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

Chapter 316 Gems (3k)

Project Fog Umbrella was an early reconnaissance strategy developed to detect the direction of Imperial ships that were being devoured. It involved detonating a large number of oil-film nuclear bombs to create an artificial, thin nebula.

After losing track of the remaining nine probes, Fleet International completely halted the peace talks and ignited an oil-film nuclear bomb near Jupiter's orbit. The explosion of the oil-film nuclear bomb formed a huge "umbrella"-shaped nebula that completely enveloped the region surrounding Jupiter's orbit.

Once the "fog umbrella" is fully deployed, even if the detector is only the size of a football, it will leave a clear trail as it navigates through the oil film.

"This is making a mountain out of a molehill. A few detectors and they're on such high alert."

The vice-captain of a planetary spaceship tasked with tracking the probe sighed as he looked at the distant starry sky, which was no longer as clear and bright as before.

"It's never a bad thing to be careful. Have you forgotten about the antimatter technology of the dinosaurs? If those detectors were filled with antimatter, their destructive power would be unimaginable."

"That's true. My main concern is that the oil-film nuclear bomb is too polluting to the solar system. Look, we can't even see Jupiter's spaceport anymore."

At this moment, a thin film of oil covered a large area of ​​space, and the Blue Shadow spaceship was flying at a constant speed of one-thousandth the speed of light.

The captain looked at the faint starlight in the distance and said, "This kind of nanomaterial will be completely blown away by the solar wind in a hundred years at most, or it will combine with interstellar dust and precipitate. There's no need to worry too much."

The Blue Shadow warship was tasked with tracking probe number "7". Blue Shadow followed it from the Kuiper Belt all the way to Jupiter's orbit, but still found nothing.
The captain of the Blue Shadow stared at the motionless radar display and strained his eyes to peer through the observation porthole, trying to discern something unusual.

But he was destined to be disappointed. At the edge of space, apart from scattered stars, the world was still pitch black, a stark contrast to the pristine white cabin.

"Have you heard? All the captains of the Stellar-class ships have been suspended, and even the two fleet commanders have not been spared. They are both under investigation by the fleet joint council," the vice-captain said.

"I heard about it, but it has nothing to do with us," the captain replied absentmindedly.

"What was it again?"

"Escapeism... The higher-ups are keeping Hines's affair a secret, but the lower-ups are going crazy, saying that the ideological creed has been altered."

"This is really scary... Luckily, I haven't been implanted with the mindset of being certain to win, but having the belief that I'm destined to lose must be incredibly painful."

“As far as I know, someone is suffering from this pain,” a radar observer chimed in.

"Who?" the vice-captain asked the observer.

"The Wallfacer Hines, I heard he implanted the belief that he was doomed to defeat in himself, and he is still in extreme pain. However, the Earth government has created a virtual game for him to play, in which humanity is defeated, so that he can immerse himself in the virtual game to alleviate his pain."

The first mate asked, "Is that so? What's the ending of the game?"

The observer said, "Humanity must have lost, right? The entire Solar System fleet was wiped out, and the Trisolaran fleet won a great victory."

The first mate asked curiously, "How was Luo Qing dealt with in that virtual game?"

The observer pondered: "I've heard from people who've played the game that Luo Qing was easily defeated by the Trisolaran fleet using antimatter weapons, leaving only a remnant soul escaping into deep space. Then the human fleet engaged in battle, first suffering a defeat in the defense of the Kuiper Belt, then losing the battle for Pluto, followed by the fall of Uranus and Neptune, then retreating to Jupiter, and finally the great battle of Jupiter, where the entire solar system fleet was annihilated, and Earth announced its unconditional surrender!"

The vice-captain frowned: "This is too unbelievable. Putting aside the fact that Luo Qing, who could pull the Great Ring and Pluto, was defeated, do you think Hines would believe that the entire Solar System Fleet was wiped out? No matter how strong the Trisolaran Fleet is in the game, it can't be this strong."

The observer smiled upon hearing this: "Of course, the game designers also know this, so how could the Trisolaran fleet have emerged unscathed? Although humanity was completely wiped out, the Trisolaran fleet also suffered heavy casualties. It was a Pyrrhic victory for Trisolaris."

The vice-captain nodded upon hearing this: "That's more like it."

"Have you two finished talking?" the captain's voice suddenly rang out.

The observer immediately shut his mouth and returned to his work.

The vice-captain also fell silent, looking embarrassed.

After a while, the vice-captain finally couldn't resist. He moved closer to the captain and took the initiative to start a conversation.

"Captain, I heard that Luo Qing has emerged from seclusion and gone to Dahuan."

"This has nothing to do with us." The captain gestured for the other party to refocus on their work.

"I'm just curious... It's been years since I last saw this Wallfacer make a public appearance. Sigh, I kind of miss him."

"Many people miss him. The ticket to the Wallfacer's compound is on Earth. Go buy a ticket and visit."

"Then, Captain, shall we go together? I've never been to Earth before."

Upon hearing this, the captain looked up at his second-in-command and reprimanded him:
"Colonel Carbin, we are now at Level 2 alert. If you really have nothing to do, go reset the radar scanning program and conduct the next round of testing."

"Alright, alright. During this period of combat readiness, you are the captain, so I will listen to you."

The vice-captain walked to the control panel, quickly reset the radar scan, and initiated the 372nd round of microwave full-domain scan targeting probe 7. He also conducted an optical survey of the 20 billion cubic kilometers of space around the Blue Shadow.

The optical sensors on the surface of the Blue Shadow began to roll back and forth along the electromagnetic track, and soon the results of the investigation were available.

No abnormalities were found.

Seeing this, the vice-captain came over and continued gossiping with the captain.

"Captain, why wasn't the Blue Shadow reviewed during the ideological censorship?"

