Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 378 No, that's not how it is!

To date, the Purple Moon spaceship carrying our fellow human beings has been flying alone in space for over 2000 years. At 90% of the speed of light, it has probably traveled about 2000 light-years.

In the previous phase, after narrowly escaping the ambush of the Destroyer civilization, he had been flying in the direction that spaceship was heading for about 1000 years. Even so, the distance between him and that spaceship at this moment was still about 1100 light-years.

Even if I flew at full speed, it would take me about 600 years to catch up.

But... even if it takes 6000 years, Li Qingsong will not give up.

Previously, due to insufficient technology, their speed could not reach 90% of the speed of light, making it impossible to catch up. Now, having finally broken through to become a gravitational civilization and mastered faster-than-light travel technology, Li Qingsong will definitely continue to pursue them no matter how difficult or dangerous the obstacles ahead.

Enveloped in this boundless darkness, the fleet advanced rapidly while maintaining its daily scientific research missions.

Time flies, and more than 600 years have passed quietly.

Li Qingsong traversed another 1000 light-years.

With the warp drive over, the fleet returned to normal navigation.

With a shift in light and shadow, the boundless darkness that had filled his vision quietly dissipated, and countless stars reappeared in Li Qingsong's field of vision, even more densely packed than before.

Here, being closer to the galactic center, the density of stars increases again.

Surrounded by countless stars, looking at the ten thousand giant space carriers that were now clean and tidy, their total mass reduced from a peak of 1 billion tons to only about 100 million tons, Li Qingsong sighed softly.

Supplies are almost exhausted, with only a few reserves remaining on the heavy transport ships, but these won't last much longer. It's now imperative to resupply within the star system.

Changing course, Li Qingsong's massive fleet began to slow down towards a star system only 1.6 light-years ahead, and then anchored in the star system, where a massive construction project immediately began.

This time, Li Qingsong not only needs to resupply here and mine at least 100 trillion tons of various materials to fill all those space carriers, he also needs to do something else.

According to the intelligence obtained from the Purple Moon Civilization, our fleet is now positioned in front of that human spaceship.

However, over thousands of years and thousands of light-years of travel, due to the influence of natural factors such as interstellar radiation and dust impacts, the human spaceship, which was always in a state of inertial travel, could not always maintain a straight line and would inevitably have errors.

It is not currently on its planned flight path. According to Li Qingsong's estimate, based on the original flight path, its deviation from its current location would be approximately ±4 light-years.

This is precisely why Li Qingsong, despite chasing after and even surpassing that spaceship, has been unable to find it.

A circle with a radius of 4 light-years has an area of ​​approximately 1125 trillion trillion square kilometers. And that spaceship could potentially pass through any point within such a vast area over the next 20-40 years.

To intercept the spaceship, Li Qingsong must deploy a sufficient number of detectors across this vast area. Furthermore, this massive interception network must be extremely tight, leaving no gaps whatsoever.

Otherwise, that spaceship might slip through the net and pass by where Li Qingsong couldn't see it.

The most advanced detector that Li Qingsong can currently manufacture, combined with the size, albedo, and other characteristics of that human spaceship, can detect it with approximately a 90% probability within a range of 1000 million kilometers.

If the distance is shortened to 700 million kilometers, the detection probability will increase to 100%.

However, to prevent accidents, Li Qingsong specified a detection cross-sectional area of ​​only 600 million kilometers for each detector.

Thus, a single detector could cover an area of ​​approximately 28.27 trillion square kilometers. To cover an area with a radius of 4 light-years, Li Qingsong would need to build a staggering 40 trillion such detectors!
Assuming a detector weighs 2 tons, and adding an average of 1 ton of auxiliary equipment such as communication, power supply, and maintenance devices, the total mass of a detector would be 3 tons. Therefore, the total mass of the detectors that Li Qingsong needs to build would reach 120 trillion tons!
Compared to the approximately 140 trillion tons of supplies carried by Li Qingsong's fleet when it set sail, this number does not seem very large.

