Chapter Summaries

Half a year later, Lü Yongchang led the human fleet out of the black hole region and initiated curvature navigation. The fleet and its Micro Black Hole entered warp safely, leaving the academicians to marvel at the blue-shifted stars.

• Lü Yongchang confirmed that the fleet had passed beyond the black hole’s gravitational influence and ordered all units to prepare for curvature navigation.
• He Bilin activated the Warp Drive, and the fleet formed Curvature Bubbles before entering warp.
• Lü Yongchang watched the starlight ahead blue-shift and the stars behind vanish into darkness as the fleet accelerated beyond the speed of light.
• Zero reported that the Black Hole Towing Ship and Micro Black Hole had entered curvature navigation successfully, with the towing gravitational field operating normally.
• The academicians crowded around the Command Center portholes to watch the warp journey as the fleet reached 10c.

After 308 years of travel, Lü Yongchang and the Human Fleet reached the Kepler-452 Stellar System and surveyed its planets. Kepler-452b appeared highly suitable for colonization, but the discovery of ancient fossils raised questions about the cause of the organisms’ extinction.

• The fleet exited curvature navigation one light-year from the Kepler-452 Stellar System and sent probes ahead to survey it.
• Zero awakened Lü Yongchang in Earth Calendar Year 3608, when the fleet was 0.01 light-years from its destination, and reported that the journey had gone as planned.
• Lü Yongchang and the academicians reviewed probe data showing that Kepler-452b had an Earth similarity rating of 0.91 and that water could be supplied from comets.
• Zero reported that the probes had found no living organisms on the system’s planets, but had discovered biological traces and fossils on Kepler-452b.
• Zero said the fossils dated back 500 million years, and Lü Yongchang suggested that a greenhouse effect had caused the organisms’ extinction.

Shen Siwen presented a terraforming plan for Kepler-452b that used antimatter bombs to thin its atmosphere and carve ocean basins, followed by water delivery and climate control. The academicians applauded the plan after Zero’s feasibility report was presented.

• He Bilin explained that Kepler-452b had once held vast oceans but had become hot and dry because of a runaway greenhouse effect.
• Lü Yongchang encouraged Shen Siwen, promising that the Human Federation would devote more resources to planetary terraforming.
• A week later, the fleet reached Kepler-452b, and engineering ships and mobile factories began rebuilding the antimatter supply infrastructure.
• Shen Siwen presented his plan to use 19,131 antimatter bombs to reduce the planet’s atmospheric density and create ocean basins, then deliver water and regulate the climate.
• After Zero’s feasibility report was shown, Lü Yongchang began applauding, and the academicians joined him.

Fang Xu asked Hong Qiming to help select councillors to manage Human Civilization’s relations with other civilizations as it began taking vassals. They chose Lin Shuguang as a promising candidate and agreed to find more candidates for training.

• Fang Xu told Hong Qiming that Professor Lü planned to build Human Civilization’s power by taking in vassal civilizations in exchange for technology and resources.
• Fang Xu explained that the Academy of Sciences wanted Parliament members trained to manage relations with other civilizations, with support from the School of Sociology.
• Hong Qiming screened councillors and excluded pro-alienism and extreme xenophobia supporters.
• Hong Qiming recommended Lin Shuguang, and Fang Xu approved him pending further tests by the School of Sociology.
• Fang Xu asked Hong Qiming to select additional candidates, and Hong Qiming agreed to do so within a day.

Hong Qiming summoned fifty councillors and directed them to the Academy of Sciences' School of Sociology without explaining why. Lin Shuguang arrived first, where Academician Lin Zile welcomed him and confirmed that he did not know what he had been summoned to do.

• Hong Qiming reviewed the remaining councillors on his list and asked Zero to summon fifty of them without revealing the details.
• Lin Shuguang left Hong Qiming's office, and Qiu Feng asked whether he knew why they had been summoned; Lin Shuguang said he had only been told to report to the School of Sociology.
• Lin Shuguang arrived at the School of Sociology and recalled its past cooperation with Parliament on the Social Public Child-Rearing System.
• Academician Lin Zile greeted Lin Shuguang while eating snacks, introduced himself, and explained that the researchers valued results over formal rules.
• Lin Zile asked whether Hong Qiming had told Lin Shuguang what he would be doing, and, after Lin Shuguang said no, approved of Hong Qiming's discretion.

