Chapter Summaries

Professor Amir returned from the Heavenly Gate with evidence of the base and reported his discovery to his nation. Instead of announcing the find, the authorities concealed it and organized a secret project to explore the base.

• San Mei photographed the base's screen and equipment while Professor Amir struggled to communicate with its Artificial Intelligence.
• Professor Amir asked whether the Heavenly Gate would remain accessible, received an affirmative answer, and led the group back to their nation.
• The archaeological institution doubted Amir's report until it saw the photographs, then passed the matter to the nation's highest authorities.
• The authorities kept the discovery secret, rewarded Professor Amir, Wei Shiba, and Gou Erpang, and recruited them into a secret Heavenly Gate project.
• The nation sought to control the base's secrets, partly because the region where the Volcano Kingdom had stood lay within its territory.

The Dog-Headed People Nation launched the secret Heaven's Gate Exploration Project, sending more than three hundred experts, officials, and soldiers into the Center of the Continent. Led by Wei Shiba and Professor Amir, the expedition crossed the Barren Land and returned to Heaven's Gate, while a spy traveled with them unnoticed.

• A spy from another country remained hidden among the experts as Professor Amir and the others began the expedition.
• The Dog-Headed People Nation assembled a team of more than three hundred and sent it along the route Amir and Wei Shiba had previously taken.
• The expedition crossed the nation's borders and traveled into the Barren Land, while the nation established a western airfield to support it.
• Wei Shiba and Professor Amir led the expedition back to Heaven's Gate after several months of arduous travel.

Professor Amir led the Dog-Headed People team into Heaven's Gate, where the base AI explained that their resource-poor star system threatened their civilization's survival and offered access to the base and nine transport ships. After a Computer Field expert questioned the AI about its nature, the Dog-Headed People began a path that would lead their computer technology in a different direction.

• Professor Amir led more than three hundred Dog-Headed People toward Heaven's Gate, and the gates opened as they approached.
• The Dog-Headed People explored the base, built a temporary camp, studied Chinese, and began communicating with the base AI.
• The base AI told Professor Amir and the experts that their planet lacked resources for Controlled Nuclear Fusion and that their civilization could not survive indefinitely in its remote star system.
• The base AI revealed that Human Civilization had left nine transport ships and stored knowledge to give some Dog-Headed People a chance to enter the stars.
• A Computer Field expert asked where the AI was, and it explained that it managed the base without having a physical body.

The base’s Artificial Intelligence introduced the Dog-Headed People to humanity’s technology and explained why the stored materials omitted fundamental scientific theories. It warned them about dangers in the universe, and the Dog-Headed People ended the day by revising their exploration plan to learn more from the base.

• The Artificial Intelligence showed the three hundred Dog-Headed People the base’s technology, from early energy sources to spacecraft and weapons, and explained that humanity had left technology but not fundamental scientific theories.
• A Dog-Headed Person asked whether the God of Light Civilization would return, and the Artificial Intelligence said it had gone into the starry sky and would not come back.
• When an astronomer asked what lay in the starry sky, the Artificial Intelligence said there was hope and danger, then gave five warnings about other civilizations and the value of their home planet.
• The Dog-Headed People returned to their camp at night and adjusted their Heaven’s Gate Exploration Project to question the Artificial Intelligence, inspect the base, obtain its technological materials, and study them.

After the Dog-Headed People returned from the human base, they considered recording scientific materials in God's Script, while Wei Shiba and Qiu Sixing contemplated the stars and the knowledge they had gained. The scientists realized how vast the universe was and how much they still had to learn from the God of Light Civilization.

• The Dog-Headed People experts proposed recording technological materials in God's Script to preserve their meaning, honor the God of Light Civilization, and limit leaks.
• Gou Erpang found Wei Shiba lying outside the camp and joined him to look at the stars.
• Wei Shiba explained that a light-year measured the distance light traveled in a year and reflected on how small he and his civilization were.
• Qiu Sixing pondered the God of Light's warnings about the dangers of space and the need to protect their home planet's location.
• The Dog-Headed scientists spent a sleepless night absorbing the base's revelations and recognizing the knowledge and future the God of Light Civilization had left them.

The Dog-Headed People discovered that their small team could not master the God of Light Civilization’s technology, and that even operating one transport ship required over a thousand trained people. The scientists called for millions of highly educated recruits and began learning the human materials at a level suited to their current knowledge.

