"Minister, how are you feeling?"
"He won't die, Old Gao, will this work?"
"It will work; the low temperature of liquid nitrogen is enough to kill these transparent creatures."
" Li Wenfei, Li Wenfei!"
"Hey, Minister, what did you call me for? Ah, Minister, what happened to your hand?!" Li Wenfei ran in from outside and immediately saw Luo Zhigao's severed arm.
"Ignore my hands. Tell the people that if they want to live, they should do what I did. As long as their brains are still alive, the fleet will reconstruct their bodies one by one. Old Gao, do you have enough liquid nitrogen?"
"It can be compressed and manufactured at any time; our air contains 70% nitrogen."
"No need to wait to build a large hibernation base, Li Wenfei, you know what to do now, right?"
"Yes, I'll take care of it right away." Li Wenfei gently touched his left leg, where the white bone was already showing. In order not to delay his work, Li Wenfei, like Luo Zhigao, endured the pain.
Countless liquid nitrogen pools of all sizes were set up in just a few days. People supported each other around the liquid nitrogen pools, and countless medical personnel were ready to go.
Li Wenfei was the first to enter the liquid nitrogen pool. A dozen seconds later, Li Wenfei was pulled out by medical staff. Pale and weak, Li Wenfei forced a smile and gently broke his own legs with an iron rod.
A man suffering terribly, his body ravaged by hunger, jumped into a liquid nitrogen pool after ingesting hibernation water. The hibernation water rapidly replaced the body's water, preventing cells from rupturing in a frozen state. A few seconds later, medical staff pulled him out. He had lost vital signs, but thanks to the protection of the hibernation water, his brain remained intact, merely in a dormant state. The medical staff removed his head and placed it in a hibernation chamber.
Liquid nitrogen continued to be injected into the liquid nitrogen pool, and robots kept removing human limbs that had been frozen into ice blocks. Countless people who could not bear the pain chose to hibernate their brains.
Soon, the hibernation pods began to run out. Of the fleet's 10 billion people, more than 1 billion had already died, more than 6 billion were injured and still alive, and less than 3 billion were intact. Of these injured people, only half were devoured starting from their limbs, while the others were devoured from their torsos or even their heads.
Those whose torsos and heads were swallowed could not remain conscious like those with injured limbs, so they could only choose to preserve their brains. Such a massive digital fleet simply did not have enough hibernation chambers. Moreover, medical personnel were overwhelmed. They were already incapable of handling such a large-scale medical event, and with medical personnel also suffering widespread injuries from being swallowed like ordinary people, less than a third of the original number of medical staff were able to work normally.
" Academician Zheng, is there any other way? Our hibernation box reserves are only around 200 million, which is simply not enough to cope with the situation." Luo Zhigao sought out Zheng Kaiping, the leading academician in fleet biology.
As someone in the same league as Academician Xiao, Academician Zheng Academician Xiao even more admirable because Academician Zheng is a female academician who works tirelessly in various organs all day long. Without strong mental fortitude, one cannot even stay there for a minute, let alone work in these organs.
"Minister, there's no need for a hibernation chamber. We can just put the brain in outer space. The low temperature there can completely replace the function of a hibernation chamber. However, we need to increase the amount of hibernation water to ensure that there are no water molecules in the body, especially in the brain, because the temperature in outer space is even lower than in a hibernation chamber. If water molecules are present, they will severely damage the brain structure. If you don't mind the trouble, you can go directly into space after drinking the hibernation water, without even needing liquid nitrogen."
"Are you sure everything's okay?"
"Yes, as long as you protect your brain from the strong radiation from stars and other harmful rays, it will be fine."
"Good."
Soon, countless heads were transported by small medical ships to the warship in outer space. The warship opened its huge hatches and shut down its energy system to keep the temperature inside the ship the same as outside. There were so many heads that they could not be arranged neatly, and the frozen heads were simply dumped into the warship's interior by the medical ships.
Piles of heads, their faces frozen in agony and pain, wide-open eyes, distorted features—more terrifying than hell itself.
There weren't enough medical personnel, so the people underground put on spacesuits and came out. In the fleet era, everyone possessed some essential medical knowledge; bandaging, hemostasis, injections, and so on were all performed skillfully by everyone.
Suppressing their grief and fear, people donned spacesuits and jumped directly into the liquid nitrogen pool to retrieve severed limbs and body parts, which were then handed over to robots to assist in treating injured individuals requiring liquid nitrogen freezing.
A relatively intact person is thrown in, and within ten seconds they are turned into an ice sculpture. People carefully cut off the head and put it on the medical ship. Once the ship is full, they put another ship in.
More than 3 billion heads need to be processed, and more than 3 billion torsos have been piled up into several mountains. Earth Three is already below -20 degrees Celsius, and these frozen torsos will not melt. They are piled up haphazardly by robots, creating a scene of hell on earth.
The fleet moved away from the binary star system and arrived at another planetary system five light-years away. This time, Luo Zhigao carefully conducted a detailed reconnaissance and only decided to dock here after ensuring 100% safety.
All the civilians swallowed by Earth Three have been dealt with, and the remaining civilians who were not swallowed by the creatures have been sent to the warships and properly protected. Earth Three has become a giant ice ball of death, with all plants and animals frozen to death. This was a last resort, but in order to completely eliminate the Stellar Worm, the name Academician Zheng later gave to this creature, Luo Zhigao had no choice but to sacrifice these creatures.
There are still many important supplies on Earth Three that need to be transferred. They can't just be abandoned. Besides, they're associated with Earth, and Luo Zhigao doesn't want to give up just like that.
After rigorous testing confirmed that there were no more Stellar Worm on the entire planet, Earth Three was moved to a suitable orbit to thaw. Waves reappeared in the sea, and city buildings emerged from the hundreds of meters thick glaciers. Looking at the piles of human remains, Luo Zhigao pondered for a long time and decided to use robots to load them all onto transport ships and send them into the star for destruction.
The next task is to reconstruct the bodies of these more than 3 billion heads. This is an arduous and lengthy task. Under the leadership of Academician Zheng Kaiping, biological scientists and medical staff began to extract the gene sequences of each person from the database and to cultivate a large number of various cells based on this data.
This is simply cell cloning. Scientists use genetic information to cultivate each person's cells, and then use microsurgery to configure cells for each brain, like building blocks, using individual cells to rebuild a complete person. In this way, the brain and body will be perfectly matched, without any aftereffects.
The new body is in its healthiest state. The only drawback is that the reorganization process is very, very slow. Each person has about 50 trillion cells. It takes at least a week to assemble a person from the brain into a complete person. Industry has already been paralyzed by 70%.