In the storm of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault, red radiation dust scraped against the outer shell like razor blades.

  Ada’s compound-eye sensors flashed with a steady blue light in the darkness, system performance maintaining a peak of 100%. She hovered by Ma Feili's side, projecting the digitized information of Archive #256 onto the charred surface in real-time.

  "Logic reconstruction complete, Ma Feili." Ada's voice was cold and precise within the comms loop. "Beneath these ruins where entropy increase is irreversible, I have captured the residual 'Copper-Green' signal left by '**Guo Qi**'. Preparing to enter historical phase reproduction."

  ---

  **[Main Text: The Verdigris Whisper of the Abandoned Sector]**

  **Star Calendar 4021, Planet Metis-4.**

  This tidally locked dead sphere possessed only a deadly crystal jungle on its eternal night side. When the Free Star Chart Illustrator **Guo Qi** landed, his power armor was blaring harsh alarms due to a coolant leak. Oxygen reserves were at 15%. Under the torture of "Cryogenic Dormancy Syndrome," his nervous system began to interpret distant magnetic storms as ancient ballads.

  The moment he crossed the subspace rift, Guo Qi thought his logic processor had cracked.

  At the core of the Shadow Basin, beside the wreckage of a rusted reactor, a dozen holographic figures were sitting in a circle. The outer shells they projected were actually the "Confucian Scholar" attire of Earth civilization from thousands of years ago. The wide robes and broad sleeves displayed an eerie, fluid-defying flutter in the near-vacuum low-pressure environment.

  "The gathering lacks just one guest. Excellent, excellent!"

  A synthetic radio wave exploded directly inside Guo Qi's helmet. A scholar stood up, handing over a transparent container filled with a glowing ghostly green light.

  "High-purity isotope nutrient solution, supplemented with nano-repair molecules." The other party's audio signal carried an archaic elegance.

  Guo Qi had been driven to a logical dead end by loneliness and thirst. He popped the supply port on his faceplate and downed the cold, strangely fragrant liquid in one go. The searing energy instantly carbonized the inflammation in his lungs, and his cracked lips miraculously healed under the forced stitching of nano-robots. He felt a hyperactivity that violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics, drank ten more tubes in succession, and laughed loudly.

  "Grand! Truly a friend of the Star Ocean!" The ghosts praised in unison.

  Guo Qi was originally a simulation genius walking the edge of the law. He tweaked the audio frequency synthesizer on his wrist, quietly tapping in commands during the banquet.

  At first, it was the murmur of "Swallows"—a biological frequency that had vanished during the Great Earth Extinction, appearing abruptly in this high-radiation fault.

  Then, the mourning of "Cuckoos"—the shrill bandwidth oscillated the frequency of the holographic projections, causing the ghosts to look at each other in uncertain shock.

  Finally, Guo Qi used ventriloquism to jam their receivers, simulating a comical electronic parrot mimicry: "Scholar Guo is drunk, send him home!"

  The dead silent basin erupted in wild laughter, like a current overload. These entities wandering the radiation zone were struck by this ancient sense of humor.

  "A pity 'Lady Green' has not arrived," one ghost sighed, his holographic image generating a few seconds of static snow due to emotional fluctuation.

  "Next time the Stargate opens, Mr. Guo must come."

  "The guest has unique skills; we shall offer the 'Shoulder-Stepping Play', how about it?" A burly ghost rose to his full height.

  Immediately afterward, the laws of physics collapsed before Guo Qi's eyes.

  The dozen holographic projections began to generate a strange physical stacking. The first ghost activated a strong anti-gravity field under his feet; the second flew up, stepping precisely onto his shoulders. Layer upon layer, in an instant, these "Scholars" composed of energy turned into a ladder piercing straight into the clouds, as if forcibly connecting to the Starport in synchronous orbit.

  It was pure energy overflow. Suddenly, the ladder let out a violent overload roar and tipped to one side. In Guo Qi's blurred vision, the collapsing energy did not vanish but disintegrated into a straight, shimmering nano-guide path, pointing directly to his missing shuttle.

  Guo Qi sprinted along the light path, crashing into the airlock chamber in the final second before his oxygen hit zero.

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  The next day, Guo Qi woke up in severe pain. The waste fluid he excreted presented an eerie, metallic **Copper-Green (Verdigris)** color. When the liquid dripped onto the alloy floor, it corroded the metal into an emerald hue like strong acid.

  He piloted his ship back to the coordinates.

  There were no scholars, no fusion core, only a pile of cold nuclear waste and the bleached bones of scavengers who had died of radiation centuries ago. Inside the ribcage of the skeletons, several mechanized rodents were parasitizing, greedily gnawing on the residual isotopes.

  Guo Qi was never able to find that coordinate again. The "Copper-Green Poisoning" in his body lasted a lifetime. Whenever the Stargate opened, his skin would glow with a faint green light, as if he were slowly evolving from carbon-based life into some form of inorganic matter.

  ---

  Ada put away the holographic projection.

  In the surrounding scorched fault, several mechanical birds circled above the reactor wreckage, emitting electronic sounds that closely resembled human sighs.