• The Dog-Headed scientists found that the base’s technology was far beyond their grasp, and that more than a thousand trained Dog-Headed People were needed to operate one transport ship.
• The project leader learned that the team of just over three hundred could not finish studying or translating the base’s materials in their lifetimes.
• The linguists and scientists urged everyone to learn God's Script and the language of the God of Light before translating technical materials.
• The scientists proposed expanding the Exploration Team to at least three million people, including more than ten percent top scientists.
• After over a year at the base, the Dog-Headed People began studying human technology, starting with materials close to their own technological level.

Rockfire Nation tried to keep the Heaven's Gate Exploration Project secret while preparing to lead the Dog-Headed People through scientific progress and global unification. After spies revealed the project to other nations, Rockfire Nation let two nations join, while neighboring nations grew suspicious and began sending expeditions toward the continent's center.

• After the Dog-Headed People concluded they needed more researchers to explore Heaven's Gate, Rockfire Nation's leaders chose to delay sharing the discovery and build up domestic scientific talent first.
• Rockfire Nation planned to use its head start to lead the world, promote a United Government Plan, and unite the Dog-Headed People peacefully because the base's Artificial Intelligence forbade using its weapons against them.
• More than a dozen Earth years later, a spy among recalled scientists leaked the project to another nation, whose delegation demanded entry into the Heaven's Gate Exploration Project.
• A third nation learned of the project through its spies and also demanded to join, and Rockfire Nation agreed while warning it to keep the news contained.
• Other nations noticed the growing expeditions to the center of Pangu Continent and began directing their own teams toward the wilderness.

The Dog-Headed People discovered a cache of Life Elixirs at Heaven's Gate, and news of the alien base and its promise of extended life spread worldwide. Rockfire Nation faced mounting demands and a military alliance, while its leaders realized the irreplaceable elixirs depended on ingredients their world had lost.

• In the sixth year of the Heaven's Gate project, the Dog-Headed People found one hundred thousand Life Elixirs and learned the base also held transport ships and Hibernation Pods.
• The news spread among the three nations and then across the world, prompting rumors that Rockfire Nation and its allies planned to keep the God of Light's legacy and immortality for themselves.
• Rockfire Nation defended its secrecy, saying it planned to open the project to other nations and that the base's wealth belonged to the entire Dog-Headed People world.
• Western nations demanded access to the three nations' discoveries, and a multinational military alliance formed to force them to reveal their findings and the Life Elixir formula.
• Rockfire Nation explained that extinct ingredients made the existing Life Elixirs impossible to replace, but other nations accused it of lying.
• Rockfire Nation recognized that the missing ingredients affirmed the God of Light's Envoy's message about a mother planet's value.

The Dog-Headed People's world war ended in Rockfire Nation's victory, establishing it as the world's leader and enabling a united effort to develop the human base's technology. The Dog-Headed People advanced toward spaceflight and set their sights on finding the God of Light Civilization, while their scientists began investigating the principles behind the technologies they had inherited.

• More than ninety nations entered a war between the East and West Continent camps, and the West Continent bloc tried to seize the God of Light's Residence at the Center of the Continent.
• Rockfire Nation's bloc crushed the opposing forces with its technological advantage and won the war, placing Rockfire Nation at the center of the new world order.
• Rockfire Nation led nations worldwide in building infrastructure toward the God of Light's Residence and launching the Heaven's Gate Exploration Project.
• Dog-Headed People developed technologies including satellites, space rockets, supersonic aircraft, laser weapons, railguns, and atomic bombs using knowledge from the human base.
• Dog-Headed scientists began reverse-engineering the principles behind those technologies, while discussing their hope of finding the God of Light Civilization after achieving interstellar travel.

The Dog-Headed People advanced into the Information Age and debated whether to develop Dog-Carrying Spaceflight independently or use knowledge from the human base. The base’s influence reshaped their society around respect for knowledge, and they named their civilization the Great Dog Civilization.

• The Dog-Headed People built satellite networks and developed new technologies, growing confident in their own scientific abilities.
• The Dog-Headed People pursued an independent Dog-Carrying Spaceflight Project but found it beyond the capacity of their understaffed team.
• Dog-Headed People scientists recognized how much the human base’s knowledge had accelerated their progress and praised the value of knowledge.
• Dog-Headed People society increasingly honored scholars and scientists while entertainment and indulgence lost status.
• The Dog-Headed People resolved to popularize Chinese characters and named their species’ civilization the Great Dog Civilization.

