At this moment, what appeared before Xiao Yu was an ocean of knowledge. Each of his combat robots was like a pump, frantically drawing from this ocean. With 400,000 robots remaining, that meant 400,000 pumps.
Vast amounts of data were being accessed by Xiao Yu. First, the information was copied into the processing chips of the robots. Then, through Superluminal communication, it was transmitted to the Heaven’s Kingdom ship, from there relayed to the China ship, and finally stored, becoming part of Xiao Yu’s own technological reserves.
The volume of scientific data was enormous. Even leaving aside Level 5 Civilization data, back in Earth’s era, just a single technology could fill dozens of hard drives once you included its principles, discovery methods, detailed diagrams, deduction processes, formula proofs, calculation steps, application research, and so on. How much more massive, then, would the data of a Level 5 Civilization be?
Furthermore, the branches of a Level 5 Civilization’s technology tree were countless times more numerous than those of Earth’s. Take materials science, for example. In Earth’s time, it could already be broken down into thousands of detailed subfields, research on wood, plastics, steel, and so forth. As for a Level 5 Civilization? Xiao Yu discovered that within the Molian Civilization’s system of materials science alone, there were actually tens of millions of categories.
Within each category were thousands of research results. And every research result contained a data volume equivalent to tens of thousands of Earth-era computers. And this was only one field of materials science. The technology tree of a Level 5 Civilization was far more than just that.
This was a sea of data, the crystallization of the wisdom and effort of countless scientists across tens of thousands of years of the Molian Civilization. Now, Xiao Yu was swimming in this ocean, desperately absorbing nourishment to accelerate his own growth.
“Too slow, too slow. The transmission speed is far too slow. At this rate, by the time the Supercomputing Center is destroyed, I won’t even have copied one percent of the data. This won’t do, I must find another way.” Xiao Yu strained his mind, racing to find a solution.
His computational power was not only tied up here. At the stellar cannon, the violent energy of the exploding star continued to rage, wearing away at the shields. The fifteen engine groups had all rotated once, and now it was the intact engines pulled from all groups that were supplying power to the Four-Dimensional Shields. Meanwhile, the number of robots engaged in repairing damaged engines and recharging them had already exceeded three million, and was still climbing rapidly.
The energy unleashed by this stellar explosion was beyond Xiao Yu’s expectations. After all, he had never personally experienced such a cataclysm like a supernova, so his estimations inevitably contained shortcomings. Now, he was paying the price for that gap.
After the initial outburst of radiation and energy, what followed was the onslaught of stellar material. The star had been blown apart by its own violent energy, like a stone ball blasted to pieces. When a stone shatters, fragments scatter everywhere; so too with a star.As these stellar fragments spread outward, the chill of cosmic space rapidly cooled them. Yet it was clear that within such a short span, their temperatures could not possibly drop to safe levels. On the star, they had existed as plasma. Once expelled into space, deprived of the terrifying high temperature and pressure, they reverted into ordinary matter.
Hydrogen was still hydrogen, helium was still helium. In the endless time to come, they would slowly disperse, eventually forming a planetary nebula. Their density would grow thinner and thinner, until they merged into the cosmic sea, vanishing without a trace.
This was the life cycle of a star. Born from a nebula, a star would also return to a nebula at its death. Compared to the moment of its destruction, its birth was far less spectacular, certainly not as it was now, hurling its own matter outward at nearly the speed of light.
Through Xiao Yu’s effort, the situation of the stellar cannon finally stabilized. The rate of engine damage began to match the pace of his repairs. In other words, if the star remained in this state and so long as his energy reserves held, Xiao Yu could maintain his defense indefinitely. But things were not so optimistic. Just as the situation steadied, the expelled stellar material arrived at the location of the stellar cannon.
An endless torrent of stellar matter began battering the Four-Dimensional Shields surrounding the stellar cannon. These fragments carried tremendous kinetic energy. Attacking through kinetic force was the simplest, most primitive, and least effective form of assault.
