"In this way, we'll first divide the fleet into ten parts, letting these insects choose their targets at will, regardless of whether we're among them. The other fleet being pursued will then be divided into ten parts again, while the remaining nine fleets will maintain their original formation and continue advancing."
"That's it?" Li Zhixiong, somewhat puzzled.
"You're still Little Zhuge? You don't even understand this, Academician. The giant insects have discovered that one of their fleets has split again. They're quite intelligent, so they'll definitely think there's something wrong with this fleet, perhaps it's where the main ship is. Therefore, the other four insects will definitely turn around and chase this second split. We can even split a third time, a fourth time, or not split at all, to confuse the insects."
"It's not that I don't understand, it's just that this is too simplistic, such an obvious scam."
" Little Zhuge, although insects are quite intelligent, they are not as complex as us. Their behavior and thinking are very simple. They lack the ability to understand and recognize things, which is commonly known as a lack of experience and knowledge. We humans, on the other hand, receive all kinds of education from childhood. Especially those of us who came from Earth's era, we are all quite experienced. We are very knowledgeable about cheating, deception, and theft. So, we see this trick as very low-level, but insects do not have this kind of knowledge."
"Understood, Academician."
The Reaper fleet immediately split into ten parts and acted separately. Faced with this move by the Reaper fleet, the giant insects were indeed at a loss for what to do. They paused for a few seconds, as if exchanging a few words, and then split up to chase after five of the fleets. Humans were unlucky; one of the pursued groups included humans.
A few dozen seconds later, one of the unmanned fleets split into ten parts again. The giant insects seemed to be getting agitated. This time, they did not communicate with each other and turned around again to chase after the split fleets. This time, the fleets did not split. After chasing for half an hour, the giant insects realized that something was wrong and turned to chase after the other five fleets that had split up a second time.
Although half an hour was wasted, the overall direction was not much different. With only 30 minutes left to catch up with the fleet, the fleet split up three times, with each fleet reducing its number of ships to 68. This time, the bugs were clever. They chased for several tens of seconds, and when they found that the fleet did not split up again, they immediately changed their target.
The pursued fleet did not split again; instead, the other nine fleets, totaling over 600 ships, converged. This time, the Reaper learned their lesson and attacked the giant worms from a distance. The giant worms, having been repeatedly tricked, quickly launched a retaliatory attack. Utilizing their speed advantage, they destroyed over 600 Reaper in less than ten minutes.
After destroying more than 600 Reaper, the Insect King continued to pursue the remaining 68 Reaper, completely unaware that tens of thousands of other Reaper were advancing at full speed towards the Matter River.
More than 20 minutes later, the giant worm finally caught up with the last fleet of the three splits. After destroying this batch of Reaper in a very short time, the giant worm looked at the fleet that was still moving forward in the distance and seemed to understand something. However, at this time, they had already been led astray by this fleet for several light-years, and it was impossible for them to catch up with the other fleets.
Several giant insects seemed to have discovered something, and vented their anger on the wrecked fragments of the destroyed warships. However, instead of entering the Matter River to continue pursuing the fleet, they turned around and surrounded the Reaper that were intercepting other insects. Of the 25,000 Reaper still fighting, less than half remained, and they were quickly annihilated by the combined efforts of the insect swarm.
No one knows why the swarm stopped pursuing, but it's good that they're not chasing for now. The remaining fleet slowly regrouped and escaped the giant swarm's pursuit at the cost of more than 30,000 Reaper ships being destroyed. This result exceeded everyone's expectations. Originally, it was thought that the giant swarm would need to destroy at least tens of thousands more Reaper to achieve its goal. It seems that these swarms are indeed all show and no substance.
With less than a light-day's distance to the Matter River, Chen Peng reduced his speed to one hundred times the speed of light. The Matter River Matter River now close at hand, and everyone could see the larger particles at its edge using ordinary optical equipment. At this moment, the Matter River resembled a river shimmering with countless bright lights. These lights were the starlight reflected by small meteorites. Although the matter was dense, there were also quite a few stars, and photons could always find suitable gaps to penetrate the river and illuminate the entire river.
It was only at this point that everyone understood why other civilizations called this place the Matter River. There was simply too much matter here, with meteorites of all sizes floating in the air. Even the Reaper had a hard time getting in without encountering a meteorite, which showed just how dense the matter was.
In the middle of the Matter River, there are dozens of relatively empty regions. In the center of these regions are huge stars burning with raging flames. However, the meteorite fragments and other debris in the empty regions do not tend to fall towards the stars. Instead, some of them show signs of moving outward from the stars. This makes the academicians very strange. This is completely opposite to the phenomenon in the vast universe. However, since they have seen the Matter River, this strangeness is no longer surprising.
The smallest distance between stars is less than a thousand astronomical units, and the most distant is only 0.2 light-years. These stars are like fixed objects, living peacefully with each other and with other matter in the Matter River. Watermelons are watermelons, sesame seeds are sesame seeds, and no one bothers anyone else.
This Matter River is currently orbiting the center of the galaxy at a speed of over 300 kilometers per second, which is faster than the speed at which ordinary planets orbit galaxies.
Suddenly, the fleet seemed to have collided with something and was forcibly stopped. No matter how hard the warp drives worked, the warships moved at a snail's pace.
" Zhuge Xiong, perhaps this is what the Heavenly Peak Civilization meant by being unable to perform warp drive and having to switch to conventional engines."
"How strange, this space seems to be frozen. I just tested the spatial curvature when the warp engine was working, and guess what the result was?"
"The engines are working normally, but the warship is barely moving, indicating that the curvature of space is very small."
"It's not just small, it's almost zero. But that's not quite right either. The space within half a meter of the engine was distorted somewhat, but there was no reaction further away. The warship's forward movement was just the reaction force from the energy leakage when the warp drive was working."
"Could it be like when we entered the Nebula Region last time, with such a high spatial density? I'll ask the academicians... hey, where Academician Zeng and the others? Why aren't any of them here?"
At this point, the academicians were no longer in the mood to stay in the warship's main control room; they all rushed to the temporary laboratory.
" Little Liu, what's the density of this space?"
"The results are in: the spatial density is a thousand times that of the normal spatial density of the river system."
"So much!?"
"The abundance of matter here and the high spatial density are not surprising. What is strange is that our warships cannot even move here. Logically speaking, the spatial density here is a thousand times that of the normal density of the galaxy's space, and our speed should be at least four times the speed of light, or at the very least sub-light speed. It shouldn't be like this."
"It seems there are many secrets here. It was worth the thrill of our journey."