The Dog-Headed People began pursuing the science and resources needed to advance their civilization, while Humanity completed its thousand-year New Collider project to seek the Grand Unified Theory. The collider awaited alignment and tests before humanity could begin its experiments, and its completion softened many Crimson Flame Civilization members’ view of Humanity.

• The Dog-Headed People recognized that they needed to master fundamental science and obtain access to humanity’s nine spacecraft to find resources in other star systems.
• Humanity finished connecting the final module of its 6,674-Astronomical-Unit New Collider after mining most rocky planets in eight star systems.
• Humanity prepared to align and test the collider before beginning experiments aimed at discovering the Grand Unified Theory.
• Humanity, the Crimson Flame Civilization, the Kuntai People, and the Dog-Headed People watched the collider’s completion with anticipation.
• Many ordinary Crimson Flame Civilization members began to regard Humanity as great and powerful, and became more accepting of living alongside it.

The Astronomical-Level Particle Collider completed preparations for its first operation, a Neutron Collision Experiment approved a thousand years earlier. The chapter explained how the collider would produce and accelerate high-energy neutron beams before the experiment began.

• The Astronomical-Level Particle Collider finished its straightness testing and was prepared to conduct a range of particle collision experiments.
• Scientists planned to use the collider’s Integrated Particle Generator and 6,674-Astronomical-Unit acceleration system for its first experiment.
• The chapter described how earlier methods of producing high-energy neutrons could not reach the experiment’s required energy levels.
• Scientists designed the collider to accelerate deuterium nuclei and separate their protons to create a high-energy neutron beam.
• The Astronomical-Level Particle Collider began preparations for its first Neutron Collision Experiment, with its indicator lights flickering across its vast structure.

Humanity launched the first experiment of the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider, beginning a long wait for collision data that would take more than two months to arrive. Yue Yuan and Yu Nanfeng watched the preparations on Lyra, while the public largely lost interest after the dramatic launch.

• The Operation Command Center staff completed checks and prepared the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider for its first neutron collision experiment.
• The particle beam entered the acceleration system, with staff estimating that it would reach the collision zone in about 38 days and that feedback would take longer to arrive.
• Yue Yuan asked Yu Nanfeng what the experiment might produce, and Yu Nanfeng said the energy could meet the theoretical requirement for producing the Grand Unified Theory but that success on the first attempt was unlikely.
• Yue Yuan accepted that the experiment might fail and that humanity would need to keep testing until it found the right answer.
• After the launch coverage ended, most ordinary viewers stopped following the experiment while interested members of the public continued watching interviews with scientists.

Liu Miyan’s team began analyzing data from the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider’s first collision experiments, hoping to find the final piece of the Grand Unified Theory. The first experiment revealed no new phenomenon, and the team continued studying successive collisions through the particle tracks and measurements recorded by their detectors.

• Liu Miyan explained that the collider was intended to explore unknown physics, not confirm a guaranteed discovery.
• More than two months after the first collision, Liu Miyan led the scientific team in analyzing its data while the collider proceeded with further experiments.
• The team published the first experiment’s results after completing their analysis, finding no new phenomenon.
• Liu Miyan’s team continued analyzing collision data using detector measurements of the new particles’ trajectories, momentum, charge, and energy.

Yue Yuan visited the Ion Collider's Operation Command Center to observe the analysis of the second particle collision and learned how the research teams processed the data. Liu Miyan finished his portion and began compiling the results, which were expected that day.

• Yue Yuan arrived at the Operation Command Center and watched Liu Miyan analyze data from the second collision.
• Yue Yuan observed researchers preprocessing data, reconstructing particle trajectories, measuring physical properties, and interpreting results with Strong Artificial Intelligence's support.
• Yue Yuan studied the collision simulation, which showed the Soft Process producing Garbage Particles and the Hard Process producing a Higgs Boson that decayed into a Bottom Quark and an Anti-Bottom Quark.
• Liu Miyan told Yue Yuan that his analysis was complete and that the results would be ready once the other researchers uploaded their work.
• After a voice called Liu Miyan back to his workstation, he began compiling the data and consulted technical materials in the Human Civilization Database.

Yue Yuan and Liu Miyan discussed the null results from the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider and the difficulty of investigating the Independent Space created by Awakener 'Illusion'. The chapter left humanity relying on further collision experiments to make progress toward the Grand Unified Theory.

