Ahead of Xiao Yu lay a journey more than six thousand light years long. Because of the influence of several large gas clouds and nearby star clusters, Xiao Yu could not see the sun from here, no matter what wavelength of detection he used. But Xiao Yu knew that the sun was there, quietly orbiting the Galactic Center beyond those layers of darkness.
That was Xiao Yu’s holand. What Xiao Yu had to do now was go ho.
The boundless universe was like an endless ocean, and the Hope spaceship was the tiny skiff carrying Xiao Yu back to his ho.
“My kin, I am taking you ho.” Looking at Zhang Shengya’s calm face, Xiao Yu murmured softly.
The Hope spaceship was racing forward at nearly one hundred and fifty tis the speed of light. Xiao Yu never lingered to admire any scenery along the way. No matter how magnificent or beautiful the natural phenona, they could not make him pause. After seeing the splendor of great cities and experiencing the rises and falls of life, that small village tucked away in a corner, the place that had raised him, might very well be the best place of all.
The Solar System was unremarkable, but it was Xiao Yu’s ho.
The death of the Specter companion had been a trendous blow to Xiao Yu, enough even to leave him sowhat despondent. It was during this period that Xiao Yu first began to doubt his own resolve.
“Can I really defeat the Sweepers Civilization? Can I really defeat the Neutron War Star?” Xiao Yu thought silently. “Hundreds of billions of warships were wiped out under the Neutron War Star, and even the Specter died.”
Never before had Xiao Yu’s situation been so dangerous. Not even when he had first left Earth was it this bad. Back then, at least the Taihao Civilization had been secretly looking after him, and under the so-called protection of Luck Value, he had never been this unlucky. Now, however, the entire Taihao Alliance had died in battle, and the Specter companion was gone.
The Specter companion’s death not only ant that he had lost an absolutely loyal and powerful comrade, it had also dragged his Luck Value down to rock bottom.
Running into the Neutron War Star for no reason had led to the destruction of the Solar spaceship. The curvature drive had inexplicably malfunctioned. In the battle with that Level 3 Alien Beast, the conventional drive engine had also inexplicably failed, causing even more serious damage to the hull. All of these events told Xiao Yu that he did not have much ti left.
“Even if I die, I want to die in my holand, in the Solar System.” Xiao Yu thought to himself.
Ti slipped by quietly. Twenty years passed. Xiao Yu had already traveled roughly three thousand light years. Half the journey was behind him.
Very fortunately, during this period the Hope spaceship had not encountered any more accidents.
At this mont, the Hope spaceship had left curvature space and was approaching a planet using conventional propulsion. The three thousand light years of long travel had nearly exhausted the ship’s stored energy. Xiao Yu had to restock here.
It was a lonely rocky planet orbiting a red dwarf. Red dwarfs were already very dim, and the great distance between this rocky planet and its star left it shrouded in perpetual darkness. It was cold and desolate, showing no sign of life, only countless craters of various sizes. Under Xiao Yu’s optical illumination, many bright reflective patches could be seen on the surface. Xiao Yu knew those were solid hydrogen or solid nitrogen, as well as solid thane and similar substances. Because the temperature was so low, these materials could only exist as solids.
Xiao Yu landed on the dayside of this planet. Any planet orbiting a star would have day and night, but the alternation of day and night here was not the sa concept as that on Earth. It was day, yet there were still only scattered stars in the sky, and lighting was still needed on the surface to see anything.
Here, day and night were basically no different.
This was an insignificant corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. Over billions of years, perhaps no life had ever set foot here. There were many such places in the galaxy. The Milky Way was too vast, so vast that even at the height of Xiao Yu’s power, he had not been able to survey it completely.
On this distant, icy, lonely, dark world, Xiao Yu completed his resupply. He activated the conventional drive and antigravity engine together, and the Hope spaceship slowly lifted off from the planet. The exhaust plu from its thrusters left the only mark of an intelligent being on this world. If nothing unexpected happened, that mark might remain for billions of years.
Xiao Yu once again entered curvature space. If all went well, the remaining fuel would be just enough to get him to the Solar System. Only twenty more years.
