Chapter 879: Total Defeat |
Fifty million stars. This number looked large, but scattered across this vast expanse of space, it seemed extremely sparse. One had to know that the Maffei One Galaxy was a large galaxy, and within the entire Maffei One Galaxy Group, it held a dominant position. Yet its current scale was not even comparable to a somewhat sizable satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
Even these final fifty million stars were still within Xiao Yu’s destruction targets.
The virtual life civilization finally became aware of this. When the stars stored within their rear construction base had fallen to only five remaining, they finally made a move.
The virtual life civilization dispatched a large number of transport fleets and began heading toward these remaining fifty million stars, attempting to transport back and stockpile some more before these stars were all destroyed by Xiao Yu.
But how much use this behavior would actually have was highly questionable. Because one obvious fact lay here, destruction was always easier than protection. To protect one star might require at least tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of ships, while to destroy one star, a single Stellar Terminator was enough.
Xiao Yu was speeding up the rate at which he destroyed stars. At the same time, he did not relax his vigilance toward the virtual life’s actions. Under Xiao Yu’s command, large numbers of fleets also began to set out, once again intensifying the effort to intercept the virtual life civilization’s transport of stars.
Within this chaotic, declining galaxy on the verge of death, the fires of war once again blazed fiercely. In the empty reaches of space, around stars, amidst the ashes of exploded stars scattered everywhere, one battle of interception and counter-interception after another broke out.
Whether he could block the virtual life civilization’s efforts to stockpile materials was tied to whether Xiao Yu’s subsequent strategy could succeed. Therefore, Xiao Yu devoted enormous attention to this matter. In space, Xiao Yu carried out interception operations that could almost be described as desperate combat.
But the way events developed once again exceeded Xiao Yu’s expectations. Under Xiao Yu’s somewhat astonished gaze, the virtual life civilization completely gave up its efforts to transport stars. It seemed they had already abandoned the idea of collecting materials by moving stars. Instead, they actually sent forces to the ruins left behind by those exploded stars and began constructing enormous space bases there. As the space bases were completed, many strangely shaped ships appeared there.
But there were simply too many of these space bases blooming everywhere. In the initial stage, each space base was merely a small detachment. Carrying some initial materials and equipment, they set out into space, arrived at different star explosion ruins, and began their subsequent construction. Where did their construction materials come from?
Xiao Yu saw in astonishment that after arriving at the ruins of exploded stars, the first thing they did was collect the dust scattered into space by the stellar explosions. This dust was rich in all sorts of elements. Even if hydrogen made up the majority, once hydrogen underwent fusion, would it not form other elements?
These small detachments used this stellar dust as raw material and rapidly expanded themselves. Once they had gained a slight material foundation, they would build large numbers of warships to protect themselves. After they possessed a certain defensive capability, they would once again begin expanding production capacity and continue manufacturing even more warships…
These small bases scattered throughout space, if left undisturbed, would eventually grow into enormous fleets. Xiao Yu knew that for them, problems of computational power and manpower were not problems at all. Once it possessed sufficient matter, Virtual Life Number One would build large numbers of computers there, then replicate itself once more. Replicates would then reside within these computers and use the computational power of those computers to direct the next stage of construction…
For Virtual Life Number One, these construction methods that Xiao Yu did not even dare imagine were merely a matter of manufacturing large numbers of computers and then replicating itself once. Manufacturing large numbers of computers was nothing. Replicating itself was even less of an issue.
In the initial stage, the resources they required were extremely, extremely small, merely a small fleet carrying primitive materials and equipment. Once launched into space, this small fleet would rapidly grow, and in the end bear abundant fruit.
Faced with such a scene, all Xiao Yu could do was smile bitterly. Because the resources required were so few, Virtual Life Number One could manufacture such small fleets in large numbers or even enormous numbers, to the point where Xiao Yu simply had no way to intercept or block them. Even if only one out of every hundred such small fleets ultimately survived, that single small fleet, within at most half a year, would possess enough ability to protect itself, and within at most twenty years, would develop into a massive fleet with at least one hundred million warships!
