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

Chapter 310 Starless Belt (3k)

“Mr. Luo Qing, the Second Fleet is a major discovery. Why don’t we temporarily station the light cone observation system on the Second Fleet, inform Fleet International, and then have it verified by specialists before you begin your observation? This shouldn’t take too long.”

A Space Force representative told Luo Qing.

Luo Qing knew it was pointless. From Fleet International's perspective, the light cone telescope would not be able to detect the Trisolaran Second Fleet accelerating to 10% of the speed of light for at least four years. For at least the next four years, the Trisolaran Second Fleet would appear stationary to ordinary people.

“This is meaningless.” Luo Qing’s voice rang out directly in the control room through divine sense, with a hint of calm after understanding. “The first fleet of the Trisolarans will arrive in 200 years, and the second fleet is still drifting four light-years away. Things in the universe don’t follow a schedule. I’ll use this telescope first, and then I’ll return it to you to use again.”

The space force officer said no more.

The observation target of the Large Ring Telescope quickly shifted away from the Second Fleet and the vicinity of the Trisolaran system.

His gaze pierced through layers of lenses, penetrating the Kuiper Belt of the solar system, passing through the Oort Cloud, and reaching a star field 200 light-years away.

Saturation observation of every star!
If the star has planets and is part of a star system, then repeated observations are even more necessary.

The blue-white light of Sirius, the red supergiant Betelgeuse in Orion... stars marked on star charts for millions of years are 'seen' like chess pieces, each maintaining a constant position in the void.

The adaptive optics system of the light cone telescope is correcting errors caused by interstellar dust in real time, while Luo Qing's gaze, through tens of thousands of sub-lenses, takes in all the information within the field of view.

The scan of 100 stars has been completed, including 17 star systems, but no trace of civilization was detected in any of them.

There may also be civilizations that haven't left their home planet, but Luo Qing simply couldn't see them clearly.

As the observation continued, Luo Qing felt that the spectrum of the distant star was breaking down into colorful bands of light, like ribbons of silk being blown by the wind, occasionally brushing across his field of vision.

The telescope, enveloped in spiritual energy, moved slowly. Luo Qing felt as if he were traveling through his eyes, his gaze sweeping across the sea of ​​stars, passing over yellow dwarf stars marked with potential planets, and over red giant stars forming planetary nebulae.

Soon, the 360° view in the plane was finished. The light cone telescope rotated once and returned to the vicinity of the Trisolaran galaxy. Luo Qing even took the time to observe Alpha Centauri again with the naked eye.

Because of its closest proximity, the Trisolaran system has the highest image clarity, allowing Luo Qing to clearly see the three stars dancing wildly under the influence of gravity.

A civilization that is pitiful, lamentable, and admirable.

For the sake of observer number 1379, Luo Qing will be more lenient in the future.

The light cone telescope could clearly distinguish the sunspot activity on the surface of the three stars, and even see the faint changes in brightness during the transit of the planets. But even so, Luo Qing's gaze did not linger on the Trisolaran system for long.

He soon discovered that ordinary divine sense and four-dimensional divine sense were so inconvenient compared to the sight that could be seen at a glance!

If only I had cultivated the art of enhancing eyesight in my past life, the drawbacks of relying too much on divine sense are now becoming apparent.

With a slight adjustment of the light cone telescope's angle, the entire large ring telescope tilts slightly upward, beginning a 360-degree panoramic observation from another angle.

"Hmm?" Luo Qing's gaze paused slightly.

In a new direction, an irregular "void" appeared in a region that should have been densely populated with stars. According to the Dinosaur Star Map Database, there should have been at least seven blue main-sequence stars there, but at this moment, only a few wisps of thin interstellar gas could be seen, like marks erased by an eraser.

These erasure marks are much cleaner than those on star 187J3X1, which was destroyed by light particles under Luo Ji's spell.

After the light particles destroyed the star 187J3X1, a large amount of interstellar matter remained, but in the places where stars should have existed, only thin interstellar gas remained.

So clean.

Even Luo Qing couldn't understand this kind of "cleanliness".

Even after a star is destroyed, it should still leave some trace.

How come there's not a single bit left?
He thought there was a calibration error in the lens array, so he used his spiritual power to fine-tune the telescope's focus. The adaptive lens array began to change its curvature, improving the observation accuracy to one millionth of an arcsecond, but the hole still existed.

Several stars that should have existed at the edge are as if they never existed, leaving only a faint spacetime distortion caused by gravitational lensing.

"..." Luo Qing frowned.

This is 200 light-years away. If nothing unexpected happens, it will be at least 200 years before humans can observe this scene.

"Hey you, could you help me look up the historical star map of dinosaurs?" Luo Qing's voice was somewhat solemn.

The screen on the control panel immediately switched to observational data from the Great Ring of Fire 850000 years ago. The image showed that there were indeed seven bright stars in that region, the brightest of which, a blue star, was even visible to the naked eye from Earth.

A Brachiosaurus scientist stretched its long head out from behind Luo Qing, looking at the control panel screen with great confusion: "Mr. Luo Qing, the seven stars on the screen match the seven stars in the star map from 850,000 years ago. What happened?"

You agree with what I see.

I don't see it!
Luo Qing was too lazy to explain to this stupid dragon, and besides, he really couldn't explain his super-light cone vision.

Moreover, the dinosaur database shows that the luminosity of the star in that direction is normal, with no signs of a supernova explosion.

