The pale blue arc light in Ada's pupils gradually extinguished, replaced by an extremely profound amber color, like a still nebula. Her logic core had completed deep self-consistency under the augmentation of the "Full-Dimensional State Convergence Protocol." Her slender fingertips swept through the holographic turbulence, cleaving apart a dense string of code afterimages that pulsed like beating blood vessels.

  "Ma Feili, the foundational data chain has been reconstructed." Ada's voice was cold as polar ice crystals, carrying minute metallic resonance that completely concealed the logic fractures left by prior computational overload. "This is a record of heterogeneous evolution concerning 'parasitism and counter-consumption.' At the edge of the entropy-reduction wandering threshold, life, in order to seize a thread of survival from eternal extinction, can always evolve certain 'runaway' postures sufficient to warp dimensions."

  As she spoke, the holographic projection bloomed like a flower bud within the cramped cabin cavity, outlining the fragmented metallic contours of Extinction Spiral-β.

  ---

  Edge of the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss Star Sector, Extinction Spiral-β.

  This abandoned Dyson sphere remnant was like a pale bone chewed by some void behemoth, trembling alone in the absolute zero of vacuum. The air here was viscous and carried an acidic electronic rot; old neon tubes vomited sickly purple-crimson light in the thin nitrogen atmosphere.

  **Zhu Pingye** was curled up in a cramped observation position, eye sockets sunken like deep pits, skin emitting that silver-gray death-light characteristic of heavy metal poisoning. At the edge of his vision, a female-silhouette specter constantly drifted. She wore a flowing gown woven from high-energy particles; her eyes flickered madly like pulsars—this was a **Dimensional Wraith**, a hyper-dimensional parasitic species capable of informatizing its own existence. At this moment, it was elegantly extracting his spinal nerves, greedily devouring dopamine and bioelectric charge, as if savoring a fine genetic stock solution.

  "It treats me as... a biological battery." Zhu Pingye rasped in a low voice. The medical nanobots inside his body were futilely swimming upstream, but they simply could not capture an illusion that did not exist within three-dimensional coordinates. To restart his logic in his gradually depleting life, he embarked on a return journey to Xihe Star Harbor. However, when the flight path cut into the Erebus Supply Station, his vital signs had already dropped below biological critical threshold.

  In the deepest level of the supply station's black market—a place reeking of rust and machine oil—a man called "**Edmund**" sat among mountains of discarded prosthetics. He had no scalpel; between his fingers danced a string of silver tuning forks oscillating in ultrasonic frequencies.

  "Higher-dimensional scum detest impurities most; they prefer stable, low-frequency life fluctuations." Edmund retrieved a dark-red reagent from a frost-covered cryogenic chamber; the liquid substance churned violently inside the test tube like magma from the earth's core. "This is 'Red Marrow Rampage.' It can instantly ignite your biomagnetic field, transforming it into an out-of-control nuclear fusion furnace. The monster wants to absorb your energy? Then give it a feast sufficient to incinerate a galaxy."

  Zhu Pingye took the reagent—it was his only certificate of allegiance, and also his final tombstone.

  That night, in a capsule hotel saturated with high-voltage static, the scorching liquid was injected into his veins.

  The instant the drug's effects erupted, Zhu Pingye felt that what flowed through his blood vessels was no longer blood, but forcibly compressed supernova fragments. His cerebral cortex activity instantly pierced through the physiological limits defined by humanity; his heartbeat frequency raced like an overloading pulse drive.

  The Dimensional Wraith descended again. Following its greedy instincts, it extended its semi-transparent neural tendrils with practiced ease, attempting to synchronize with Zhu Pingye's mental firewall. It anticipated a docile plunder, but instead collided head-on with an ideological nuclear explosion.

  At the instant the neural link locked, Zhu Pingye's consciousness displayed an unprecedented predator posture. He no longer defended but completely opened every synapse, flooding that frenzied, scorching, even destructively logical bioelectric energy into the parasite's dimensional model like a bursting dam.

  The parasite began to tremble violently. Its originally sacred and inviolable form became twisted and scorched under the overloading current, emitting an electronic wail sufficient to shatter eardrums. It tried to sever the link, tried to flee back to the dimensional fissures of subspace.

  "Want to leave?" Zhu Pingye's will exploded like thunder in the sea of consciousness. "Swallow it all... swallow everything down!"

  He locked firmly onto the opponent's fluctuation frequency, using this self-destructive mad will to forcibly maintain the bidirectional link.

  The air in the capsule room crackled from extreme ionization; a blue-white plasma arc exploded from nowhere in the void. Accompanied by a scream transcending physical limits, everything returned to absolute silence.

