According to the information Xiao Yu had obtained from that box, this ruin was about twenty light-years away from the Dwarf star system. But because Xiao Yu had not left in a straight line from that location, it was now about twenty five light-years from his current position.
Xiao Yu had already conducted comprehensive observations of the site through his own thods and had ford a preliminary understanding of the situation there. What he found was an ordinary, dium-sized star, slightly larger than the Sun, but with no planets orbiting it whatsoever.
Without question, this was a desolate star system, completely unremarkable in the vast Milky Way, if it weren’t for the presence of the Trolor Civilization’s relics, Xiao Yu wouldn’t have spared it even a glance.
After plotting the course, Xiao Yu’s enormous fleet quickly set out for the location, accelerating to ten tis the speed of light. At this speed, the journey would take only two and a half years.
Just as he had expected, that Level 4 Alien Beast was still trailing behind him, hovering in and out of detection.
“My strength will only keep growing, and your threat to will only keep shrinking.” Xiao Yu cast it a casual look, not bothering to pay it much attention.
A year passed, and the Dwarves had grown accustod to life aboard the ships. The initial excitent had gradually faded. It was at this point that a rather serious problem began to appear within Dwarf society.
Naly, life was simply too boring.
Xiao Yu’s social welfare system was so complete that every function could be replaced by robots. Under such a model, the Dwarves were left with only one thing to do: study, study, and more study. But this couldn’t go on forever, not everyone was suited to be a scientist. Without a large number of occupations to consu their energy, they inevitably turned to eating, drinking, amusent, and decadence. So monitoring data even showed that the seeds of organized cri had already begun to sprout among the Dwarves.
Energy always needs an outlet. If there is no external pressure, internal conflict will arise.
When it ca to handling such issues, Xiao Yu had so experience. The more than one hundred races that had originally co under his control, including the Luka, had now grown to a total population of nearly one hundred million. Among these groups, Xiao Yu had maintained firm control by refining the social model, developing legal entertainnt industries, and implenting the Contribution Point currency system. But this ti, the society in question numbered forty billion, and the population was still growing. The managent thods suited to a small-scale society simply did not apply.
Therefore, Xiao Yu convened Luka Two and other scientists from the psychosocial sciences division. Drawing on managent practices from humanity’s Earth era, the native systems of the Dwarf howorld, and his own experience governing one hundred million individuals, they together devised a rational frawork for this society.
In broad terms, Xiao Yu drastically cut back the previous free-welfare model and began to expand the scope of the Contribution Point currency system. At the sa ti, he refined all aspects of the social structure, absorbing large numbers of Dwarves into the workforce.
Accustod to the free distribution system, the Dwarves protested this fiercely. But now that they were living aboard the Ho starships, Xiao Yu had no fear of them causing any real trouble. The ard robots standing watch everywhere were not there for decoration.
While he wielded the stick in one hand, he naturally offered the carrot in the other. Dwarves who cooperated with Xiao Yu’s reforms and displayed pious faith were held up as role models and rewarded. Religious figures embedded throughout every part of society also played a huge role in calming their emotions.
On one side, Xiao Yu proclaid, “The blessings of the Great True God shine on every one of His children. The demons have inflicted trendous losses on the Great True God. To protect our ho, the True God needs you to contribute your strength and labor in His service.”
On the other side, he sat there idly, watching these Dwarves spend at least ten tis as long completing tasks that robots could have finished in monts.
Yet no matter how the reforms progressed, the primacy of science never changed. The special treatnt enjoyed by scientists remained the envy of all other Dwarves, making their eyes go red with longing.
Two and a half years passed amid these mundane matters. Xiao Yu’s fleet once again disengaged from curvature flight and returned to the visible universe.
At this location, he was twenty billion kiloters away from the ordinary star at the system’s center. Xiao Yu cautiously held his position at the system’s edge, not rushing in recklessly. Instead, he launched a vast number of probes to first survey the star system in detail.
“The Trolor Civilization’s ssage said that after the Sweepers wiped them out and departed, their civilization’s reserve protocols activated their most powerful defensive weapon, sothing called the ‘New World’, to protect the relics they left behind. So, just what is this ‘New World’ supposed to be?”
