Chapter Summaries

After 1,000 years, engineers discovered that the Reversed State armor on older Grim Slayers had fused into smooth, indestructible layers. Tests showed the armor remained highly effective, while Academician Liu Bo and Academician Li Youwei decided to investigate Perfect Structure and microscopic space as the fleet prepared for a possible conflict with the Xuan Star Civilization.

• An engineer found that the Reversed State armor on a Grim Slayer had fused into a smooth surface and reported the change to the Academy of Sciences.
• Academician Li Youwei and Academician Liu Bo inspected the fleet and discovered that the armor fused increasingly with age.
• Hu Yu approved tests showing that the fused armor resisted every weapon used and performed at least as well as the original cubes.
• Academician Liu Bo proposed studying Perfect Structure and microscopic space with Academician Li Youwei, and Hu Yu supported their decision.

In 7190 AD, a fleet noticed that Star HTR378894 had dimmed, prompting the Mu Star Civilization and Xuan Star Civilization to investigate amid fears that humanity had returned. Gao Jianchuan confirmed that both fleets had been drawn toward the Wind Master, whose preparations had taken longer than planned but were now complete.

• A fleet spotted Star HTR378894 dimming and reported the anomaly, suspecting a civilization was stealing the star’s mass or moving it.
• The Mu Star Civilization and Xuan Star Civilization dispatched a combined fleet of fifty million warships to Star HTR378894.
• Ji Wa worried that humanity might have survived and secretly developed near the space vortex after he had claimed to destroy them.
• Gao Jianchuan showed the general footage of the Mu Star and Xuan Star fleets setting out, confirming that their bait had worked.
• By 7190 AD, the Wind Master had hidden near the vortex for two thousand years, while more than eight billion androids prepared the planet and manufactured energy balls; encapsulating the weapons had delayed the mission by five hundred years.

Humanity prepared the freed Branch Consciousness Entities to establish their own civilization in the Aquila Nebula. Hu Yu and Academician Zeng sent the seven main consciousnesses off with a name, resources, and the task of building the Aquila Civilization.

• Humanity gathered the energy spheres into two enormous armored planets and hid them far from the androids’ activity, while 300 million Grim Slayers were produced and deployed.
• Academician Zeng told Number One that the freed Branch Consciousness Entities should leave humanity and develop a civilization of their own.
• Hu Yu offered the entities technology, spaceships, machinery, Wind Masters, and cloning as a way to grow their population.
• Hu Yu named the seven main consciousnesses Xiao Fan, Xiao Rong, Xiao Chang, Xiao Sheng, Xiao Ping, Xiao An, and Xiao Shun, and called their civilization the Aquila Civilization.
• The seven main consciousnesses departed reluctantly to find a planet and gather the other Branch Consciousness Entities.

Ji Wa’s fleet discovered traces of human activity on a planet and attacked the hidden base, triggering an ambush by the Wind Masters. The Wind Masters destroyed the Mu Star Civilization’s fleet, but the Xuan Star Civilization’s Space Barrier devastated their charge, leaving them to retreat while the Trojan Horse Plan continued.

• Ji Wa ordered Feng Ci to investigate planets near Star HTR378894 after learning that the star’s brightness had dimmed.
• The Mu Star Civilization’s fleet bombed planets and uncovered human-made equipment, prompting Ji Wa to order every planet destroyed from long range.
• The Wind Masters emerged from the planets and annihilated nearly all of Feng Ci’s forty million warships with a volley of energy balls.
• Ji Wa’s Xuan Star Civilization fleet activated the Space Barrier, disintegrating Wind Masters that tried to penetrate its netlike formation.
• The Wind Masters retreated as the Xuan Star Civilization charged into their fleet and activated the Space Barrier again.

Ji Wa’s Xuan Star Civilization fleet fought the Wind Masters and summoned reinforcements after suffering heavy losses. As the Wind Masters carried planets toward a spatial vortex, Ji Wa planned to pursue them and destroy them there.

