem of Irreversible Entropy*, the '**Agir-7**' System to which that archive belongs may have already reached heat death. However, the '**Silver Marrow**' phenomenon mentioned in the archive has a 98.7% overlap with the energy signature of the '**Foot of Erebus**' before us."

  Ma Feili looked up.

  At the center of the Scorched Fault, a twisted, obsidian-textured colossal structure rose from the ground, piercing the clouds. It looked less like a building and more like a black giant foot stabbing out from deep in the mantle, firmly nailed to this land baptized by nuclear fire. This was the "**Foot of Erebus**," a gravity stabilizer left by a predecessor civilization.

  At the mottled base of the giant foot, several mechanized rodents were gnawing on the radiation crystals on the rock surface with their alloy fangs. Sensing the approach of the two, these little creatures flashed the red light in their eyes once and quickly burrowed into the rock crevices.

  "Look there." Ma Feili pointed to a position about three meters above the ground on the giant foot.

  On that pitch-black, dense rockface that seemed to devour light, several cubes displaying a liquid silver luster were quietly floating in mid-air, maintaining a subtle distance of a few millimeters from the rock wall. They were like some kind of living metal, their surfaces constantly rippling like mercury.

  "**Silver Marrow Ingots**." Ada confirmed softly. She took a step forward, the scorched earth crackling dryly under her feet. "According to the archive records, this is a product locked by the strong interaction force. If the frequency is wrong, they are harder than neutron star matter."

  "Karren relied on some kind of 'Genetic Resonance,' but that was too random." Ma Feili walked to the obsidian wall, feeling the tremors conducted up from the earth's core. "In this era of irreversible entropy, the favor of probability is a luxury. Ada, we need a more logical solution."

  "I am already scanning the boson frequency." Ada spread the five fingers of her left hand, micro-scanning probes popping out from her fingertips, approaching the Silver Marrow.

  The radiation concentration in the air suddenly increased. In the sky, several mechanical birds let out shrill electronic cries. They circled at the edge of the thermonuclear storm, seemingly waiting for these two intruders to be torn apart by the gravitational field.

  "Warning: The quantum entanglement field of the 'Foot of Erebus' is undergoing a phase transition." Ada's voice remained calm, but her speech quickened. "It is identifying our 'identity.' Ma Feili, this is not just resource collection; this is a verification. If the logical algorithm cannot match the consciousness echoes inside the giant pillar, the entropy increase process will instantly accelerate around us, and our molecular structure will directly disintegrate into ash."

  Ma Feili did not retreat. He extended his hand, hovering in front of the Silver Marrow Ingot.

  "Then give it the logic it wants." He said in a low voice. "Ada, interface with my neural center. Use the archive frequency we just parsed as a baseline and simulate the pulse of that era."

  "Understood. Synchronization begins."

  Ada extended her right hand and gripped Ma Feili's wrist tightly. In that instant, pale blue data lines emerged from under her skin, flowing upstream along Ma Feili's prosthesis.

  The world changed before Ma Feili's eyes. The scorched earth, radiation, and thermonuclear storm all receded, replaced by endless arrays of numbers. He felt he was touching a vast and lonely consciousness—a quantum ghost named "Poseidon" or "Erebus" that had been watching for thousands of years.

  The Silver Marrow Ingot began to vibrate violently.

  The originally hard obsidian rock face began to ripple like a water surface, and countless tiny nanobots surged from the crevices. Ma Feili's fingertips touched that mass of liquid silver.

  No resistance.

  The priceless "**Isotope-239**" crystal became incredibly docile at the moment of contact. Like a giant droplet of water, it lightly slid into Ma Feili's collector.

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  As the crystal detached, the tremors at the base of the giant foot subsided. As recorded in the archives, within seconds of the Silver Marrow's disappearance, the nano-matter surging from inside the rock rapidly rearranged itself, and an identical Silver Marrow Ingot re-condensed.

  Inexhaustible, yet unattainable.

  "Success." Ada disconnected, her indicator light flickering once as the logic nucleus re-entered low-power mode. "Energy consumption 0.4%, logic integrity maintained at 100%. Ma Feili, we have obtained the fuel to support the next jump."

  Ma Feili looked at the flowing silver light in his hand, then at the mechanical rodents peering from a distance. In this ruin world of irreversible entropy, this Silver Marrow Ingot was not only fuel but also a final morsel of pity left by a dying civilization.

  "Let's go, Ada." Ma Feili turned and walked toward the depths of the storm. "Before the heat death arrives, we still have a long way to go."

  Ada followed silently behind him, her mechanical feet treading on the scorched earth, leaving a trail of precise and stable footprints.

  ---

  The dark red glow of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault reflected on Ada's silver shell, refracting a cold and stable texture. Her logic module was operating at its 100% peak. Even in this high-energy radiation zone, she still precisely maintained a low-entropy field with a five-meter radius for Ma Feili.

