The two walked out of the conference hall one after the other, both avoiding each other’s gaze.

The corridor was lined with excavated artifacts from the Nyx Civilization, drawing the attention of many passing scientists who stopped to study them with great interest. However, neither Jason nor Lily had the leisure or the inclination to admire the relics.

"Ahem..."

Jason cleared his throat. As a man, he had no choice but to initiate the conversation.

"So... what if we just make do?" He had no idea what to say, so that was the brilliant opening line he went with.

The moment the words left his mouth, Jason mentally berated himself for being an idiot. He had spoken without thinking. He was probably just too used to being a pragmatic military leader; he spoke bluntly and said whatever was on his mind without any social filter.

The Senior Scientists actively encouraged this hyper-efficient communication style... Over the past nine years, it had practically become his default setting.

But this wasn’t a tactical briefing...

Jason deeply regretted his words, but you can’t un-ring a bell, and he had no idea how to backpedal and fix it.

Hearing the bizarre proposal, Lily simply offered a soft hum. She furrowed her brow slightly, then continued walking beside him.

A thick, suffocatingly awkward atmosphere settled between them.

Jason coughed twice more to cover his embarrassment. "Uh, that’s not exactly how I meant to phrase it..."

But he couldn’t actually articulate what he did mean, because the core sentiment was essentially the same. He genuinely did agree with "just making do" so the older generation would stop nagging him. Of course, his deep respect and underlying affection for her played a major role as well.

Clearly, Lily was not an average woman, and her cognitive process was highly unusual.

A normal woman would have been furious at the phrasing, but she wasn’t.

After careful, logical consideration, she found the proposal to be quite practical. Finally, she spoke quietly, "Reproduction is a biological imperative, a fundamental dictate of our genetics. Biological organisms that fail to reproduce have long since been eradicated in the brutal river of evolutionary time."

"...Romantic love is essentially a biochemical conspiracy designed to manipulate consciousness into procreation. It’s merely a poetic rationalization for the reproductive impulse."

"Marriage, therefore, is a societal construct, a compromise between the optimal reproductive strategy for a male and the optimal reproductive strategy for a female. It is, functionally, a Pareto-optimal Nash equilibrium..."

Yes, that was a highly analytical, scientific way of putting it. Jason couldn’t quite grasp everything she meant at first.

Pareto-optimal? Nash equilibrium...?

However, the clinical breakdown was perfectly in line with her personality.

Marrying a woman like this... well, it was fine. It was solid. It was highly acceptable...

When you reduced concepts like love and marriage down to their core biological and sociological mechanics, it wasn’t nearly as awkward anymore.

However, Lily’s face was inexplicably flushed red. She had only agreed to this walk because her adoptive father had relentlessly pressured her... When you were an older, single woman in a high-profile family, the parental pressure was inescapable. It was a truly embarrassing situation.

"Then I suppose that settles it."

Jason had remained silent for a long time, completely unable to decipher Lily’s specific emotional state, and blurted out another phrase he didn’t even fully understand himself.

He said it, and instantly regretted it again. What the hell did "that settles it" even mean in this context?

Lily paused for a moment and then simply replied, "Okay."

What does "okay" mean?

Jason was utterly stunned. He had just blurted out total nonsense, and she had responded with a simple "okay"?

He was completely bewildered. He instinctively reached up to run a hand through his hair, only for his gauntlet to clink uselessly against his powered armor helmet...

Perhaps... it means she agrees?

Today, Jason finally understood the true definition of an "awkward conversation."

During their halting chat, the two arrived at their destination: a fully sealed, massive industrial complex. It was the newest surface structure erected by Central Command.

This secure facility primarily housed high-level residential quarters, a mess hall, and classified administrative offices, serving as their new surface headquarters.

The building operated under strict Level-4 bio-security protocols. Absolutely no Nyx artifacts were permitted inside.

Upon entering the outer airlock, their powered armor was blasted with boiling chemical solvents, followed by a high-temperature sterilization cycle exceeding two hundred degrees Celsius, before the secondary security doors would even unlock.

After passing through the grueling decontamination sequence, the two arrived at the locker rooms, unsealed their armor, and immediately let out deep sighs of relief.

Inside this massive bunker, the environmental controls perfectly replicated the atmosphere aboard The Ark. There was zero risk of extraterrestrial microbial contamination, allowing the personnel to live comfortably. Finally, I don’t have to wear that damn armor 24/7!

This was undeniably the most luxurious working environment on the surface of Nyx; aside from the slightly higher gravity, it was identical to being back in orbit.

