Chapter 220: Blueprints for Humanity’s Escape Route

Year 262 of the Federation.

After two years and countless tests,

the first-generation Jump Disruption Device—also called the Subspace Oscillator—was finalized and officially put into mass production.

At the same time, Jump Disruption Countermeasures also entered large-scale production, with even more assembly lines being set up.

After all, every Federation warship had to be equipped with one.

Not just the warships—even private ships that were fitted with a jump engine were required to have it.

But wrapping the entire Desolate Star Region in a jump-disrupting net?

Honestly…

That’s a bit unrealistic.

Sure, a single device could disrupt a sphere with a 1.8-light-year diameter, but the universe isn’t flat. To include the whole Desolate Star Region—even with the Federation’s current manufacturing capability—it probably couldn’t be done in a hundred years.

So instead, they decided to focus on a smaller area and secure the most important parts first.

Using Earth as the center, projecting out in every direction for ten light-years, this zone was designated as the Federation’s core region, scheduled for complete jump disruption coverage.

This included the Solar System, Lutania, Barnard’s Star, Ross 154, Ross 248, Proxima, Alpha Centauri, Tianyuan IV, Lalande, Wolf, and Sirius—eleven stars in total.

This would make up phase one of the project, planned for completion within fifteen years.

Phase two? That would push deeper into the Desolate Star Region, targeting other stars under the Federation’s control near Tianyuan IV.

As for the other subordinate civilizations?

They weren’t even on the Federation’s radar.

Phase two was currently estimated to take 170 years to finish.

Of course, that’s just based on the current generation of disruption devices and existing production rates.

If the second-generation tech gets upgraded in the future—say, the disruption range skyrockets by tenfold and industrial output multiplies…

Then all the calculations would change.

Either way, this project—especially stage one—was already listed as a top priority for the Federation. Nothing else even came close.

But as for later technical updates, Lin Yun just wasn’t interested anymore.

By now, she’d switched to another project group, off to tackle a brand new challenge.

For her, it wasn’t enough just to disrupt jumps.

Humanity needed a fallback plan—an escape route for the worst-case scenario.

And what was that route?

Lin Yun had thought about this for a long time, and finally found her answer.

Out beyond the Milky Way.

It’s said that a level-4 civilization is marked by jump technology, while a level-5 one masters spatial teleportation and hyperspace technology.

Within a galaxy, jump drives work fine—on shorter distances, they’re even faster than hyperspace drives.

But the catch is: each jump has a max range, limiting its use to a single galaxy. Intergalactic travel is off the table.

Take our local galaxy group, for instance. It’s made up of three main galaxies, plus a bunch of smaller satellite galaxies.

The three big ones are the Milky Way, Triangulum Galaxy, and Andromeda Galaxy. Everything else is either a satellite galaxy to one of them or smaller than most satellites.

The Milky Way alone has loads of satellite galaxies.

The best known are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is 163,000 light-years from the Milky Way, with 20 billion stars.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is even further—200,000 light-years—with a billion stars.

If humanity could make it to either of these or any of the other satellite galaxies and build a backup civilization there…

Then even if disaster struck Earth, we’d have a way out. The entire civilization wouldn’t be wiped out in one blow.

But the real problem is—

Getting there isn’t easy at all.

Currently, only the Houyi—the Federation’s lone hyperspace warship—can travel between galaxies. Even so, its hyperspace speed caps out at 505 times the speed of light.

A trip to the Magellanic Clouds would still take two or three centuries.

But a hyperspace engine isn’t fixed at just 505 times light speed. According to records from that mysterious civilization’s cube, 500 times is just the entry-level for hyperspace tech—for higher speeds…

There’s actually no upper limit.

So why hasn’t the Federation made any breakthroughs in hyperspace drives after all these decades? The answer’s pretty simple—

Even the only engine they have wasn’t built by the Federation.

How can you improve on something you didn’t make in the first place?

Yes, the Houyi’s engine—the Federation only supplied some supporting components. The core parts still came from that unknown level-5 civilization.

There are blueprints; humanity has them.

A full set of manufacturing techniques—stored in those ancient records.

But the actual fabrication tools needed to build it—

Sorry, humanity doesn’t have any!

So what’s really holding us back isn’t the navigation tech, but something much more basic.

Simply put, our industrial foundation just isn’t up to scratch for interstellar work.

Even to build an entry-level 500x light-speed hyperspace engine, its core requires degenerate matter—no, not just any degenerate matter. It must be at least 100 times denser than electron-degenerate matter.

And that’s not even the whole story. Fabricating degenerate materials at that level demands incredible precision.

It’s honestly mind-boggling.

That’s why, for decades, the Federation’s been totally stuck making its own hyperspace engine.

But now—

Lin Yun had taken up the challenge.

She set her sights not just on building a new hyperspace drive but on pushing the technology far beyond current limits.

After all, only if travel to the Magellanic Clouds could be shortened to three to five years would it truly matter.

And that would mean boosting hyperspace speeds to tens of thousands, even over a hundred thousand times the speed of light.

Honestly, the Federation’s top brass saw little hope for this project.

From their view, the Federation would be better off becoming a true level-4 civilization, mastering all key level-4 tech, and only then tackling this mission.

Right now, the Federation’s interstellar industrial power barely scraped the threshold for a level-3 civilization.

Trying to master the manufacturing for core hyperspace components at this level…

Was simply a pipe dream.

One genius alone couldn’t fix something this foundational.

It was a problem that went to the very roots of humanity’s abilities.

But Lin Yun was stubborn. If she set her mind to something, not even her favorite person in the world—her father, Lin Yu—could sway her.

After a few failed attempts to talk her down,

the Federation leaders went to Lin Yu, hoping he could persuade her to quit wasting time.

But Lin Yu only gave one reply—

“When my daughter makes a decision, as her father I’ll always support her.”

He truly believed that since she’d made up her mind, she’d find a way to succeed.

So he refused on the spot.

With that, the upper echelons of the Federation were completely out of options.

All they could do was hope that after a while, Lin Yun would realize the challenge was insurmountable and come back.

And they prayed it wouldn’t take too long…