Chapter 832: Everything Had Disappeared |
What appeared before Xiao Yu was a vast and mysterious scroll of starry sky. There were one hundred billion stars here, along with countless planets, comets, asteroids, shattered rocks, and interstellar dust gathered here. It was quiet and profound. A vast galaxy was silently revolving here. Over these several million years of history, countless changes of time, joys and sorrows, separations and reunions, events either magnificent or lingering had taken place within this vast galaxy, yet now, every trace of those events had been erased.
Xiao Yu was very familiar with this place, because he had lived here for more than one hundred thousand years. But Xiao Yu also felt that this place was very unfamiliar. Everything here was different from what it had been in his memory. At this distance, through precise long-range measuring instruments, Xiao Yu could clearly see the Sun, which should long since have ceased to exist, could see the Crab Nebula supernova, which should long since have exploded, could see Tianyuan IV, which should long since have been destroyed, and many other things that should not have existed.
With a trace of confusion, Xiao Yu entered the Milky Way and sent out a message by means of spatial broadcast.
“Divine Ark Civilization, this is Xiao Yu. Because I detected that some unusual things have happened within the Milky Way, I have returned here from the distant Andromeda Galaxy. Can you receive this message? If you can, then please respond to me. I very much hope to hear your voices.”
Any somewhat advanced civilization within the Milky Way could receive this message, but because Xiao Yu had adopted a certain encryption method in this message, Xiao Yu believed that only the Divine Ark Civilization would be able to decrypt it and ultimately obtain the information carried in this spatial broadcast.
Xiao Yu very much hoped to receive a response from the Divine Ark Civilization. Even if he could not obtain any intelligence from the Divine Ark Civilization regarding these strange changes, it would still be enough if Xiao Yu could simply know that the Divine Ark Civilization still existed safely. But after waiting several days, Xiao Yu finally gave up on that thought.
The deep universe and the galaxy still maintained their quiet appearance. No reply was received by Xiao Yu.
Xiao Yu could be certain that if the Divine Ark Civilization still existed, then the Divine Ark Civilization would definitely be able to receive the message he had sent out. And if the Divine Ark Civilization could receive this information, they would have no reason not to respond to him. Since he could not receive any reply, that could prove only one thing. The Divine Ark Civilization was not currently within the Milky Way.
Then where had the Divine Ark Civilization gone? Xiao Yu did not know. Had the Divine Ark Civilization already been destroyed? Xiao Yu still did not know. The Divine Ark Civilization’s fate was unknown, then what about Zhang Shengya? And the Pegasus Civilization, which had been in the Small Magellanic Cloud when he left? Xiao Yu likewise did not know. Xiao Yu knew nothing at all.
After the Divine Ark Civilization consistently failed to respond, Xiao Yu tried sending a message to the Sweepers Civilization.
But Xiao Yu was disappointed again. He still received no reply. After that, Xiao Yu sent messages in turn to the Guardian Civilization, Trolor Civilization, Alien Beast Taihao, Technology Taihao, Specter Taihao, the Python Alien Beast, and every other existence whose name he knew. But without exception, Xiao Yu did not receive a single response.
At this moment, Xiao Yu was like a traveler returning home after many years away. Yet when this traveler once again returned to his hometown, what greeted him was not smiling fellow villagers, but ruined houses and abandoned fields. This place was empty and deserted, with no sign of life. Those stars and planets without life knew what had happened here. But they could not tell Xiao Yu what they had seen, and Xiao Yu had no way to obtain from them what he wanted.
With a slight sigh, Xiao Yu began preparing to carry out a comprehensive galactic scan. Through this method of detection, Xiao Yu would be able to determine whether, at this moment, there were any spaceships in the Milky Way conducting curvature flight above a certain speed. Xiao Yu needed to find some somewhat advanced technological civilization, hoping to obtain some information about the Milky Way from them.
This detection method was extremely troublesome, and for it Xiao Yu spent more than a full year preparing. And during this one year, Xiao Yu had already guided his fleet forward for more than one thousand light years. Along this route, Xiao Yu deployed enough instruments. Space is interconnected and mutually influential. By measuring the fluctuations of space within this range, Xiao Yu could grasp the distortion state of the entire galaxy.
With a trace of unease, Xiao Yu activated these instruments. Immediately, a vast data stream poured into Xiao Yu’s mind, and Xiao Yu employed his immense computational power to process the data one by one.