Academician Lin questioned Lin Shuguang about how humanity should deal with alien civilizations, then recruited him into the Human Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Meanwhile, the Federation expanded its fleet and began transforming Kepler-452b, and Lü Yongchang announced that Academy of Sciences research had fully resumed.

• Academician Lin asked Lin Shuguang how humanity should treat alien civilizations, and Lin Shuguang argued for fighting hostile civilizations while accepting useful ones as vassals under strict controls.
• Academician Lin told Lin Shuguang that aliens already lived in the Academy of Sciences’ biology laboratory as a vassal civilization, then appointed him to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and arranged training through the School of Sociology.
• Humanity deployed the [Dyson Cloud], expanded its fleet with specialized ship classes, and began terraforming and mining planets in the Kepler-452 Stellar System.
• Humanity filled the surrounding interstellar region with probes and space gun emplacements and sent probes toward neighboring stellar systems.
• Lü Yongchang announced the full resumption of scientific research at the Human Federation Academy of Sciences.

Lü Yongchang proposed developing tachyon communication to overcome the speed limits imposed on the Human Fleet by its existing communication technology. He argued that traveling faster than light aboard a warp spacecraft might let scientists observe tachyons, leaving the academicians to consider a new path toward superluminal communication.

• Lü Yongchang told the academicians that the fleet’s planet-class starships could reach 30c but had to cruise at 10c because communication technology remained a bottleneck.
• Fang Xu explained that Mo Zeyang’s work on quantum communication had made no progress past the [event-form] theory, and Lü dismissed quantum communication as the solution.
• Lü Yongchang introduced Tachyon Communication Technology, which he had found on the technology tree two days earlier.
• Mo Zeyang and Fang Xu noted that tachyons had never been observed, while Lü said faster-than-light travel might make observation possible.
• Lü Yongchang explained that a warp drive could let scientists break out of the sublight universe and test for tachyons.

Lü Yongchang explained that tachyons would have imaginary mass and could only be observed by traveling faster than light, prompting Tao Yuda to propose that the universe had real and imaginary parts. After Fang Xu raised the danger of reversed causality, Lü Yongchang considered possible safeguards and turned the discussion toward designing an experiment, while Fang Xu feared that advanced civilizations might cause such effects.

• Lü Yongchang explained that tachyons could have imaginary mass, allowing them to travel faster than light, and that observing them would require immense energy and Curvature Navigation.
• Tao Yuda proposed that the universe consisted of a real, observable part below light speed and an imaginary, unobservable part above it, and Lü Yongchang tentatively agreed.
• Fang Xu warned that tachyons could reverse cause and effect if they affected the observable universe, threatening Human Civilization's understanding of physics.
• Lü Yongchang imagined time flowing backward, then suggested an unknown self-correction mechanism or parallel universes might prevent causality paradoxes.
• Lü Yongchang set aside the speculation and called for discussion of the experiment, while Fang Xu worried that the Cleaners or the Gardener Faction might be capable of reversing causality.

Lü Yongchang’s team conducted a high-energy particle collision experiment while their vessel traveled at ten times the speed of light, hoping to detect tachyons. When the collision data revealed two oppositely traveling gamma-ray emissions with changing intensity, Lü concluded they were traces left by a moving tachyon.

• The Academy of Sciences began its experiment by accelerating protons with Carrier-Based Drones and preparing to collide them aboard a vessel in curvature navigation.
• One year later, Lü Yongchang ordered the vessel to accelerate to ten times the speed of light and begin the particle collision experiment with high-energy lasers aimed at the collision region.
• The collision produced a Micro Black Hole that quickly evaporated, and the resulting data showed no particles traveling faster than light.
• Fang Xu reassured Lü that they might have taken the wrong path, but Lü insisted tachyons must exist because he trusted the Technology Tree.
• An alarm announced anomalous data showing two oppositely traveling gamma-ray emissions whose intensity decreased from strong to weak.
• Lü explained that tachyons emitted gamma rays that could not catch up with them, producing oppositely directed emissions with redshift and blueshift, and declared that the team had found tachyon traces.

Lü Yongchang and the Academy of Sciences studied tachyons and found that they were widespread remnants of the universe’s eleven-dimensional pastoral era. After playing a recording derived from tachyon waves, Lü concluded that the waves could be modulated to transmit information.

