Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 276 The Mushrooms Can't Survive (5k)

Crisis Era Year 204

The Trisolaran fleet is 2.12 light-years from the solar system.
This is the first year that the Great Ring has entered the solar system's orbit, and also the first anniversary of the solar system's victory in the war against the Devouring Empire.

Many significant events occurred this year. First, the apocalyptic crisis that had been looming over all of humanity was gone, much to the delight of the United Government and the Fleet International. The remnants of the Devouring Empire, led by Tyrannosaurus Karl, declared their allegiance to the 'god' who protected the solar system.

As for who this deity is, it is naturally Luo Qing.

As the defeated party, the Devouring Empire also announced its unconditional surrender to Fleet International and Earth International (United Government).

The Great Ring Internet is unilaterally transparent and open to the human internet, and all remaining Great Ring permissions are transferred to the Digital Republic and MOSS for control.

This Great Ring War certainly shocked the Devouring Empire, but the Devouring Empire had seen its share of grand events, and being defeated by a god was not shameful. The ones truly shaken were humanity itself.

When the Kuiper Belt defenses collapsed, the defensive fleet was severely damaged, and the fleet's main force ran out of ammunition, the moment Luo Qing appeared wielding Pluto, the entire human civilization was in an uproar.

BYD Wallfacer, I knew you could do it!
Some surviving dragons hid in the ruins and used cameras to film the scene of the giant ring being destroyed by 'divine punishment'. These photos and videos were then transmitted to the Internet on Earth.

These videos transmitted back from the Great Ring became a hot topic on the Earth's internet. Everyone saw the moment of destruction in the video—a huge, ice-blue planet appeared in the sky, then rapidly expanded, crushing the blue sky and white clouds. It grew larger and larger until it finally covered the sky and the earth, and fell towards the ground.

Then, the planet was mysteriously 'lifted up' again and launched another fierce attack in another direction.

One of the surviving dragons recounted his experience online:
I knew the empire was going to be destroyed, but I didn't expect it to happen so quickly. I just wanted to record it all. I looked up at the sky, waiting for the punishment of the quasi-gods. Then I saw the divine punishment itself—a rapidly expanding silver star.

The emergency broadcast said it was the gods manipulating Pluto to collide with the rings. I know Pluto; I learned about it in history class. I never imagined that this dwarf planet in the ancient solar system would one day collide with the rings. The rings have devoured too many planets and are finally getting their comeuppance. I know there's no point in hiding inside the rings now. Rather than dying thousands of kilometers underground, I'd rather witness divine punishment.

After Pluto appeared, I started counting. By the time I counted to three, its shape had expanded to cover half the sky. Strangely, it was still ice-blue. I'm not good at physics, but I know that a planet traveling at high speed in space filled with interstellar dust should look like a red-hot iron ball, not a block of ice. I also remember that scene: Pluto trailed a plasma tail tens of thousands of kilometers long, which was far more spectacular than the plasma tail of the giant ring engine. Its atmosphere, which had been subjected to numerous nuclear explosions, began to boil into a golden-red color. I almost thought I was witnessing the legendary "twilight" from 3 million years ago.

Then came the tremors. I couldn't tell if it was the air trembling or the ring itself. If the ring had consciousness, I believe it would be in despair at that moment. I heard a crying sound; it was the female announcer from the emergency broadcasting station, a dragon, crying. But the crying quickly disappeared. Pluto's rapid approach completely disrupted the ring's electromagnetic waves, and the broadcast stopped. Most dragons hid underground, waiting for destruction to come. But I was different. I stood on the ruins, arms outstretched, head held high, feeling the surging wind. Three words echoed in my mind, and finally, I shouted them out with all my might.

Ah, life!

The city ruins began to crackle, fissures were forming in the earth, and I started to reduce the camera's focus, but even wide-angle mode was useless now. That ice-blue planet with golden veins had filled the entire lens, filled my entire field of vision, and filled—the entire sky.

The anticipated planetary destruction collision at nearly 10% of the speed of light didn't occur. The god seemed to have changed his mind; he brought the entire star to a halt in a way I couldn't comprehend. And so, a terrifying scene unfolded in my view: the sky became another land, and the land became another sky. I stood on one side of the land, gazing at the other, feeling as if I had fallen into a bizarre dream. But the god's next actions quickly made me realize this was no dream.

