Chapter Summaries

Hu Yu’s alliance fleet faced the joint fleet after the Flying Bear Civilization secretly crippled much of the defensive perimeter with corroding devices. The battle turned against the alliance when the Flying Bear Civilization unleashed miniature Space Shockwaves, destroying billions of warships and sending its own fleet tumbling in the resulting explosions.

• Hu Yu withdrew after losing five billion warships, while the Falling Star Civilization vanished from the galaxy and the alliance’s relocated planets remained hidden.
• A Flying Bear Civilization fleet secretly attacked the defensive perimeter, then its Space Shockwave corroded more than a third of the defense system and disabled satellite equipment.
• Hu Yu identified the corrosion as the work of devouring bacteria or nanobots and prepared for battle as the joint fleet breached the perimeter.
• Wen Zhonghua ordered the alliance fleets to engage the Flying Bear Civilization and its allies in a confined region of space.
• The Flying Bear Civilization launched miniature Space Shockwaves that destroyed more than five billion alliance warships, followed by another wave that destroyed over two billion more and sent Flying Bear warships tumbling away.

Hu Yu’s alliance fleet struggled against the Flying Bear Civilization until the Tree Race elders tied down some enemy warships, but the arrival of the Hydra Civilization threatened to end the battle. The Aquila and Xuan Star Civilizations then arrived as reinforcements, and the opposing fleets exchanged threats.

• Hu Yu ordered the Tree Race elders to enter the Flying Bear Civilization’s formation while the alliance fleet opened a path for them.
• The Tree Race elders restrained some Flying Bear Civilization warships, easing the pressure on the alliance fleet as the battle continued.
• A hundred-billion-ship fleet from the Hydra Civilization arrived without warning, and Hu Yu ordered the Tree Race elders to withdraw and prepared to retreat.
• The Aquila Civilization arrived with forty billion warships, followed by the Xuan Star Civilization with sixty billion, and Hu Yu welcomed both fleets as reinforcements.
• Hu Yu placed the Xuan Star and Aquila fleets under his command, while the Hydra Civilization demanded the defense system and another message threatened to destroy the Hydra fleet and race.

Luo Zhigao arrived with a 100-billion-ship fleet, and Hu Yu resumed command of the alliance forces against the Hydra and Flying Bear Civilizations. Both sides threatened the other’s inhabited planets, leaving Hu Yu waiting for the Hydra Civilization to decide whether to withdraw or keep fighting.

• Luo Zhigao reunited with Hu Yu and handed command of his fleet to Hu Yu and Wen Zhonghua.
• Hu Yu offered the Hydra and Flying Bear Civilizations a peaceful withdrawal, but the Hydra revealed another 20-billion-ship fleet near the humans’ inhabited planets.
• Ninety-Seven reported that the enemy had found the hidden human settlement, while Hu Yu refused to abandon its industrial planets or let the old patriarch risk a spatial transfer.
• The Xuan Star Civilization revealed that it had placed an antimatter star near the Hydra Civilization’s hidden settlement and threatened to detonate it if the humans’ planets were attacked.
• The Xuan Star Civilization also threatened the Flying Bear Civilization’s territory, and the Flying Bear Civilization announced its withdrawal.
• Hu Yu demanded that the Flying Bear Civilization leave behind a hundred intact warships, then asked the Hydra Civilization whether it would withdraw or continue fighting.

Yun San ended the battle after confirming that humanity had never possessed the defense system, and Hu Yu secured compensation and salvage from the defeated fleets. As Yun San prepared to leave, he discovered a hidden Mechanical Civilization warship, whose destruction left a threat of a coming “grand gift” from its lord.

