"I also felt that things had gone too smoothly along the way. Mm, that was it." The Level Six Gaia Life thought for a moment but could not explain why, so it merely repeated what had been said on the United Front's public channel.
After a rapid internal discussion, the humans had arrived at some conclusions. Having heard their opinions, Yue Yuan spoke on the public channel. "In our view, the most likely possibility is that this is a Harvester conspiracy."
"A conspiracy? What makes you say that?" Seeing that Human Civilization seemed to have genuinely noticed something, the Awakeners played along.
Yue Yuan nodded and began, "Before that, I would like to ask the Silver Heart Alliance something. Are you certain that we had shaken off the Harvesters' pursuit?"
"We can be certain. We deployed several batches of disposable probes at the time and found no trace of them, nor any Warp signatures. Furthermore, we had concealed detection equipment in certain star regions. There were hundreds of information anchors throughout the starry regions we traveled through, yet none received any feedback. We can say with certainty that we were not being followed," the Silver Heart Alliance replied confidently.
"Good. In that case, if there really is something wrong with this Silicon-Based Collective fleet, then only one possibility remains." Yue Yuan's words appeared once more on the public channel and were translated by the built-in system into the languages of several major civilizations. "The Harvesters anticipated our actions. Or rather, they made the right bet! Think about it: if you were the Harvesters, after discovering that your opponents were willing to pay any price to shake off your pursuit, where would they most likely go?"
"The Galaxy is so vast. They could go anywhere!" said the Level Six Gaia Life.