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

Chapter 299 Wild Star Dance (4k)

The gravitational pull of the three stars tore at each other, causing the stellar system's trajectory to become illogical, appearing as a chaotic patch of light on the light cone telescope's display screen. The plasma plumes at the edges of each star were twisted into jumbled tongues of fire due to intense gravitational perturbations, sometimes suddenly scattering and each occupying a region of the sky.

When one of them reveals a clear orange-red circle due to the change in distance, another shrinks into a glaring blue-white spot, while the third is in the distant background, emitting a faint halo.

Only through minute adjustments to the lens of the light cone telescope was humanity able to barely encompass this chaotic dance of stars within the field of observation.

After fixing the perspective of the star, the dinosaur technicians, together with human engineers, put in a great deal of effort to find Earth's nemesis.

The distance of four light-years was simply too vast. Even the light cone telescope searched carefully for a long time before finally locking onto the Trisolaran star when it passed through the halo of a certain star.

It was a dark silver planet with no oceans or atmosphere; the illuminated parts of its surface gleamed with a metallic sheen.
That's it.

There are no stable star orbits, and no regular alternation of light and dark. In the past Earth month of observation, the Trisolaran star system has experienced hundreds of day-night cycles. Just hours before, the Trisolaran star system was in a brief shadow between two stars, only to be dispelled into daylight by the sudden approach of a third star.

Even though they knew they were watching footage from four years ago, the humans were still terrified.

This is... terrifying.

Even at one point in the past week, people noticed the light of the three stars superimposed, creating a triple eclipse with the gravitational synergy pulling the three stars toward the surface of the nearest star.

Almost just before Trisolaris was about to reach the Roche limit, the next moment, two other stars rapidly plunged into the distant dark region, and the gravitational shockwave caused Trisolaris to be flung out again.

Humanity witnessed a catastrophic event on the Trisolaran planet: a triple sun alignment.
People also noticed that beyond this chaotic sea of ​​light, besides Trisolaris and three other stars, there was nothing else in the entire star system except for the solitary Trisolaris. Humanity refused to believe that the Trisolaris system contained only one planet. At least according to the observation records of the Devouring Empire, 60,000 years ago, the Trisolaris system had at least four planets.

In just 60,000 years, only the Trisolaran Star remained.

The light cone telescope can faintly see sparse interstellar dust being pushed by stellar winds, forming a constantly flowing haze. These hazes are dyed orange, white, and blue by the light of different stars, which are probably the remnants of other planets after they were swallowed by stars.

A never-ending dance of light, heat, and power continues in full swing.

Later, someone leaked this video footage, which should have been kept strictly confidential, onto the internet, immediately causing a huge uproar among netizens.

Upon seeing the hellish planetary environment, people seemed to be immediately transported into the Trisolarans' living environment, and understood the unspeakable reasons behind the Trisolaran civilization's invasion of Earth.

There are a very small number of non-ETO organizations in human society that are pro-Trisolaran, especially after learning about the existence of the Trisolaran Earth Organization, a pro-Earth Trisolaran force.

The public outcry caused by the leaked video has even impacted the upcoming Solar System Intelligent Life Conference.

In public opinion, this inexplicable empathy of modern people has also drawn angry criticism from some people from the Republican era.

"Sympathize with the invaders? Are you modern people out of your minds?"

"Dinosaurs and humans at least share the same origin; their war of predation was a sibling rivalry. What are the Trisolarans? Do they even deserve to be called dinosaurs?"

"You people have really forgotten the contempt the Trisolarans showed by calling you 'insects'."

"ETO terrorist attacks, Sophon technology blockade, the Great Depression—don't you hold grudges? You new humans are so lenient, but we older generations of people from the Common Era are still alive!"

Unfortunately, the people of the Common Era are too small, and public opinion does not dominate society. Some social organizations that should have served the people of the Common Era have even begun to defect, taking the lead in expressing sympathy for the Trisolaran world.

As for which organization it is and who is in charge, I will not name names here.

However, the solar system is vast, and some people have not been disturbed by this wave of public opinion.

While human society focuses its attention on the observations of the light cone telescope.

At the almost neglected Ringle-Fitzroy monitoring station.

Seeing the monitor screen suddenly dim, Robinson's eyes, which had been half-closed, suddenly widened. He hurriedly woke up Ken, who was sleeping soundly beside him.

Ken was a physicist, while Robinson was a representative of Fleet International. This pairing of a soldier and a scientist had been used at the Space Telescope Monitoring Station since General Fitzroy and Dr. Ringer.