Pluto slowly descended onto the surface of the rings, as if afraid of damaging the entire ring system. Because Pluto is a sphere, I was fortunate enough to avoid direct contact between Pluto and the rings, but in my eyes, that icy blue land was already within reach.

Immediately afterwards, Pluto began to rub against one side of the planetary engine. This god was truly meticulous; the path he chose avoided the herbivorous dragon's refuge area. Then I saw Pluto erase the area of ​​the large ring engine like an eraser.

The Great Ring Engine is very tall, over 10,000 meters. When the Great Ring is moving at a constant speed, the mountain peaks where the Great Ring Engine is usually shut down are covered with snow all year round. However, this is all I heard from my great-grandmother. Since the Great Ring made a slight adjustment and changed course toward the solar system, the snow has melted and disappeared, and the towering pillar of light has illuminated everything.

But these colossal peaks, spewing beams of light that reach to the heavens, were stripped away like snowflakes as that massive planet rolled over them. Like shredded paper, they turned into incandescent dust in the impact with Pluto.

There was no explosion, or any secondary explosion of the engines could not shake that massive planet in the slightest. And so, I saw that massive planet, after flattening hundreds of engines, was once again lifted into the sky by the gods, and then gradually disappeared into the atmosphere, becoming the silver planet that I was familiar with.

Then came the second frictional impact, the third frictional impact… With remarkable ease, the deity simultaneously reinforced Pluto to prevent its disintegration and efficiently cleaned the engines on its rings. The closest Pluto came to me was less than 15 kilometers away. During that impact, all sound vanished; I became deaf. Then, the blinding white light rendered me blind. I didn't know if the cameras were still working, but guided by instinct, I scrambled to my feet from the rubble and painstakingly aimed at Pluto.

But I miscalculated. This time, Pluto was far too close. I smelled burning fur and realized my scales were burning hot. Then, a shockwave hit, instantly blasting away the few audacious dragons with me. The whole world began to distort and ripple. The earth arched upwards violently, and I was tossed into the air like a withered leaf.

As I fell, I used my last bit of consciousness to protect the camera. Oh, and I forgot to mention, although I'm a Triceratops, a fourth-class herbivorous dinosaur, I managed to cross class boundaries and become a reporter for the "Greater Ringed Dragon News" through my own efforts.

Finally, someone told me this, which I can no longer see: the dragon said, "The Great Ring, where we've lived for generations, has been killed, all the engines destroyed, and the remaining half of Pluto has left as if nothing happened." The surviving dinosaurs stood on the corpses of the Great Ring, their eyes filled with swirling ice crystals and sparks, silently colliding in the vacuum, like a funeral for an empire.

Regardless, the fact remains that the quasi-god was soft-hearted. The Devouring Empire will likely linger for several centuries before its demise, growing within the solar system and decaying there—perhaps the best ending for dragons.

This self-narration, combined with the content of the video, has a tremendous impact on humanity.

The two worlds found a subtle resonance in this destruction—it turns out that not only are their life forms similar, but their emotions are also so alike.

Luo Qing naturally saw this self-description, but his decision was not something that dragons or humans could interfere with. He had already decided to let the Great Ring dock in the solar system long after he destroyed all the Great Ring engines.

Regardless, let's give these dragons a chance to survive.

However, Luo Qing did not expect that his earlier attempt to guide the large ring into the 3AU (Note: abbreviation for astronomical unit) would be met with fierce criticism from Ding Yi.

"Use your invincible, immortal-cultivation-level brain to think about what would happen if the giant ring were embedded in the 3AU? Do you want to destroy the solar system? The gravitational pull of the giant ring alone could cause asteroid belt disorder, which could have a huge impact on Earth, Mars, and Jupiter! Do you want Earth to have meteor showers every day?"

Luo Qing remained silent, embarrassed by the scolding.

The astronomical community also jointly wrote a letter, pointing out the dangers of the giant rings entering the inner solar system, which made Luo Qing determined to study mathematics and physics properly.

