Thermonuclear radioactive dust took on a sickly dark purple hue under the faint illumination of the Epsilon Eridani star system.

  Ada's logic core maintained a 100% peak frequency, her optical sensors' sampling rate dialed up to the absolute maximum. On the surface of Planet Taomin—a sector officially designated as the "Scorched Fault"—every gust of wind was saturated with the whispers of entropy increase. Ada and Ma Feili stood beside Lord Bi. The nano-coating on Ada's chassis efficiently repelled the high-intensity ionizing radiation, ensuring her observational data wouldn't suffer even a 0.001% deviation from environmental noise.

  "Your Excellency the Consul, welcome to the frontline of entropy increase."

  The voice belonged to the half-mechanized man, Yang Hualin. Ada's database instantly completed a full-spectrum scan of him: 54% of his torso had been replaced by subatomic-grade prosthetics. The "Pulse Tension Bow" slung across his back radiated icy magnetic field fluctuations under Ada's multi-spectral analysis. In a high-radiation hellscape like the Scorched Fault, primitive kinetic weapons relying on physical tension and strong magnetic confinement offered far more logical stability than laser weapons, which were highly susceptible to ionization interference.

  The shuttle tore through the orbital pipeline. Through the reinforced crystal window, Ada calculated the outside world. It was a dead, reddish-brown expanse. The only signs of life were a few mechanized rodents, utilizing symbiotic circuit boards to leech residual static charge from discarded cables.

  Suddenly, Ada's threat-assessment matrix flagged an anomaly.

  Just outside the pipeline, a scavenger in tattered hazmat gear was squatting near a thermal exhaust vent. He was defecating. Within Planet Taomin's incredibly fragile atmospheric circulation system, this behavior was strictly classified as a "High-Risk Entropy-Increasing Activity."

  "Trash like this is actively polluting the circulation system we are about to take over," Yang Hualin's voice grated through his damaged vocal cords, sounding like two rusted steel plates grinding together.

  He drew a "Kuaiji-pattern" memory metal anchor pin. Ada captured a massive electrical surge in his cybernetic brain—he was running outrageously complex ballistic compensation algorithms.

  "Commander Yang," Lord Bi attempted to intervene. "Every human life is a valuable computational parameter. His crime does not warrant death."

  "Out here on the scorched earth, fear is a far more efficient governance tool than parameters." Yang Hualin sneered. He didn't bother with lethal nano-strings; instead, he casually nocked the anchor pin onto his bowstring.

  He slammed open the pressure-release window.

  In a fraction of a second, violent, low-pressure hurricane winds howled into the cabin. Ada's gyroscopic balance system instantly locked her joints, keeping her perfectly immobilized. She watched as Yang Hualin braced one foot against the edge of the hatch, the 500-kilometer-per-hour wind pressure snapping his polymer-fiber cloak completely straight.

  "Hey! You organic-waste-squandering slave!" Yang Hualin's built-in amplifier roared across the wasteland. "Here's a 'Kuaiji Rattan Hairpin' to pin up that dog head of yours!"

  His fingers released.

  Captured by Ada's high-framerate vision, the metal pin transformed into a streak of lightning tearing through the air. It wasn't just flying; it was skipping along the very edges of physical laws.

  *Swoosh—!*

  It was a display of absolute kinetic violence. The metal pin grazed the exact millimeter above the scavenger's scalp. The resulting supersonic shockwave instantly ripped his respirator mask clean off. Under the scavenger's horrified gaze, the anchor pin, carrying devastating kinetic energy, nailed the loose, ill-fitting neural-interface helmet on the back of his head directly into the bulkhead.

  *Thwack!*

  The pin embedded itself deep into the discarded metal framework. The immense inertia pinned the scavenger to the wall like an insect mounted on a display board, leaving him flailing frantically in the rapidly dropping air pressure. Ultimately, he unbuckled the pinned helmet, abandoning it entirely as he scrambled and rolled away into the radioactive dust. The excrement he left behind rapidly crystallized in the freezing air, turning into a cluster of lifeless, pathetic ice spikes.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Yang Hualin retracted his longbow. The hatch hissed shut, and cabin pressure stabilized.

  "Your Excellency the Consul," he offered Lord Bi a completely totally temperatureless military salute. "Out here, organisms must revere fear, just as entropy requires energy."

  Ada turned her head, her logic core filing the behavioral analysis of the incident. In this Scorched Fault forgotten by law, civilization was indeed exactly as Lord Bi had witnessed—merely a hairpin capable of taking a life at any second: fragile, razor-sharp, and brimming with randomized cruelty. She also dutifully recorded the trace of profound dread leaking from Lord Bi, as well as the quiet, burning anger in Ma Feili.

  Ada uploaded the entire sequence to the cloud archives intact. There was no emotion in the code, only a brutally honest record of the cold laws governing the deepest reaches of the star sea.

