"Shouldn't we prioritize addressing these issues of Main Consciousness? What if they really destroy us when the 200-year deadline arrives?"
"There's no rush. Academician Xiao already has a plan for manufacturing organisms, but we won't release it so soon. In the meantime, Academician Zeng can thoroughly study this space with its increased density. Hopefully, they can discover its secrets as soon as possible, so that our fleet's strength can advance by leaps and bounds."
"Really? What plan?"
You'll find out then; let's keep it a secret for now.
"Okay, Academician Xiao will definitely have a way. I believe in him."
At this time, Academician Xiao had already returned to the underground biological ship and destroyed all the data on brainwaves and consciousness. He had already mastered these things. Now, in order to create the illusion of starting from scratch, buy time for the fleet, and make these Main Consciousness Nebula lower their guard, if they knew the depth of Academician Xiao's research on brainwaves and consciousness, they might immediately capture Academician Xiao for intensive research.
Having completed these tasks, Academician Xiao led a team to fly to the vicinity of these Main Consciousness. The brainwaves of these Main Consciousness Nebula were indeed powerful. Perhaps "brainwaves" is not quite accurate, because they did not have a true brain. Even from tens of kilometers away, the special brainwave collecting instrument created by Academician Xiao could receive the information. This instrument was secretly created to test Ninety-Seven.
The brainwaves of these Nebula Lifeform were far stronger than those of Ninety-Seven, but Academician Xiao pretended not to know. He flew until he was only a dozen meters away from the Nebula Lifeform before pretending to collect brainwave data. He would also ask them to increase the intensity of their brainwaves from time to time, otherwise he would not be able to collect data. He would also ask them all sorts of questions to provide database support for brainwave analysis.
Collecting brainwave activity data means that all the thoughts of these Nebula Lifeform are exposed to Academician Xiao. Their thoughts at every moment will be known to humans. However, the Nebula Main Consciousness usually does not have any thought activity, and the brainwaves they release are just ordinary life signals. No wonder they have not found a way to escape for billions of years. It would be strange if they could escape if they only know how to plunder and never think for themselves, unless they are extremely lucky.
The information gleaned from brainwaves was too limited, so Academician Xiao had to abandon the idea, making it difficult to collect brainwaves with such an instrument in the future.
What troubles Academician Xiao the most is the Consciousness Field. This field does not react with matter, meaning that ordinary instruments cannot detect Consciousness Field existence.
The Consciousness Field does not react with matter, yet it exists by relying on matter. When matter is gone, the Consciousness Field also disappears. Academician Xiao also has some ideas about the Consciousness Field, but for the same reason as before, he will not conduct experiments so soon. He is still waiting for Academician Zeng's space physics to make progress.
At first, everyone was a little scared, but after a month or two, they confirmed that the Nebula Main Consciousness would not harm humans for the time being, nor were they afraid of being controlled by Branch Consciousness Entity, because controlling a few scientists was useless, and they could quickly see through the control. So the scientists boldly piloted their spaceships to various places in the Nebula Region to conduct research, collect various spatial data, and strive to solve the problem of why the overall spatial density was increasing as soon as possible.
Academician Liu Bo and several others had already piloted a research vessel towards the outside of the nebula. Since the Fish Horse Star Fleet wasn't there, there was nothing to worry about. At worst, they could return to the nebula; there were seven free henchmen there who could handle anything below the Small Star Sector Civilization.
However, this is the Nebula Region after all. Even if the Main Consciousness stops interfering, the journey cannot be too fast. A distance of fifteen light-years will take at least half a year to travel.
Hu Yu's biggest headache right now is that there are too few scientists. So far, only 1.5 million scientists have been awarded titles. However, these are truly top-notch scientific talents, and there are absolutely no fake experts who spend two years at some foreign diploma mill and then spend money to buy a paper to pass themselves off as experts.
A cluster of alien warships half a light-year away requires analysis. According to statistics, these warships belong to 94 civilizations, the lowest level being the early stage of the Star-Level. Both the number of civilizations and the number of fleets are the largest, with over 70 being Stellar-Level Civilization. The surfaces of some Star-Level warships have become rotten and the metal plates have peeled off. The highest-level civilization is only the advanced stage of the Star System Level. Their warships are few in number, so they probably didn't come here to seek refuge like humans. They were likely conducting research or passing through when they were captured by the Nebula Main Consciousness.
It's unclear whether these Main Consciousness are genuinely foolish or simply underestimate humanity, accepting such absurd conditions. Perhaps the biggest reason is their desire for liberation, hoping that humanity can find some clues on these warships that can help them escape. After all, humanity is Star System-Level Civilization, and the technology of these warships is unlikely to allow humanity to break through to the Small Star Sector Civilization, thus posing no threat to them.
However, in the eyes of humans, these are all treasures. Where else could they normally get so many alien warships? These warships from 94 civilizations need to be studied. Even the Star-Level warships cannot be overlooked. Perhaps some inspiration can be found in their warships. Not to mention the Star System Level warships, especially the advanced Star System Level warships, the value of one of them is equivalent to all the Star-Level warships combined.
To reverse engineer and analyze these warships, even if each civilization chooses only one, Star-Level warship would require one to two hundred scientists, and Star System Level warship would require several thousand scientists. With more than 70 Stellar-Level Civilization and more than 20 Star System-Level Civilization, the required number of scientists would be at least 200,000 in related fields.
Deciphering these technologies could take anywhere from a minute or two to eight to ten years. The fleet simply doesn't have enough scientists to conduct reverse engineering. Moreover, much of the Wind Star Civilization's technology has already been translated, and now a large number of scientists are needed to analyze it.
Everything else can be rushed and completed by working overtime, but the training of scientists is an extremely long process. With the development of the fleet, it now takes about 60 years for a person to grow from a child to a formal scientist. These 60 years are the stage of accumulating knowledge.
Academician Zeng has subdivided each discipline into even smaller sub-disciplines to minimize the accumulation of unrelated knowledge among scientists and avoid wasting time. However, the number of scientists added in the past 70 years is still less than 200,000.
Compared to the limited technology of this ragtag fleet, the complete technology tree of the Wind Star Civilization is the key. It's impossible to transfer the scientists currently analyzing the Wind Star Civilization to study the ragtag fleet. Therefore, Academician Zeng decided to send 20 scientists from various fields to lead a large group of doctoral students to analyze each civilization's warships. Analyzing warships from Star System-Level Civilization shouldn't be a problem for doctoral students from Stellar-Level Civilization, but working with warships from other Star System-Level Civilization will be more difficult. However, this is the best opportunity for them to gain practical experience; perhaps a good performance this time will even earn them bonus points for future promotion to full-fledged scientist.
After arranging the scientific analysis of the miscellaneous fleet, Academician Zeng returned to the Science City. He emphasized that the five aspects of navigation speed, space compression, space vortex, space transfer, and dimension should now be prioritized and not treated as independently as before. The main scientific research forces should be concentrated to achieve key breakthroughs.