The Kuiper Belt and the asteroid belt are two separate planetary belts in the solar system.

小行星带位于2.2-3.2（AU）轨道，内侧接火星轨道（1.5AU），外侧延伸至木星轨道（5.2AU）附近。整个区域呈环状分布，厚度约1AU（约1.5亿公里），总宽度超过2.5AU（约3.75亿公里）——相当于从地球到太阳距离的2.5倍。

The asteroid belt is composed mainly of primordial material from the solar system, and its size varies greatly. The vast majority of asteroids are less than 1 kilometer in diameter, but there are also some dwarf planets.

For example, Ceres (950 km in diameter), Pallas (520 km), and Vesta (580 km).

Although these dwarf planets are not as massive as the four dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, and their combined mass is not even half that of Pluto, they are still genuine dwarf planets.

The asteroid belt has very little use for humans and almost no economic value. On the contrary, it poses a potential threat to planets like Earth and Mars. It's worth noting that the numerous impact craters on the moon were almost entirely created by meteorites from the asteroid belt.

The Chicxulub asteroid that destroyed the remaining dinosaur civilization on Earth 6500 million years ago also broke away from the asteroid belt. Besides defending against the Devouring Empire and the Trisolaran fleet, the Solar System Fleet has another important mission: to deal with asteroid belt meteorites and reduce their harm to spacecraft.

Every time a spaceship passes through an asteroid belt, its surface armor suffers severe damage.

If Luo Qing's plan is followed and the giant ring is allowed to dock in 3AU, the threat it poses will be extremely significant. Although swallowing the giant ring would have resulted in the loss of its industrial capabilities, space fleet, 360 'Sun Spears', and 32000 ring engines, the giant ring's own gravity would still remain, and gravity would be the greatest threat to this behemoth.

The volume of the Great Ring is twelve times that of Earth. Due to its hollow interior, its mass is about three times that of Earth. After the Great Ring enters the solar system, it will become the fifth largest planet in the solar system, with a mass second only to Jupiter (318 times), Saturn (95 times), Neptune (17 times), and Uranus (14 times).

The solar system is a perfect star system, so perfect that it would make the Trisolarans jealous. The rash introduction of a large ring-sized celestial body would shake and affect the galactic structure of the entire solar system. It may maintain balance in the short term, but it will inevitably lead to turmoil in the long term.

If the large ring were to rashly enter a 3AU orbit, its mass would be enough to trigger a chain reaction in the asteroid belt, such as drastically increasing the probability of asteroids deviating from their orbits and increasing the risk of impacts within the solar system. Furthermore, the long-term existence of the ring would be affected by Jupiter's gravitational perturbations. While the direct impact on Earth, Mars, and Venus would be relatively weak, it would still pose a risk.

If the dinosaurs followed their plan of eating up the Earth within a few centuries and then leaving, then naturally it wouldn't have any impact.

However, since the giant rings obviously need to remain permanently in the solar system, it is necessary to take into account the long-term effects of millions or tens of millions of years.

After all, the magnificent solar system will surely, definitely, and inevitably burn for billions of years in the universe, bringing billions of years of eternal life to the solar system.

Humans are not a short-sighted species, so naturally we must be fully prepared.

Astronomers' best answer for Luo Qing is 10–12 AU. This distance lies outside Saturn's orbit, a region with strong orbital stability. Jupiter (5.2 AU) is the largest source of gravitational perturbation in the solar system, and this distance far exceeds Jupiter's strong resonance range, making long-term gravitational perturbations negligible. Furthermore, there is no interference from the asteroid belt. This region is located outside Saturn's rings, and the gravity of the large rings will not trigger large-scale ejection of small celestial bodies, causing minimal disturbance to the existing order of the solar system.

It has almost no impact on the traditional spheres of influence of humankind, such as water, metal, earth, fire, and wood.

The only problem is that, being too far from the sun, the Great Ring cannot receive sufficient sunlight and will fall into a state of extreme low temperature. Without nuclear fusion fuel to replenish it, the Great Ring's surface temperature will drop to -130°C, and its atmosphere will experience low-temperature condensation.