“I really have no concept of it. The technological capabilities of a Level 6 Civilization are beyond anything I can guess at. All I can do is proceed step by step.” Xiao Yu pondered silently, staring intently in the star’s direction.
A star by itself wasn’t anything remarkable in the Milky Way, but a star system this barren was sothing Xiao Yu had never encountered before. He observed that this star not only had no planets at all, even the essential asteroid belt was a pitiful, miniature version. Just a few lonely asteroids orbited in marginally stable paths, barely gathered into anything that could be called a ‘belt.’ Their total mass didn’t even reach one-thousandth that of Earth.
In fact, beyond the asteroid belt, Xiao Yu suspected this star didn’t even have an Oort cloud. The phenonon was highly abnormal. Generally speaking, any nebula capable of forming a star would, after the star ignited at the center, be partially dispersed by the star’s powerful stellar winds. The scattered material would gradually coalesce into planets, cots, and asteroids. It was nearly impossible for an entire nebula to collapse into a star without leaving behind any residual matter at all.
Yet that was exactly what had happened in this system.
The sparse asteroid belt ant the bodies within it would almost never collide. Without collisions, they couldn’t gather into larger objects. And without large planets, there was no gravitational disruption to alter their orbits. Those handful of asteroids would likely continue circling the star in their stable paths for billions of years. The absence of an Oort cloud ant there would be no cots, no water.
Looking at this star system, the only word Xiao Yu could think of to describe it was ‘desolate.’
“This really is a barren place,” Xiao Yu sighed inwardly.
Of course, all of this observational data ca from long-range instrunts. The full picture would only be clear after the probes arrived.
At present, this was just the first wave of probes, one hundred thousand in total. A second batch was already in accelerated production.
Five days later, the first probes arrived. The information they transmitted back was beyond Xiao Yu’s expectations.
The probes failed to detect any trace of artificial structures within the star system. Normally, any large-scale space war, even a conflict between civilizations at Xiao Yu’s technological level, would inevitably produce vast quantities of debris: shattered ships, projectile fragnts, damage to natural celestial bodies. In his own war against the Molian Civilization, the battlefield had been littered with such remnants.
Under most circumstances, no entity would ever bother to erase all of those traces completely. Not only would it be a tedious and extrely difficult task, there was simply no need. For example, cleaning the battlefield with the Molians to the point that every sign of the conflict was gone, no matter how advanced Xiao Yu had beco, would still take him at least a thousand years.
Every bit of ship wreckage and every scrap of munitions would have to be removed. The quantity of such fragnts would probably be asured in trillions, with sizes ranging down to milliters or smaller. Any heavily damaged planetary body would have to be relocated entirely. Even teorite fragnts would need to be collected and taken away, because anyone could tell at a glance whether a rock had been smashed by natural forces or blasted apart by civilization-grade weapons.
This star system now exhibited exactly that characteristic.
“Perhaps this place is so barren precisely because every trace of war has been erased? Maybe it once had planets and all kinds of other bodies, but because they were contaminated by the signs of battle, so being ca and removed them all… But why do that? What purpose or goal could it possibly serve? Isn’t such an effort absurdly pointless?”
Xiao Yu racked his brain, but no reasonable answer presented itself.
“It’s also possible that this emptiness wasn’t caused deliberately. In the natural evolution of the system, maybe the star encountered so massive object, or passed through a dense stellar region, and all its satellites were stolen away by other bodies. If I explain it that way, it seems to make sense too.”
“Both explanations, artificial and natural, fit the evidence,” Xiao Yu concluded.
“But…this place was supposed to be the battlefield between the Trolor Civilization and the Sweepers. Where exactly is their so-called ‘New World’?”
Because he had obtained that box in advance and read the Trolor Civilization’s ssage, Xiao Yu still leaned toward the artificial explanation for why this star system was so empty. But that raised a series of additional, unanswerable questions:
Just how bored would a civilization have to be to do such a thing? Or did they have so hidden strategic objective?
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