With his knuckles pressed against the cold, rigid crevices of an asteroid, Lin Ye’s fingertips brushed along a rock wall coated in crystalline stardust, while the shards of helium‑3 ice clinging to his boot soles slowly melted in the lingering warmth of the relic’s ventilation shaft. Half a month earlier, he had accepted this anonymous commission—offering tenfold compensation—parking his hunting vessel in a silent orbit on the shadowed side of the asteroid and descending alone into the ruins of a outpost that had gone silent three centuries ago. The employer had made only one demand: retrieve intact the “fragment” embedded within the core control room.