In this environment, the extinction of dinosaurs was a foregone conclusion.

With the destruction of the Great Ring Engine, the Great Ring had exhausted all its fuel and was completely "starved." The remaining light nuclear fusion energy system could barely maintain temperature stability within the ring, but the surface of the Great Ring was inevitably frozen in perpetual motion.

Luo Qing couldn't conjure up a small sun out of thin air.

Humans didn't have enough fuel to feed dinosaurs.

The Devouring Ring has already paid the price for its invasion and consumption. Almost all the carnivorous dinosaurs have died on the battlefield. Luo Qing couldn't bear to freeze the remaining billions of herbivorous dinosaurs that were being used as reserve food to death. After all, when the old Human Emperor signed the Treaty of Friendship among the Worlds, he treated all intelligent beings equally.

However, since I don't have the strength of a human emperor, I still need to use my brain and proceed slowly.

After much deliberation, Luo Qing still dragged the Great Ring to a distance of 2.8 AU. The biggest problem with this distance was that it would trigger an asteroid impact—but that's simple, I, Cheng Zun (crossed out), will just collect all the asteroids.

It's important to understand that the asteroid belt is essentially a "complete planet" from the formation of the solar system. 46 billion years ago, the solar system evolved from a primordial nebula. The material in the inner solar system should have gathered to form a new planet, just like the formation of Earth and Mars. However, the appearance of Jupiter disrupted this process. In its early stages of formation, Jupiter interfered with the material in the asteroid belt region with its strong gravity.

Jupiter's gravitational pull prevents dust and rocks in the region from accreting stably (the "accretion" effect). Instead, it shatters the already formed small planetesimals, preventing them from merging into a single planet. Ultimately, these fragmented pieces remained between Mars and Jupiter, forming the asteroid belt.

Luo Qing spent three months gathering all the dwarf planets in the asteroid belt, including Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta, causing them to spontaneously clump together under the influence of gravity. As for where to place these newly formed asteroids...

Wasn't the large ring 'bitten off'? Filling it in wouldn't be enough, but if we include all the material and debris that escaped from the vicinity of the large ring, and take some material from the Kuiper Belt, and then slightly hollow out the interior, it would be barely enough to fill it.

Thus, a new donut with the gap repaired appeared in 2.8 AU.

Moreover, the human fleet no longer needs to worry about the negative impacts of asteroids.

Luo Qingwei is great.

As for the effects of gravitational perturbation, Luo Qing was relieved after consulting with the Earth science community and MOSS. The gravitational perturbation of the Great Ring will not have a significant effect for at least several million years. By then, human civilization will have long since developed into a pan-galactic civilization.

Even if humanity doesn't develop further, Luo Qing will still exist. At worst, every 100,000 years, he can readjust all nine planets in the solar system to their original positions, just like periodically adjusting the time on a clock.

Yes, even the largest planet, Jupiter, isn't unchangeable.

2.8 AU is also more reasonable than the initial 3 AU. First, 2.8 AU avoids the gravitational resonance point of Jupiter at 3.2 AU, making it the best location that balances light and heat with survival. The radiation intensity per unit area is about 100-180 watts per square meter (about one-fifth of that of Earth), which is enough to support the photosynthesis of ordinary plants. It is an ideal habitable zone in the ring system.

The Great Ring is extremely arid, has no oceans, and no satellites, so there is no need to consider the issue of tidal locking.

Although it might still be cold, the dinosaurs' technological capabilities allowed them to survive.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex Karl's long-cherished dream of devouring the distorted civilization was changed at this moment. With the continuous energy of the sun, the creatures on the Great Ring could finally live again.

Although it was tough, and the Big Ring was just a lump of iron with scarce resources, they managed to survive.

Moreover, Luo Qing clumped the asteroid belt together and filled the gap. Although the total mass of this asteroid belt is only one ten-thousandth of that of Earth, it is indeed rich in carbon and water ice, which can solve the immediate problem.

Without the 30,000 engines that truly consume resources, this amount of material is sufficient for the basic ecological cycle to function.

The dinosaurs could still survive by tightening their belts.

The only problem is...

The mushrooms couldn't survive.

(End of this chapter)