Ten years later, in Earth Calendar year 15510.
On the outskirts of a small, unremarkable, unnamed galaxy within the Shapley Supercluster.
A spacetime fluctuation flashed past. A wormhole appeared, then rapidly dissipated.
In that brief interval, the "uninvited guests" from afar had already entered the unnamed galaxy.
A fleet of several hundred starships glided silently through the unfamiliar stars like a host of cosmic ghosts.
Only the ripples continually spreading across the spacetime ocean betrayed the fleet's presence.
Hatches on the sides of the starships quietly opened.
Vast numbers of silvery-white, spherical Self-Replicating Probes swarmed out, streaming toward the surrounding stellar systems.
Unlike conventional Interstellar Probes, the Self-Replicating Probes carried extensive basic production equipment.
Guided by the weak artificial intelligence [One] within them, they could independently locate suitable planets and extract resources using Nanomining Devices, enabling them to replicate themselves.
Just like bacteria.
Ever since the Human Fleet left the M87 Galaxy, this operation had become routine-whenever the fleet reached a new galaxy, it scattered a crop of Self-Replicating Probe "seeds."
They were the product of Human Civilization's [Universe Listening Plan].
Proposed by Lü Yongchang, the plan, as its name suggested, ultimately aimed to distribute Self-Replicating Probes throughout the universe, enabling high-precision monitoring and detection across its entirety.
Lü Yongchang had proposed the plan after the Saikol Civilization's extraordinarily far-reaching Wide-Area Tachyon Broadcast exposed a shortcoming in Human Civilization.
As a newly advanced level eight civilization, Human Civilization's greatest weakness compared with the universe's established level eight civilizations was not its combat strength, but its lack of an "intelligence network"!
Before mastering Wormhole Technology, even a level eight civilization's battlefields and territory remained confined to a single galaxy.
But after mastering wormholes, its battlefields and territory would begin expanding dramatically!
This was a quantum leap in development, and the greatest