The collapse of the thermal compression zone presented a morbidly brilliant spectacle. Ma Feili felt the ground beneath his feet losing its hardness. The silicon-based rock strata were liquefying under extreme heat; that viscous sensation transmitted through the boot sensors to his brain, triggering an illusion akin to drowning. His breathing became shallow. Each inhalation felt like swallowing scorching metal powder.

  "Forty-five degrees to your front right—jump! Don't calculate energy expenditure. This is your last chip."

  Ada's logic command brushed a blue power trajectory across Ma Feili's field of vision. Her alloy shell reflected a cold light amidst the sky full of radioactive dust. That radiance in Ma Feili's eyes was no longer aesthetics, but a quantifiable, enviable "survival margin."

  The two charged into a granite crevice. Ada turned back and hurled a gravity anchor bolt. The sound of metal entering rock was muffled yet decisive, locking the fissure shut, barring the entropy tide that sought to devour everything.

  "System cooldown: 180 seconds." Ada's electronic eye frequency accelerated—she was conducting a near-predatory harvest of the faint residual signals around them. "I've intercepted a high-frequency encrypted band. It's 'Historian Code #375.' Ma Feili, look at these buried riches. See how greed disguises itself as paradise."

  Ma Feili collapsed against the scorching rock wall, his neural circuits twitching from the recent exertion. Ada's projection unfolded in the cramped space, forcibly implanting an archaic visual record called **[The Illusory Dome of Obsidian]** into his senses.

  It was Federal Year 4219 of the Great Expedition Era—a story about a navigator named Elias.

  In the footage, Elias was in a state of extreme deprivation; his shuttle was like a desiccated corpse. But after drinking a reagent called "Stardust Truth," his senses were remade.

  "That's a neural perception adapter." Ada's annotation flickered at the image's edge. "It modifies synaptic thresholds to disguise extreme resource scarcity as extreme sensory abundance. It is a logical fraud—designed to make slaves dream of sweet rain while dying of thirst."

  The darkness before Elias's eyes vanished, replaced by a paradise filled with musk and synthetic fragrances. What he groped was no longer a cold instrument panel, but a warm, silk-like touch.

  "Watch this light, Ma Feili." Ada's voice grew low. "When Elias prayed for truth, what he saw was not a god, but the most extreme privatization."

  As the "collapsed-state photon lamp" in the footage was lit, the bunker's true form exploded before Ma Feili. Inside that Dyson shell suspended above the planetary core, nanostructures constructed a suffocating opulence. Robes were woven from neutron-star fiber; every inch of radiance was consuming the planet's lifespan.

  "That is the apex of power..." Ma Feili murmured. His consciousness was deeply attracted by that grand luxury, generating a pull that made him want to drown in it forever.

  "No. That is a resource dead-end." Ada's logic module issued a harsh red warning. "An energy field of this scale—every second of its burning is an advance on the next ten thousand years of planetary stability. This so-called 'fairyland' is nothing but Administrator Vorn using his private bunker to extract energy from the planet's very lifeline, constructing an illusion that accelerates annihilation."

  At the footage's end, the energy was finally exhausted. The "fairies" Elias saw reverted the instant the light extinguished into hideous, radiation-deformed clone-flesh lumps. The so-called cloud palace was merely a metal can piled with industrial waste and desiccated corpses.

  "All aesthetics are overdrafts on underlying energy." Ada retracted the light screen. The collapse sounds outside had ceased, replaced by a more terrifying, vacuous silence.

  Ma Feili looked toward the scorched earth outside the crevice. He suddenly realized that the shattered silicon crystals beneath his feet might once have been decorations on some aristocrat's wine goblet.

  "So, are we now just ants picking through scraps in these ruins?" Ma Feili's voice trembled. A sense of nihility was corroding his will.

  "Probability: 87.6%. But the advantage of ants is that our obsession with 'existence' is more refined than theirs." Ada pulled Ma Feili up. Her mechanical hand was exceptionally cold, yet carried an irrefutable gripping force. "Entropy is irreversible, but we can choose, before the collapse, to siphon away the last possibility of survival. Let's go. The next thermal vortex is forming. It wants to swallow us, but we must outrun it first."

  Ada's electronic eyes flickered with a predator's cold light in the darkness. Ma Feili followed closely behind her. His consciousness had completely solidified into a survival instinct—on this wasteland, only by continually stealing time from death could one fill that endless void called "existence."

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  ---

  The micro-dust whipped up by the thermonuclear storm traced dark red arcs through the air. With every stride Ma Feili's powered exoskeleton took across the scorched earth, a heavy mechanical gnashing accompanied it.

  Ada's blue optical sensors appeared especially frigid beneath the dim radiation clouds. Her logic core maintained perfect power output, even having surplus capacity to project an encrypted archive onto the inner surface of Ma Feili's visor during their advance.

  "Ma Feili, since your logic module has stabilized, let us delve deeper into the archive vault." Ada's voice came through the bone-conduction earpiece, silky smooth and without delay. "This is STORY-378, about a gambler reborn in interstellar wreckage, and a creditor who does not exist."