  "The frequency of the Silver Marrow Ingot has been locked, Ma Feili." Ada's voice vibrated in the dry air, without a trace of fatigue. "While waiting for it to cool, I extracted an encrypted archive from a recently repaired ruin terminal. Number 346, from the '**Eternal Spire**' of the Eridanus Epsilon System. It involves the core law we must face: Entropy."

  Ma Feili leaned against the scorching mechanical wreckage and signaled Ada to interface with the holographic projection.

  The archive's imagery slowly unfolded over the scorched earth. It was an old tale from Star Calendar 4112.

  ---

  **[Colony Archive Record #346: The Cocoon of Entropy]**

  The "**Eternal Spire**" Space Station was once a monument to humanity's deep-space expansion. But under years of bombardment by high-energy gamma rays, it had spawned a freak that defied natural law—the "**Chaos Rat**."

  It was a monstrous beast enough to chill the blood of any carbon-based life. It devoured high-strength alloys; its bones had mutated in the low-gravity environment to become as strong as a shuttle engine. What made the security department most desperate was not its strength but its explosive power that exceeded physiological limits. The elite "**Raptor**" mechanical units were like paper toys before it. Often, before they could lock onto the target, they were torn into scrap iron by those fangs capable of biting through cooling pipes.

  In the corridors of the administrative district, the shrill sound of metal friction never ceased, accompanied by the white smoke of leaking coolant—the prelude to death.

  Until the envoy from the **Vega Consortium** brought a biological weapon named "**Snow Shadow**."

  It looked like just an ordinary white cat, its fur gleaming with an immaculate luster in the dim space station. Only those deep blue pupils pulsed with the light unique to advanced quantum computers in the darkness.

  The Archon deployed "Snow Shadow" into the most devastated energy bay. Behind the lead-armored layers, countless pairs of eyes held their breath, watching through neutrino scanners.

  The beginning of the battle was extremely mundane.

  When the "Chaos Rat" burst out of the ventilation pipe with a roar loud enough to shatter eardrums, "Snow Shadow" did not bare its claws nor counterattack. It was like a glimmer drifting at the edge of physical laws. Under the monster's overwhelming impacts, it merely performed tiny displacements with sub-microsecond-level prediction.

  Once, ten times, a hundred times.

  The "Chaos Rat" became a streak of dark red lightning, bouncing frantically between the bulkheads. Every footfall cracked the titanium-alloy floor. Yet "Snow Shadow" always maintained that desperately calm composure. Its leaps were as elegant as a sine wave drawn in a vacuum, not wasting even a single joule of extra energy.

  The technical officers in the monitoring room began to mock: "It's just running away. When its stamina runs out, it will become a lump of white mush."

  However, Ada paused the image at this moment and magnified the thermal imaging data for Ma Feili.

  "Look here," Ada pointed to the giant beast. "This is the logical trap."

  The image continued.

  As time passed, the arrogant giant beast's movements began to deform. Its respiratory organs heaved violently. Its overloaded metabolic system caused its surface temperature to soar to a critical point. On the thermal imager, it had become a frantic mass of crimson red—a sign that its bio-energy was being consumed uncontrollably.

  Yet "Snow Shadow" remained an icy blue.

  This was no longer a battle, but an execution concerning the "**Energy Consumption Game**."

  When the "Chaos Rat" finally could not hold on any longer, squatting in the center of the compartment trying to cool its boiling blood with rapid panting, "Snow Shadow" moved.

  It was an instantaneous collapse from extreme stillness to extreme speed.

  Without any superfluous motion, the white afterimage swept through the air, precisely avoiding the monster's hardest carapace. In the staggered instant, nano-level reinforced claw tips severed the main neural bundle in the monster's neck and subsequently bit through the overheated, overloaded biological core.

  The screams stopped abruptly.

  When the airlock opened, all the Archon saw was "Snow Shadow" elegantly grooming its fur, and the floor covered in dark green bodily fluids that were evaporating.

  ---

  The image dissipated in the breeze of the scorched earth.

  "This cat understood a principle," Ada closed the projection and turned to look at Ma Feili, her eyes flashing with the same ghostly blue glow. "Under the law of irreversible entropy, blind outbursts only accelerate one's own destruction. A true hunter will induce its prey to walk toward heat death on its own."

  Ma Feili stood up and gripped the collector in his hand. He looked toward the desolate fault in the distance, where those mechanized rodents were peering from the shadows.

  "So, we are not evading radiation," Ma Feili said in a low voice. "We are waiting for this scorched earth to 'burn out.'"

  Ada nodded, her logic core operating stably, without any loss.

  "Precisely. The frequency of the Silver Marrow Ingot has been synchronized. The current entropy value is at its lowest point. We can begin."