The universe where Harlan is currently hiding is located on the verge of the void area. It is desolate and remote, and we have never set foot in it.
We usually divide the void into several regions according to the radiation degree of the empire's power: including the capital of the empire, the region completely ruled by the empire and with various military fortresses is the inner territory of the empire, or directly referred to as the empire area, which includes The universe where the servant army lives and the hundreds of universes that have been built successively in the past five years; the macro world is managed by the empire, but the world where we have not issued a ruling declaration over the entire universe is the subordinate area, or the frontier of the empire —Well, we have a fairly vast frontier, which is quite insane; outside the macro world, it is not ruled by the empire at all, but the area that can be monitored by the imperial reconnaissance force or scanning system is called the far frontier, this area It is jokingly called the "low security area". Basically, you will not get any military asylum from the empire after you reach the far frontier. It is even difficult to ask for help from the macro world. Except for the imperial army, civilians will never It is easy to go to the far frontier.
And there is an endless and vast void beyond the far frontier. Except for the territories of the star field, the Huron gods, and the fallen apostles, this unexplored void is collectively called the "white area" by us.
Know nothing, have no guarantee, the information about this place is as clean as a blank sheet of paper, this is the white zone.
The world where Harlan is hiding is located on the border between the White Zone and the Far Frontier. We have never set foot in this world, but as long as its information offset is 10% closer to the empire's territory, it will fall into the garden of death Within the range of the daily rational scan.
This world is still quite a "distance" from the universe where we discovered the substance of our hometown. This is something that comforts me and Sandora. It seems that Harlan found nothing in the few days he wandered here. They There is a big gap between the information on the hometown materials and the actual situation. Sandora is also worried that once the two sides start a war, the scale of the battle will endanger the clues of the hometown world after the battle reaches a certain level. Now it seems that there is no need to worry about this for the time being.
During the few hours when we rushed from home to the front line, Sivis had sent a large number of probes and three waves of scouts to the impenetrable universe surrounded by the imperial army. She originally wanted to find out Harlan faced the imperial army's attack plan, but the situation inside the world barrier seemed a little strange.
"We saw the spaceship of the fallen apostle in the main material plane for a short time at the beginning," Sivis reported to Sandora, "They must have found the probe and the imperial army outside the world barrier, but They quickly hid in the deep space, or disappeared in some kind of space fold. This universe is very strange, it should be formed naturally, but the state of space inside it is not very stable, and the subordinates detected large-scale space The folds open and close, as if there are many closed small worlds inside—these things don’t form naturally, perhaps some civilized civilization stayed in this universe for a short time and modified its structure.”
"Is Harlan hiding in that space fold now?" Sandora looked at Sivis.
"Yes, they all hid in. They were neither prepared to break through nor to attack. Hiding in the folds of space can only keep them safe for a while. It is really not smart to rely on this method of hiding to fight against the imperial army, and Harlan's hands There are clearly enough troops to meet him, but he really doesn't look like a normal... "
"It doesn't look like a normal imperial soldier," Sandora nodded, "doesn't even care about basic military common sense... Well, regardless of what Harlan thinks, anyway, sooner or later, the imperial army will go all the way in. Let me talk about it first." Speaking of the situation in this world, it seems that it is not just some abnormality in the spatial structure—I see traces of intelligent biological activities."
Sandora pointed to the holographic projection on the officer's platform, which showed a dim and reddish space, and there were clearly man-made objects in the space: it might be some kind of space station, and it was definitely not produced by the Empire.
"Yes, Your Majesty, there are aborigines here, and they have spread throughout the entire universe," Sivis said with a puzzled expression on his face, "This is the most incomprehensible part—Harlan doesn't seem to have disturbed these people at all." Indigenous, he has been lurking in this world for maybe several days, but... the subordinates have not found any traces of this world being destroyed at all."
Fallen apostles staying harmless in a certain world? I understand what happened to the expression on Sivis's face.
"Have you ever had contact with the aborigines?" My sister interrupted suddenly.
"Not yet," Sivis replied, "Most of our attention is focused on searching for the fallen apostles. Those aborigines seem to have a mediocre level of technology. They haven't mastered the technology to jump out of this universe. This is a group of people with limited potential. species, before solving the immediate enemy, the Imperial Army has no extra energy to pay attention to them for the time being."
In other words, Sivis still doesn't know anything about the indigenous races of this universe. I can understand her standard Xiling way of thinking, and the biggest problem now is to deal with Harlan, the indigenous resident of this universe—as long as they calmly watch and don’t get involved, the Imperial Army really doesn’t have the extra energy to do it. look after them. But I think it is better to get in touch with these natives. They have spread throughout the universe. Although they have not jumped out of the world, they are still civilized by the standards of the empire. The fight between the Imperial Army and the Fallen Apostles will definitely be discovered by these natives. Contacting them in advance may save a lot of trouble.