The Divine Ark Civilization, the Sweepers Civilization, the Guardian Civilization, the Taihao Alliance, the three great Alien Beasts, these nas now felt dreamlike and distant to Xiao Yu, as if everything that had happened between them belonged to a previous life. For Xiao Yu as he was now, it was hard for these nas and the stories between them to stir his heart. All he wanted was to go ho, back to the place that had given him life.
Roughly nineteen years later, Xiao Yu reached the forr location of the Tianyuan IV star system. The Hope spaceship exited curvature space and drifted forward slowly on conventional propulsion as Xiao Yu carefully observed this place that could be called his second ho.
Xiao Yu would never forget the things that had happened here, but reality never matched the scenes in his mories. The vibrant, seething star that had once burned here was gone. In its place was a nebula about half a light year in diater, still expanding. Only from the faint radiation that lingered here could one infer what had once existed in this place in the distant past.
Tianyuan IV had vanished, sothing Xiao Yu had long known. But seeing with his own eyes the shattered remnants left behind still made him feel a trace of sadness.
The three planets Tianyuan A, Tianyuan B, and Tianyuan C had also long since disappeared. Xiao Yu knew their fate. When Tianyuan IV had been detonated by the Guardian Civilization, the loss of gravity had caused the three planets to fly off along the tangents of their orbits. As for where they were headed, Xiao Yu did not know. But he knew that they had surely entered the boundless universe, becoming rogue planets that had lost their parent star and could only wander the galaxy.
It was a rather sorrowful ending, but compared to Earth’s ending, they were still relatively fortunate.
After lingering for a while at the forr site of Tianyuan IV, Xiao Yu set out again. At this point, the Solar System was only about ten light years away. Ho was right before his eyes.
The sun had beco a bright star in the sky, emitting a faint yellow light.
Xiao Yu sighed softly and entered curvature flight. He still rembered that when he had first left the Solar System, it had taken him more than six thousand years to complete his first interstellar journey. Now, retracing that path, it would take him less than a month.
Between the first and second journeys, Xiao Yu’s state of mind could not have been more different. When he had first left, he had felt confusion about the future and fear of the deep universe, but more than that, he had felt the excitent of exploring the unknown.
This ti, on his way back, there was no trace of bold ambition in his heart, only a kind of deadened calm.
Xiao Yu felt like a youth who had left his hotown to seek his fortune in the bright world outside, had gone through all manner of dangers and hardships, had finally achieved success, and then, because of a major setback, had been knocked all the way back to the starting line.
On this journey, he was not returning in glory, but seeking psychological comfort and fleeing danger.
Eighteen days later, Xiao Yu arrived at the Solar System’s Oort cloud region. This was the outermost boundary of the Solar System, one light year from the sun.
The sun was now the brightest star in the sky, brighter than Venus had ever appeared from Earth. But when seen from the ecliptic plane, the sun was much dimr. Xiao Yu knew this was because the asteroid belt that had once contained Earth’s fragnts was blocking it.
Nearly one hundred thousand years had passed since Xiao Yu had left the Solar System. After one hundred thousand years, Xiao Yu had finally returned. Such a long stretch of ti was more than enough to bring about countless changes, but on astronomical scales, one hundred thousand years was only a fleeting instant.
Xiao Yu did not linger here long. He stayed for less than a day before once more entering curvature flight. A day and a half later, he exited curvature flight again and ca to a stop beside a planet.
This was the Lost Star. That na had been given by Xiao Yu himself. It was the outermost planet in the Solar System, and throughout long history, it had always drifted beyond the range of human sight, never observed or detected by them. But Xiao Yu had found it.
The Lost Star still retained its original appearance. Aside from the increase in craters on its surface, there were no other changes. It had been struck more frequently of late, and Xiao Yu saw many new impact craters on it. He knew that a large portion of the objects that had created those craters were fragnts of what had once been Earth.
After staying for one day, Xiao Yu once again set off. This ti he did not use curvature flight, but advanced under conventional propulsion.
Ahead lay the heliopause. Once past the heliopause, Xiao Yu would truly be within the bounds of the Solar System.
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