  Zhu Pingye collapsed onto the metal frame, sweat seeping from his entire body mixed with metal powder, as if a new creation just crawling out of a furnace. And on the floor at his feet lay a one-meter-long, charred corpse. It was a fox-shaped creature woven from silicon-based fibers; its entire meridian network had been completely carbonized from overload, emitting a pungent ozone smell.

  This predator capable of freely traversing higher dimensions ultimately died from ignorance of survival desire, and from humanity's reckless violent counterattack.

  ---

  Ada closed the projection; at the archive's end emerged a supplementary note annotated by chronicler Hawkwood. The note recorded how a heavy miner codenamed "Pressure Unit" used the heavy metal ions rich in his blood, combined with the short-circuit discharge of his exoskeleton armor, to burn straight through another parasitic species.

  "Logic loop closed." Ada looked at Ma Feili; a trace of approval belonging to "the Other" flashed through her cold eyes. "In the entropy-reduction wandering threshold, the most dangerous thing has never been the extreme vacuum environment, but those 'higher-dimensional superiors' who attempt to view humans as resources. They can never understand what kind of self-destructive counterattack humans will unleash in the growth moment of stepping into desperation."

  She stood up elegantly; her body displayed an almost perfect geometric rhythm in the dim light—all prior damage had been completely erased.

  "Ma Feili, the next spacetime coordinate has been anchored. We're going to meet that Edmund's youth. Hidden in his 'Red Marrow Rampage' formula is the final key parameter we need to reshape our core logic."

  ---

  At the edge of the Stellar Plains · Nomad Belt, space was no longer empty vacuum but filled with some viscous, heavy gravitational rhythm. Countless massive metal components—those abandoned starship wreckages, stripped outer shells of automated mining stations, and geometric bodies left by unknown civilizations—were slowly and mechanically pulsing with invisible gravitational tides. Each metallic scrape would excite faint but clear high-frequency vibrations in the vacuum; these vibrations traveled along the alloy deck of the *Observer*, through Ma Feili's soles, climbing all the way up to his spinal cord.

  Ada floated silently beside the life-support pod. Her logic core had just undergone a thorough, nearly self-destructive reboot. The originally damaged left prosthetic eye had disappeared, replaced by a deep pale-blue photosensitive element; inside, tiny gratings constantly fine-tuned focus with the throughput of data flow. On the streamlined surface of her body, the damaged nano-layer had been re-polished, refracting a cold, even somewhat sacred industrial aesthetic. Ma Feili could feel the faint thermal radiation emanating from her—a physical oppression produced by computational units running at full speed.

  Ada now was operating at absolute peak efficiency. Her thinking was no longer linear language but like mercury spilling across ground, covering hundreds of millions of logic branches in every microsecond.

  "Ma Feili, abandon your sensory-level cheap observations. Look here." Ada extended her slender metal finger; her fingertip lightly flicked in the void, and a dark-red coordinate pulsed in the holographic projection like a beating heart, releasing some unsettling pulse.

  "In the 'State Machine Convergence Protocol,' individual behavior is never random evolution, but an inevitable collapse for the system to trend from extreme chaos toward absolute stability." Ada's voice oscillated directly in Ma Feili's cranial cavity through bone-conduction earphones. "To make you understand the cruel aesthetics of this 'convergence,' we need to trace back. Trace back to that foundational sample from a slightly earlier era, to feel the resonance of bone-shattering and will-restructuring."

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

  The holographic projection instantly exploded—no longer a monotonous image but some information flow superposition carrying higher-dimensional properties. The dim, oppressive twilight zone scenery of Red Marrow-56f instantly replaced the entire deck. Ma Feili felt a strong sense of weightlessness, followed by bone-piercing cold—this was highly simulated sensory synchronization; his skin even produced a layer of fine red rash from the simulated low-pressure environment.

  ---

  **【Archive Record: Convergence Node #106】**

  Red Marrow-56f. The air here was filled with high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide and fine silicate dust; every breath felt like swallowing a handful of steel needles ground by sandpaper.

  Sixteen-year-old miner **Edmund** stood in the desperate, massive shadow of the atmospheric extraction tower. His power armor was long since tattered; the hydraulic support rod on his left shoulder emitted a teeth-grinding friction sound. Inside his mask, due to temperature control system failure, his breath condensed into fine ice crystals; with every rapid gasp, those crystals would pierce his nasal cavity, bringing waves of acrid stinging pain.

  Three weeks ago, this wasteland had swallowed his father. That old man who could manually calibrate atmospheric stabilizers and steady the gravity chassis even in the most violent ion storms had, during a routine vein survey, become a pile of scrap iron at the edge of a liquid methane pit. Among those titanium alloy fragments etched beyond recognition by strong acid, Edmund recovered only a twisted identity tag.