• The Wind Masters scattered and attacked the Xuan Star Civilization fleet, preventing it from forming a Space Barrier as both sides suffered losses.
• After the Wind Masters fell to eighty million, Ji Wa reported the battle, and the Xuan Star Civilization chief officer ordered Bi Cha to bring a hundred million warships.
• Ji Wa sent a million warships to destroy nearby planets, while the Wind Masters split their forces, let several planets be destroyed, and carried others toward the spatial vortex.
• The Wind Masters kept Ji Wa’s main fleet occupied while two hundred thousand of them slipped away with two enormous energy spheres.
• Ji Wa rejected the Wind Masters’ offer to trade energy sphere technology for their lives and vowed to pursue them into the vortex.

Hu Yu and the Xuan Star Civilization’s fleets entered the spatial vortex, where Hu Yu planned to use the Grim Slayers’ superior conventional engines and physical weapons to fight. As the Wind Masters lost their planets, Hu Yu transferred the androids aboard and struggled with the guilt of sacrificing them to protect humanity.

• The Xuan Star Civilization’s commanders decided to pursue the Wind Masters into the spatial vortex, believing their conventional engines would give them an advantage there.
• Thirty million Wind Masters carried six planets into the vortex while the rest fought a retreat that left only forty-five million Wind Masters alive.
• Hu Yu committed 250 million Grim Slayers to the battle, relying on their engines, energy spheres, and antimatter against the Xuan Star Civilization’s larger fleet.
• The Wind Masters moved deep into the vortex and surrounded the six planets as they deformed and began shedding matter.
• Hu Yu transferred the androids from the doomed planets into the Wind Masters, then discussed his guilt with his companions and turned his attention back to the war.

The Wind Masters split into twenty fleets to escape the space vortex, but the Xuan Star Civilization pursued and used its engine advantage to keep intercepting them. The humans remained trapped as they waited for a chance to break out, while the enemy expected reinforcements within two months.

• Li Zhixiong split the seventy-five million Wind Masters into twenty fleets and led them toward the vortex's edge.
• The Xuan Star Civilization commander ordered his fleet to divide into twenty groups and pursue the Wind Masters into the vortex.
• The Xuan Star Civilization's faster engines let its fleets catch up and attack the Wind Masters with lasers as both sides moved through the vortex.
• Wen Zhonghua ordered the Wind Master fleets to close ranks and counterattack with energy balls, forcing the Xuan Star Civilization ships to scatter.
• Li Zhixiong drew the enemy ships farther from the Wind Masters, but the Xuan Star Civilization repositioned beyond the reach of human attacks and kept intercepting their escape attempts.

Zhonghua led the Wind Masters in a breakout from the spatial vortex, but the Xuan Star Civilization destroyed the fleet and began recovering human planets and wreckage. The first stage of the Trojan Horse Plan ended, with the hidden energy spheres still undiscovered and human planets under examination.

• Zhonghua and his companion prepared the Wind Masters’ breakout, expecting the Xuan Star Civilization’s main force to finish off the fleet afterward.
• The Wind Masters rammed at the encircling ships and forced their way toward the vortex’s edge, suffering heavy losses as Ji Wa’s forces attacked.
• More than 20 million Wind Masters escaped into normal space and scattered, but a 100-million-warship Xuan Star Civilization force arrived and pursued them while destroying those trapped inside the vortex.
• The Xuan Star Civilization began dragging a human planet out of the vortex, while Zhonghua and Old Hu concluded that the first stage of their plan had succeeded and the hidden energy spheres would eventually be found.
• Bi Cha salvaged human wreckage and moved nine planets showing signs of human activity toward the space between the Mu Star Civilization and the Xuan Star Civilization for scientific examination.

Feng Long investigated an abandoned human planet to learn more about energy sphere technology while Bi Cha explained the limits of the Xuan Star Civilization’s discoveries. Ji Wa arrived claiming he had found two remarkable objects and asked Feng Long to come outside and look at the sky.