To obtain an accurate result, it would be necessary to continuously collect this information for at least three days. Three days later, the final monitoring result appeared in Xiao Yu’s mind. This result caused Xiao Yu’s heart to sink once again.
The final result was zero. The range Xiao Yu had set for this monitoring was that any curvature flight speed above ten times the speed of light would be observed by him. But even with the condition relaxed to such an extent, the final conclusion Xiao Yu reached was still zero. This meant that during these three days, within the entire Milky Way, not a single spaceship had been conducting curvature flight at above ten times the speed of light. And one thing was obvious, for any normal technological Level 4 Civilization, whether in wartime or peacetime, even if not for military needs but merely for ordinary civilian needs, they would absolutely have spaceships traveling in curvature flight. Just as in Earth’s era, even when no fighter jets were flying, civilian airliners were still flying in the sky.
But the data was entirely zero. This basically meant that at this moment, no Level 4 or above civilization existed within the Milky Way. This was a terrifying result. In fact, Xiao Yu believed the actual situation was likely even more terrifying than that. It was very possible that not only Level 4 or above civilizations, but throughout the entire Milky Way, there might not even be Level 3 civilizations, Level 2 civilizations, or even Level 1 civilizations anymore.
“Where have all the intelligent beings gone?” Xiao Yu thought, his heart turning cold.
Everything Xiao Yu saw and everything he detected was telling him clearly and unmistakably that the Milky Way’s time had indeed been reversed. This time was different from the previous one. In the last incident, those traps laid by Taihao Civilization could not withstand scrutiny at all, but this time, no matter how Xiao Yu tried, he could not find even the slightest clue.
“Let’s go to the Galactic Center. The supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center may perhaps tell me something about what exactly happened here…” Xiao Yu thought silently, changed his course once more, and sailed toward the Galactic Center. At the same time, Xiao Yu also launched some probes toward the location of the Sun, the location of Tianyuan IV, the former Crab Nebula, the Aquila Nebula, and other such locations.
Xiao Yu’s current scientific theory told him that black holes were the most difficult things to alter. Therefore, by observing certain data of the black hole at the Galactic Center and comparing it with his previous data, he might perhaps find some clues with which to study exactly what had happened in the Milky Way.
While wandering forward at will through the boundless galaxy, Xiao Yu was also striving to observe every patch of starry sky he passed, observing every celestial body he had recorded. Some celestial bodies that originally should not have existed had appeared, such as that star in the Crab Nebula. The supernova explosion of this star had been observed on Earth during the Song Dynasty. Now, after time had seemingly been reversed, it had not yet exploded. It maintained its state in the final years of a star and was shedding a huge amount of matter.
Some stars that should have existed had not yet appeared at this moment. Xiao Yu had once observed a very young new star, but at this moment, it was still in the protostar stage. Great clouds of interstellar dust were falling onto it like raindrops, increasing its mass, and around it, some protoplanets were in the process of forming…
The fleet containing Xiao Yu’s main body had already arrived at the Galactic Center. At this time, however, the probes had not yet reached the Sun’s location. Because the Sun was currently on the other side of the galaxy, reaching it required a longer journey than reaching the Galactic Center.
Throughout this process, Xiao Yu did not discover any creations of technological civilizations, did not receive any information from any technological civilization, and did not see any sign of any technological civilization existing.
Of course there would not be any traces here at the Galactic Center from the previous great battle among many powerful existences. After arriving at the Galactic Center, Xiao Yu carried out a detailed observation of the Central Black Hole of the Milky Way, analyzing it from every aspect, including mass, accretion disk, angular momentum, gravity, charge, and the celestial bodies revolving around it. The final conclusion disappointed Xiao Yu once again. This black hole was completely and utterly in the state it had been two million five hundred thousand years ago, and this was fully consistent with the data Xiao Yu had extrapolated backward from previously known data. This meant that Xiao Yu’s hope of finding clues from the black hole at the Galactic Center had failed.
“What exactly happened here? Where did the Divine Ark Civilization go? Where did Zhang Shengya go?” Xiao Yu thought in a dazed and dispirited manner. “What happened? What happened exactly?”
It was at this moment that Xiao Yu once again discovered something that shocked him beyond measure.
From a specific position in the Andromeda Galaxy, Xiao Yu had observed a gamma-ray burst. According to Xiao Yu’s records, that gamma-ray burst at that location should have occurred five million years ago.