If there were one million such fleets, and even if only ten thousand of them ultimately survived, then after twenty years of development, those ten thousand fleets would become one trillion warships. And besides, how could the number of fleets of this type launched by the virtual life civilization be as little as just one million?
Xiao Yu knew that the last path by which he could defeat the virtual life civilization had also been sealed off. The situation he had painstakingly created was dissolved by the virtual life civilization with such casual ease. Under such circumstances, how could he still talk about defeating the virtual life civilization through material reserves? Since the virtual life could use this method, then the amount of matter it could mobilize far exceeded his own. Competing with it in stockpiled materials? There was no suicidal method quite like that.
“From the beginning of this war, I have been in a passive position all along.” Xiao Yu sighed inwardly. “The disparity in computational power has placed me at an absolute disadvantage in both warfare and logistical construction. Even the small advantages I luckily gained in the early stage were erased in an instant. Most likely, when I manufactured the Stellar Terminators and launched the fleet to destroy stars on a large scale, Virtual Life Number One was secretly laughing at me. Its deliberate entanglement with me over the transport of stars was only to waste my time… It was not that it did not know the importance of matter. It simply already had a way to solve the current problem…”
“And I foolishly thought this was a method that could drive it into a dead end…” Xiao Yu shook his head gloomily in his heart, filled with a sense of frustration. After the virtual life civilization brought out the method of collecting stellar ruins to manufacture warships, Xiao Yu could more or less be considered completely defeated. Before the two sides had even formally started fighting, Xiao Yu already knew that he had failed.
“My abilities are insufficient. This is not something I can handle.” Xiao Yu thought somewhat gloomily, and made up his mind. “Whoever wants to deal with it can deal with it. I am only a Level 7 Civilization. I do not have the ability to handle it. If I flee now, it is still not too late. While those seeds it has scattered out have not yet blossomed and borne fruit, it does not yet hold an overwhelming advantage over me.”
“Architectural Civilization, follow me and leave this galaxy together. All of our previous efforts have been wasted.” Xiao Yu said. “The virtual life civilization’s abilities exceed my imagination. I truly do not have the ability to deal with it. Right now, only by fleeing do we still have a sliver of hope.”
“What new intelligence have you obtained?” the Architectural Civilization asked.
“I always thought my arrangements could play it in the palm of my hand, but only now do I realize that I am the fool being played in the palm of its hand.” Xiao Yu said with deep bitterness. “Do not ask. Do not ask anything. Make preparations. Within this month, we must leave this place. Right now, it probably still does not have the ability to stop us from escaping.”
“In this universe, all civilizations of the computational direction believe that the virtual lives they create will never escape their control. Every one of those civilizations believes itself special, believes its own preventive methods are absolutely foolproof, yet the result is that every virtual life created by computational civilizations has rebelled against its Main Civilization. Nothing illustrates being blinded by one’s own position better than this. Is that not rather ironic?” the Architectural Civilization said to Xiao Yu with some bitterness. “It seems every one of us underestimated it.”
“You have encountered other Level 7 Civilizations of the computational direction and virtual life civilizations before? Do they still exist in this universe? If they have already perished, how did they die?” Xiao Yu asked.
“We have not encountered other virtual life civilizations.” the Architectural Civilization said. “However, through exchanges with other civilizations, we obtained this intelligence. They told us that in the depths of this universe, there once existed a virtual life civilization that had developed to the level of a Level 8 Civilization. In the end, no one knows whether the Guardian of the Way acted or the Rebel Alliance acted, but in any case, the entire galaxy group where that virtual life existed was completely destroyed, and several hundred galaxies became funeral offerings for that virtual life civilization.”
This news caused Xiao Yu to fall silent once again. After a long while, Xiao Yu clenched his teeth and said, “Go, go, leave now. Stop wasting so much time on preparations. Run as fast as we can. We are leaving this galaxy…”