"The detector has disappeared."

"What disappeared?" Ken had just been shaken awake and was still a little groggy.
"Probes! The probes launched by the Trisolaran world. Weren't there 10 in total? One of them arrived in the solar system ahead of schedule and is being escorted by our fleet toward Jupiter's orbit. The other probes are missing."

"There were a total of nine detectors, and they've all disappeared?"

"Correct."

"Wait, what do you mean by 'everything is gone'? Do you mean it's invisible or it's disappeared?"

"Come and see for yourself."

Ken was pushed by Robinson to the observation window, where he saw that the remaining nine detectors, which should have been in the same direction, had indeed disappeared. However, Ken's physicist intuition told him that these nine detectors were still within the observation window's range.

However, all nine detectors have lost all visible light, so the FitzRollinger Observatory, which relies on optical capture, cannot 'see' these nine detectors.

Previously, in order to ensure the sincerity of the negotiations, after the probe was captured by the Fleet International's star-class warship, the Fleet International put forward another negotiation condition to the Six-Dimensional Sophon, which was to allow the other nine probes to activate their deceleration engines and use the visible light emitted by the engines to make them easier for humans to lock onto and observe.

The Trisolarans agreed.

After all, if these detectors don't emit visible light, it's honestly very difficult for human observation systems to pinpoint these little things.

Ken plopped down on the sofa behind him.

"Has the fleet been notified internationally?"

"No way... I don't know anything about this. I was worried about system malfunction, so I woke you up first."

“The system isn’t malfunctioning; it’s genuinely invisible. Report back to your superiors truthfully. You should also apply for another light cone telescope on the ring. That behemoth is thousands or even tens of thousands of times more accurate than our current observation system. Even if these small objects don’t emit visible light, as long as they reflect starlight, the light cone system can still detect them,” Ken said.

Robinson said helplessly, "The telescopes on that big ring were all used to look at the Trisolaran system. After looking at the Trisolaran system, the next observation target should be the Trisolaran fleet. How could we possibly pay attention to these little things?"

Despite his skepticism towards his comrade, Robinson did as Ken instructed. Just as he was about to dial his superior's communicator, Ken suddenly stopped him. "Wait, do you know where that probe being escorted by five starships is?"

"It seems... we're almost at Jupiter's orbit."

...

News of the loss of track on the other nine probes quickly reached the three fleets.

Although the three fleets had varying degrees of doubt and concern about this, they were in the midst of a major investigation into the human mindset, and with the conference approaching, the arrangement of various alien guests alone had already taken a toll on their minds. Not to mention that most of the star-class warships were in the process of arranging an interstellar parade, making it very difficult for them to spare any energy to deal with this matter.

Moreover, before the other nine probes disappeared, they were still 100 astronomical units away from the solar system, meaning they were still outside the Kuiper dust belt.

(Note: After the War of the Great Rings, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially renamed the Kuiper Belt the Kuiper Dust Belt based on its actual distribution.)

Based on the captured probes, the remaining nine probes are nothing more than small, broken objects that have traveled four light-years through interstellar space, with fragile appearances and posing almost no high threat.

Even at their theoretical maximum speed, these probes would only have the destructive power of an electromagnetic railgun projectile at most.

As for Ken and Robinson, their request, as observers at the Fitzroy-Ringer Telescope, to use the light cone observation system to scan the location of the detectors was unsurprisingly rejected by both the person in charge and the person in charge of the dinosaurs.

The reason the dinosaurs refused was that, given the energy that the remaining light nuclear fusion of the Great Ring could provide, drastically adjusting the light cone telescope would plunge the Great Ring into an energy crisis once again.

The reason given by the person in charge of the Light Cone stationed on the Great Ring was much simpler. Ensuring the Light Cone observation system continued to observe the Trisolaran planet and monitor the movements of the 1000 dilapidated warships of the Trisolaran First Fleet was far more important than observing these few small probes.

We can't focus on trivial matters while ignoring the important ones.

Nevertheless, each of the three fleets dispatched some surplus planetary warships to block Jupiter's orbit while simultaneously flying at a maximum speed of 1% of the speed of light towards the direction where the probes had dimmed.

If all goes well, the planetary-level warships should be able to intercept the remaining nine probes.

There are reasons for doing so.

If the probe loses its light, it means that its engines will shut down, which means that the probe will be unable to perform any maneuvering and can only rely on its inertia to continue gliding towards the solar system.

