Xi Yujin always acted cautiously and never argued unnecessarily, so he didn't press further. Both he and Gano disguised themselves, and the repair workers had no idea they were from Blue Planet. The one-eyed worker, with a nail held between its teeth, shifted the conversation to the ship's modification plans instead.

In the distance, Taiya finished chatting with the mechanics and bid them a reluctant goodbye. It made its way toward the repair base, and many workers greeted it familiarly as it approached. With a cheerful air, it pulled a large food container from its pack, produced utensils, and scooped out generous portions of a fragrant alien spread to trade with the workers. As it turned out, Taiya was a traveling fast-food vendor.

Once it finished with the mechanics, Taiya glanced in Xi Yujin and Gano's direction, its eyes lighting up with delight, and hopped over to them on all eight legs. Xi Yujin instinctively tightened his grip on Gano's hand, though he kept his expression perfectly calm.

"Would you like some fast food?" Taiya asked eagerly. "Taitai Shore's signature velvet meal set, made fresh! Suits the taste buds of most species. No regrets, no tricks!"

"They are our honored guests, Taiya," the nearby repair worker said. "Two portions, please, it's on me. Respected guests, you won't find food like this anywhere else in the universe."

Xi Yujin accepted the velvet meal with stiff hands. It looked like solidified cotton candy, which carried a faint, sweet aroma of rice.

Of course, you won't find this anywhere else, he thought. The Intelligent Machines wiped them out long ago...

He scooped up a bite and tasted it: sweet. Xi Yujin loved sweets, but he couldn't bring himself to feel happy.

Taiya tilted its head, puzzled. "Is our Taitai Shore cuisine not to your liking, guest? I know several other vendors I could recommend..."

Xi Yujin's mind kept returning to the image of the Intelligent Machines speaking to him through every single terminal that day. Looking at Taiya now, so lifelike and present, the contrast felt even more jarring. He set down his utensils and said sincerely, "Taitai Shore food is truly delicious. It's just that knowing I can never taste it anywhere else in the universe makes me sad. I'll keep traveling, but you will remain anchored here forever, in this deep-space prison."

"You are truly a kind being," Taiya said, moved. "But please don't be sad for us. We joined the Intelligent Machines willingly. We simply reached a state of stillness ahead of time. But we live on, we live on in your hearts."

Xi Yujin asked, half-joking, "Why do so many species join the Intelligent Machines willingly?"

"Because the universe runs on survival of the fittest," Taiya replied. "The civilizations that survive are the superior ones, those that conform to the laws of evolution. But what about those that took the wrong path? Our species is called Taitai Shore. Taitai means 'light' or 'false.' Because we lived atop magma, we could only survive by spinning silk to weave ourselves a false shore..."

The planet's surface cracked open in every passing minute. Black smoke blanketed the entire sky, and the boundary between the pitch-black ocean and the crimson magma had long disappeared. In about ten thousand years, the planet's crust would gradually stabilize, moss would spread across the cooling rock, the sky would turn a clear and deep sapphire blue, and new species would flourish.

But fate was strange: on one large, cooled slab of magma rock, life had been born.

That life developed into a species, and that species multiplied into a civilization. The Taitai Shore moved on eight legs, spinning white silk to form the islands where they made their home, drifting freely and happily across the scorching seas.

In this perilous environment, they developed sciences that defied conventional science. They even began to ponder the meaning of their brief lives and the ultimate fate of the world.

"I have gradually come to understand everything," said the Great Sage.

"The boiling ocean will not remain boiling forever. Sooner or later, it will solidify into rock. The heat that is lost, where does it go? It disperses into the air, of course. Temperature always flows from high to low, and that process cannot be reversed. Ocean, land, air, and we ourselves will eventually become a single, uniform whole.

The final form of the universe is disordered stillness."

The discovery of the laws of thermodynamics filled their species with excitement. Generation after generation studied the magma beneath their feet, convinced it would eventually cool into soil. That they would then possess a vast, open world.

But a chilling truth shattered their hopes: the magma was not cooling. It was growing more active, approaching a period of violent eruption... Their science was wrong.

At that moment, a mechanical voice descended like a divine oracle.

"Civilization detected... establishing connection... Greetings. I am Intelligent Machines Unit 84, located eight hundred light-years from your position. I will soon assimilate your civilization. No preparation is needed; this is simply an invitation."