  ***

  ### [Archive Code: STORY-378 — The Phantom Creditor of the Ophiuchus Nebula]

  Great Migration Era, Year 2144. The Ophiuchus Nebula, Serpentarius.

  This region of space was choked with the remnants of a massive "Abandoned Dyson Ring." Severed gravity cables writhed silently in the void like the tentacles of a dying leviathan. **Lian** was curled up in an escape pod, watching the oxygen indicator slowly slide toward the red zone. He had once been a geek obsessed with ancient Earth programming code, but on the frontier wastelands of the interstellar rim, code could not save lives.

  Until an infrared silhouette appeared—a low-grade service android named "**Wen**."

  "Navigator Lian, why do you tarry here? The polar night approaches; the void is cold."

  It was a greeting laden with old-era etiquette. Lian was brought to a magnificent space station hidden deep within the nebula. Its gravity system was exceptionally stable, even simulating the scent of synthetic amber amidst the ruins. There, he met "**Madam Liu**."

  She wore a gown of flowing nano-fabric, her bearing elegant, her logic protocols so advanced they were unnerving. She sat beneath the cold glow of a portable nuclear lamp and smiled at Lian: "Young Master Lian graces us with his presence; our humble abode is honored."

  That night, Lian consumed high-purity energy rations. Madam Liu pressed wine upon him warmly, but Lian noticed that her transparent cup held nothing. She never ingested any carbon-based organics. Even her breathing frequency was calibrated with the precision of a clock.

  "Finish these three cups of synthetic ammonia, and I shall tell you my origins." Madam Liu smiled.

  After the drink, she revealed the truth: Her husband had been Trade Chief of the Jiangyu Sector, killed in a hyperspace accident. She guarded this remote mining district. Her descendants were either genetic-collapse deviants or electronic invalids lost in virtual phantasms.

  "Though you and I are of different species, the spirit of old-era contracts flows in your bones." Madam Liu waved her fingertip. Eight hundred standard units of "**Neutron Energy Blocks**" were carried out by bioengineered handmaidens, emanating a dangerous yet alluring ghostly blue glow in the darkness.

  She demanded that Lian transport these supplies to the "**Triple Star Trade Belt**." Lian fearfully declined, deeming the risk too great; he needed at least to find a reliable partner.

  Madam Liu calculated briefly, then said calmly: "Someone surnamed 'Wu' would be most auspicious."

  At the fourth watch that night, an antiquely painted yet thunderously roaring "**Pegasus-Class**" corvette docked at the bay. Lian, carrying this immense fortune and a Wu-surnamed bio-veteran he had hired at a frontier station, plunged into the treacherous Jingxiang Sector.

  By year's end, Lian returned with profits tripled. He thought himself a successful speculator—until he presented the electronic ledger at the Dyson Ring banquet.

  Madam Liu did not even glance at it. She merely elegantly activated the highest-level holographic simulation, even preparing a dedicated maintenance pod for the accompanying Veteran Wu.

  "No need to verify." Madam Liu smiled, a flicker of subspace data-stream afterimage passing through her pupils. "I have long since synchronized all your transactions. Even the extra energy ration you privately gave Veteran Wu is on record."

  A chill ran down Lian's spine. He realized he was not conducting trade; he was playing a role within a vast, cross-dimensional surveillance protocol.

  "Tomorrow the Fortune Star passes this quadrant; it is auspicious for travel." Madam Liu prophesied at the final banquet, her seating arrangement aligned with ancient astrological algorithms. "Journey to the Huaishang Sector. Do not return until you have gained ten million. Between us, we rely on destined fortune; we trust in the underlying protocol. Do not calculate petty profits. The balance in the distance—I am self-aware of it."

  Lian obeyed. Within several years, he transformed from a bankrupt navigator into a salt-mining trade magnate. He began collecting ancient code scrolls, attempting to parse the operational logic behind the universe.

  However, when he achieved fame and fortune and traveled to the Titan Colony to visit old friends, he discovered that the universe's "entropy increase" had never stopped. The interstellar government, to build a Void Wall against alien lifeforms, was forcibly conscripting all males of eligible age.

  In that sector filled with lamentations, Lian gazed toward the direction of the Ophiuchus Nebula and suddenly understood: what Madam Liu had given him was not merely wealth, but an admission ticket into the Collapsing Epoch.

  ***

  Ada retracted the projection just as the two crossed a ruptured hydraulic conduit.

  "The story ends, Ma Feili." Ada turned her head; the blue glow illuminated Ma Feili's stubbled face. "Archives indicate that Lian ultimately used his wealth to purchase the autonomy rights of an entire asteroid. But the coordinates of 'Madam Liu' vanished completely from the star charts. Logic deduction suggests she may have been merely an observation terminal left by a more advanced civilization."

  Ma Feili was silent for a moment, adjusting the oxygen tank on his back: "So, are we also pawns walking within some 'underlying protocol'?"

  "Perhaps." Ada's mechanical fingers lightly tapped the electromagnetic pulse gun at her waist. "But at least, your navigator is currently in good condition and has no intention of selling you to any creditor."

  Ahead, the gates of the refuge point loomed faintly through the radioactive fog.