• Fang Xu questioned how the researchers could control tachyons when they had only observed traces of their movement, and Lü Yongchang said they needed to slow and observe them.
• Lü Yongchang privately wondered whether particle collision experiments had created tachyons, then redesigned the next experiment to test his suspicion.
• After many experiments, Lü Yongchang announced that tachyons were everywhere and explained that energy briefly slowed them enough for researchers to detect their traces.
• Lü Yongchang proposed that tachyons were remnants of the universe’s eleven-dimensional pastoral era, and Tao Yuda suggested they had existed since the universe’s birth.
• Lü Yongchang processed tachyon gamma-ray data into an audio recording, which Fang Xu likened to the final mournful cry of someone about to die.
• Lü Yongchang concluded that researchers could modulate tachyon waves like electromagnetic waves and use them to transmit information.

Academician Wang Man discovered that the Human Federation fleet’s base metal reserves had fallen below 10% and traced much of the consumption to megastructure engineering. He contacted Academician Tang Hairong to challenge the project’s resource use, leaving Tang angered as Wang Man began his complaint.

• Wang Man saw that the fleet’s base metal reserves were below 10% and checked the resource expenditure records.
• Wang Man found that megastructure engineering and the Starship Factory were the largest consumers of base metals and ordered Zero to contact Tang Hairong.
• Wang Mingyuan told Tang Hairong that Wang Man had come to question his allocation and use of base metals.
• Tang Hairong had Zero connect the call, and Wang Man criticized him for consuming more base metals than any project except the Starship Factory.

Tang Hairong explained that Professor Lü had prioritized a Giant Space Ring Habitat to protect the younger generation from Kepler-452b’s high gravity, while Wang Man warned that the fleet’s basic metal reserves were nearly exhausted. Unable to resolve the shortage, Wang Man returned to the [Earth] to speak with Professor Lü.

• Wang Man told Tang Hairong that the fleet had less than ten percent of its basic metal reserves left, with the starship factory and Tang’s project consuming most of the supply.
• Wang Man asked Tang Hairong to halt the megastructure project, but Tang refused and said Professor Lü had personally ordered it.
• Tang Hairong explained that the project was a Giant Space Ring Habitat in synchronous orbit around Kepler-452b, designed to house the younger generation and connected to the surface by twelve Space Elevators.
• Tang Hairong suggested that Wang Man ask Professor Lü what to do about the metal shortage.
• Wang Man returned to the [Earth], where Zero told him Professor Lü was waiting in his office.

Lü Yongchang proposed destroying Kepler-452c to speed up the fleet’s resource mining, and Wang Man enthusiastically agreed. Their main challenge was building a weapon powerful enough to break apart the iron planet.

• Wang Man apologized to Lü Yongchang for failing to keep resource extraction up with the fleet’s needs, but Lü Yongchang said they would develop new mining methods instead of suspending a project.
• Lü Yongchang showed Wang Man Kepler-452c and explained that the iron planet held vast quantities of metals but was too slow to mine conventionally.
• Lü Yongchang proposed blowing up Kepler-452c, containing its debris with reverse Gravity Shields, and smelting the fragments in space with High-Energy Laser Beams.
• Wang Man embraced Lü Yongchang’s plan, while Lü Yongchang identified the chief obstacle as building a weapon powerful enough to destroy the planet.

Wang Man learned that the Planet-Busting Starship [Vermilion Bird] had been completed and arranged for the fleet to prepare a planetary mining operation at Kepler-452c. As the ship arrived near the iron planet, he and Tang Hairong watched from a porthole just before the mining operation began.

• Wang Man received word that the [Vermilion Bird] had completed assembly, and Professor Lü approved preparations for mining.
• The fleet scheduled the operation at Kepler-452c for half a month later to allow final testing and deployment of support ships.
• Zero sent [Golden Crow] battleships and [Glutton] Supply Reserve Ships to Kepler-452c while Professor Lü remained aboard the [Earth] working on Tachyon Communication Technology.
• Wang Man and Tang Hairong watched Kepler-452c from a porthole and discussed Professor Lü's research and the [Vermilion Bird].
• Wang Man spotted the approaching [Vermilion Bird], and Zero announced that the first planetary mining operation was about to begin.

Wang Man and Tang Hairong oversaw the destruction of Kepler-452c and the recovery of its iron. After the planet’s fragments were divided and smelted, Wang Man lifted the restrictions on basic metal resources.