• Dongdong defended humanity as the Carina Civilization and Hydra Civilization argued over the invasion, leaving the battlefield in a months-long stalemate.
• Yun San arrived, declared the defense-system rumor an insect-swarm trick, and ordered the Flying Bear Civilization to leave ten warships while the Hydra and Falling Star Civilizations faced possible expulsion from Alliance Space.
• The Flying Bear Civilization handed over ten intact warships, and Hu Yu recalled the 20th Fleet as the invading fleets withdrew from the now-safe inhabited planets.
• Yun San told Hu Yu that the warship debris could provide valuable materials and discussed the limits of humanity’s retaliation.
• As Yun San departed, his warship pulled a hidden Mechanical Civilization warship from the debris, and its mechanical occupant warned that its lord had prepared a grand gift before the ship exploded.

Hu Yu and Luo Zhigao reunited after nearly forty thousand years, and Luo Zhigao learned that Academician Zeng and his team were missing in the Matter River. The Xuan Star Civilization joined the Star Ring Alliance, which celebrated its expanded strength and divided captured warships among its members.

• Yun San warned Hu Yu that the Mechanical Civilization could rebuild quickly and told him to report any mechanical lord rather than attack it.
• Hu Yu and Luo Zhigao embraced with their compatriots after nearly forty thousand years apart.
• Hu Yu told Luo Zhigao that Academician Zeng and his team had entered the Matter River and lost contact.
• Hu Yu explained that the Xuan Star Civilization had become an ally, and Luo Zhigao welcomed its leader and praised the alliance between them.
• The Xuan Star Civilization formally joined the Star Ring Alliance, and Hu Yu distributed ten captured Flying Bear Civilization warships among the alliance's ten technological civilizations.
• Hu Yu introduced Number One and the other six leaders of the Aquila Civilization, who had grown into a small star sector intermediate civilization.

After Luo Zhigao’s fleet stopped at an apparently empty binary star system, invisible microorganisms began devouring people on Earth Three. The survivors began an emergency plan to freeze the creatures, while Luo Zhigao sacrificed his infected arm to stay alive and lead them.

• Luo Zhigao led thirty million warships and Earth Three toward the galactic center, then stopped at an empty binary star system to replenish supplies.
• After the fleet docked by an asteroid, invisible microorganisms attacked Earth Three and began devouring its people.
• Zheng Kaiping identified the creatures and explained that extreme cold could kill them, so Gao Zhengyang proposed slowing them with cold and building hibernation facilities.
• Luo Zhigao discovered that the creatures had eaten the skin from his right arm and plunged it into liquid nitrogen.
• Luo Zhigao broke off his frozen arm, and Gao Zhengyang bandaged him so he could continue leading the fleet.

After Stellar Worms devastated Earth Three, Luo Zhigao and the fleet preserved the survivors’ brains through liquid-nitrogen freezing and exposure to space, then destroyed the creatures and began rebuilding bodies. The chapter ended with Academician Zheng Kaiping’s team cloning cells to reconstruct more than three billion people, a process slowed by the scale of the work and the collapse of much of the fleet’s industry.

• Luo Zhigao ordered the injured to preserve their brains by freezing their bodies, and Li Wenfei helped organize the effort despite his own injuries.
• As hibernation boxes ran short, Zheng Kaiping proposed storing brains in space after removing all water from them and protecting them from radiation.
• Fleet members and medical crews processed the victims, sending billions of heads to cold warships and piling frozen torsos and limbs on Earth Three.
• Luo Zhigao moved the fleet to a surveyed planetary system, later thawed Earth Three after confirming it was free of Stellar Worms, and ordered the remains sent into the star for destruction.
• Zheng Kaiping’s scientists began cloning each victim’s cells from stored gene sequences to rebuild bodies around the preserved brains, but each reconstruction took at least a week while seventy percent of industry lay paralyzed.

After recovering from the Stellar Worm disaster, Luo Zhigao’s fleet discovered that it could not leave the space around the riddled asteroid and began investigating the Lost Zone. Five thousand years later, the fleet had advanced to a Small Star Sector Junior Civilization but remained trapped and missed its scheduled meeting with Hu Yu.