Once civilizations advanced to Level 3 and mastered shield technology, kinetic weapons had largely been abandoned, replaced by various energy weapons and radiation weapons. Yet now, this situation showed Xiao Yu that kinetic attacks were still terrifying. The only reason he could not replicate such power himself was that his scale had not yet reached the critical threshold where quantity transformed into quality.
But the kinetic assault from this star had indeed reached that threshold. The pressure on the Four-Dimensional Shields increased once more, accelerating the rate at which engines were being damaged.
“No choice. Activate the emergency plan.” Xiao Yu steeled himself and made the decision.
The Four-Dimensional Shields were retracted. He had no choice, all fifteen engine groups had reached their limits and needed rest. If he did not give them a break, millions of engines would be destroyed outright.
In place of the Four-Dimensional Shields, he deployed energy shields, tachyon shields, and other conventional barriers. These did not consume the engines’ power; instead, they ran on energy Xiao Yu had previously stored. He hoped these conventional shields could hold for at least half an hour, buying him precious breathing space.
But the effectiveness of conventional shields was far inferior to Four-Dimensional Shields. Even though Xiao Yu still employed a multi-layer system, one by one the conventional shields were shattered by the star’s furious energy. Each time a layer fell, part of the stellar cannon’s own material was stripped away. By now, its diameter had been reduced by over 500 meters. More than one hundred million tons of matter had been stripped away.
The stellar cannon had long since lost its original function. Now it was nothing more than a shield, and even in that role, its integrity was being pushed to the brink.
At this moment, it struggled to hold off the raging energy of the star while simultaneously retreating with the 1.2 million starships sheltering behind it, fleeing from this star system as quickly as possible.
Those million-plus ships had already completed their historic mission. There was no need for them to remain here any longer. On the journey, they had transported the resources used to build the stellar cannon and served as its escort. Upon arrival in this system, their task had been to protect the cannon from destruction by the Molian Civilization. And if the cannon’s shot had failed or underperformed, those ships would have gone into battle directly. But events had unfolded more smoothly than Xiao Yu expected, so their continued presence was unnecessary. The remnants of the Molian fleet could be dealt with by the biological army.
Yet the raging stellar energy meant Xiao Yu’s retreat could not be too fast. A hasty withdrawal risked mistakes, and in such conditions, even a small error could spell catastrophe. It was no joke for a single misstep to doom an entire fleet. Even after retreating to a distance of 20 billion kilometers, beyond the pull of the star’s gravity, Xiao Yu still could not enter curvature flight, for the same reason.
A single supernova explosion affected a region spanning light-years. Xiao Yu could not possibly flee that far in such a short time. His only hope was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the corpse of the star. The farther away, the weaker the impact. Even if the difference was tiny, better to have it than not. At a critical moment, a small margin might be the difference between life and death.
After the stellar cannon’s ten-kilometer diameter had been stripped down by more than 500 meters, the conventional shields finally reached their limit. And the price for this heavy loss had bought only twenty-five minutes. In those twenty-five minutes, Xiao Yu had managed to repair just eighty percent of the engines. But he had no choice, he had to proceed.
Thus, a new round of engine group rotations began. Xiao Yu dispatched another one million robots into the stellar cannon to continue emergency repairs on the damaged engines.
The situation here was extremely perilous. And deep beneath the Molian Civilization’s capital planet, within the buried Supercomputing Center, things were not much better. The greatest limitation Xiao Yu faced remained the painfully slow data transmission. This was unacceptable to him. After so much time, after paying such a staggering price, with victory almost within reach, yet to fall short simply because the transmission rate was too slow, even to the point of total failure? No one could accept that.
But this situation might be about to change. Xiao Yu was planning to create something. At this moment, as many as 200,000 robots had been gathered inside the Supercomputing Center. They were busily transporting component after component…