• Hundreds of [Golden Crow] battleships formed a Gravity Shield around Kepler-452c as the [Vermilion Bird] Planet-Busting Starship prepared to fire.
• The [Vermilion Bird] bored a passage into Kepler-452c’s core with a High-Energy Laser Beam, then sent an Antimatter Bomb inside.
• The bomb detonated in the core, breaking Kepler-452c into fragments that the Gravity Cage captured and stabilized as an asteroid cluster.
• Wang Man ordered the fragments divided and smelted, while [Glutton] supply reserve ships collected and processed the molten iron.
• Tang Hairong asked Wang Man about using basic metal resources, and Wang lifted the restrictions.

After Kepler-452c was destroyed and its metals replenished the fleet’s reserves, Lü Yongchang announced plans to build a fully functional, mobile planetary fortress. He revealed that a nearby stellar system rich in metals and apparently free of alien civilization could supply the resources.

• Zero told Lü Yongchang that Kepler-452c had been destroyed and the Gravity Compensation Ship was operating normally on its former orbit.
• Wang Man reported that Kepler-452c’s metals had replenished the fleet’s reserves, only for Lü Yongchang to announce plans to restart planetary fortress construction after the Starship Replacement Project.
• Lü Yongchang explained that he wanted to build a true planetary fortress capable of moving, and Wang Man warned that the Human Federation lacked the resources.
• Lü Yongchang sent Wang Man survey results showing that a stellar system 6.71 light-years away contained three iron planets and two rocky planets, with no signs of alien civilization.
• Wang Man realized that Lü Yongchang intended to send the fleet to mine nearby stellar systems.

Wang Man and Tang Hairong developed the [Star Swallower], a giant mining apparatus built from concentric rings, to extract resources more efficiently than combat Starships. In Earth Calendar year 3620, it began mining an Iron Planet, while an aged Probe approached the region around Kepler-452.

• Lü Yongchang limited the mining fleet's Starships and advised Wang Man to consult Tang Hairong about building machinery dedicated to mining and smelting.
• Wang Man reassured Tang Hairong that the Planetary Fortress project would be his, but warned that the mining machinery had to provide enough resources first.
• Tang Hairong showed Wang Man a ring-shaped habitat design and proposed modifying it with lasers and gravitational devices to break apart and smelt planets.
• By Earth Calendar year 3620, Tang Hairong's [Star Swallower] had joined the fleet, unfolded around an Iron Planet, and generated a gravitational cage as the [Vermilion Bird] began the mining operation.
• An aged Probe traveled toward the dense region of Stellar Systems surrounding Kepler-452.

The Talodan Civilization, a battered fleet fleeing alien invaders, received anomalous data from a probe observing the Kepler-452 Stellar System. Maren and Milo discovered that a planet had apparently disappeared and began checking the probe and other observations.

• A lone Talodan probe traveled through interstellar space and observed the Kepler-452 Stellar System.
• The Talodan fleet's laboratory workers Maren and Milo complained about their escape from invaders and the fleet's heavy losses.
• An alarm announced that the probe had transmitted anomalous data, and Maren hurried to inspect it.
• Maren and Milo saw data indicating that a planet had suddenly disappeared.
• Milo checked the calculations while Maren began pulling up observations from the other probes.

Milo warned Leader Aldan that a Probe had detected one fewer planet than expected in a distant Stellar System, suggesting an advanced civilization had destroyed it. Fearing another dangerous encounter while their fleet was pursued, Aldan ordered the Talodan fleet to change course toward a different Stellar System.

• Milo and Maren verified that neither the Probe nor its calculations were faulty, and concluded that a planet had vanished unnaturally.
• Milo rushed to the Command Center to warn the fleet to change course.
• Milo told Leader Aldan that a Probe had detected only five planets where calculations had predicted six, and argued that an advanced civilization was responsible.
• Milo urged Aldan to choose a different destination and displayed a new route to a potentially habitable Stellar System.
• Aldan ordered the Talodan fleet to change course.

Lü Yongchang and the Academy of Sciences began the first tachyon communication experiment using two controlled micro black holes to alter tachyon frequencies. After the device started operating, the Mobile Experimental Ship prepared to test communications while accelerating beyond 10c.

• Lü Yongchang revived the tachyon communication project after a successful binary black hole control experiment made it feasible.
• Lü Yongchang ordered the Tachyon Communication Device powered up aboard the Mobile Experimental Ship after Fang Xu confirmed the inspections were clear.
• Zero controlled two micro black holes into a stable orbit while high-energy lasers fired toward their center of mass.
• Fang Xu activated the Mobile Experimental Ship's Warp Drive and began the flight plan to accelerate beyond 10c while transmitting information to the [Earth].