A Change in Strategy

This superlife form's existence completely defied the known laws of the universe.

If Chen Yu had to give the "Hunter" a precise definition, he could only call it a "super-quasar life-form"!

What did a body spanning more than twenty light-years mean?

Chen Yu could only stare in astonishment.

As he remembered it, the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way was only about 44 million kilometers across.

Even that was enough to drag every star system and celestial body in the entire Milky Way into orbit around it.

Compared with the Hunter's immense body, even that supermassive black hole at the galactic center was as insignificant as dust.

The moment a "super-quasar life-form" descended upon the Hou Shen Galaxy, every celestial body, every other life-form, and every civilization in the galaxy would be doomed.

In fact, by all logic, Gonggong and its entire crew should have been annihilated in the Hou Shen Galaxy the instant the Hunter arrived.

But Chen Yu's will was connected to every Federal Citizen, no matter when or where they were in the universe.

For a certain price, Chen Yu could use that connection to find them.

Gonggong had returned safely because Chen Yu had crossed the cosmic spacetime coordinate axis, broken through the Hunter's gravitational-source blockade, and forcibly pulled the entire ship back to the Milky Way.

The price was that he had lost nearly a tenth of his Psionics, most of it spent breaking through the Hunter's gravitational-source blockade.

Using Psionics, he transmitted the precious information about the Hunter that he had gathered to Gray Wind.

Gray Wind was an aggregate of nanorobots, and she also possessed a certain unusual potential for Psionics.

After learning the Hunter's true nature, Gray Wind was stunned. But she quickly realized how serious the situation was. With no time to marvel, she uploaded the data to Thousand Year Stars for analysis.

Thousand Year Stars was a colossal computational cloud made up of supermassive celestial bodies. Its processing power was terrifying; even the computing capacity of a top-tier Celestial Computer like the Great Clock was less than one-thousandth of Thousand Year Stars'.

The Federation currently possessed thirteen such Thousand Year Stars.

All thirteen ran their calculations simultaneously, trying to unravel the Hunter's secrets, but they could never get anywhere.

Some mysterious higher-dimensional algorithm seemed to be interfering with Thousand Year Stars' attempts to process the data.

Chen Yu and Gray Wind could only watch as a mass of error messages and garbled text filled Thousand Year Stars' programs.

All information related to the Hunter had been sealed behind some unknown symbols and could not be deciphered.

Another phenomenon that defied the laws of the universe.

"Boss... what do we do?" Gray Wind asked nervously.

She had never encountered anything like this before.

Chen Yu, however, had regained his composure and turned his attention back to the Star Map System.

He tapped the air a few times, highlighting every star system where a Hunter might have appeared.

The closest one was at least a hundred million light-years from the Milky Way.

On the scale of the observable universe, it would take these Hunters quite some time to eat their way through one star system after another.

Chen Yu couldn't help wondering whether the reason no Hunter had descended upon the Milky Way in the previous universe was largely due to the Void Realm.

But this universe had no Void Realm to keep them out. No one knew whether the Federation could hold its ground if a Hunter descended upon the Milky Way the very next moment.

To the Federation, beings like the Angel Civilization and the Lieyang Civilization were food on the table.

But put the Federation in their place, and it seemed that the Federation was food to the Hunters.

There was no shame in realizing this. If anything, it was a stroke of luck.

At least their civilization had not been eaten yet, and they still had a chance to eat back.

There were currently dozens of Hunters suspected to have entered the Known Universe. The Federation was not yet strong enough to deal with dozens of super-quasar life-forms.

They would have to speed up the construction of the Aether Phase Engine.

But the Hunters were apparently not the only external threat!

Previously, the Sentry Array Matrix had detected Anomalous Spacetime Effects in the structures of numerous star systems across the Known Universe.

Apart from the confirmed Hunters, the causes of the Anomalous Spacetime Effects in some unknown star systems had yet to be identified.

Those star systems had not been destroyed outright, unlike the ones where Hunters had appeared, but they had still undergone major upheavals.

For instance, another Sky Burning Divine Weapon, sent to the Angel Nebula to mine Dark Matter, had encountered an unexpected threat unrelated to the Hunters.

At the center of the Milky Way, the supermassive black hole there had also developed an Anomalous Spacetime Effect unlike that caused by the Hunters. Its cause was currently unknown.

The entire supermassive black hole and a small part of the star region near the galactic center were now shrouded by a dimensional membrane. The situation inside was unknown.

The sudden tide of crises forced Chen Yu to take the situation seriously.

He had thought this universe was a calm sea. It turned out that the real dangers were all hidden beneath the surface.

He quickly revised the Federation's strategy.

The Sky Burning Divine Weapons previously dispatched beyond the Milky Way were urgently recalled to avoid unnecessary losses.

The first layer of strategic defenses would be deployed inside the Milky Way; the second would cover nearby regions beyond the galaxy, including the Andromeda Nebula and the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy...

The Hunters were scattered throughout the universe. They were far from the Milky Way, but that did not guarantee they had no plans to head this way.

So the third layer of strategic defenses would be aimed at them.

"Gray Wind, where is Zhurong right now?"

"Near the Nineteenth Star Region of the Angel Nebula. Coordinates..." Gray Wind replied.

"What's the situation there?"

"The Angel Nebula has been occupied by a civilization that suddenly appeared and calls itself the Ancient Guardians. Those mechanical beings have placed all the Angel xenos under some form of forced supervision..." Gray Wind pulled up the relevant data and reported seriously:

"Zhurong is currently fighting the Ancient Guardians. The battle is fierce, but the situation is under control..."

The Ancient Guardians?

The ancient, fallen machine empire from the previous universe?

It seemed that the Federation wasn't the only thing that had crossed over from the previous universe. The Presolin Zerg and the Hunters had come too.

After thinking it over, Chen Yu issued his orders:

"Cancel the original battle plan!"

"Recall the Sky Burning Divine Weapons. Activate the Falling Star Sky Spear and strike the Angel Nebula across star systems!"

"Revise the Galactic Grand Expedition plan. Instead of gathering Dark Matter resources as originally planned, redirect the effort to the Milky Way."

"Next, dispatch a reconnaissance fleet to investigate the central region of the Milky Way as quickly as possible."

"Gray Wind, release the Gray Gu Storm again. Its range should cover the entire Local Group, including the Milky Way!"

"Understood!" Gray Wind acknowledged the order and saluted solemnly.

After the strategic overhaul, the war machine formed by the Human Federation transformed once again, revealing a new set of fangs.

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