  "Ma Feili, logic closed-loop confirmed." Ada turned her head, her compound eyes reflecting the lingering copper-green on the surface. "What Guo Qi encountered were not ghosts, but '**Thought Mirrors**' generated by entropy reversal in this fault. If we stay here too long, the nano-repair fluid in my system will also invite you for a drink."

  ***

  **The Thermonuclear Scorched Fault.**

  The air here was filled with fine ionized sparks. The surface, repeatedly stripped by high-intensity radiation, presented a sickly dark purple. Ma Feili stepped on the brittle silicon-based rock, every step making a tooth-aching crunching sound.

  "Environmental radiation level: 450 mSv/h. Suggest enabling Exoskeleton Full-Seal Mode." Ada's voice was clear and stable in the comms channel. She had just completed a deep analysis of the "Copper-Green" sensory trap and was now running her scanning matrix at full power. Pale blue laser beams spilled from her mechanical prosthetic eyes, carving precise lines in the dim air.

  "We have arrived, Ma Feili. Inside that spire."

  It was the "**Entropy Monastery**." A building roughly stacked from the pressure plates of scrapped spaceships and local basalt, standing lonely at the edge of the Eternal Night Hemisphere. It was not only a geographical terminus but also a spiritual tomb for these believers in thermodynamics.

  Due to a minor leak in a ship's fission reactor, Ma Feili had to enter this dead supply station. When the hatch opened, the smell of stale metal and thin oxygen rushed out. The internal life support system had collapsed long ago, with only the emergency circulation wind whimpering in the pipes like a trapped beast.

  At midnight, the extreme cold caused the architectural structure to emit loud "crack" sounds due to thermal contraction.

  "High-frequency vibration response detected. Distance 15 meters, approaching." Ada quickly entered a combat stance, her slender and powerful mechanical fingertips spreading slightly, blue energy circuits flowing beneath the armor gaps.

  A blurred human figure stumbled out of the shadows.

  It was a man wearing Deep Space Priest robes. The robes were frozen into eerie crystal pendants by dark red coagulated liquid—a mixture of bio-oil and body fluids. His eyes were hollow, pupils dilated into two glass spheres that had lost focus.

  "Target bio-signs: Zero." Ada projected a line of blood-red warning text on Ma Feili's retina. "**He is a dead man.**"

  However, this "dead man" was walking. He completely ignored the fully armed Ma Feili and walked straight to the center of the hall. There stood an "**Entropy Idol**" welded from scrapped engine parts. The head of the idol was a translucent quantum processor casing.

  The subsequent scene was filled with uncomfortable absurdity: the blood-stained monk climbed onto the pedestal, frantically opened his arms, and hugged the cold processor "head" tightly. He pressed his face against the rough metal surface, his throat erupting with a twisted, electronically synthesized laugh. The laughter conducted directly into Ma Feili's exoskeleton sensors through the physical vibration of the idol's structure.

  It was extreme ecstasy, and also extreme despair.

  An hour later, the figure quietly faded into the shadows.

  "That is a '**Residual Neural Echo**'." Ada holstered her weapon and walked toward the living quarters where the monk had vanished. "Some intense obsession is constantly replaying within the quantum bits. Ma Feili, look at this."

  The door to the living quarters was easily sliced open by Ada's high-frequency vibration blade.

  The strong smell of corruption instantly overwhelmed the filtration system. A monk lay dead on the maintenance bed; a penetrating wound on his chest showed he had died from a high-energy ray gun. The room had been ransacked, clearly having undergone a brutal looting.

  "He died three days ago. Pirates killed him, but found nothing." Ma Feili looked at the withered corpse, then turned to look at the idol in the hall. "If he is already dead, why does his 'Ghost' still go to embrace that pile of scrap iron?"

  "Unless, that is not scrap iron." Ada walked up to the idol's pedestal, her laser scalpel precisely cutting open the occipital seam of the processor casing.

  *Click.*

  Dozens of ghostly blue "**Zero-Point Energy Lattices**" rolled out from the idol's breach, twinkling in the dust with a mesmerizing light sufficient to buy an entire cruiser.

  "The Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that the universe will ultimately return to silence, but this believer obviously wanted to keep the most chips in the dead silence." Ada picked up a lattice, analyzing coldly. "While alive, he intercepted all the energy supplies of the monastery and hid them inside the idol. He died of greed, yet even after death, through residual neural signals, he continues to guard this wealth he could not take with him."

  Ma Feili looked at the lattices. In this universe where entropy increase is irreversible, these high-energy objects were the only weapon against the void, yet they also became shackles that imprisoned the soul.

  "Ada, leave the lattices here." Ma Feili remained silent for a long time before ordering in a low voice. "Contact the nearby trade station and use this energy as a long-term maintenance fund. Bring the spire's defense system back online."

  "You want to protect him?"

  "No. I just want this miser to guard his treasure forever, before the heat death of the universe arrives. This is his best reward, and also the most reasonable punishment."

  With the activation of the automated commands, the defense turrets outside the spire emitted a low hum. In the eternal night of Gliese-581g, that blood-stained figure walked out of the shadows once again, mechanically and contentedly hugging the head filled with wealth.

  ***