Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1115: Running Light Years in One Breath
"Take another look at this spot!"

"It's there. That's our home, our everything."

“Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being in history, lived out their lives on it.”

“All our joys and pains, all our religious convictions, ideologies and economic ideas, all the hunters and robbers, heroes and cowards, creators and destroyers of civilization, kings and peasants, lovers in love, fathers and mothers, hopeful children, inventors and explorers, great teachers, corrupt politicians, superstars, supreme leaders, all the saints and sinners in the history of the human race, gathered here - a speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

On February 1, 64, Voyager took a photo of the Earth from billion kilometers away, showing the Earth suspended like a speck of dust against the dark background of the solar system. Inspired by the photo, Carl Sagan wrote the book Pale Blue Dot, and the above is a classic quote from the book.

And now, the humans on the Lyra also saw similar scenes, and some emotional people read them out.

Because the situation is so similar, except that the dark blue dot that originally represented the earth has become the entire Milky Way.

The vast Milky Way, where many civilizations once crisscrossed the starry sea, is now just a tiny speck of light against the backdrop of the distance. It is so tiny against the backdrop of the deep and dark universe.

And in it, there are countless wonderful stories of civilizations, as well as countless legends of destruction and creation.

Whether it's the circumpolar stars, the North Pole Purple Star, the twenty-eight constellations, or the celestial constellations, all the stories are there.

Humans don’t know whether other civilizations have had books like “Pale Blue Dot” in history like themselves, but even if not, they must have had similar sighs when they set foot in the starry sky.

It used to be its home planet, and now it is the Milky Way.

And the so-called large-scale fleet cluster of fourteen civilizations seemed even smaller against the backdrop of the light spot in the Milky Way.

However, looking around from the perspective of the current fleet cluster, the dim light of the Milky Way is already the brightest light. The name of the starry sky is no longer worthy of its name here, because in addition to the Milky Way, only the Andromeda Galaxy can be seen through a conventional telescope. The Triangulum Galaxy, which is also a member of the Local Group, can only be seen with a larger telescope and long exposure.

Looking around, there is no starlight anywhere.

Yue Yuan stared blankly in the direction of the Milky Way. This scene brought back to his mind the memory of when a human ship, the Hope, set foot on the starry sky. But at that time, at least there was the starry sky to accompany him, but now there is nothingness only.

Against the backdrop of stars, the universe always gives people a feeling of immense vastness, and the great long-distance fleets that set sail against such a backdrop also give everyone who sees them a sense of magnificent epicness.

But after leaving the background of the starry sky, the universe gives people a feeling of darkness, depth, coldness and loneliness. Against such a background, the long-distance fleet gives people a feeling of extreme smallness and humbleness.

The sixth-level civilization, the pinnacle of interstellar civilization, the powerful civilization that spans the galaxy, seems to have become a crawling reptile here, crawling with all its might but only moving a little bit.

The nothingness around gives people a feeling as if they came from the abyss.

The fleets of fourteen civilizations were sailing in this endless deep void, and because there was no reference system whose relative positions were changing rapidly, they seemed to be standing still.

Four hundred years have passed, and the Great Voyage Fleet has traveled 85,400 light years. If it were placed in the Milky Way, it would have almost completed the inter-galactic journey, but now it has only made a little progress on this long voyage.

However, the morale of the fourteen civilizations is still high because this journey is going particularly smoothly.

Everyone's fleet had no major problems, the warp engines had been running for four hundred years without any signs of aging, and many civilizations' ships didn't even need to be refueled, and everyone was confident in their own technological strength. Of course, this was only the majority, such as the Feiyu civilization, humans, Shenju civilization, and awakeners, which were civilizations with relatively good positions in the team.

The battleship fleet of the Tianxing civilization had already completed a round of replenishment, and just when the large fleet had traveled 80,000 light years, it received a round of fuel from their transport ships.

However, so far, no transport ship has been dismantled into fuel, so everyone is still quite optimistic.

Some civilizations even think that it is only 254 million light years away. With their own navigation technology, they can travel light years to replenish a round of supplies and fuel, and they will reach their destination after times of replenishment.

But the awakeners who had experienced a long voyage were not so optimistic.

When they were about 100,000 light-years away from the Milky Way, they told all the civilizations present through the interconnected communication system: Everyone can carry out the last round of supplies here, because there will be almost no dark matter ahead. The dark matter halo that surrounds the Milky Way, and the thinnest dark matter has only spread to here.

And this is also the last chance to regret.

If any civilization changes its mind and does not want to go on the long voyage, it can turn back after completing its supply replenishment here. There is no turning back once it moves forward.

No civilization has ever proposed to go back.

The great voyage is what they have always dreamed of. If a civilization like the Alan civilization continues to exist, it will self-destruct. They must have external stimulation and new goals to support their progress.

The long voyage to find a way to advance to a cosmic civilization and to find a way to truly utilize vacuum zero-point energy on a large scale is the way out for civilization.

In this way, the fourteen civilizations made their final adjustments at a place about 100,000 light-years away from the Milky Way. In the void here, they used dark matter probes to absorb dark matter, and then produced dark antimatter through dark matter, and then used the annihilation of dark matter and dark antimatter to generate energy, and finally used this energy as a drive to carry out energy-to-matter conversion and create the matter that had been lost along the way.

At the same time, the fuel tanks of each ship are refilled with various energy sources.

After the warehouses were filled with various energy blocks formed by force field processing, the Great Voyage Fleet located the Andromeda Galaxy and set sail again.

The voyage after the final repairs was still led by the Star Civilization. The Tianxing Civilization complained a lot about this, but the other fourteen civilizations did not want to change, especially the five civilizations including the Daya Civilization. They did not want to change because it was obvious that the Tianxing Civilization was doing the hard work and they should continue. If they really supported them to change, they might become the "leader", which was not worth it.

As the saying goes, it is better to die than to have a friend die. Under the leadership of Daya civilization, everyone unanimously supports the continuation of Tianxing civilization.

As for joining the fifth leadership position of the organization, that's easy to say. The opportunity is for everyone, not just for you, the Tianxing civilization. You lead the way first, and then negotiate with other civilizations while you navigate.

The Tianxing Civilization was so angry about this that it gritted its teeth and directed its spearhead towards the Daya Civilization, because anyone could see that it was the Daya Civilization that did it on purpose.

Since the civilizations that know the truth won’t tell anyone, the Tianxing civilization still doesn’t know that it’s humans who are behind it.

In any case, this 100,000-light-year journey was quite smooth, and the great long-distance fleet consisting of 14 civilizations was also embarking on a new stage of the voyage, the dark and void stage, amid noisy negotiations.

(End of this chapter)