The instant the tachyon fluctuations spread outward, a faint spacetime fluctuation arrived from afar.
Immediately afterward, a thin, irregularly shaped gray "canvas" slowly appeared beside Thread.
It was a two-dimensional lifeform.
As the gray shadow shifted, a series of tachyon messages arrived.
[Thread, did you feel that?]
[It's a fragment.]
The tangled mass of threads swiftly unfurled and sent out another tachyon message.
[Yes. After more than a hundred thousand years, another fragment has finally fallen here.]
[The gravity of the Greater Universe bubble has shifted slightly! Membrane's plan is already beginning to work!]
[Ant, do you want to take a look?]
[Ant] fell silent for a while, seemingly weighing the gains and losses.
Rather than give a definite answer, [Ant] asked, [Thread, how are your injuries?]
They clearly remembered that when [Thread] first arrived in the Shapley Supercluster, Thread had been gravely wounded. Even their core had been badly damaged!
For a dimensional being, that was equivalent to being barely alive.
[Thread] gave a clear answer: [I've completely recovered.]
Upon hearing this, [Ant] fell silent again.
They were deeply conflicted.
The Gardener Faction had suffered heavy losses in the war in the Laniakea Supercluster.
At the same time, the major delays to the Universe-Spanning Accelerator project had made the Cleaners Civilization rather desperate.
The Cleaners branches in some superclusters would even take the initiative to dispatch Quark Fortresses and Black Hole Fortresses to purge Gardener Faction Civilizations from the accelerator node regions.
To avoid interfering with [Membrane]'s plan, the Gardener Faction, having achieved its objective, adopted a strategy of hunkering down-staying out of trouble whenever possible and avoiding conflict with the Cleaners Civilization as much as they could.
To rashly leave this safe region at such a critical moment...
Who knew what kind of trouble might follow?
Seemingly noticing