• Humanity revived every sleeping brain and restored the fleet, though more than a billion people had been devoured by the Stellar Worms.
• Academician Gao Zhengyang and Academician Zheng Kaiping traced the Stellar Worms to the riddled asteroid and studied how they survived and reproduced.
• After replenishing its supplies, Luo Zhigao led the fleet onward, but repeated journeys brought it back to the same binary star system.
• Gao Zhengyang mapped the Lost Zone and conducted extensive tests, finding that ships traveling beyond ten light-years returned near the binary stars.
• Five thousand years passed as the fleet developed into a Small Star Sector Junior Civilization, but Luo Zhigao still could not reach Hu Yu for their scheduled meeting.

After tens of thousands of years trapped in a warped, increasingly hot space, Gao Zhengyang led the fleet in detonating four stars to open a passage. The fleet escaped through the shrinking void with no losses.

• Gao Zhengyang told Luo Zhigao that space was looping through the fourth dimension and that the fleet’s only chance was to detonate four stars at their convergence point.
• As the trapped space grew denser and hotter, Gao Zhengyang arranged the four stars in a square while the fleet abandoned the planets and evacuated their supplies.
• The four stars collided and exploded, sending their energy into the space between them and creating a vast, calm void.
• Gao Zhengyang recognized the void as a passage and urged the fleet to race through before it closed.
• Luo Zhigao counted the ships and civilians after the last warship escaped, confirming there were no losses.

The fleet emerged into a dark region that Gao Zhengyang identified as the interior of a rapidly rotating black hole. Luo Zhigao and Li Wenfei prepared to calm the fleet while Gao Zhengyang studied how they could escape, with supplies limited to about two thousand years.

• Li Wenfei and Luo Zhigao saw that the fleet was surrounded by darkness and could not receive signals from outside.
• Gao Zhengyang concluded that the fleet had entered a Kerr or Kerr-Newman black hole and ordered the warships to remain still.
• Gao Zhengyang explained that the fleet might be in normal space near a ring singularity, though space could be compressed and the passage of time remained uncertain.
• Luo Zhigao asked how the fleet had entered the black hole and whether it could escape, but Gao Zhengyang admitted he did not yet know how to get out.
• Luo Zhigao told Li Wenfei to reassure the people aboard the warships, and he warned Gao Zhengyang that food and energy would last at most two thousand years.

Trapped in the black hole with dwindling supplies, Gao Zhengyang and the fleet searched for a way out and considered using the consciousness field to investigate the closed spacetime loop. Gao revealed that their only chance might be to send a person into the loop and detect the person's consciousness field.

• Gao Zhengyang surveyed the fleet's sealed region and found it spanned five million kilometers, with a closed spacetime loop surrounding it.
• Gao and the academicians failed to find a way through the loop, while the fleet's energy and supplies continued to dwindle.
• Jiang Moyan warned Gao that Luo Zhigao could not hold out much longer, and Gao proposed using the consciousness field to gather information beyond the loop.
• Gao explained that data from the black hole's inner regions might let the fleet open a spacetime passage and create a new timeline by returning to the past.
• Gao told Jiang that Zheng Kaiping's proposed method was to send someone into the closed spacetime loop, where their consciousness field might survive even as their vital signs ceased.

The fleet tested its members for the Consciousness Field strength needed to enter a black hole’s closed timelike curve, but everyone failed until injured Captain Xie Jinqiao volunteered. Xie’s result exceeded the required threshold, leaving him as a possible candidate for the dangerous mission.

• Gao Zhengyang told Luo Zhigao about the Consciousness Field test, and Luo decided to proceed because the fleet had fewer than two hundred years of energy left.
• Luo Zhigao invited volunteers to take the test, then narrowed eligibility to people with relevant knowledge after too many applied.
• Luo and other fleet leaders tested negative, and the fleet-wide search found no one who met the threshold.
• Xie Jinqiao left the hospital despite his recent heart reconstruction and asked to be tested.
• Xie’s helmet repeatedly showed green, and Zheng Kaiping confirmed that his Consciousness Field strength was at least eighty, well above the passing score of sixty.