The problem is that the detector is not a raw material, nor is it a supply like gold, silver, copper, iron, water, carbon dioxide, methane, or ethane; rather, it is a relatively high-end industrial product.

Producing this industrial product requires not only a large amount of raw materials, but also specialized factories.

"120 trillion tons, 40 trillion detectors... No problem, build them!"

At this moment, a total of 80 billion engineers, scientists, technicians, and logistics personnel from among the 150 billion intelligent beings, plus Li Qingsong's 100 billion clones, were mobilized. This massive engineering force, unimaginable to ordinary civilizations, was poured onto the six large planets in this star system.

Factories sprang up everywhere, in the vast expanse of space, in planetary orbits, on the surface of the earth, and underground—the list goes on and on.

Space elevators stretched from the Earth's surface into space, and transport ships shuttled back and forth, creating a bustling scene.

At present, apart from necessary replenishment, Li Qingsong has invested all the basic materials he has mined into the detector production plant.

Within just ten years, Li Qingsong completed the construction of a factory for 10 detectors. And this was only the final assembly plant.

Upstream from it are numerous component factories, producing casings, cables, communication modules, thrusters, optical components, computing chips, and even further upstream, metallurgy, forging, mining, and so on.

There are even more of these factories, totaling more than 1000 million!

At this moment, parts from these numerous upstream factories flooded into these final assembly plants like a tidal wave and entered the production line.

Like flowing water, the probes, each weighing 2 tons, flowed out continuously, with one coming off the production line every 1.5 minutes on average. They were then quickly packed into boxes and transported away via the space elevator.

One detector every 1.5 minutes is the output of one production line. Each factory has an average of 50 to 200 production lines. This means that each factory can produce an average of 5 to 20 detectors per day. With 10 factories combined, that's an average of about 110 billion detectors per day!

These numerous probes, carrying Li Qingsong's hopes, were then orderly transported to space aboard heavy transport ships, starting from the standard route of the human spaceship in the calculation, and spreading outwards with a radius of 4 light-years.

A vast net was quietly spread out in the boundless space. Li Qingsong himself, aboard a habitation spaceship, arrived at the center under the escort of numerous warships.

Using long-range communication with a communication range of up to 3 light-years as the axis, Li Qingsong can monitor all detectors within a 3-light-year radius in real time.

As for the outermost detector, which is one light-year away, it can only be controlled by the Primordial AI. This will inevitably lead to some decrease in efficiency, but it will still be within an acceptable range.

At this moment, there are at least three years until the arrival of that human spaceship. Li Qingsong has not been idle during this waiting period.

Early in the process of setting up this detection network, Li Qingsong had already thought that in addition to capturing and locating the human spaceship, this network could also be used for other purposes.

Light-year-scale studies include those on the flow of interstellar matter, microgravitational perturbations in interstellar space, detection of spatial expansion coefficients at the light-year scale, and interstellar high-energy radiation.

These projects are all extremely important scientific research topics, and they have extremely demanding research environments, making them simply beyond the capabilities of ordinary civilizations. Even if an ordinary civilization could deploy trillions of detectors spanning light-years, it would undoubtedly take an immense amount of time.

Now is the perfect opportunity to capture a human spaceship and advance this research.

While conducting research and reaping numerous scientific and technological achievements, Li Qingsong waited patiently.

Time slipped away bit by bit. Gradually, three years passed, then five years, until the sixteenth year after the giant detection network was completed. Suddenly, Li Qingsong received a slightly unusual signal.

A macroscopic substance passed through its own giant detection net at an extremely high speed, reaching 88.52% of the speed of light.

Macroscopic matter?

The space in which this giant detection net is located is interstellar space, where there is no natural macroscopic matter.

That being the case...

Li Qingsong's heart instantly burned with excitement. Across a distance of 2.6 light-years, Li Qingsong directly controlled several of the nearest warships and research vessels using long-range communication, rapidly accelerating them in that direction.

