Chapter 400: Navigating Cosmic Storms

From the Solar System to the Pleiades, including the Lishi-1 system, there are a total of six bases. Lishi-1 is Base 1, and Base 2 is located 48 light-years away from Lishi-1.

Over the years, Du Qiu has focused his research on space technology, finally mastering the technological data provided by Ge Ya.

On Dream Technology’s warships, the only equipment reaching peak level six is the space-related devices.

Because of this, in Dreamland Du Qiu can use space technology to make his fleet appear and vanish near battlefields, scooping up valuable spoils.

In reality, Dream Technology has already established space gates at these pivotal bases. With these gates, a fleet can appear from tens or even hundreds of light-years away in record time.

Of course, this requires that space gates be pre-established between the two locations.

Originally, the Dream Technology mega fleet planned to use these gates to appear at a temporary base, 10 light-years away in the Pleiades system, within just one day.

Over the years, Dream Technology’s exploration fleet has never come closer than 3 light-years to the Pleiades.

This was a special request from Du Qiu.

This is the star system that birthed the Pleiades civilization, which later developed into the Ge Ya, Dominant, and Blue Star Civilizations.

Du Qiu wanted to be among the first to explore it, while also fearing that before the Dominant Civilization departs, they might leave behind a hidden contingency.

If the exploration team accidentally triggered it, it could spell enormous trouble—if not disaster—for Dream Technology.

But if he were personally in charge, he could handle any emergency on the spot.

For over 30 years, Du Qiu also deployed search fleets to locate the myriad small fleets that had scattered during the escape.

To his surprise, in more than 30 years he only found three small fleets; two of them were reduced, upon discovery, to just one Heavenly Spacecraft.

Remember, originally—with the support of Dream Technology—beyond their mega fleet, there were 80 fleets of various sizes fleeing across Earth.

From these three small fleets, Du Qiu learned that each had encountered bizarre spacetime storms during conventional flight.

These storms were strange energy shocks that caused severe damage to warships and spacecraft alike.

Even more alarming, all three small fleets estimated that less than two months had passed since they left the Solar System.

In fact, when Dream Technology located them, the earliest found—the Sart nation fleet with two escort ships and one Heavenly Spacecraft—had left the Solar System five years ago.

The other two fleets, each with only one Heavenly Spacecraft remaining, had departed 18 and 21 years ago respectively.

Shortly after locating the Sart fleet, Dream Technology instructed all its operating fleets: if flying more than one light-year away from any star system, they must engage faster-than-light mode.

Du Qiu felt both trepidation and relief. He shuddered at the thought that during the journey from the Solar System to the Lishi-1 system, when the mega fleet had briefly exited faster-than-light mode to deploy meteor detectors, they might have encountered a spacetime storm.

Had that happened, who knows where Dream Technology’s mega fleet might have ended up?

Fortunately, during the initial five years, both the Longtar and Rin Feng fleets—rushing back to the Solar System—maintained continuous faster-than-light travel.

Later, even the colonization fleets adopted faster-than-light travel to reach their destination systems as quickly as possible.

Who would have guessed that such terrifying spacetime storms lurk in the vast interstellar spaces between star systems?

For this reason, Du Qiu meticulously searched through the database of his original flagship fleet—about a hundred ships inherited from the Dominant Civilization—seeking any mention of spacetime storms in Dreamland.

In the end, he found an entry in the database of one flagship, aged 1200 years, which recorded an encounter with a spacetime storm.

That flagship had endured a spacetime storm and taken three years to return to normal.

Although the database did not specify how many warships survived the storm, it noted the storm was classified as Level One.

According to Du Qiu’s interpretation, Level One is the minimum severity.

Subsequently, Du Qiu managed to extract more information from the remnants of databases found on warship wrecks in the battlefields of the two major civilizations.

He finally uncovered data indicating that spacetime storms typically occur in the outer regions of a galaxy, becoming less frequent as one moves closer to the galactic center.

Furthermore, the farther a galaxy is from the cosmic center, the more frequent the storms become.

Based on this, he classified galaxies into grades.

The closer a galaxy is to the cosmic center, the higher its grade; the farther away, the lower.

The Andromeda Galaxy was classified as Grade Three.

This indicates that the Andromeda Galaxy lies relatively far from the cosmic center.

Upon reviewing this information, Du Qiu wondered if the Milky Way might be even smaller—and perhaps more isolated—than the Andromeda Galaxy.

At the very least, nearly every Blue Star escape fleet had encountered spacetime storms, suggesting that the Milky Way experiences them much more frequently than the Andromeda Galaxy.

Considering that the Solar System is located on the third arm of the Milky Way, in a peripheral region, it’s no wonder that spacetime storms are so common.

Reflecting on how the Tur Civilization fleet managed to traverse a spacetime storm spanning thousands of years—nearly crossing the entire Milky Way—Du Qiu felt immense awe and caution toward these phenomena.

Looking back at the base he selected in Dreamland, Du Qiu felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

That base was located at the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy, a region known for frequent spacetime storms. Fortunately, during the transfer from the Ge Ya base, he maintained uninterrupted faster-than-light travel.

Had he known about such deadly natural disasters in the universe, he should have mentioned some cosmic knowledge when conversing with Ge Ya.

After all, with the Ge Ya Civilization inheriting wisdom from the Pleiades and having waged millennia-long wars with the Dominant Civilization, they held abundant knowledge about the cosmos.

Sadly, Du Qiu can no longer establish contact with the Ge Ya Civilization.

Over the past 30 years, as the Dominant Civilization renewed its offensive, the control zone of the Ge Ya Alliance was further compressed.

Du Qiu’s base is now increasingly distant from the Ge Ya Alliance’s territory, separated by several bases of the Dominant Civilization. Crossing over undetected is now impossible.

At that time, mutual mistrust prevailed; otherwise, if they had left intelligent machines for each other upon arrival, the transition would have been smoother.

But that would have meant entrusting one’s life to the other—an impossibility during a first encounter.

Du Qiu managed to persuade Ge Ya into providing the relevant technological data. Ge Ya believed that even if Du Qiu reached peak level six, it would pose no threat to them but might even trouble the Dominant Civilization, so they agreed willingly.

Nowadays, the fear of spacetime storms is codified as an unbreakable rule on all Dream Technology warships: once departing the vicinity of a star system, they must immediately switch to faster-than-light travel.

Once equipped with a space-jump device, crews also try to minimize space jumps in interstellar regions far from any star systems.

This is because before and after a space jump, the warship remains in conventional flight—making it vulnerable to a spacetime storm during that window.

For this very reason, after acquiring information on spacetime storms, Du Qiu suspended the search for the Blue Star escape fleets.

After all, such a search would require conventional flight scans within interstellar space.

At that moment, he hesitated upon reading a transmission from Base 2 sent by his aide.

“Headquarters, our base’s peripheral sensor picked up a distress signal from a Blue Star Ark spaceship. The signal originated 6 light-years beyond Base 2’s star system in empty interstellar space. Please authorize our base to dispatch a search fleet immediately.”