Fireflies in the Nebula

The entire Warp Speed Travel fleet was led by humans, with smaller ships of other races following behind. All of these ships had been fitted with Warp Engine by the humans.

Seeing that every spaceship was larger than their own civilization, it would be a lie to say that these vassal races were not envious, especially the Crimson Flame Civilization, whose entire civilization had almost surrendered to humanity; their envy was practically written all over their faces.

The entire social elite class is basically a "human worshipper," and some people even have alien versions of this, with their networks filled with praise for humanity.

For example, humans designed Personal Mecha to fulfill their individual dreams of flight, demonstrating their respect for life; human dining environments are cleaned seven times a day; and human Residential Spaceship are as beautiful as their home planet.

Even more outrageous are the claims made on their websites. Whether these are fake news sources or just the wild imaginations of netizens from the "Crimson Flame Civilization" community, some have actually come up with statements like "human toilet water is so clean you can drink it directly," which is obviously a lie.

To prove the truth of his claims, the individual from the Crimson Flame Civilization who expressed this view wrote a lengthy account of his experience visiting the new human Residential Spaceship, even specifically mentioning that he had tasted the toilet water. He described it in such a detailed and convincing manner that anyone who didn't know the facts would believe it to be true.

Such matters were then brought to the human intranet by human residents who had bypassed internet censorship, and viewed as entertainment during their leisure time. The headlines were generally: "How do the people of the Crimson Flame Civilization view humanity?", "The reaction of the people of the Crimson Flame Civilization after seeing human- Residential Spaceship", and "Shocking! An individual life form of the Crimson Flame Civilization actually claims to like drinking human toilet water".

Some mischievous netizens even acted like experts, posting articles on the internal network with titles such as "A Study on Individual Life Characteristics Derived from the 'People of the Crimson Flame Civilization's' Preference for Drinking Human Toilet Water."

Of course, where there are rumors, there are also people who clarify them. These people are either people on the human side who frequently bypass the Great Firewall to access the internal systems of affiliated civilizations, or vice versa.

In fact, the higher levels of humanity have seen these acts of circumventing the Great Firewall to access the internet, but since they are only of a civilian nature, they haven't paid much attention to them, treating them as individual entertainment activities, so they have turned a blind eye.

After sailing for more than a year, the human Great Fleet stopped at its first target star for a short time to resupply. Then it continued along the previously planned route. The second voyage covered a much greater distance, with humans crossing several stars and traveling a hundred light-years. After arriving at the destination, they carried out another major resupply, probably stopping to use the matter and energy in the Star System to produce Antimatter or something similar. After replenishing their supplies, they continued on their way.

During this process, humanity discovered no trace of any other civilizations, nor encountered any strange phenomena; it was as if they were the only ones left in the entire universe. This is a normal phenomenon in space travel, nothing to be surprised about. Humanity has long been accustomed to it; encountering a civilization at every step would be abnormal.

In this way, humanity has traveled one journey after another, crossing one star after another, and unknowingly has already traversed thousands of light-years.

Now, the human fleet, which is Warp Speed Travel 10 times the speed of light, has suddenly detected a very dense Nebula in its path.

Based on the data from the probe, the Nebula is enormous, with a radius of at least fifty light-years, and its overall shape is a flattened sphere. Judging from its appearance and structure, astronomers believe that there must be a Gravity source at the center of this stellar region; otherwise, Nebula in interstellar space would generally not have such a regular shape, but would instead exhibit various irregular shapes.

The Nebula's disk, or rather its ecliptic plane, is at a 90-degree angle to the Galactic Disk. If viewed from the Solar System, with sufficiently advanced technology, it would likely appear as a thin, elongated line.

Of course, you have to be able to see it first.

This area is located in the interstellar region, far from any village or shop. Without the light of Nebula illuminating the nebula, it is extremely difficult to detect Nebula existence using only the faint light of the stars in outer space. However, it is a different story if other detection methods are used.

At least now humans can clearly see its shape and size.

After discovering the Nebula, humanity intensified its exploration efforts and realized the special nature of this star field; its density was far greater than any Nebula humanity had encountered before.

Soon, human scientists came to a conclusion that such a dense Nebula was very detrimental to the Warp Speed Travel of the fleet. If the human fleet continued to move forward at ten times the Warp light, it might put a huge load on the engines and it would not be suitable to travel at maximum speed for a long time.

There were two solutions: one was to take a detour, and the other was to reduce Warp power to pass through. Reducing speed to pass through was obviously the worst option, as it was faster to take a detour. So, after reaching this conclusion, humans did not hesitate much and decided to take a detour.

However, as the first amazing cosmic phenomenon encountered during their journey, humanity did not intend to simply leave, but instead sent out probes to observe and record it.

After all, this is the first time humanity has encountered such a dense Nebula, and it is only right to conduct a scientific investigation of it.

However, this seemingly ordinary decision led humanity to discover even more amazing aspects of this Nebula. After the probe approached the edge of the Nebula for close-up exploration, humans were astonished to find that this dense Nebula was not entirely dark, but rather occasionally flashed with lights like fireflies.

In the visual images transmitted back by the probe, humans decided that the scene resembled seeing a firefly twinkling in the distance on a dark night on Earth.

These lights are very faint, and most of them are blocked by the density of the Nebula itself, making it difficult for them to reach the outside Nebula. It is only because human detectors have come close to the edge of the Nebula that they have been able to detect them.

According to the feedback from the spectrometer, the Nebula is mainly composed of common Hydrogen Molecular Cloud, with a small amount of helium mixed in. Such a large Nebula should, in theory, have gathered together over a long period of time due to the difference in Gravity, and then formed a new star or became a failed star.

However, observations have revealed that this Nebula shows no signs of further coalescing.

These strange phenomena quickly piqued the interest of scientists, leading to the deployment of more unmanned probes. Scientists planned to send these probes deep into the Nebula to investigate the nature of these flashing lights.