  ---

  The radiation storms of the Thermonuclear Scorched Fault shrieked against the outer hull like the wailing of some dying metallic behemoth. Yang Hualin had already departed. Lord Bi, looking remarkably pale, had retreated to the flagship to rest.

  Ada stood at the ruined entrance of the "Emerald Ring" Σ-09 agricultural satellite, her pale blue optical sensors pulsing rhythmically in the gloom. Her logic core was running at a 100% peak state, the overclocked coolant flowing through her chassis emitting a faint hum. To her eyes, the surroundings weren't just broken walls and rubble; they formed a dynamic model constructed from countless high-energy particle trajectories and thermodynamic entropy values.

  "Thermonuclear radiation level: 4000 millisieverts. Entropy increase rate: Constant." Ada's voice was flat, devoid of any synthetic tremor. "Ma Feili, the physical constants here are undergoing a microscopic collapse. Logical deduction dictates: Do not touch any structures bearing dark red veining."

  Ma Feili kicked aside the remains of an already-mechanized rodent, its spine having been replaced by a rusted drive shaft. He lit a synthetic nicotine cigarette, the brief flare illuminating the dilapidated hydroponics matrix ahead.

  "So this is the birthplace of the legendary 'Bowl-Sized Watermelon'?" Ma Feili squinted through the smoke. "Sounds like the punchline to a terrible Ancient Earth joke."

  Ada didn't answer. She directly interfaced with a surviving terminal in the ruins. As the data stream flooded in, the bizarre archive recorded by Historian Sauron H materialized within her processing core.

  It happened during the polar day of Star Calendar 4026. Botanist Level 3, Karen, witnessed an event inside Hydroponics Pod 402 that blatantly violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The "Hydra Gourd," originally engineered to absorb radiation and emit an ice-blue fluorescence, had its growth protocols hijacked in a split second by a signal originating from a higher dimension.

  "Scan records indicate this was not a genetic mutation," Ada explained, simultaneously projecting the holographic data into the empty laboratory.

  In the projection, a dark red secondary tentacle was growing savagely out of the blue vines. It was covered in carbonized fiber scales, looking like a venomous snake burrowing into a flock of sheep. In a mere three standard hours, the spherical object dubbed the "Bowl-Sized Watermelon" was born.

  "Look here," Ada pointed at the nearly perfect geometric sphere in the projection. "The surface veining isn't a rind; it's a form of subspace coding. According to the theorem of irreversible entropy, a highly ordered, complex structure like this cannot spontaneously generate in a closed system. Unless... it is an 'Anchor Point'."

  Ma Feili leaned in closer. The dark green sphere was pulsing faintly. With every beat, the surrounding space seemed to fold momentarily, like crumpled paper.

  "In his logs, Karen noted that this thing had no organic pulp inside. It was entirely filled with tightly folded spatial membranes." Ada's logic core spun at terminal velocity, deducing a chilling conclusion. "That is the 'backup drive' of a silicon-based civilization. Ma Feili, imagine this: a civilization that has been dead for hundreds of millions of years encoded their entire species' consciousness, history, and pure, concentrated vengeance into a single biological spore. They drifted through the cosmos until they blindly crashed into humanity's gene-printing technology."

  "They treated the Hydra Gourd like a 3D printer for the three-dimensional world?" Ma Feili blew out a smoke ring, his eyes turning ice-cold.

  "Precisely. The carbon-based framework of the Hydra Gourd is merely their 'skeleton,' while the electrical energy of this entire satellite serves as their 'nutrient bath'." Ada walked over to a carbonized culture medium, crouched down, and traced her metallic fingertips over a thick, dark red sludge lingering on the floor. "Karen was ultimately assimilated. The moment he laid eyes on that tentacle composed of pure photons, he ceased to be human. He became the amplifier for that civilization's triumphant return to reality."

  A sudden, fine rustling sound echoed from the depths of the laboratory.

  Ada stood up instantly, her chassis performance spiking directly to the combat threshold. Her sensors captured it: within the seams of those rusted metal pipes, countless dark red vines were pulsing like blood vessels. They had already pierced the satellite's titanium alloy hull and were growing madly out into the void, as if determined to bear enough "Anomalous Fruits" on this scorched earth to devour the entire galaxy.

  "The signal is still broadcasting." Ada locked onto the faint, endlessly looping radio wave.

  Ma Feili tightened his grip on his high-frequency vibration blade. "What the hell is it transmitting?"

  Ada's logic core flickered—the final translation of a cold, unforgiving calculation.

  "'Anomalous Fruit'. In their dead language, the root meaning of this word is—'The Prelude to Harvest'."

  She turned her head and looked out the window. Under the faint, sickly glow of thermonuclear radiation, the entirety of the Σ-09 satellite didn't look like a ruined space station at all. It looked exactly like a colossal, dark red heart, slowly and methodically maturing in the starry sky.

  ***