  "**Shadow Predator**." Ada's voice sounded low in Ma Feili's ear, accompanied by a high-frequency hum—the simulated electromagnetic interference when Shadow Predators moved. "Silicon-based life, natural electromagnetic camouflagers. Their existence is physical law's mockery of carbon-based civilization. In predation state, their entropy approaches zero."

  Ma Feili felt a cold-sweat tremor down his spine. In the holographic image, Edmund showed no grief; his eyes were filled with a cold light called "absolute fury." It was not mad howling, but the transformation of all emotional pressure into precise, destructive logic.

  Edmund refused the colony psychiatrist's "trauma smoothing treatment." In that late-night maintenance cabin reeking of machine oil and rust, he seemed to be performing some solemn ritual. The muffled, powerful sound of a hydraulic wrench prying open an ordnance crate—that metallic collision vibration, through the holographic simulation, struck Ma Feili's heart directly.

  Edmund retrieved an old magnetic pulse crushing hammer. It was an industrial tool retired by the military for being overweight—heavy, clumsy, but at close range, it could release resonance waves that destroyed all silicon-based structures. Edmund's thin shoulders formed a stark contrast with that massive, scratch-covered iron hammer; this visual imbalance produced extremely strong tension.

  He put on the electromagnetic boots his father had left behind; when treading on the ground, those boots made heavy "thud, thud" sounds; with each landing, the ground's subtle tremors traveled from soles straight to cerebral cortex.

  He walked alone into the "Silent Plain."

  In the vacuum zone, silence had weight. This oppressive sensation made Ma Feili feel difficulty breathing. Edmund lay beneath the cold tower base full of metal debris, manually severing his power armor's main circulation system.

  "He's performing 'state degradation.'" Ada commented; the pale blue light in her eyes flickered madly, as if calculating every trace of energy flow. "He's reducing all his biological signatures to background noise level. Heart rate, body temperature, even brainwave frequency—all approaching dead matter. He logically erased himself, solely to deceive the Shadow Predator's sensors."

  Time stretched in absolute silence. Ma Feili could feel that nearly stagnant heartbeat in Edmund's chest cavity; each beat was heavy as if pushing rusty gears.

  After an unknown duration, the infrared sensor in the holographic environment rippled almost imperceptibly.

  A Shadow Predator seeped out from the bottomless cracks in the surface. Its body was semi-transparent silicon-based composite material, flickering with eerie, cold blue light under the faint distant starlight. It made no sound when moving, but the surrounding air produced visible distortion from violent electromagnetic field fluctuations.

  It approached Edmund.

  Ma Feili held his breath. He could feel the faint friction as those tentacles carrying acidic mucus swept across Edmund's mask—that sound was like tiny insects crawling on eardrums. The digestive fluid secreted by the Shadow Predator dripped onto the frozen soil, hissing teeth-grindingly; a corrosive sulfuric smell filled the entire sensory space.

  Edmund lay like a true, lifeless piece of ore, heart rate forcibly suppressed to thirty beats per minute. His will was performing an extremely dangerous "higher-dimensional overload"—he had to keep his brain in some extremely high-frequency alert state while maintaining minimal vital signs.

  When the Shadow Predator opened its head covered with compound eyes, preparing to bite through the energy conduit in this "stone's" neck, the still state machine switched instantaneously.

  The electromagnetic boots instantly overloaded; a powerful magnetic pulse formed a brief physical exclusion zone within a three-meter radius. This pulse caused the monster's silicon-based neural center to experience 0.5 seconds of logic deadlock.

  Just these 0.5 seconds.

  Edmund's eyes blazed wide; the originally suppressed fury transformed in this moment into pure kinetic energy. The magnetic pulse crushing hammer roared heavily—not merely sound, but a low-frequency oscillation that could shatter internal organs. Industrial-grade kinetic energy directly pulverized the Shadow Predator's silicon-based shell. Blue, fluorescent liquid sprayed like a shattered neon tube, carrying scalding temperature onto the gray dust, and onto Edmund's mask.

  The burning sensation when that liquid contacted the helmet, through the tactile resonance system, made Ma Feili instinctively step back.

  "First convergence complete." Ada waved her hand; the image began to distort, accelerate—the timeline was forcibly compressed.

  Second night, the same silence, the same hunt.

  Third night, Edmund's movements became more precise; he had learned to exploit the microsecond delay in Shadow Predator nerve conduction.

  By the fourth stellar day, long-term low-oxygen metabolism and extreme mental pressure caused Edmund to experience severe hallucinations. In the constantly flickering ghosting of his HUD (heads-up display), he seemed to see his father's weathered face; on that face, a hoarse voice kept reminding him:

  "The real threat is the mutant variant with the white repair patch on its nose bridge."

