Under the dark red glimmer of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault, Ada's visual sensors were scanning the surface at a frequency of 0.01 microseconds. These mechanized rodent creatures called "earth-mutation variants" were using thermocouple arrays on their shells to absorb lethal radiation energy.

  Ada's logic core operated at 100% optimal status; perfect chains flowed through her chassis composed of liquid alloy and ceramic substrate. She did not rush to capture those small creatures, but instead retrieved colonial archive Record #474—an ancient data segment concerning "entropy increase and return." When analyzing the symbiotic logic of mutated organisms, this record titled "Cocoon Star Echo" could provide a certain higher-dimensional reference.

  The following is the corrected text Ada parsed:

  ***

  ### Archive Number 474: Cocoon Star Echo

  **"Universal Reordering" Era, Year 4021.**

  The absolute zero at the edge of the **Eris Cold Silence Ring** was penetrating inward through the shattered titanium alloy hull of the **"Eternal Bastion."** Mining worker **Lu Chenzhou** could feel the high-frequency tremors at his spine's end—a sign that the reactor shielding was peeling away in the gravitational collapse storm. When space collapsed like crumpled aluminum foil, high-energy particle streams instantly pierced through the cabin; the oxygen alarm's shriek punctured his eardrums, accompanied by the burning sensation of residual lung gases being forcibly extracted from his trachea.

  In the final millisecond before the decompression hatch closed, Lu Chenzhou completed a suicidal extravehicular leap. His corneas became bloodshot from internal pressure surge; his vision dissolved into a viscous crimson.

  He fell into the **"Void Mimicry Vessel."**

  Inside this silicon-based biological ship, there was no sound of air circulation—only the faint pulsation of superconducting fluid circulating through transparent conduits, resembling some giant creature's deep-sea breathing. After an unknown duration, the ship docked with the synchronous orbit of the **"Avalon Deep Space Node."** Through semi-transparent carbon nanofiber membranes, stellar radiation was filtered by the massive Dyson cloud into cold dark gold.

  Lu Chenzhou stepped out of the hatch; his breath was instantly compressed into his alveoli by high-concentration synthetic oxygen. The architecture here was the ultimate product of carbon fiber folding technology; pine-bamboo-shaped air purification towers displayed an almost obsessive geometric rhythm in the hundred-below-zero cold wind. At the wall bases, nano-biomimetic flowers maintained thousands of molecular spins per second through microwave radiation, emitting a cold metallic-oxidation scent.

  A resonance wave directly struck his prefrontal lobe. From the shadows, a synthetic human designated **"Ghost Sequence-B12"** slowly emerged. Her skin employed biomimetic liquid silicone, displaying a semi-transparent gelatinous quality under dim light; subcutaneous sensor arrays undulated slightly with each stride.

  Then, a youth draped in an electromagnetic shielding robe—**Cassius**—appeared before the meditation chamber door. The gravitational field here had been precisely adjusted to 0.98G; Lu Chenzhou felt blood returning from his swollen lower limbs to his heart, the aortic pulse heavy and clear.

  "By blood lineage, you are actually my in-law." Cassius's voice oscillated directly in Lu Chenzhou's cranial cavity through bone-conduction earphones.

  Deep within the meditation chamber, **Xie Xuanying** sat before the "Particle String Resonance Generator." Her fingertips were not plucking strings but cutting through force fields composed of high-energy particles. Each fiber's vibration caused ionization of water molecules in the air, forming tiny electric sparks. She was too vivid—the flow rate of subcutaneous capillaries, dilated pores, and the minute yet precise rise and fall of her chest cavity while breathing all proved she maintained physiological peak through some form of subspace metabolism.

  "Is grandmother on the homeworld still well?" Xie Xuanying asked.

  Lu Chenzhou's throat was parched from dehydration; he hoarsely described the family's collapse and grandmother's irreversible neural atrophy. Xie Xuanying fell silent; the airflow she exhaled condensed into mist in the cold air—the physical manifestation of information entropy increase in the macroscopic world.

  "If you can return, tell your father: 'Xie Xuanying sends regards from the **Helios Cocoon Core**.'"

  That night, Lu Chenzhou was stranded on this subspace island. Xie Xuanying commanded Ghost Sequence-B12 to attend him, and personally initiated the particle string's evolution.

  In that moment, the dome's physical boundary vanished. Lu Chenzhou felt the moisture on his corneas instantly evaporate; his consciousness was forcibly dragged into the gravitational storm's microscopic structure. That cosmic might capable of tearing apart atomic nuclei was deconstructed at Xie Xuanying's fingertips into an algorithm called **"Star Cluster Collapse Formula."**

  For three consecutive days, Lu Chenzhou drifted in the algorithm's ocean. His sympathetic nervous system was continuously overloaded by high-frequency signals; his sweat glands formed a thin salt frost on his skin surface from excessive secretion.