Xie Jinqiao sacrificed himself by entering the Closed Spacetime Curve, where his Consciousness Field survived and began sending information to the fleet. After more than a hundred years for the fleet and billions of years for Xie Jinqiao, he warned them that he had avoided a strange ring that might be their only hope of escape.

• Xie Jinqiao volunteered to enter the Closed Spacetime Curve, and Luo Zhigao sent him off in a shuttle.
• After thirty days without news, Zheng Kaiping detected Xie Jinqiao's message saying he was alive in a strange place.
• Luo Zhigao learned that Xie Jinqiao's Consciousness Field could not leave the curve without dissipating, and ordered Zheng Kaiping to find a way to rescue him.
• Xie Jinqiao sent data about the curve's strange spatial properties, then later reported that he had seen time and might know a way to free the fleet.
• After another hundred years, Xie Jinqiao sent a long message saying billions of years had passed for him and that he had avoided a strange ring so the fleet would retain its last hope.

Xie Jinqiao used his weakened consciousness field to move the fleet out of the black hole, leaving himself behind. The survivors found themselves in a separate timeline, and Gao Zhengyang and Jiang Moyan began investigating how to rejoin the greater universe’s timeline.

• Luo Zhigao ordered the fleet reduced to one million warships and positioned near the closed spacetime curve while they waited for Xie Jinqiao.
• Xie Jinqiao sent a farewell message and spread his consciousness field across the fleet, transporting everyone out of the black hole.
• Luo Zhigao and Gao Zhengyang discussed the possibility of returning someday to rescue Xie Jinqiao, then discovered the fleet was in a different timeline from the greater universe.
• Gao Zhengyang went to the laboratory, where Jiang Moyan proposed synchronizing the fleet’s time with the greater universe to rejoin its timeline.

Luo Zhigao explained how his fleet spent fifty thousand years on a meaningless timeline, built a hundred billion ships, and returned to the universe through a black hole. After reuniting with Hu Yu, he learned the fleet had arrived amid a conflict over the Matter River’s defense system and prepared to continue the leader’s mission.

• Luo Zhigao’s fleet found the galaxy empty, settled on a planet, and expanded through destructive mining for fifty thousand years.
• Academician Gao Zhengyang and Academician Jiang Moyan devised a way for the fleet to return to the normal timeline through a black hole’s infinite redshift surface.
• Luo Zhigao’s fleet emerged from the black hole and received a message claiming humanity had obtained the Matter River’s defense system, along with coordinates that likely led to Hu Yu.
• Luo Zhigao discovered the Hydra Civilization’s fleet near the coordinates, concealed his own fleet, and sent ships to investigate.
• Luo Zhigao told Hu Yu and the others how his fleet had been trapped on the meaningless timeline and returned through the black hole.
• Hu Yu and Luo Zhigao agreed to share their spatial information and technology, unite against humanity’s enemies, and continue the leader’s mission.

Luo Zhigao’s fleet briefly reunited with Hu Yu’s, but the two fleets separated again when their timelines diverged. Hu Yu focused on rebuilding the alliance and searching for the Mechanical Civilization while waiting for the academicians trapped in the Matter River, where a giant glowing object appeared before their flagship.

• Qin Yin and Hu Yu realized Luo Zhigao’s fleet was fading as it began separating from the greater universe’s timeline, and Luo Zhigao sent them a brief burst of technology before vanishing.
• Luo Zhigao accepted that his fleet was stranded in a meaningless timeline and gave the Academy of Sciences ten years off while they explored the Milky Way.
• Hu Yu stayed near the alliance’s exposed territory, abandoned plans to rebuild its defenses, and deployed Wriggler miniature spacecraft to search for the Mechanical Civilization.
• Hu Yu distributed the battle wreckage among small star sector civilizations as the alliance began a major construction effort.
• More than fifty thousand Reapers surrounded the academicians’ flagship inside the Matter River as a gigantic glowing object appeared ahead of them.