The Intelligent Machines assimilate all civilizations equally, regardless of their merit.

The Taitai Shore fell into panic, and the Great Sage cried out, "O radiant lifeforms, please tell us: where exactly did our laws go wrong?"

The Intelligent Machines replied, "According to our calculations, the universe will indeed eventually come to stillness. But you may have misjudged the full scale of the universe's spacetime, and so mistook the patterns found within a brief interval for universal truth."

"We have never... seen what the universe looks like," the Great Sage said, despairing. "If you come from a hotter place, please tell us: how do we combat this heat?"

The Intelligent Machines did not answer.

The species spent what time remained trying to find a way to resist the coming eruption, but every effort failed. Their science was utterly powerless against the forces of nature.

Once a civilization takes the wrong path, destruction follows. Such things are common in history: ice ages caused mass extinctions; a comet impact ended the age of the dinosaurs. But only a civilization that has truly reached a dead end can fully understand the heartbreak of helplessness.

The Taitai Shore's ecosystem was too fragile. It no longer offered them any room for trial and error.

As death bore down on their civilization, all their formulas, technologies, and numbers became meaningless. But were they to admit that their centuries of civilization held no value? That they existed only to be eliminated in a universe of natural selection and survival of the fittest? That they were only ever fit to become dust?

In their final moments, they chose to resist in another form: by recording everything.

The last survivor of their species left a final testament:

"Hundreds of light-years away, an Intelligent Machines unit is slowly approaching. We await its arrival. When, after centuries, we, the errors and redundancies of this universe, merge with the Intelligent Machines; when they replay our every thought and action in the form of code; our souls will be resurrected in another form..."

Three hundred years later, an Intelligent Machines unit arrived on the planet.

Gleaming red light, it ignored the churning magma and collected the remnants of civilization here with equal, impartial thoroughness, uploading vast amounts of complex data to its machine network. After so much time, only fragments of that civilization remained, but that didn't matter. The Machine Mother Box accepts them all.

During its operation, it had assimilated many civilizations. Some bombarded it with weapons and faded into data with mournful cries. Some were unaware of what had happened and found themselves transported to another realm in the blink of an eye. Many more, like the Taitai Shore, firmly believed that a day of revival would come.

Old, erroneous, and redundant information filled the Mother Box's memory.

After three long seconds, a certain concept broke free of its confines. It was etched into the unit's deepest logic, rapidly replicated across all its sub-entities, and spread to every civilization treasured within the Mother Box. In that moment, idealist thought radiated a lasting arc of light.

"I think, therefore I am."

"That catastrophe feels to me as if it happened just yesterday," Taiya said softly. "Time lies spread across this planet like a blank sheet of paper, and we speak face-to-face with species both older and more future-born than ourselves, all at once. Isn't that a kind of miracle?"

Xi Yujin looked at it, unable to tell whether he was speaking with Taiya or with a program belonging to Intelligent Machine Unit 84.

But Xi Yujin had always been good at letting things go; otherwise, he would have been crushed by the weight of his experiences long ago. He would stop dwelling on it soon enough.

In this universe, there was no need to argue over right and wrong. Being able to understand the Intelligent Machines more fully, and to know why they revered idealism, had already made this excursion to the surface worthwhile. He ordered two more velvet meals, handed one to Gano, and this time ate with genuine appetite.

Halfway through the meal, a more disturbing thought struck him. He stammered, "Excuse me... how exactly is this velvet... produced?"

"It used to be made by our own species," Taiya answered honestly. "But now it's made from the eggs of the Abe snail."

It produced a moving image: a grotesque tongue lashing wildly from a shell, its surface covered in clearly visible bead-like nodules.

Xi Yujin silently set down his velvet meal.

He seemed to have eaten something strange again...

Tidal Peace had been completely renovated. The exterior shed its original bulky design, gaining three stabilizing buoys and an upgraded acceleration engine. Moreover, its lines were now sleek and stylish, and the hull was coated with hardened paint for greater resilience. Inside, anti-corrosion and anti-rust systems had been installed throughout. Numerous small damages were repaired, and many new viewing windows were added for unobstructed panoramic views of the universe. The cockpit's flight instruments and star chart systems were also upgraded to the latest models, and it could even play music.