• The Xuan Star Civilization searched the region for escaped humans while its technicians inspected a human-inhabited planet and found that the humans had abandoned it without tampering.
• Feng Long landed on the planet to investigate its damaged supercomputers and seek clues about energy spheres, which Xuan Star scientists had failed to understand for more than 3,500 years.
• Feng Long ordered Bi Cha to keep a few human bodies and send the rest to feed the bugs, then discussed the failed attempts to capture intact energy spheres.
• Feng Long told Bi Cha that the Xuan Star Civilization would have to reach the intermediate stage of a small star sector civilization to help the alliance fight the Insect Race.
• Ji Wa arrived after nearly four years of pursuit, said he had found two good things, and asked Feng Long to come outside and see them in the sky.

Feng Long learned that Ji Wa had seized two lightweight planets packed with human energy spheres, which the humans had apparently prepared as revenge. He ordered the planets moved away from civilization so he could work on them and uncover how to detonate the spheres.

• Feng Long followed Ji Wa outside and learned that the two nearby planets each had less than twenty billion tons of mass because they were filled with human energy spheres.
• Ji Wa explained that his fleet had destroyed a human convoy transporting the planets and estimated that they contained ten quintillion energy spheres.
• Feng Long concluded that the humans had intended to use the spheres to devastate the Mu Star Civilization or Feng Long’s civilization, but the planets had been far from human settlements during the battle.
• Ji Wa reported that the energy spheres could not be detonated by ordinary means and evaporated when their casings broke.
• Feng Long realized something about the spheres’ detonation and ordered Ji Wa to move both planets ten light-years from their territory so he could work on them.

Feng Long searched the dismantled energy-sphere framework for its hidden detonator, hoping to learn how the spheres were made. Bi Cha found a tiny hole in a hollow section, and Feng Long began carefully decomposing the framework around it.

• Ji Wa's fleet delivered the energy-sphere assemblies to Xuan Star Civilization territory, where over a million Xuan Star people dismantled one assembly and exposed its framework.
• Feng Long told Bi Cha and Ji Wa to search the framework for the detonator without scanning or touching it, explaining that it might yield energy-sphere manufacturing technology.
• After three years of searching, Bi Cha found a needle-thin hole in the framework.
• Feng Long waited for a particle decomposer, then used it to remove a small amount of the framework near the hole.
• After three days, Feng Long had decomposed one side of the section and discovered that it was hollow inside.

Feng Long recovered and analyzed the hidden detonators in the human energy spheres, while Hu Yu and his companion waited for the spheres to enter Xuan Star Civilization territory. After a century, the human sites were destroyed and no evidence of surviving humans had been found, but the spheres’ eventual use remained unresolved.

• Feng Long found a hidden detonator in an energy sphere’s framework, removed it safely, and ordered a thorough inspection of everything the humans had left behind.
• Feng Long replicated and tested the detonator, discovering that electromagnetic waves triggered the spheres and that their calm energy could be divided and contained in smaller bombs.
• Feng Long spent a hundred years in his laboratory analyzing the energy spheres while Hu Yu and his companion waited for Xuan Star Civilization to move them into its territory.
• Ji Wa and Bi Cha inspected the ten human-occupied planets with Xuan Star Civilization scientists and found no evidence that humans had survived.
• The Xuan Star Civilization kept some human machinery and electronics, then sent the remaining equipment and planets into a nearby star.

Humanity triggered the energy balls scattered around the Xuan Star Civilization’s outskirts, creating a spatial vortex that began destroying the region. As the human fleet set out, the Xuan Star Civilization’s leader faced the choice of evacuating some of its people or staying to fight.

• Bi Cha arranged for the Xuan Star Civilization’s warships to distribute the energy balls in groups around the territory’s outskirts.
• Wen Zhonghua and Hu Yu learned the energy balls had been placed across the outskirts and summoned Academician Zeng and Academician Liu.
• Academician Zeng explained that micro gravity bombs could detonate the energy balls in sequence and form a spatial vortex, while Hu Yu estimated the human fleet would arrive in a year and a half.
• Humanity’s hidden micro-spaceships released gravity bombs, setting off the energy balls and forming a vortex that destroyed hundreds of planets and killed tens of billions of people on the outskirts.
• The Xuan Star Civilization’s leader confronted Feng Long over the disaster, and Bi Cha suggested asking the Fish Horse Star Civilization for help.

