Rapid development

The Star Observation System began coming online. All its satellites had been coated with a special electromagnetic-wave-absorbing coating.

The deployed satellites operated in synchronized orbits around Orange Star, resembling lifeless meteorites.

1,500 satellites formed a ring around Orange Star, maintaining silence ninety million kilometers from Water Blue Star as they took turns monitoring its direction.

Water Blue Star had not reacted as quickly as Luo Qi had imagined. That left him somewhat subdued. If he had not been certain he was still there, he might have thought Water Blue Star had used some terrifying, impossibly advanced technology.

Had the video not been received, or were the humans on Water Blue Star making preparations?

But all the data indicated that Luo Qi still had time to keep developing. There was no need to rush to meet his defensive equipment needs.

For Orange Star, improving its scientific and technological capabilities remained the most important task.

Whatever needed building would be built, but construction could not hold up the research centers. All technology rested on research.

It was like Three-Body, which he had read in his previous life. A single technologically advanced Droplet could crush thousands of human warships. At that point, technology became an insurmountable gulf. Sometimes numbers alone could not win a war.

Rapid technological iteration meant many products were only ever produced in the research centers. Luo Qi's laboratories held first-, second-, third-, and even fourth-generation electromagnetic weapons.

A new generation appeared almost every three days, far faster than Luo Qi had anticipated.

Orange Star's current predicament was that its hypothetical enemy was Water Blue Star, yet the two planets lay more than eighty million kilometers apart.

Ground forces were out of the question, while recklessly developing a space fleet would be unwise.

With Luo Qi's existing technology, any space fleet would inevitably consist of large vessels. Modular replacement did exist, but it applied to products of the same model.

Meanwhile, Orange Star Base's technology was advancing at a tremendous pace, with a minor upgrade every three days and a major one every ten.

The construction and design of the Homeward Bound were products of that very predicament.

He could build warships in bulk, but ten days later, the first batch would be obsolete before construction was even finished.

The warships themselves would have to be large, which meant consuming vast quantities of resources and affecting the operation of every research center on Orange Star.

Controllable magnetic fields, a branch of electromagnetic-force research, could already manipulate molecules. This meant Orange Star's materials science had advanced another level, and research into nanorobots had begun in the related fields.

The Electromagnetic Shield Research Center had successfully used magnetic fields to create a shield capable of resisting high-energy particles and impacts from solid objects, producing the first generation of energy shields.

Wasn't controllable nuclear fusion itself the use of electromagnetic fields to confine high-energy plasma at three hundred million degrees Celsius?

But controllable magnetic field research did not stop there. It had already begun attempting to control even smaller particles, rearranging and recombining them into the desired substances!

For instance, all the microscopic particles in sand could be scrambled and rearranged into any desired combination of metal particles, achieving the legendary feat of turning stone into gold!

Luo Qi established a new research project for particle recombination theory: Matter Recombination Laboratory 188.

Once that laboratory produced results, perhaps even the sand found everywhere on Orange Star could become raw material for space warship armor.

Production of the Guardian Drone Type 2 reached three hundred units, accelerating deployment of the Myriad Stars System and improving the efficiency of expanding ground sub-bases.

It also marked the beginning of Luo Qi's expansion of his defensive forces from the planet's surface into orbit around Orange Star.

The base never stopped, day or night. More and more machines were built, and buildings spread rapidly like patches of mold.

The surviving humans saw only the exterior, not what lay beneath. Orange Star Civilization had already stepped out of the shadow of Water Blue Star and Earth.

It had its own unique systems for technology, production, and manufacturing.

The Oscillating Magnetic Field Research Center, one branch of electromagnetic-force research, made new progress. It used powerful magnetic fields to confine high-energy particles into a small Particle Oscillation Cutting Blade whose length could be adjusted.

Not only could it easily slice through zero alloy, leaving a smooth cut, but reducing its output also allowed it to polish and grind an object's surface.

Manufacturing parts became easier as controllable magnetic fields were developed into practical technology. The latest functional products had already appeared in the laboratories.

In experiments, iron powder could be melted instantly by an electromagnetic field, while controllable magnetic fields formed invisible molds that shaped the molten metal at will.

Like an invisible hand performing some terrifying magic trick, it produced parts with an astonishing precision of zero error.

This entirely new production method discarded Luo Qi's original assembly-line process of melting metal in an Electromagnetic Furnace, transferring it into molds to form blanks, and then completing precision stamping.

It integrated all three production methods into one, becoming a processing method found only in a new interstellar civilization.

This overturned Orange Star Base's entire former production system, allowing manufacturing efficiency and precision to increase severalfold again.

All that remained was to produce the new equipment and replace the factories' outdated machinery.

The base personnel who had failed their exams could only spend their time at leisure, but some had already grown restless.

Qi Siyu was a prime example. He asked Stendhal for a pile of small electronic components and a new-generation miniature nuclear battery, then became thoroughly secretive.

He Xuan, meanwhile, borrowed a small flatbed vehicle from Stendhal and went to find Gu Tianming. The two drove off into the distance.

In the vast red desert, two figures in protective suits left footprints as they gradually moved away from the flatbed parked below a dune.

