The Entropy Trial in the Inverted Star Trails of the Civilization Autophage

The fingertips of Wen Nianchu, a cultural relic restorer, could read the memories of antiques. But when she touched Huo Yanci, heir to the Huo Group, she glimpsed the truth behind her mother's death twenty years ago: a fall from a building disguised as suicide. The fragments of a blood-red Warring States jade pendant still soaked in blue liquid in the Huo family's laboratory. To uncover the "human relic preservation" contract her mother had signed with the Huo family, she entered the Huo residence, kept at a constant 18.5 degrees Celsius, under the guise of a contractual marriage. But she soon discovered the deal was far more dangerous than she had imagined. Huo Yanci's body temperature was always below 35 degrees, dropping to 26 whenever he touched a relic, while every time their skin touched, memories of her mother's final moments came rushing back. When a Ming dynasty blue-and-white porcelain vase revealed the key to an international smuggling ring, and sweat stains on the Dunhuang murals led to a list of gene-edited test subjects, Wen Nianchu's ability began to spiral out of control. A Song dynasty jade pendant stained with blood let her experience the perspective of a serial killer, while a Tang dynasty bronze mirror revealed Huo Yanci's frozen memories of a past life. Even more deadly, an AI legal team suddenly argued that "temperature exchange constituted compensation for services," turning their private encounters into a tax dispute watched by the entire internet. In the underground ice cellar of the Huo family's old residence, she found her mother's final experiment log: the Warring States jade pendant was actually a beacon for an extraterrestrial civilization, and Huo Yanci's cold-temperature genes were the password to activate an extinction program. As the lies evaporated with their body heat, the bloodstained thermometer hidden in Huo Yanci's suit pocket remained forever stuck at 37.8 degrees, the temperature her mother's body had been when she died. The cold-temperature suppressant he had willingly injected himself with could prevent her memories from overwhelming him, but at the cost of gradually forgetting her face. When an alien signal was broadcast worldwide through cultural relics from the Palace Museum, she had to use