Feng Long killed himself after realizing the spatial attacks had doomed the Xuan Star Civilization, and Bi Cha took command of the evacuation and defense. As the human fleet overwhelmed the Xuan forces, Ji Wa sacrificed his fleet to delay it, but the humans suffered heavy losses when Xuan warships rammed them.

• Feng Long killed himself, and the leader appointed Bi Cha to command the war and rescue civilians.
• Xuan Star Civilization warships rescued more than three hundred billion civilians, while over two hundred billion people remained unsaved.
• Hu Yu watched footage of the disaster and hardened his resolve by remembering how the Xuan Star Civilization had killed Luo Zhigao and more than a hundred million humans.
• Bi Cha learned that the human fleet had arrived and that Ji Wa's forces were losing ships to its speed, armor, and weapons.
• Ji Wa ordered his warships to ram the Grim Slayers, destroying ships from both fleets in the collisions.
• Wen Zhonghua ordered the Grim Slayers to spread out and avoid further fighting as the human fleet lost five million ships.

Humanity’s Grim Slayers pushed into Xuan Star territory, where Bi Cha remained behind to delay them while the Xuan Star fleet sacrificed stars and ships to turn the battle into a deadly spatial chaos. After heavy losses on both sides, Wen Zhonghua ordered the Grim Slayers to regroup and advance under all-direction defense.

• Chen Peng fired curvature energy balls as the Grim Slayers used their speed to bypass Ji Wa’s defenses and enter Xuan Star territory.
• Overwhelmed by his failure, Ji Wa killed himself, and his adjutant followed; Bi Cha stayed behind while two hundred million warships escorted the leader and surviving population away.
• The Grim Slayers’ superior engines, armor, and energy weapons inflicted heavy losses on the larger Xuan Star fleet.
• Bi Cha ordered his ships to charge into the human formation, activate their curvature engines, and destroy twenty nearby stars to intensify the spatial chaos.
• In just over ten days, collisions destroyed more than twenty million Grim Slayers and over forty million Xuan Star warships.
• Wen Zhonghua ordered the Grim Slayers to form groups of ten thousand, defend in every direction, and advance.

The Xuan Star Civilization retreated and prepared a desperate defense, while Bi Cha arranged to use two stars, one an antimatter star, against the advancing human fleet. The Xuan leader proposed peace, but the humans rejected friendship and demanded the civilization’s technology tree or its extermination.

• Bi Cha ordered the Xuan fleet to retreat and asked the leader to authorize a plan that would buy time for the civilization’s people to escape.
• Wen Zhonghua slowed the human advance, sent forces around the vortex, and ordered a vanguard to investigate the Xuan fleet’s withdrawal.
• After repeated Grim Slayer waves were destroyed, Bi Cha sent ships to move two stars toward the humans and positioned his fleet in front of them.
• The Xuan leader asked the humans why they were attacking, and the humans demanded the Xuan Star Civilization’s technology tree.
• The Xuan leader revealed that one star was antimatter and warned that bringing the two stars together would destroy everything nearby.
• The Xuan leader proposed ending the war, but the humans rejected friendship because the Xuan Star Civilization had supported their enemies.

Hu Yu's fleet fought its way through the Xuan Star Civilization's defenses to place a hundred energy-sphere-filled transports among its main fleet, forcing the two sides into direct negotiations. The Xuan Star leader threatened to detonate the antimatter star, but Hu Yu countered that the transports could destroy the Xuan Star Civilization first.

• Hu Yu learned that the pursuing fleet had engaged the enemy and that his fleet had recovered wreckage that could help decipher Xuan Star spatial technology.
• Hu Yu ordered 70 quadrillion Grim Slayers to escort the hundred transports toward the Xuan Star Civilization's main fleet, where its leaders and people were gathered.
• Wen Zhonghua formed the Grim Slayers into a giant metal fish, enabling them to break through the blockades at the cost of 50 million ships.
• The remaining Grim Slayers split into groups around the transports and stopped among the Xuan Star Civilization's galaxy-level warships, while 600 million pursuing enemy ships held back.
• Hu Yu invited the Xuan Star leader to negotiate and warned that the transports could annihilate the Xuan Star Civilization if its antimatter star was detonated.