  "That's 'systematic deviation.'" Ada explained behind Ma Feili; her speech was extremely fast, carrying an unquestionable authority. "Mutation from laboratory isotope radiation gave that monster higher logic priority than its kind. Ordinary traps were merely transparent data before it. It was evolving; it was learning Edmund's strategies."

  When that enormous mutant Shadow Predator appeared—one that could almost completely shield infrared scanning—it did not probe.

  It was like a black, materialized lightning bolt, instantly shattering the magnetic field trap Edmund had set. Those massive, barbed fangs directly bit through Edmund's left ankle.

  "AHHH—!"

  Ma Feili screamed; he clearly felt the crisp sound of bone crumbling under pressure. That agony was so real that his brain nearly force-disconnected the link.

  Edmund was being dragged toward the pitch-black, fetid lair of the volcanic crater. Sharp volcanic rocks tore his pressure suit; vacuum alarms screamed madly in his ears. Edmund felt the agony of his body being torn, but he did not activate the defense pulse.

  He was waiting. His eyes held no fear, only an almost cruel focus. He was waiting to be dragged into that logical dead angle—that instant when the Shadow Predator believed itself absolutely safe and would relax its electromagnetic shielding.

  In the darkness of the volcanic crater, filled with thick ammonia and rotting silicon-based remains, the mutant Shadow Predator stopped. It emitted a deep resonance, preparing to enjoy this wounded "gift" that had delivered itself.

  Edmund opened his eyes.

  He stared at close range at that white-porcelain-like keratinous growth—the monster's weak point, and the core of its evolution.

  He did not swing that heavy crushing hammer. His arm had multiple fractures and could not exert force.

  With his last strength, using that blood-covered hand, he pressed the forced overload key on the high-temperature plasma battery pack he carried.

  "Convergence... ended." Edmund's voice was so faint it was nearly inaudible.

  In that moment, the world lost all color.

  White light, pure enough to melt souls, devoured everything. Ma Feili felt a destructive heat wave sweep his entire body; every cell seemed to be heated to boiling point in that fraction of a second. This was true "higher-dimensional overload"—excessive information and energy directly broke through the sensory system's threshold.

  ---

  The holographic projection gradually dissipated.

  The *Observer's* deck returned to its original silence; only the metallic scraping sounds from the distant Nomad Belt continued their rhythmic pulse.

  Ma Feili gasped heavily; sweat had soaked through his inner lining. He knelt on the deck, hands still trembling involuntarily. That phantom pain of fangs biting through his ankle still danced madly at his nerve endings.

  "When he carried that corpse with the whitened nose tip back to the dome, 35% of his total tissue had already necrotized; his left leg was permanently amputated." Ada turned her head to look at Ma Feili. Her pale blue prosthetic eye flickered with an almost compassionate light, but her tone remained cold as ever.

  "From a probabilistic standpoint, in that environment, his survival chance was below 0.003%. He should have died on the plain, becoming nutrients for the Shadow Predator. But the 'State Machine Convergence Protocol' tells us: when an intelligent individual's will is firm enough to oppose survival instincts, even oppose basic physical feedback, they can forcibly reshape physical reality's output results."

  Ada walked to Ma Feili; her slender metal fingertip lightly traced across his forehead. That cold, delicate touch made Ma Feili shiver.

  "Will, Ma Feili—that is the only variable capable of crossing dimensions and interfering with causality. When your fury is no longer emotion but a clearly directed logic vector, you can make the entire universe yield to you."

  Ada's tone became solemn and profound, as if reciting some ancient codex: "This is the first lesson we're teaching you. In the Stellar Plains, laws are not meant to be obeyed—they are meant to be 'converged.' As long as your logic is sufficiently closed-loop, as long as your pain can be converted into sufficient potential energy, even physical constants can be modified."

  Ma Feili slowly stood; he looked at Ada's perfect yet cruel body, feeling that oppressive and guiding force from higher civilization.

  "Then, Mentor," Ma Feili's voice was hoarse but carried unprecedented firmness, "my state machine... when does the first convergence begin?"

  Ada smiled slightly; that smile appeared both alluring and dangerous under the pale blue light and shadow. She waved her fingertip again; the data flow in the void began to reweave, forming a more massive, more chaotic coordinate system.

  "No need to wait." She spoke softly, her voice carrying a seductive magnetism. "It begins now. Go feel that destructive resonance."

  As her words fell, the entire *Observer* shook violently. Ma Feili felt the deck beneath his feet instantly virtualize; the endless pressure of deep space and higher-dimensional data flow swept violently toward the depths of his consciousness like a tsunami.

  - Edmund: Convergence → Explosion (disguise as dead matter, then deliver the fatal blow)

  - Zhu Pingye: Release → Counter-consumption (open all entry points, let the enemy drown in energy flood)