The captain patiently replied, "Why would we need to inspect the Blue Shadow? With its fuel reserves, can it even leave the solar system? Escapeism is for starships, it has nothing to do with us." "I see..." Colonel Yuvan pointed to the scenery outside the porthole and asked in a low voice, "Then wouldn't this count as escapism?"

"Um?"

The captain suddenly turned around and discovered that the area near the Jupiter spaceport, which had been dimly lit due to the fog umbrella project, was now filled with an extremely bright golden light.

Golden light pierced through the mist umbrella!

This is……

The Blue Shadow was a planetary warship that had participated in the defense of the Kuiper Belt, so it was naturally very familiar with this kind of light.

A star-class warship has advanced to the fourth stage!

The captain estimated the relative distance between himself and the enemy and realized that there was at least a three-minute delay in the scene he was seeing. He realized that a warship was defecting, but he could only watch helplessly as the scene unfolded before him.

As the first golden light appeared, more golden lights ignited one after another throughout Jupiter's orbit, quickly forming ten golden lights in succession. These ten golden lights belonged to different regions of Jupiter's orbit, and four of them were clearly still in the fleet formation of the interstellar grand review, so their light overlapped and became extremely dazzling.

These ten warships, with different locations and launch times, are flying in completely different directions! Like a blooming epiphyllum flower, they stretch into the depths of the universe in all directions!
"What should we do?" the vice-captain asked the captain.

"..." The captain remained silent.

But the observer suddenly shouted, "Abnormal heat detected behind us! Right behind us!"

Directly behind the Blue Shadow, less than a kilometer away, the Blue Shadow's No. 7 probe, which it was desperately searching for, was bathed in the Blue Shadow's exhaust plume. Only in this way could the No. 7 probe avoid being located by Project Fog Umbrella.

Human-made fog umbrellas have indeed caused a lot of trouble for the probes.

Not only this one detector, but the other eight detectors were also hidden behind the tail flames of the large warship, immersed in the high-temperature ion jets of millions of degrees, using the warship's tail flames to erase all traces of their existence.

Now, the probe had clearly spotted the ten warships in the distance that had entered the forward phase four. After a moment's hesitation, it decided to stop concealing itself and flew towards the direction in which one of the star-class warships had fled.

A faint trail appeared on the fog umbrella.

The Blue Shadow's electromagnetic wave reflection radar immediately went off sharply. In fact, before the radar went off, the two colonels had already seen a teardrop-shaped mirror-like object flash past the porthole.

Because its appearance was so different from that of the first probe announced by the fleet, the two men were stunned for several seconds before realizing that this was the probe they were supposed to monitor. By the time they came to their senses, the probe had already accelerated from one-thousandth the speed of light to one-hundredth the speed of light and disappeared from their sight in an instant.

After the target disappeared from their sight, the radar gradually quieted down.

"What kind of bullshit radar is this? Its detection range isn't even as far as our eyes can see," the vice-captain cursed angrily.

"Wow, that detector is so fast! When did it accelerate so fast? It must be at 1% of the speed of light!" the observer exclaimed in astonishment.

"Lock on, attack, use electromagnetic kinetic energy cannon and gamma ray cannon, report to Fleet International." The captain of the Blue Shadow immediately issued the most appropriate attack order.

"But we've already lost their position!"

"Fire in the direction the enemy is flying!"

"The electromagnetic kinetic energy projectiles aren't fast enough to catch up! Unless we accelerate them to 1% of the speed of light."

The captain immediately authorized the Blue Shadow warship to enter its maximum speed and advance three kilometers per hour.

As the Blue Shadow accelerated, the vice-captain also successfully calibrated the target area.

A beam of gamma-ray laser light began charging at the main gun muzzle of the Blue Shadow. About 15 seconds later, a large number of photons were condensed into a highly degenerate compressed state. The resulting gamma-ray laser light ignited the oil film material along its path, creating a faint blue trail.

Approximately 3 seconds later, the gamma laser beam successfully hit the target. The highly degenerate photons were immediately dispersed by the perfectly smooth mirror surface, scattering into space in multiple different directions. One of the gamma laser beams returned along its original path, striking the Blue Shadow's nanoarmor and burning out a meter-sized crater.

"It can also counterattack with lasers?" the vice-captain exclaimed in surprise.

"No, this is probably not a counterattack." The captain of the Blue Shadow looked at the distant outer space, where the gamma-ray laser, which had been completely dispersed, had scattered in all directions, like a beam of laser light shining on a brilliant gemstone. The reflected light beams melted the oil film material along the way, forming obvious laser trails.

This appears to be... a laser emitted by the Blue Shadow itself.

The real "counterattack" arrives within 0.1 seconds of the laser reflection.

The smooth head of the "7" probe first rippled, and a ring was formed, quickly gliding along a perfect arc and converging towards the tail. Energy gathered at the tip into a single, incandescent point, and then exploded with a deafening roar!

The directional electromagnetic pulse, with power far exceeding that of a stellar hydrogen bomb explosion, instantly overwhelmed the Blue Shadow, easily penetrating its anti-electromagnetic pulse armor and paralyzing all its internal electronic components.

"Quickly send out the relevant intelligence—" the captain hadn't finished speaking.

The interior of the Blue Shadow instantly turned pitch black.

After a long while, several bright yellow lights suddenly appeared in the darkness, illuminating the ashen faces inside the cabin.

They were glowing mushrooms that emerged from the engine compartment, flashing rapidly as if questioning the humans about why the engine had stopped working.

Looking at the few light-wielding individuals that resembled candles, the captain of the Blue Shadow gave a wry smile. "The warship is damaged. You'd better soak in the nuclear fusion fuel to save yourselves. Humanity is in big trouble."

(End of this chapter)