After three hundred years of war, Hu Yu used a devastating attack to force the Xuan Star Civilization to negotiate, while its leader refused to surrender the tech tree. The leader offered a secret about the Insect Race in exchange for the survival of the remaining three hundred billion people, leaving the fate of Xuan Star and the wider Milky Way unresolved.

• Hu Yu told his people that he would destroy the Xuan Star Civilization if he got the chance, even if it surrendered its tech tree.
• After three hundred years of war, the Xuan Star Civilization had lost nearly 400 million warships and 200 billion people, while humanity had lost over 100 million Grim Slayers but no people.
• The leader of Xuan Star asked to send civilian ships away before handing over the tech tree, but Hu Yu rejected the proposal and destroyed a transport ship packed with energy spheres, devastating nearby Xuan Star fleets.
• The leader of Xuan Star explained to Bi Cha that he had made a compromise with the Fish Horse Star Civilization over its plans involving the Insect Race, and that it had promised no help if Xuan Star faced extinction.
• The leader of Xuan Star told his people to detonate the antimatter star if he could not reach an agreement with humanity, then offered a secret about the Insect Race in exchange for the survival of the remaining three hundred billion people.
• Hu Yu questioned whether the secret was worth that many lives, and the leader of Xuan Star argued that it concerned the survival of every civilization in the Milky Way and that humanity could reverse-engineer Xuan Star ships.

Hu Yu and the academicians agreed to exchange the Xuan Star Civilization’s secret for safe passage and intact warships, but the Fish Horse Star Civilization interrupted before the secret could be revealed. Humanity was left weighing whether to expose the secret and how much protection Mr. Daozi could provide.

• Hu Yu consulted Academician Xiao and Academician Zeng, who advised accepting the Xuan Star Civilization’s offer to learn why the Fish Horse Star Civilization bred the Insect Race.
• Hu Yu agreed to let both fleets leave and demanded ten intact Small Star Sector warships, while the Xuan Star Civilization’s leader agreed to reveal the secret after traveling a thousand light-years away.
• The Xuan Star Civilization handed over ten warships, and both fleets left the vortex; a thousand light-years away, its leader began to explain the secret to the humans.
• Several Fish Horse Star warships suddenly entered the vortex and ordered the humans to leave, preventing the Xuan Star Civilization’s leader from revealing the secret.
• Hu Yu and the academicians discussed whether to broadcast the secret, then considered whether Mr. Daozi had helped deter the Fish Horse Star Civilization from attacking humanity.

Humanity’s fleet diverted to attack the Mu Star Civilization and lure out the Fish Horse Star warships, while the Xuan Star Civilization began assessing how to survive its catastrophic losses. The attack shook the seemingly invulnerable Fish Horse Star warships but failed to damage them, leaving Hu Yu stunned by their power.

• The Grim Slayer fleet withdrew from the spatial vortex, and the Xuan Star leader considered whether to keep cooperating with the Fish Horse Star Civilization as the damaged civilization worked to save its planets.
• The fleet split, sending twenty million Grim Slayers and ninety-nine transport ships toward Mu Star territory while ten thousand ships attacked nearby Insect Race bases.
• The Grim Slayers destroyed fifty million Mu Star warships, prompting a hundred Fish Horse Star warships to arrive.
• Wen Zhonghua ordered the fleet to isolate the Fish Horse Star warships and use transport ships to attack them while the rest of the fleet ravaged Mu Star territory.
• Energy spheres failed to harm the Fish Horse Star warships, and the transport ships’ explosive attack only sent them tumbling hundreds of kilometers.
• Hu Yu realized that even the Xuan Star Civilization had reason to fear the Fish Horse Star Civilization’s immense strength.