Furthermore, even in a supernova explosion, remnants of the supernova will remain; it won't be completely destroyed. Otherwise, how would the Light Speaker civilization have survived?
Luo Qing remained silent, using his spiritual power to activate the light cone telescope and begin a wider scan. The field of view expanded at a rate of 0.1 degrees per second, sweeping across more stellar regions... and more and more "holes" appeared in the field of view.

These voids are not randomly distributed, but extend along a blurry straight line, as if someone had swept across a star map with a giant brush. Some voids still retain nebulous gas trails, like traces left when stars were forcibly stripped away; others are so clean that even the background radiation is slightly weaker than the surrounding area.

This obvious "artificial" trace made Luo Qing's expression increasingly grim. The joy brought by the superluminal cone field of view vanished without a trace, and faced with this instantaneous superluminal observation result, he suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

He focused the telescope on an area where a hole had just appeared at the edge, where a yellow dwarf star similar to the sun was dimming at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye.

This is happening in real time!
That star is disappearing!

In Luo Qing's view, the outer atmosphere of this star was being stripped away by some unknown force, the absorption lines of hydrogen were becoming unusually thin, the star's gravitational field showed no abnormalities, the planetary system was still operating stably, only the "sun" at the center was disappearing silently.

"Something's not right, there's a problem."

Luo Qing's gaze swept over the "erased" star, and he realized just how serious the problem was.

As the light cone telescope continues to extend its field of view, Luo Qing is no longer limited to the straight-line observation range; the 200-light-year boundary begins to extend beyond a distance of 1000 light-years.

Finally, a chilling scene unfolded before my eyes:
At the edge of the spiral arm of our solar system, a "starless belt" about 500 light-years wide and of immeasurable length is slowly advancing. The stars within the belt have either disappeared or are dimming in the same way, while the stars outside the belt remain bright, forming a clear boundary between light and dark.

The universe was sliced ​​open by a black scalpel, and wherever the blade cut, star systems were erased.

For the first time, Luo Qing felt as if something was slipping out of her control.

He was starting to feel a chill run down his spine.

Most critically, the starless belt is spreading towards the solar system...

His gaze lingered on a star at the edge of the boundary line. The star's light was diminishing at a uniform rate, and in addition to the absorption lines of hydrogen and helium, a previously unseen energy radiation was detected in its spectrum when analyzed with the naked eye.

It has nothing to do with electromagnetic waves or gravitational waves. This should be a strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces. This strong nuclear force is acting directly on the atomic nucleus, and it is this strong force that is breaking down the basic particles that make up stars.

He looked in the direction of the radiation source and could vaguely see some blurry spots of light moving in the deeper part of the starless zone.

The number is impossible to estimate, but it definitely exceeds ten thousand.

The total number of stars that have disappeared exceeds 100,000.

The starless zone extends for a very long time, indicating that stars began to disappear very early on.

How early exactly? Luo Qing didn't know.

Luo Qing pondered for a moment, then summoned a group of senior human scientists and dinosaur scientists. However, he soon realized that he could not provide a reasonable explanation for these humans and dinosaurs, so he dismissed them and simply called over MOSS instead.

MOSS was connected to the Big Ring's electronic computer network a year ago. The entire Big Ring network system is now upgrading towards a quantum network. Although the upgrade is not yet complete, it has already successfully connected to the Earth Internet. MOSS can also solve many problems.

Luo Qing briefly described his observations of the small moss.

Although Luo Qing deleted her from his friend list, Little Moss obviously didn't hold a grudge. She didn't even doubt the feasibility of Luo Qing's "faster-than-light observation." In short, it's not surprising that an infinite individual could do anything.

After a moment's thought, the little moss replied to Luo Qing:
"Based on your description, I have made a simple calculation of when these stars disappeared. Based on the redshift you can see with the naked eye, the earliest stars in those voids disappeared about 1,400 years ago, while the latest stars disappeared now."

The little moss's electronic expression was full of confusion. She knew what this meant; those vanished stars had actually begun to die out during the Song Dynasty.

The process of extinguishing the fire has continued to this day.

According to Luo Qing, the advancing starless belt has now extended to a place less than two hundred light-years away from the solar system.

The solar system is also a part of that space, which is 500 light-years wide and countless in length!

“Summarize all the possibilities from what I just dictated and send them to me. I’m staying in the Big Ring for now and not going anywhere else,” Luo Qing said to Little Moss.

The little moss asked, "Should I inform the international side of the fleet?"

Luo Qing was about to agree, but when he saw that he could only detect less than 5% of the stars within a 200-light-year range, he shook his head.

"Give me a few hours. Let me observe all the stars within a range of two hundred light-years. I want to see if this universe is full of humans or ghosts, and how much more is flying towards the solar system."

Little Moss: "Do you have a specific goal?"

Luo Qing sighed: "Let's leave aside 'First Earth,' 'Retirement Civilization,' and 'Refugee Fleet.' As for that dinosaur's distress signal emitted via neutrinos, I also need to check the direction of that neutrino emission to see if I can find that so-called god... My mind is a mess right now. What do you think we should do?"

Little moss: "I believe you."

Luo Qing said, "I don't believe in myself. How about... I go and clear Dr. Hines' name so that humanity can start preparing to escape?"

Luo Qing covered his face and smiled bitterly: "I fucking can't take it anymore!"

The little moss remained silent.

She only hoped that Luo Qingzhen's observations after scanning the entire 200 light-years wouldn't terrify Fleet International.

(End of this chapter)