"The siege troops continue to interfere with the world's barrier. I request that the relay base station be operational within 24 hours," Sandora ordered after a moment of pondering, "The main force has begun to sink to the main material plane, and I want to Let's see if Harlan can continue to hide safely at this time."
As it turns out, that guy can really do it!
When the main force of the imperial army swaggered into this universe, and even quickly set up their positions, the fallen apostles didn't even show their shadows!
"It is confirmed that no enemy reaction has been detected—in the entire universe." Sivis reported from the command seat.
I opened my mouth: "There is no movement at all? Even if a reconnaissance plane or probe pops up to check the situation!"
"There is no movement at all. The Fallen Apostle didn't even put a probe, and we didn't even detect the enemy's radar response." Sivis reconfirmed the data in front of him, and nodded to me very seriously, "They just Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist..."
Even Sandora was a little helpless this time: "What the hell is that Harlan doing... Prepare a broadcast for the whole universe for me."
The communication department immediately prepared the high-energy broadcast tower. This giant tower installed on the longitudinal arm of the Admiral Empire can allow the psionic energy to echo throughout the universe in the form of signal waves, and it is easy to broadcast without delay all over the world. , Sandora asked Harlan to come out to fight immediately, and she ordered the broadcast to be adjusted to the frequency of the Harlan Legion. This frequency was intercepted by us during the last border battle. Using this frequency to broadcast is a serious threat. Provocative behavior, but ten minutes after the Imperial Army announced that the universe was under control and demanded that the fallen apostles fight immediately, Harlan still pretended that he did not exist, like a cat in a certain space fold...
I suddenly wondered if Sivis' information was wrong. Is the remnant of Harlan really in this world
Sivis immediately pledged her life to guarantee the accuracy of the information. Not only was she sure that Harlan's legion was somewhere in this universe, but she definitely hadn't escaped. So we conducted a second broadcast. The content of this broadcast was proposed by Bingtis in a friendly manner. The wording was particularly concise: "Halan has the guts to come out and fight!"
Of course, there is still no movement from the enemy.
This is not the reaction that Xiling soldiers should have, but no one knows what happened to Harlan. Sandora finally ordered the establishment of a space fortress on the spot, and began to scan the entire universe: no matter where Harlan is hiding, wait for the whole world to After all the space anomalies are analyzed, he will come out to fight sooner or later. I really don’t know what is the point of him being so obsessed now. Is he planning to create a new battleship that is enough to compete with the imperial army in three or two days?
Or... is he using this time to recharge the King's Lander formation
The last one is the only possibility, but soon I feel that it is not reliable. If Harlan still has a little brain, he should know that he is now in a state of escape. After all, it is better to reduce the life of the spaceship a little than to be blown up. So he shouldn't be hiding now to recharge the king's lander.
Anyway, what was supposed to be a quick and intense volley was briefly stalemate because of Harlan's erratic behavior, and when the stalemate started, I gave my spare attention to other places in this universe.
On the second day, I began to check the various scenes taken by the probes from deep space, as well as the real space scenes taken by the shipboard observation equipment. What I saw was surprising.
I saw a very old world that was on the verge of decay.
When the fleet arrived, I noticed that the stars in the surrounding space were dim, and I could hardly see the stars and distant nebulae. At that time, I thought it was because the fleet just teleported to an area where the celestial bodies were rare, or the universe itself had few celestial bodies. As a result, however, when the pictures taken by the probe were sent to my eyes, I realized that it was not that there were few celestial bodies in the universe, but that all the stars had entered their twilight years—this world had entered the late stage, and the star-making movement in the entire universe It's all on the verge of stopping, and we don't see bright nebulae because those nebulae have run out of fuel and resources, and 90 percent of the stars they created have died out, and now only dim embers remain. According to the detection, the universe is still expanding slowly, but the expansion rate is almost stagnant. According to the calculation of the host computer, the total amount of matter in this world is just at the critical point, and its ultimate fate is to stand still at a certain time without expanding. , does not shrink, and becomes a solidified space, and all the celestial bodies inside it will be extinguished one by one after a long time, and finally this universe will become a dark bubble, the entropy tends to be infinite, and no phenomenon will occur anymore, Waiting for the moment when the flow of information stops completely, it will be quietly swallowed by the void.
In my room, I flipped through the pictures from deep space one after another. There was a little doll girl hanging on her body. The little girl couldn't understand those things at all, but she pretended to be very professional.
This is quite similar to myself...
A universe that is nearing the end of its life is looking bleak.