Since the Federation’s initial landfall on Nyx, the biochemical division had successfully synthesized a battery of localized vaccines and prophylactic drugs, freeing the colonists from their previous state of extreme vulnerability. Furthermore, analyzing the fossilized remains from the ruins had provided several baseline pharmacological formulas, vastly accelerating the development of microbial defenses.

The colony’s mascot, the genetically modified mastiff known as "Big Black," had also played a critical role. Its robust immune system had adapted almost perfectly to the Nyx biosphere, and its antibody-rich serum had been reverse-engineered into a highly effective broad-spectrum treatment. However, synthesizing the serum was incredibly slow and resource-intensive, so avoiding infection was still the best policy...

"Let’s grab something to eat."

Jason finally managed to shake off the lingering awkwardness. He was notoriously thick-skinned and quickly acted as if nothing had happened—as if their painfully awkward exchange had never occurred.

"You read the briefing on Thor City, right? The data drive and the orbital map they decrypted..." Jason asked as they walked toward the mess hall, smoothly pivoting the conversation to professional matters.

When it came to Federation business, there was always something to discuss.

"Of course I read it."

Lily seemed a little annoyed by the abrupt pivot, but she was deeply committed to her work. She sighed and replied in a slightly exasperated tone, "I personally oversaw a portion of the decryption algorithms."

Inside that alien solid-state drive, the vast majority of the recovered e-books were cheap romance novellas and fantasy serials—pure escapist fiction. Historically speaking, those files held very little tactical value; at best, the sociologists could use them to infer the average living standards and cultural tropes of the Nyx citizens.

The Federation simply didn’t have the time or luxury to appreciate the artistic merit of the Nyx Civilization.

However, a handful of the files were children’s educational primers, and their content was grounded, factual, and of incalculable value...

The informatics division theorized that the original owner of the drive might have been a female citizen with a young child, though a male caretaker was also statistically possible. Furthermore, their psychological and cultural frameworks were shockingly similar to humanity’s.

Jason shook his head and offered a wry smile. "Unfortunately, while these primers gave us a snapshot of the Nyx Civilization’s geography and history, they didn’t hold a single clue regarding the cause of their extinction."

Lily rolled her eyes, her irritation flaring again. "Of course they wouldn’t! That’s logically impossible. History is the documentation of events that have already occurred. An author writing a children’s book can’t possibly document a future mass extinction event."

"If a civilization survived an apocalyptic event long enough to write textbooks about it, then they aren’t extinct. It’s a fundamental paradox."

Jason shook his head, disagreeing. "That’s not necessarily true. A mass extinction event isn’t always instantaneous. There’s usually a sequence of escalation. First, a global crisis emerges. Then, the civilization realizes the crisis is insurmountable, and the population gradually succumbs. It’s physically impossible for an entire planetary population to die in a single microsecond, right?"

"Even if they were subjected to an orbital bombardment by an advanced interstellar empire, they couldn’t wipe out every single citizen instantly. There would inevitably be survivors holding out in deep bunkers, clinging to life for years or decades. Therefore, as long as there is a chronological sequence to the apocalypse, someone, somewhere, definitely left behind a survival diary or a final operational log."

"Finding that log is absolutely critical to our survival! It’s arguably more important than the technological archives we’re hoping to scavenge. We must understand how they were destroyed..."

At this point, Jason had completely forgotten the awkwardness of his marriage proposal. His mind was entirely consumed by the existential dread of humanity’s future...

It was truly terrifying that such a formidable, industrialized civilization could be erased so completely.

Was it an external cosmic threat, or internal self-destruction?

Given how advanced they were, could they really have annihilated themselves in a petty civil war?

Would the Federation eventually face that exact same apocalyptic dilemma?

Seeing Jason lost in dark, strategic thought, Lily offered a faint, reassuring smile. "I think the probability of an alien attack is mathematically very low. If a hostile empire truly wanted them dead, they would have just cracked the planet or glassed the surface from orbit. It’s far more likely they went extinct due to internal failures."

"Think about the lethal radiation we found... This isn’t a lush world like Earth. There were only a few dozen major cities here, and they all relied heavily on centralized geothermal or nuclear power. If a localized nuclear exchange destroyed even a fraction of those power grids, the resulting cascading failure and freezing temperatures would decimate the population."

"Furthermore, even if we never find a direct survival diary, our archaeological teams can eventually deduce the cause of death from the geological strata and remaining clues..."

"And... didn’t you promise that humanity would rise to become a true interstellar empire? No matter how impossible the odds, no matter if there’s only a one-in-a-billion chance of surviving the Great Filter, we are going to become an interstellar empire... right?"

Jason was slightly taken aback by Lily’s intense, unwavering gaze.

He held her gaze for a long moment before answering solemnly, his voice carrying the weight of a sacred vow. "Yes. We will."