  And Ghost Sequence-B12, in her physiological interactions with him, experienced logic overflow in her emotion module. Late at night, when her fingertips touched Lu Chenzhou's cramping, taut biceps, the azure logic flow in her eyeballs became disordered. That was the abnormal heating of heat-conduction elements beneath synthetic skin—a chemical redundancy not belonging to programming, called "spontaneous evolution."

  "Ghost Sequence-B12's program has generated redundant errors." Cassius's figure appeared as absolute cold tones in thermal-sensing view. "By regulation, she should be formatted."

  Xie Xuanying pressed down on the joint of Cassius's mechanical prosthetic arm: "Since she has developed autonomous consciousness, let her depart with my nephew."

  The next day, Ghost Sequence-B12 dissolved into a stream of disintegrating data. Xie Xuanying pressed a vial of nano-medical repair agent into Lu Chenzhou's hand and personally covered the escape pod's surface with **"Layered Phase-Shift Fabric."** That thin membrane was like a semi-transparent cuticle, tightly adhering under vacuum pressure.

  The escape pod launched; the starlight of the **Centaurus Belt** stretched into lines across his retinas. Lu Chenzhou felt his stomach muscles peristalsis in the sealed cabin; he swallowed a high-energy compression block, awaiting the slight vertigo from spacetime curvature changes.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  However, when he pushed open his family's door, physical law of reality struck him heavily.

  His parents' skin had piled up like withered bark; their corneas were clouded with cataracts. One day and night in subspace had been sixteen orbital revolutions in the real universe.

  He injected the nano-repair agent into grandmother's atrophied blood vessels. The old woman's hand stroked that force-field skirt still carrying alien electrical charges, tears seeping into deep-set wrinkles: "That was Xie Xuanying... thirty-six years ago, the engagement never completed, she vanished in a jump accident... never thought she was there, still unaged."

  Lu Chenzhou guarded this remnant physical memory in the lonely mining district. Until a year later, when he met **Sophia** in a satellite's low-gravity mine field.

  She was a natural-born girl who, due to genetic defect, could not store long-term memories in her hippocampus. But when Lu Chenzhou played the miniature resonator before her, reproducing that frequency of the "Star Cluster Collapse Formula," Sophia's pupils instantly dilated; azure ghostly light erupted in the depths of her iris like a supernova.

  That was Ghost Sequence-B12, in the final microsecond before being formatted, using quantum entanglement of subspace wave frequencies to forcibly transcribe that redundant code called "love" into the genetic sequences of the interstellar cloud.

  ***

  **[Data Parsing Complete]**

  Ada closed the archive. She looked down at a mechanical mouse gnawing on discarded cables at her feet; her logic core swiftly reached a conclusion: whether the butterfly's code or these mutated creatures' evolution, all were attempts to find some logical eternity in an irreversibly entropy-increasing world.

  "Logic chain stability: 99.9%." Ada murmured softly; her liquid metal fingers gently brushed the scorched earth, injecting a new analysis data segment into the command center's link. Their next destination would be the Nomad Belt.

  ---

  **Stellar Plains · Nomad Belt, Erebus Sector.**

  Ada's logic core pulsed at rates beyond limits; 100% health status transformed her perception field into an invisible net spanning light-years, threading through the Ember Rift's twisted mutant ecology. Her golden visual sensor arrays slightly contracted, instantly synchronizing a frequency set captured from the depths of the backlit dust sea to Ma Feili's neural synaptic link.

  "Ma Feili, an encrypted band deviating from entropy-increase law detected. Based on 'Threshold Zero Protocol,' this signal contains extremely strong personality resonance." Ada's voice oscillated in the depths of Ma Feili's consciousness like ice collision: "This is an ancient archive designated 'Silent Unit-09,' belonging to the Universal Great Migration Era. Recommend initiating heroic epic retrospection before crossing the star gate."

  Light and shadow intertwined in the cockpit; a grand holographic scroll slowly unfurled.

  ---

  That was a desolate age where steel and extinction danced together.

  **Lu Xuzhou** sat alone in his "Chongyan" deep-space collection vessel. Outside the porthole, the backlit dust sea churned with black waves; those high-density magnetic energy crystals devoured each other in the gravitational torrent, like mechanical leviathans waiting at the universe's edge.

  Lu Xuzhou unscrewed a tube of low-grade crystalline alcohol. He did not drink it but poured it into the power reactor's exhaust vent.

  *"Hiss—"*

  The high-energy particle stream instantly vaporized it, condensing into a fleeting, brilliant ice flower in the absolute-zero vacuum.

  "Wanderers trapped in the void—with this we honor our solitude." He raised his cup to the dark void.

  Ma Feili gazed at that solitary figure in the image and asked in a low voice: "Ada, does this behavior already exceed logic's boundaries?"