Li Qingsong accelerated until he reached the same speed as the macroscopic matter, and was in a relatively stationary state, before initiating faster-than-light travel to bridge the distance between them.

After a flash of light and shadow, Li Qingsong's tracking spaceship instantly appeared less than 10,000 kilometers away from that macroscopic matter.

At this distance, even with only optical equipment, one can clearly see the shape of that macroscopic matter.

That's a spaceship.

A spaceship perfectly in line with the design style of the Purple Moon civilization. And... it's a habitable spaceship.

Li Qingsong felt a surge of excitement. But this excitement lasted only a moment, followed by an overwhelming chill.

At this moment, Li Qingsong seemed to freeze, a crazy voice in his mind kept shouting "No, no, it's not like that, it's not like that," but his body couldn't move at all.

Boundless pain arose from his limbs and bones, then slowly spread into Li Qingsong's heart, causing it to ache constantly.

Driven by inertia, the tracking spaceship steadily approached the Purple Moon Civilization spaceship. When the distance shrank to only a few hundred meters, a scene clearly visible to the naked eye was transmitted into Li Qingsong's mind.

He saw that the entire spaceship had a fluffy feel that was definitely not of a metal object, as if dense rust had grown on a sheet of iron.

Li Qingsong was very familiar with this kind of rust.

Back when the ship was still in a low-energy phase, only able to travel at speeds below 10% of the speed of light, and without an energy shield to protect against dust impacts and high-energy radiation, Li Qingsong's ship also underwent such changes.

This is clearly a case of severe damage to the spacecraft's materials after prolonged exposure to interstellar dust and high-energy particle radiation!

but……

This is clearly a creation of a powerful, peak-level civilization! Where did the energy shield go?
After observing for a while, Li Qingsong saw a large hole on the port side of the spaceship.

Judging from its appearance, the large hole was not caused by an external impact, but rather appears to be the result of some kind of internal explosion. As for the exact time, it's impossible to determine precisely, but it's at least 2000 years ago.

By then, the spaceship must have been at sea for hundreds of years.

Perhaps... at that time, the spaceship malfunctioned due to some internal or external influences, causing an explosion and leading to the collapse of its protection system.

After that, it was subjected to high-energy radiation and particle bombardment at speeds of over 80% of light for more than 2000 years, eventually becoming what it is today.

Li Qingsong maneuvered the spaceship slowly forward, releasing the landing craft in preparation for landing. But during this process, the spaceship's exhaust lightly swept across the vessel, and Li Qingsong saw that, as if a strong wind had blown dust onto it, endless dust particles dispersed from the spaceship, merging into space and disappearing.

The reason they were able to attach to the spaceship was simply because matter was extremely scarce in space, and basically nothing could affect them.

Now, they disappear at the slightest disturbance.

As the dust settled, the spaceship's size shrank by half, and its internal structure was fully exposed.

Thousands of robots gently approached, and through their eyes, Li Qingsong saw one hibernation pod after another that was completely broken or even completely disappeared due to "rust," leaving only some frames.

There are tens of thousands of units in total.

This figure matches the intelligence obtained from the Purple Moon Civilization.

A robot stopped in front of a hibernation pod that was still in good condition.

Gently brushing away the surface dust, Li Qingsong saw the internal structure.

Inside was a stiff body.

Without the protection of life support systems and without temperature control equipment, their bodies were frozen solid like stone before they even had time to decompose in the low temperatures of the vacuum of space.

Li Qingsong's body trembled slightly uncontrollably. At this moment, besides pain and anger, he felt something else.

A feeling of emptiness, as if life has lost all hope and support.

"More than 2000 years ago... I was still fighting the Purple Moon Civilization in the galaxy, facing a life-or-death crisis, and I had no way to come and save you..."

Even if I could escape, my technology was too limited at that time, and I wouldn't be able to catch up with you at all.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my fellow humans, I can't save you, I have no power to save you..."

(End of this chapter)