• Liu Miyan reported that the latest neutron collision experiment had found no particles or phenomena beyond those in the Standard Particle Model.
• Liu Miyan explained that humanity planned a century of collisions involving different particles and expected discoveries to require time and accumulated data.
• Yue Yuan asked about research into the Independent Space, and Liu Miyan said progress on spatial distortion had been limited.
• Liu Miyan suggested that investigating the space's boundary might require the Grand Unified Theory to identify how it applied to space and Warp travel.
• Yue Yuan recalled scientists' theory that the boundary consisted of connected Klein Bottle structures, but acknowledged that its mechanism remained unexplained.
• Liu Miyan pointed to the null collision results and said humanity had not reached the Grand Unified Theory; the collider remained its main hope for progress.

Humanity and its allies struggled to find a way to achieve Warp Speed Travel, while decades of experiments with the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider revealed no new phenomena. After upgrading the collider and revisiting possible explanations for their failures, scientists continued experimenting, convinced that persistent effort might uncover the Grand Unified Theory’s clues.

• Humanity asked scientific institutions among the Crimson Flame Civilization, the Kuntai People, the Nair People, and the Dog-Headed People to propose ways to achieve Warp, but none could think of a solution.
• Scientists spent half a century conducting particle collisions at the Grand Unified Theory’s predicted energy level, including overload experiments, without discovering new phenomena.
• The Human Development Committee organized symposiums, and experts improved the collider’s detection modules, but subsequent experiments still found nothing new.
• Scientific teams suggested that detection methods were inadequate or the predicted energy level was wrong, and the New Government rejected extending the collider further because it would take too long and require more mining.
• Human engineers upgraded the collider’s acceleration system with advanced magnetic field technology, but experiments still found only known phenomena, and scientists continued their work in hope of eventual clues.

A century of astronomical-scale collision experiments had yielded hundreds of data sets but no trace of the Grand Unified Theory, leaving humanity’s scientists divided over why they had made no progress. The scientists continued their work without evidence for any explanation or a clear path forward.

• Humanity spent a century conducting collision experiments, but the scientists collected only several hundred data sets and found no trace of the Grand Unified Theory.
• Some scientists argued that humanity’s theoretical foundation was flawed, while others believed a century of data was not enough to uncover the answer.
• Another group of scientists blamed detection technology and believed humanity could not yet observe anomalous phenomena or new experimental products.
• Other scientists proposed indirect experiments around Planck Energy as a possible route to a breakthrough.
• As historical examples such as stellar spectra, atoms, and neutrinos persuaded more scientists that discoveries might be undetectable, they still lacked anomalous data to support a new hypothesis.

After decades of failed collision experiments, Liu Miyan proposed analyzing the accumulated composite-collision data through String Theory calculations. The calculations suggested that some mass had disappeared, leaving scientists to question their measurements or one of their methods.

• Humanity and its allied civilizations continued particle-collision experiments, but found no phenomena beyond those already detected in earlier experiments.
• Pessimism about scientific progress spread through the Crimson Flame Civilization, the Kuntai People, and the Nair People, while the Human New Government tried to bolster public confidence.
• At a collision-data review, Liu Miyan urged researchers to reconsider their approach and apply String Theory calculations to composite-collision data.
• Researchers entered the experiment parameters into a Strong Artificial Intelligence system and found that the calculations showed part of the mass had disappeared.
• Liu Miyan and the other scientists recognized that either their detection methods or one of their calculation methods had to be wrong.

Liu Miyan argued that undetectable Tachyons produced in Astronomical-Level Particle Collider experiments explained the apparent mass-energy discrepancies, drawing on supersymmetry, String Theory, and findings from a dismantled Hyperdistance Communication Core. His hypothesis suggested that identifying Tachyons was a major barrier to reaching Level 4 Civilization.

• Liu Miyan explained how supersymmetry could predict particles and decay chains that collider scientists struggled to reconstruct.
• He proposed that undetected decay products escaped detection and made experiments appear to conserve mass-energy, then identified Tachyons as a possible culprit.
• Scientists connected Liu Miyan's hypothesis to the Hyperdistance Communication Core, which he and Yu Nanfeng had dismantled and studied.
• Liu Miyan used the core's structures and mass changes derived from String Theory to support his theory that the collider produced faster-than-light Tachyons.
• He concluded that detecting Tachyons required Level 4 technology and theories, making the path to Level 4 Civilization exceptionally difficult.