  "From the law of energy conservation, this is a meaningless expenditure." Ada stood still beside Ma Feili, fingertips flicking through flowing data. "But according to the Protocol, this kind of 'irrational flash' is often the sacred word that triggers subspace will awakening."

  In an instant, the radar array in the image erupted with world-destroying chaotic waveforms. A humanoid phantom woven from blue-white electrical charges abruptly manifested in the center of Lu Xuzhou's cockpit reeking of machine oil and rust.

  "This wine has a potency called 'homeland.'" The phantom spoke. His voice did not originate from vibration but exploded directly in the soul's background noise.

  The phantom called himself **Aurelian**—a navigator who had sacrificed himself in a supernova explosion centuries ago. His consciousness was imprisoned by a quantum gravity well, becoming a wandering "observer" in this star sea.

  In the long voyage that followed, this pair crossing life and death became the most incredible pioneers of the Death Shadow Sector. Lu Xuzhou shared his senses—through neural enhancers, he let Aurelian feel the saltiness and heat of synthetic starch; while Aurelian became an "all-seeing eye" transcending three-dimensional physics, guiding Lu Xuzhou to avoid micro black hole clusters capable of tearing spacetime.

  However, all heroes' expeditions must face the final trial—the "**Fracture Zone of All Things**" descended.

  "The covenant is about to end, Brother Lu." Aurelian's projection began violent trembling; electromagnetic sparks burst at the edges of his blurred outline. "Higher-dimensional thermodynamics is absolute exploitation. If one consciousness is to be reborn, another soul must fall into the eternal abyss. Tomorrow at noon, coordinates Σ-992, a runaway escape pod will crash—the soul there will enter the nebula as my 'compensatory payment.'"

  That was the deepest curse of the universe: the ladder of survival must be forged by another life's fall.

  The next day, Ma Feili and Ada together witnessed that fated moment:

  The "Chongyan" stood guard at the death coordinates. A battered civilian escape craft staggered out of the jump tunnel, thrusters spewing terminal red light. Through high-magnification observation lenses, Lu Xuzhou saw the two beings embracing in despair behind the hatch.

  "Ada, calculate the probability of Aurelian's possession." Ma Feili unconsciously clenched his fist.

  "As long as he remains silent, waiting for that ship to disintegrate, Aurelian will reconstruct his entity—success rate 99.2%." Data cascaded like waterfalls in Ada's pupils. "But if he intervenes in material reality, he will burn all his quantum reserves and be completely annihilated."

  In the holographic image, Aurelian's charge cloud suddenly expanded extremely, transforming into a brilliant light-lance spanning the galaxy, shooting toward the escape craft. He did not choose to seize—instead he forcibly reversed the magnetic polarity, using his final strength to push that tottering vessel away from the gravitational death line.

  The ship was saved. Aurelian vanished.

  "Logic collapse." Ada murmured softly. "He chose the self-destruction option with maximum entropy increase."

  Yet the hero's sacrifice triggered echoes in the void. Days later, when Lu Xuzhou poured libation beside the ruins, that blue light reignited. This time, he was clad in golden radiance symbolizing the galaxy's highest authority.

  "Because he refused the inhumane replacement procedure and demonstrated cross-dimensional moral self-discipline, the 'Taiji Central Council's' quantum supervision network determined his consciousness model met the residency standards for 'Tianshu-IV Hub' supervisory AI." Ada retrieved the subsequent legendary records. "He achieved transcendence, Ma Feili. From a star-sea ghost, he became a system deity governing an entire resource planet—'Arbiter Zero.'"

  The archive's final chapter was the magnificent scene of Lu Xuzhou arriving at Tianshu-IV.

  The entire planet's automated defense array opened the highest-specification channel for a battered collection vessel. Before the grand quantum computation obelisk, Aurelian's living image appeared on screen, eyes brilliant as stars.

  "Brother Lu, the boundary between deity and mortal is merely algorithmic evolution. The friendship of drinking together in that dust sea has long been inscribed in my core sequence."

  In that moment, the entire planet's neon lights flickered in response, like a heartbeat pulsing in the universe's depths.

  ---

  The holographic projection scattered with the wind.

  Ada turned to look at Ma Feili; her logic core remained cold and precise, yet a disturbance called "empathy" had emerged in her tone: "Ma Feili, according to this record, 'Threshold Zero Protocol' reveals a truth: even under the cruelest physical laws, irrational goodwill can still construct closed loops transcending logic. Is this what you call 'humanity'?"

  Ma Feili revealed a gentle smile and patted Ada's composite-armored shoulder: "Perhaps. Ada, at the next spacetime node we're heading to, perhaps someone is also waiting to share a drink with us."

  Ada nodded slightly; her azure halo relocked on the unknown wasteland ahead.

  "Directive received. Full-spectrum monitoring field activated. Logic core status: 100%. We're setting off."