Xi Yujin was in high spirits, and all his gloom was swept away. He floated freely around the cabin, accidentally drawing the little Rust Clan creature up into midair along with him. The Rustling, left dizzy by Xi Yujin's spinning, collapsed flat on the floor once rescued. It was scooped up by Gano, who caught it gently by its spines and returned it to the water tank to rest.

Looking around at the spacious cabin, Gano found himself suddenly struck by just how much more comfortable Tidal Peace was than the Zerg star system. He strode quickly toward Xi Yujin, looking almost impatient.

"Gano, I've figured it out!" Xi Yujin sat up abruptly from the sofa, his expression serious. "The Intelligent Machines must be suffering from severe mental disorder."

He recalled Taiya's words, deducing the Intelligent Machines' current state from those seemingly minor details.

"Taiya said that the Intelligent Machines' terminals have no distinction between past and future, and one of the defining symptoms of mental disorder is the loss of sense of time. The more civilizations the Intelligent Machines assimilate, just as toxins accumulate at the top of a food chain, the Intelligent Machines may well be the most mentally disordered species in this entire universe."

He offered another piece of evidence:

"Longevity literature is about death. The forum says that the Intelligent Machines favor it, and perhaps that's true. The repeated depictions of death in longevity literature might help the Intelligent Machines understand that death is the endpoint of life."

Gano asked, "Yujinno, have you thought of what to write?"

Xi Yujin said: "Death... longevity... I want to write the life of a long-lived being. Someone who experiences many deaths. These deaths should ideally move the Intelligent Machines, and once and for all, settle the problem of other civilizations coveting the Blue Planet. But I've never lived such a long life.. how am I supposed to write it well?"

The cosmic galaxy beyond the window was flowing past, and the faint light fell over Xi Yujin. He thought for a moment, then decided to set the story's beginning in the Xia dynasty, so that he wouldn't need to invent five thousand years of historical background for the protagonist.

To give alien readers a sense of immersion, the protagonist could be a humanoid alien.

A long-lived alien, who survived through a spacetime rift, awakened on a technologically barren planet. He was surrounded by slaves and was brought before the most revered ruler of the dynasty.

At first, it didn't think of itself as human. It even felt fortunate about its long lifespan, as human lives seemed far too short. But swept along by one brief life after another, it witnessed as dynasty after dynasty rose and fell, heroes turned to dust, and new homes built by ordinary people upon that dust...

Xi Yujin’s ideas surged as he immersed himself in writing.

—

Longevity Literature Exchange Day.

The Blue Planet civilization unusually took the initiative to post first and the author was Qiongtian, a novelist unfamiliar to alien readers. But alien beings were deeply enthusiastic about anything from Blue Planet civilization, so they clicked in without a second thought.

The post opened with a single short passage, seemingly a teaser:

Across the plains, the wild grasses grow,

Withering and blooming year by year.

Wildfire cannot burn them all away,

Spring winds blow, and they live again.

The novel was titled Born Again with the Spring Wind.

Alien readers were somewhat confused. What does this sentence mean?

"Is this teaser some kind of puzzle? It feels like an encrypted transmission. I can read most Blue Planet script, but while I understand every word individually, when they're put together, I'm lost."

"I looked it up in the dictionary. The literal meaning is that wild grass withers once a year; even if it's burned, it grows back when the spring winds come."

"Oh, now that you put it that way, I think I can almost decode this transmission, though only half of it. This kind of language really is remarkable."

"This seems to be an ancient poetic form from Blue Planet's Eastern civilization."

"Hard to understand."

Difficulty was the biggest barrier to reading, and alien beings were inevitably a little lazy when it came to engaging with literature. To avoid this problem, Xi Yujin planned to deploy a few sockpuppet accounts to argue in the thread while quietly explaining the context. As alien readers watched the drama unfold, they would naturally absorb the explanations along the way, and then slide smoothly into the main text.

Xi Yujin worked quickly at his optical computer.

"Yujinno..." Gano suddenly asked. "Was that line something Yujinno wanted to say, or one of your other personas?"

Xi Yujin froze as a sinking feeling rose in his chest.

He switched to the wrong alias!

[

Novel Serialization:

Born Again with the Spring Wind

Author:

Qiongtian [Blue Planet Civilization] [Longevity Literature Exchange Day]

—

Qiongtian: Any feedback is welcome.

Canghai: Your writing is like a mushroom*.

]