Lin Ye, a mercenary fresh from a infiltration mission, still had faint traces of nano‑disinfectant mist clinging to his knuckles. Through the frosted bulletproof glass, he tapped the short blade displayed in the black market’s corner showcase—a weapon that shimmered with a soft pink‑blue gradient. The black market dealer rubbed his aging mechanical prosthetic hand and chuckled, explaining that this was no ordinary ornament: it was a replica of an original artifact salvaged by the former Interstellar Fleet’s Survey Corps from the ruins of a collapsed wormhole observation station. Embedded within the handle’s intricate spiral pattern were remnants of low‑level void‑borne exotic energy🔮—capable of silently slicing through the Empire’s quantum‑encrypted alloys inside a full‑bandwidth shielding field, without triggering even the slightest alarm. Lin Ye ran his fingers over the heated neural interface at the base of his neck. Three days earlier, the Empire had raided the rebel underground stronghold where he’d been hiding, seizing all his comrades’ cryopreserved genetic samples. He now had to infiltrate the Imperial Bank’s core vault to retrieve them—and this blade was practically tailor‑made for the job🔑. Paying ten times its usual price, he strapped the short blade to the inner side of his forearm and slipped into the secure zone. Along the way, he effortlessly cut through three layers of encrypted doors without setting off any alarms—until, upon prying open the central storage cabinet, he discovered half a fragment of the original blade, gleaming with the same iridescent gradient. Etched into the fragment’s groove was a genetic identifier he had long since forgotten—the very number assigned to him at birth🔍. A cold draft from the ventilation duct swept across the blade’s surface, emitting a faint hum; and gradually, that vibration began to resonate with the lullaby of his mother, a tune that had vanished from his mind twenty-six years ago🌌. You never know: the weapon you’ve sought may, in fact, be the key to the past you’ve lost.