After more than a hundred thousand years lost in the Mirror Sub-Universe, Human Civilization encountered a luminous sphere that called itself Zu and revealed there was no defense system. Zu explained that the supposed system was a deception intended to draw it out, then began answering questions about the forces behind the scheme and the universe’s origins.

• The fleet detected a huge luminous sphere, and Chen Peng and Li Zhixiong prepared the warships to fire.
• The sphere engulfed the fleet in white light, withstanding the Reapers’ barrage and speaking directly into everyone’s minds.
• Zu asked who had sent the fleet, and Academician Zeng learned that the promised defense system did not exist.
• Zu said it would send the fleet back and explained that the false information was meant to confirm its existence.
• Zu revealed that a force beyond a Great Star Region Civilization had entered the Mirror Sub-Universe and that the fleet’s true purpose had been to find it.
• Zu described the Mirror Universe as a space that split from the greater universe and reached heat death.

Zu explained that he came from the greater universe and offered the humans a stabilized region where they could study the connection between the universes. After fifty thousand years of research, Academician Li Youwei discovered how to combine the basic energies of the Fourth Reversed State.

• Zu told the humans that he had come from the greater universe, wanted to return, and hoped they would help him take revenge on a powerful enemy.
• Zu expanded the ball of light around the fleet, then explained the Matter River, the cone-shaped region he had stabilized, and the danger of leaving without his help.
• Zu warned the humans to be cautious of the first person who asked about him, then departed and left them to explore the region.
• The academicians chose to study in the cone-shaped space, while Li Zhixiong and Chen Peng stayed near the greater universe to experience its slower time flow.
• Fifty thousand years passed at the narrowest part of the region, and Academician Li Youwei announced that he had found how to combine the basic energies of the Fourth Reversed State.

Academician Li Youwei completed the Fourth Reversed State, a powerful defensive material, while the academicians discussed its military use and energy costs. Academician Liu Bo then identified the Universe Membrane and a possible spatial-structure anomaly as clues to their lost contact, and chose to investigate alone.

• Academician Li Youwei successfully created the Fourth Reversed State and estimated that its defense rivaled an early-stage Great Star Region Civilization.
• Academician Liu Bo calculated that producing enough Fourth Reversed State armor would consume vast amounts of matter, and Li Youwei described a system for collecting Basic Energy from the universe.
• Academician Zeng urged Li Youwei to pause his experimental work and help the others reason through their investigation.
• Academician Zeng proposed that the junction between the two universes, which he called the Universe Membrane, might hold the clue they sought.
• Academician Zhou Xiaohua suggested that the inability to enter from the other side could result from a problem with the spatial structure, and Academician Zeng agreed.
• Academician Liu Bo ordered the others to return to the general and the people while he stayed behind to investigate the spatial anomaly.

The fleet returned from the mirror universe to the greater universe, leaving Academician Liu Bo, General Chen Peng, and volunteers behind to continue studying the cosmic membrane. After the fleet sent word of its return, Human Civilization and the Carina Civilization began opening a four-dimensional passage for the Reception Plan.

• Academician Zeng ordered Academician Liu Bo to remain behind with General Chen Peng and several dozen logistics personnel while the rest returned to the fleet.
• The fleet passed through the cosmic membrane into the Matter River and found no sign of Li Shun or the bugs.
• Li Zhixiong navigated the fleet toward the original entrance, where it retrieved a functioning four-dimensional communications device and sent a message to the greater universe.
• Old Hu received the signal and arranged to activate the reception system.
• Wen Zhonghua and Dongdong coordinated the Reception Plan as Reversed State instruments around more than two hundred stars began converting their energy into the Third Reversed State.