In other words, following the trajectory of the detectors before they went out, it would be possible to effectively intercept them. If these detectors could not be intercepted, Fleet International authorized the frontline planetary warships to use gamma laser beams to destroy them.

Keeping only one sample is sufficient.

The principle of "better to destroy than leave nothing behind" shows that the Solar System Fleet is quite vigilant.

Even if the remaining probes glide in a straight line towards the solar system at a constant speed and direction, the planetary fleet still has a hard time pinpointing the location of these small objects.

Unless these remaining nine probes happen to just miss the reconnaissance sensors that survived in the Kuiper Belt defenses during humanity's battle with the Devouring Empire.

But the probability is extremely low.

To help planetary-class warships accurately locate the remaining nine sensors, the European Fleet authorized one of its planetary-class warships to use an oil-film nuclear bomb.

As the name suggests, an oil-film nuclear bomb is a stellar hydrogen bomb encased in an oil film. This oil film, found at the edge of the Kuiper Belt and in the orbit of Pluto, has excellent diffusion and concealment properties. After the oil film is blasted open by a nuclear bomb, a space oil film region with a volume comparable to that of the Sun can be formed. These nanoscale interstellar dust particles will make those almost invisible probes in space visible, thus allowing them to be detected, captured, intercepted, or destroyed by planetary warships.

A planetary-class warship quickly deployed the oil-film hydrogen bomb, which will be detonated in 15 minutes. If the detector's speed remains constant, it will pass by the location two hours later.

The cloud of interstellar dust, reaching a diameter of 200 million kilometers, formed after the explosion of the oil-film hydrogen bomb will make all these detectors visible.

Humans have long studied the speed of the probes as a result of the three-dimensional structure.

As early as the time of Dr. Ringer and General Fitzroy, the two had already discovered suspicious aspects to the probe's flight speed. Subsequent observations also confirmed that the Trisolaran fleet probe had already begun to decelerate long before the Otto Nebula.

When people first observed the 10 'bristles' appearing in this interstellar dust cloud, these 10 bristles were traveling at maximum speed, which is close to 8% of the speed of light.

However, this state lasted for less than a year. Soon, these probes, during their long journey, dropped to 2% of the speed of light or even lower. Otherwise, it wouldn't have taken them a full 200 years to reach the vicinity of the solar system.

This prolonged, slow flight time has led humans to suspect that the true speed of these probes may not actually be 8% of the speed of light.

The 8% light speed at which the ten probes were launched by the Trisolaran fleet likely indicates that the Trisolarans used a technology similar to human-made electromagnetic railguns, accelerating the probes to 8% of their maximum light speed in a single launch via electromagnetic rail launch.

The Trisolaran fleet attempted to use this technologically outdated method to increase the speed of its 10 probes as much as possible, so that they could reach the vicinity of Earth as quickly as possible.

However, unexpectedly, due to the impact of too much interstellar dust, the speed of these probes dropped rapidly.

As a result, in the end, the probe could only use its own engine, which travels at 2% of the speed of light, for propulsion.

The above speculation is currently the most reasonable and widely accepted estimate by the Solar System Fleet regarding the flight speed of the Trisolaran fleet's probes.

After all, if they had continued flying towards Earth at 8% of the speed of light, these 10 probes should have reached Earth's vicinity by around 80 years into the Crisis Era. The reason they didn't do so was clearly not because the Trisolarans didn't want to, but because they lacked the capability.

How much harm can a 2% light speed detector cause?

The electromagnetic cannon shells fired by human star-class warships all have an initial velocity of 3% of the speed of light.

Although the Wallfacer admitted more than 100 years ago that he would stand guard at the edge of Pluto and destroy all the probes after they arrived in the solar system, humanity, which has developed to this point, naturally does not need the Wallfacer's help.

The latter is currently in seclusion and indeed has no intention of making a move.

In fact, if these 10 truck-sized probes traveling at 2% of the speed of light were to reach Earth in the early stages of the Crisis Era, they could indeed cause extremely serious damage to humanity.

The sheer amount of air shock generated by a flight at 2% of the speed of light within the atmosphere is enough to destroy most cities on the ground.

However, scientists do not believe that such a detector can fly at 2% of the speed of light within the dense atmosphere. It should be noted that all macroscopic objects that humans can currently travel at more than 1% of the speed of light do so in a vacuum.

Currently, Luo Qing is the only individual capable of moving at sub-light speeds within the atmosphere, or even in liquids and solids.

(End of this chapter)