No Turning Back After Drawing the Bow
Regardless of the circumstances, humanity is now preparing for battle.
The smooth transaction between the 3,000-year-old Life Elixir and Alloy No. 2 has relieved humanity of any worries. After all, with the Life Elixir sample in hand, there's no longer any fear of not being able to obtain what humanity urgently needs in the event of war.
As for the Life Elixir with a five-thousand-year efficacy, obtaining it would be a bonus, but not getting it wouldn't be a great loss. Of course, after this deal was completed, humanity still had another reason to wage war.
That is, the Interstellar Transaction Market obtained the manufacturing technology for No. 2 Alloy Material.
Humanity must launch a war after this; otherwise, once the Interstellar Transaction Market produces Alloy No. 2 and equips it on their subsequent warships, their armor and defense capabilities will reach the level of human warships.
Therefore, they must be defeated before they can produce and arm themselves.
And with the plan being executed by someone who was not, it proceeded quite smoothly, at least from a human perspective.
Several months later, the trade between humans and the Interstellar Transaction Market was successfully completed. Then, as previously agreed, both sides each dispatched a fleet to meet at the designated location and set off towards the coordinates of the Life Planet provided by humans.
As planned, the human fleet comprised one million ships, led by the Donghai (East Sea) Warship. The Interstellar Transaction Market side followed suit, deploying six million warships under the pretext of the vast distances Star Path and the need to guard against pirate attacks.
And so, propelled by powerful Magnetic Propulsion, the two fleets gradually sailed toward the dark Void like ghosts.
Upon witnessing this scene, the First Fleet of humanity began its final preparations.
Yue Yuan and his senior officers were already formulating a specific attack plan, waiting for the Donghai (East Sea) Warship to arrive at the designated location so that the Lyra could take immediate action.
Yes, the Donghai (East Sea) Warship launched its attack as soon as it arrived at the designated location, instead of waiting for the Donghai (East Sea) Warship to send back information before taking action, because if the Donghai (East Sea) Warship sent back information, it would mean that the Interstellar Transaction Market would also receive information that their fleet was under attack.
Humanity cannot allow the Interstellar Transaction Market sufficient time to prepare, otherwise it will inevitably increase the difficulty of conquering it.
This timeframe isn't considered long, because humanity's Third Fleet isn't far from this Star System; in fact, it could be said that it's already within the Star System's sphere of influence.
So, watching the timetable turn, at a certain moment, Yue Yuan, who had been prepared all along, announced directly on the Lyra that the surprise attack had begun.
"Gentlemen, after years of preparation, we will make this our moment. My First Fleet will now be divided into two sub-fleets as planned. The main fleet, with the Lyra as its flagship, will lead three million warships straight to the Twelfth Orbital Planet. The other sub-fleet, also with three million warships, will be led by the South Sea and the North Sea, and will proceed to the Thirteenth Orbital Planet."
After the conquest, the development of the Planet Thirteen will be overseen by the Strong Artificial Intelligence aboard the South Sea. The priority is to produce resources as quickly as possible to supply the Great Fleet, while simultaneously opening the Space Dock to continue producing warships.
Yue Yuan, who was on the fleet communications line, paused and then said, "Gentlemen, whether it's to seek justice for the fifteen million Dog-Headed People died, or to help humanity break through the shackles of lifespan once again, we must win this battle, and win it beautifully."
"Set off!"
As Yue Yuan's final words faded, the First Fleet immediately changed its posture in the Void and began to accelerate toward the target planet.
Such actions naturally did not satisfy the Interstellar Transaction Market, which was constantly monitoring the human fleet. So, just as the fleet entered the accelerated charge phase, a message appeared on the human receiver.
[Earth Civilization!!! What are you doing? We hereby solemnly warn you that arbitrarily deploying your fleet in this trading market without our consent constitutes an act of aggression! We reserve the right to take any measures we deem reasonable!]
[Earth Civilization, Second Warning! Immediately cease your actions, halt your acceleration, and return to our designated location to await the previously agreed-upon resource and fuel resupply. Otherwise, our fleet will consider you hostile!]
[Earth Civilization, this is the third and final warning. Do as we say immediately, or our fleet will launch a devastating attack on you. Do not say you were not warned!]
The phrase "Don't say I didn't warn you" is clearly not the actual terminology used by the Interstellar Transaction Market; it's just that the human translation system deems it most suitable for this context.
The three warnings from the Interstellar Transaction Market were not far apart, but by the time the third warning reached the First Fleet, the fleet had already transitioned from a relatively stationary state to a high-speed advance.
Logically, after the third warning, even if humanity doesn't respond, the Interstellar Transaction Market should still define humanity as an enemy, as they stated.
At this moment, Yue Yuan, adhering to the principle of delaying as much as possible, had the communications team send a message back to the Interstellar Transaction Market.
"Huh?! No, no, no, it's not what you think. We are not acting arbitrarily without regard for market regulations. Our Earth civilization is a peace-loving civilization that also enjoys exchanging ideas with other civilizations. Abiding by the agreements between us is a consensus of our civilization."
Therefore, our actions are not intended to violate the rules of your trading market, but rather we have been forced into this situation. As we mentioned before, we have traveled across the stars, a long and arduous journey. Our fleet's resources are nearly depleted, and fuel is almost gone. The shortage of various resources has forced our fleet to resort to robbing Peter to pay Paul when repairing damaged parts. It can be said that the one million warships previously selected by the sub-fleets are our best warships.
However, faced with this predicament and our demands for resources and fuel, you have repeatedly made excuses. Do you know that if this continues, our fleet will run out of fuel to put our individual lives into hibernation?
So we're not acting on our own initiative, or rather, there's a reason behind it. We just want to discuss with you the possibility of temporarily allocating that last planet to us so we can replenish our supplies.
The reason given in this reply was utterly absurd, and coupled with the charging posture of the human warships, it was simply outrageous. However, faced with such an outrageous argument, the response from the Interstellar Transaction Market surprised humanity greatly.
[Is that so? Why didn't you say so sooner that you were already in such a predicament? Sigh, in the end, we overlooked the fact that our guests have traveled a long way. Well then, since it will be hundreds of years before our two fleets send back news, it is indeed necessary to provide you with a safe planetary orbit for docking and hibernation.]