Standing on the dune, Gu Tianming looked over the desolate landscape and said bluntly, "This is far enough. We can turn off our suits' communications ourselves."

They stopped walking. A golden sun hung high in the black sky overhead, and the endless red desert stretched to the horizon.

Manually switching off her suit's communications, He Xuan said, "Chief Engineer Gu, I'll be direct. What do you think of Orange Star Base?"

Their voices traveled through the thin atmosphere, muffled by their tightly sealed helmets, and could only be heard clearly at close range.

Gu Tianming shook his head. "This isn't something people like us can solve on our own. You've seen what intelligent AI can accomplish on Water Blue Star. The fact that all the surviving conglomerates chose to build artificial intelligence to protect themselves already tells you enough."

"Isn't there even a single loophole?" He Xuan asked, unwilling to give up.

Gu Tianming calmly shook his head. "Don't do anything foolish. It's far smarter than a human brain, and the Alliance does have ways to restrain it."

"But I've already contacted Water Blue Star through it!" He Xuan told him everything about going to Stendhal.

Somewhat helpless, Gu Tianming closed his eyes and thought for a moment before saying, "You're right to worry about Water Blue Star, but Orange Star Base losing contact, combined with the loss of Tianhe 1, was already enough to put the Alliance on its guard."

He Xuan suddenly felt powerless. So her excessive worrying had only ended up alerting the enemy.

Gu Tianming said, "Water Blue Star already has a rudimentary space force. Some things aren't ours to worry about."

Thinking of the mechanical behemoths, the satellite station he had seen, and the swarms flying unchecked through the atmosphere, Gu Tianming could only shake his head.

A rogue intelligent system with an industrial infrastructure was not something a simple command or a strategic weapon could easily deal with.

Besides, they were unarmed, no different from prisoners.

What imprisoned them was the entirety of Orange Star.

Luo Qi continued carrying out his backup plan. The number of bases deployed across Orange Star's surface had reached twenty-seven.

Clusters of mining vehicles began heading farther afield, leaving the base's resource-poor region. Everything they gathered was packaged at designated collection points and airlifted directly back to the base by Guardian Type 2 units.

The research centers submitted reports together: some laboratories lacked research materials.

For the first time, the base's production capacity could not keep up with the consumption of research and manufacturing.

The Chip Research Center developed a new chip, the Molecular Computing Chip.

Servers built from these chips would offer eighty percent more computing performance than the base's existing servers.

The manufacturing factories were immediately refitted, and the carbon nanochips, which had been in production for less than a week, were phased out.

The Third-Generation Ion Thruster was developed, construction began on Fourth-Generation Small-Scale Nuclear Fusion units, the First-Generation Energy Weapon entered service, research began on the Second-Generation Energy Weapon and the Second-Generation Electromagnetic Shield, the flying builder concept was proposed for the first time and put into construction, and the Strong Magnetic Field Research Center began extracting nuclei from atoms.

The many research centers collaborated closely, jointly driving scientific progress.

Nothing like this could be seen among Earth's major research centers in his previous life. Even researchers working under the same institution guarded against others stealing their credit and results, because those determined the reputation and bonuses they would receive.

The materials laboratory issued a report on a new material. The research project used Orange Star's common sand as its raw material to create a new No. 3 molecular material. Its hardness already exceeded diamond's, and its formability was astonishing.

The Materials Research Center named it insulating metal.

It was not metal, yet its properties were even more formidable than metal's. The Large Controllable Magnetic Field Device could arrange it at the molecular level.

Under Luo Qi's control, sand began replacing steel within Orange Star Civilization, becoming the primary consumable of its ground-based factories.

The immediate consequence was a frenzy of sand extraction by the mining vehicles. This eased the base's consumption of metals, allowing those precious metals to be allocated to the research centers.

If Matter Recombination Plan 188 succeeded, Orange Star's laboratories would have an inexhaustible supply of experimental materials.

Fully automated factories operated day and night, producing the vast quantities of supplies and equipment the base needed. Brand-new equipment was temporarily stored in warehouses, ready to be moved into the new factory buildings and assembled into production lines as soon as the electrical wiring was complete.

Guardian Type 2 units took off from the side of Orange Star facing away from Water Blue Star. They headed deep into space and began constructing Orange Star's first Deep-Space Laboratory, equipped with an independent controllable nuclear fusion unit, for research into matter and antimatter.

The Deep-Space Laboratory occupied a high orbit and would not rotate along with Orange Star. It had its own ion thrusters, allowing it to remain on the far side of Orange Star and avoid detection by Water Blue Star.

Countless Replicas took part in building Orange Star Civilization. The scientific results achieved by these Replica clusters prompted Luo Qi to build computing centers on a massive scale.

From the initial one thousand Replicas, their numbers soon grew to the current two hundred thousand.

The research centers' technological paths had already expanded enormously, with a multitude of branching research projects emerging. Science was like a bubble being inflated.

The more it touched, the more there was that remained unknown.

That night, Qi Siyu sought out He Xuan. He knew what she was thinking, and he had also used his own knowledge to make something...