Originally, Tau Ceti's main purpose had been to deter humanity. Ma Meng had not intended to detonate it. The force of a stellar explosion at such close range was terrifying, and the fleet would inevitably suffer some losses. He had not expected the seemingly weak humans to possess such combat power, or their bizarre defensive technology to foil every attack from the Sand Python fleet.
Now Ma Meng could no longer afford to worry about that. Only by detonating Tau Ceti could he inflict irreversible losses on humanity. At least that would count as a draw, rather than letting the entire fleet be swallowed up by the humans.
After receiving the leader's orders, a Sand Python warship hidden behind Tau Ceti fired an enormous antimatter bomb. The bomb sped toward Tau Ceti at 800 times the speed of light. After 0.3 seconds, it broke through Tau Ceti's outer gaseous layers and reached the star's core 0.01 seconds before its high temperature could melt it. The core's heat immediately destroyed the bomb's outer structure, and the hundreds of kilograms of antimatter stored inside instantly encountered nearby matter and began to annihilate.
The violent release of energy inside Tau Ceti destroyed the equilibrium it had maintained for billions of years. The inward pull of gravity could not contain the energy released outward, and Tau Ceti disintegrated in an instant. The intense energy it unleashed swept across every part of the battlefield. Warships of every size were swept away by the torrent like fallen leaves in an autumn wind, while the battlefield debris was reduced directly to particles.
One minute after Tau Ceti exploded, Alpha Centauri's third star was also detonated by the humans. The energy in the surrounding space increased more than tenfold once again. For a time, the entire region seemed to turn into a purgatory, filled with high-energy radiation and streams of particles. Before the Sand Python fleet had recovered from Tau Ceti's fury, it was immediately subjected to an even greater wash of energy. This time, however, they were not so lucky. Detonating a star had already been a seven-injuries fist tactic for the Sand Python fleet. Faced with Alpha Centauri's third star, which was several times the size of Tau Ceti, the Sand Python fleet could no longer hold out, and its ships disintegrated one after another in the energy tide.
The Sand Python Civilization had lost its leader once again. They had originally believed their fleet could withstand Tau Ceti's fury, while the human fleet's individual ships were too small to survive the energy tide of a stellar explosion. They did not understand what made the human warships' force-field protection technology special. This was the gap between a mid star system-level civilization and an early star system-level civilization. Thanks to the force fields, much of the energy torrent striking the warships was deflected by warped space. It was like seeing a fish in the water and thrusting a stick at it, only to miss every time because the water refracted the light. But the stick that was the stellar explosion was powerful enough that, even without striking the fish, the resulting waves still caused it some harm. The human Stealth Killer fleet therefore fared little better: half its warships were reduced to elementary particles.
Both sides had underestimated the terror of a stellar explosion. Alpha Centauri's first and second stars also became extremely unstable under the impact of the energy torrent, unleashing one powerful flare after another. If the underground city on the first planet had not been on the side facing away from the two stars, even the people inside would have suffered severe harm.
The fleet might not have felt much attachment to Alpha Centauri's stars, but Tau Ceti was different. This star had given the fleet a second life. Without Tau Ceti, the fleet might still have been struggling to find a place to settle, or it might already have exhausted its energy in the vast void and fallen silent in space.
Tau Ceti, if I ever have the ability, I'll restore you to your former glory. I'll also find your lost planets for you, one by one, Hu Yu said silently in his heart.
The debris from the stellar explosion was still slowly spreading. It might form an enormous nebula shrouding Alpha Centauri, but no one had time to appreciate the beauty it might hold in the future. The surviving Stealth Killers immediately began regrouping, then swiftly entered warp to search the surrounding space. One group of five million ships had already assembled and was preparing to head to Tau Ceti to search for Sand Python remnants. This time, they would wipe out the Sand Python Civilization completely. The Tau Ceti System was gone, but Sand Python beings might still remain in that region of space. The Sand Python Civilization had deployed nothing but warships this time, without a single civilian ship among them.
In the region where Tau Ceti had once been, there were several hundred enormous civilian ships amid the otherwise empty starfield. The Sand Python Civilization's residents had all relocated aboard these ships, where they awaited their leader's triumphant return. Several light-days away from the civilian ships, a silver, diamond-shaped spacecraft hung silently in the void. It was the very same spacecraft belonging to that Patrols entity from before.
"A bunch of trash, idiots!!! I still need two more targets to complete the task my master gave me, and to think I wasted so much time on these pieces of trash!!" the Patrols shouted furiously. The Patrols knew that, with the Sand Python fleet's early star system-level strength, it could never have destroyed human civilization. But it should not have suffered such a crushing defeat so quickly. With proper arrangements, it could certainly have inflicted severe losses on human civilization.
As for the master of the Patrols' civilization, the mere thought made the Patrols' scalp tingle. The Patrols could only blame the civilization's leader for taking one wrong step, leaving the entire civilization with no hope of ever rising again.
After cursing them, the Patrols immediately started the spacecraft and headed for the region where Tau Ceti had once been. The Sand Python Civilization's civilian ships still did not know that their leader and vast fleet had been reduced to elementary particles. Not every star system-level civilization could master cutting-edge technology like a four-dimensional network, and the Sand Python Civilization was even less capable of it.
"Your leader has died in battle. I'm letting you know so you won't die without knowing why." The Patrols arrived near the Sand Python civilian fleet.
"My lord, that's impossible. Our warships are far more powerful than the humans'. My lord, what do you mean by that? Why would we die without knowing why?" The civilian fleet's leader came to his senses and asked in a panic.
"I really don't know how a foolish species like yours has survived this long. Hmph, you're simply a waste of the Milky Way's energy. I'll tell you now: I'm going to send you to meet your leader myself. A bunch of idiots like you have no right to live."
"My lord, don't."
The Patrols said nothing more. In a single pass, the Sand Python civilian ships turned into fireballs one after another. With that, the Sand Python Civilization vanished completely from the Milky Way.
"General, we found no sign of the Sand Python Civilization in the Tau Ceti region. We also searched the surrounding space for hundreds of light-years and found nothing. The Sand Python residents may all have been dispersed among the warships, or they may have retreated in advance. In addition, the fleet searching the space around Alpha Centauri found no sign of any Sand Python warships either. They should all have been destroyed in the energy tide from the stellar explosions."
"Order all warships to return. It's time for us to leave too," Hu Yu said.
More than three years had passed since the war. They had defeated the Sand Python fleet but gained no technology whatsoever, and had instead exposed this region of space to the universe. The fleet still had more than ten million warships. As long as they did not deliberately provoke other civilizations, finding a desolate planetary system to settle in would not be a problem. Besides, everyone had stayed in the underground city long enough. Humanity's longing for sunlight had never changed over hundreds of thousands and millions of years, and that longing had left a deep imprint on their genes. Although the underground city did its best to simulate Earth's environment, in people's eyes, only seeing the light of a star with their own eyes could bring them reassurance and satisfaction.
In the fleet, they could occasionally enjoy starlight coming through the thick viewing windows, but the underground city was like a sealed box. Only a very small number of people could go out onto the surface under strict protection, and the heat of over 600 degrees could kill a human at the slightest slip.