The space is full of ancient black holes and cooling matter. The dark pictures captured by the probe in the deep space are actually not empty. There are a large number of black holes there, and the high-density celestial bodies formed after the stars are exhausted completely occupy the starry sky of this world. From the number of black holes, we can judge that this universe must have had an idyllic age full of stars—there must be several times more active celestial bodies in space than those black holes.
In space, you can also find something emitting light and heat, which are dark red objects: red dwarfs. These stars that have run out of fuel but not enough to form a black hole are burning at an extremely slow speed, squeezing the last bit of energy in their bodies, some of them have been completely exhausted, and now they are just releasing the heat accumulated in them . These low-temperature stars are like little lights dotted on black velvet, shimmering vaguely in the moment when the universe ends. The end of this universe belongs to the most classic situation in the end of the world: cooling.
There are many ways to end the universe, and the natural and end-of-life ending methods are mainly divided into three types: expanding to the big rip, collapsing to the singularity, or just at the critical point, slowly cooling in the state of a black bubble, and the winter of space will kill everything. The world in front of me is slowly approaching the third kind of end of the world. Of course, this "facing" is viewed from the perspective of the evolution of the universe. It will take about 100 million years for this world to completely cool down until all living space disappears. time.
And the last aborigines of this universe are living around those dying stars.
According to the pictures collected by the probe, there are almost settlements around those dim star embers, including natural celestial bodies and man-made space fortresses. The remaining indigenous inhabitants of this universe live there, gathering around the ever-cooling red dwarf stars. Collecting a handful of stellar energy is like the asylum seekers who gather around a small pile of bonfire embers to keep warm when winter night comes, except that the winter night they face will no longer have sunrise, and the embers in front of them have already disappeared. It is the last bit of fuel in this universe.
"If it wasn't for Harlan, we should start doing a doomsday assessment of the aborigines here now."
I gently raised my arm and turned the little puppet pillowed on my elbow upside down. Bingtis is right, I should teach this child something, even if she won't become a commander, as one of the royal family, she will also At least you must understand the basic principles - you can't have unlearned and incompetent brats in your family, they are already brats now...
"Doomsday Apple?" The little puppet was already confused by the drowsy space picture and the messy annotations on the picture. At this time, it replied to me in a state of almost sleepwalking, "I don't like apples, they are too big , but also hug and eat... "
I:"… "
After I repeated it to the little girl, the doll girl became interested: "What is that?"
"This universe is gradually going out," I pointed to something on the data terminal, "Look at these dark red light balls, red dwarfs, if you can see dark lines on their surface, it means that this red dwarf is about to die completely. Many The total amount of matter in the universe is limited, and there are only so many materials that can be used to make stars. Now this world is dying. After these stars are extinguished, no new stars will be naturally produced in space, but the original nature of this world Residents have not yet mastered the technology to jump out of the world."
"They're going to die, aren't they?" The puppet thought for a while, "I remember, if a civilization is about to die out, and the empire happens to be free, it will help out."
I think there seems to be something wrong with the understanding of the little puppet, but it basically means this: "Almost, but it's not as simple as helping out. Any rational civilization belongs to the order side. In front of the abyss, the order side All creatures belong to one camp. Based on this logic, the empire will help other species—well, the "helping means" in the old empire will not be discussed for the time being. In short, the empire has a special evaluation group and logic system to judge the needs of a civilization. How much guidance is accepted? If the assessment concludes that the natives of this world do not have the ability to spontaneously research boundary-crossing technology, then they may be sent directly to a new world to survive. If the assessment concludes that they can carry out technology with limited guidance Breakthrough, then the empire will help them manufacture equipment for cross-world navigation. However, no matter what kind of assistance, unless the target civilization voluntarily becomes a vassal of the empire, it will strive not to cause monopoly control over this civilization. The last rule is just added by the new empire .”
The little puppet seemed to understand and nodded seriously, then her eyes were suddenly attracted by a picture on the data terminal, and she grabbed my arm in amazement: "Hey, look at this, it's so bright! Is this an artificial sun made by the locals?"
I quickly turned back the picture I just jumped over. This is a deep space picture just uploaded by the probe. The probe should be passing by a dead star system. It glanced at the nearest red dwarf star —So a picture was uploaded more than ten seconds ago. In the center of the frame is an almost completely extinguished Sun at a great distance, while in the lower left corner of the frame is a planet at a close-up distance with a particularly bright spot of light above it.
I looked at it for a long time, and felt that the light spot looked familiar, so I immediately directed the probe to go back and take another look.
A minute later, the picture observed by the probe was transmitted in real time, and I was dumbfounded:
That spot of light is not an artificial sun made by the local indigenous people at all, but an... an EOP-03! !
(It is expected that Man Wang Magazine has spread to most outlets, it seems that it is time to go out and bask in the sun and buy a book by the way.) RS