Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1354 Vacuum Decay Mechanism
Incredibly, before the meeting, the brilliant scientists of the Divine Cube civilization conducted a special probe into the dark matter islands. The results were clear: according to the gravitational gradient structure diagram, there was definitely a large area of ​​dark matter islands at that location.

Scientists have also given a definitive answer: the dark matter islands are about 100 light-years away from the void where the current Galactic Expeditionary Organization is located.

Given the Shenju civilization's method of mapping stars using large-scale gravity, this distance is absolutely impossible to be wrong; otherwise, they would have all perished on those many previous voyages.

But now the Galactic Heart civilization says that before even reaching the Dark Matter Island, they have already entered a region where the rules of physics have been altered.

Should we take a closer look?
The leader of the Divine Ju civilization dismissed the idea as soon as it crossed his mind, realizing it was pointless. After a moment of contemplation, he said, "We can't be wrong. So there's only one possibility: the area whose rules were modified wasn't affected by the physical laws of gravity. In other words, the dark matter islands inside are still there!"

Based on the current detection results, this explanation is quite reasonable.

Several teams from distinctive scientific and technological civilizations present also agreed with this viewpoint, but agreement does not mean it is the truth. The specific situation still needs to be explored further, and even scientific research vessels may need to be dispatched to conduct experiments in that area in order to obtain an accurate answer.

These things must be done because they not only relate to the actual situation in the areas where the rules have been modified, but also determine the subsequent decisions of the Great Voyage Organization.

The outcome that the six distinctive technological civilizations desire most right now is for the Great Voyage Organization to find a way to enter the Dark Matter Island, resupply, and continue their journey.

Of course, this possibility is too small, so some civilizations don't have such high hopes. They simply hope that there are cracks or gaps in this area where the rules have been modified, and that they can find these gaps and pass through them. The worst-case scenario is that everyone will have to return via a long journey.

After a brief consultation meeting, the six distinctive technological civilizations continued to await the latest detection results from the Galactic Heart Civilization. At the same time, they also dispatched their own detection teams to various parts of the void to explore whether there were any alternative routes and to determine the extent of the area where the rules had been altered.

Since the meeting was held in a virtual environment, everyone could quickly go online to discuss any new information that needed to be discussed. This had become a basic procedure for the highest-level meetings of the Great Voyage Organization.

However, when everyone gathered in the virtual meeting room again, they heard unsettling news once more.

Each civilization has already received the detection information from its respective exploration teams, and now they have gathered together again to summarize this information.

The first member of the Daya civilization team described their findings: "The situation is extremely bad. We have deployed hundreds of thousands of probe teams, scattered across thousands of light-years of space, but we still haven't found the existence of the 'gap'."

The leader of the Falcon Civilization, representing his own civilization, pointed to the area his civilization was responsible for on the star map and said, "That's right, we've searched this area, which is about ten thousand light-years wide, and we haven't found any 'gaps' either."

Other civilization leaders then shared the results of their civilization explorations.

"So are we!"

"Yes, so do we."

"It's basically the same. Moreover, we also lost a considerable number of probe ships during the exploration process, all of which disappeared when they accidentally entered the rule modification area during the exploration."

"Disappeared? So it's not just our probe fleet that's experiencing this."

"You have them too?" "Yes, the areas where the rules have been modified are very difficult to identify. If you're not careful, you can easily wander into one and lose contact. We've lost many of our probe ships because of this."

"It seems we've encountered a vast area. Could it be another self-spreading rule-modifying region?"

Listening to the discussions among the various civilization teams, the Silverheart Civilization finally stood up and said, "No, no, no, it wasn't that we lost contact, but that we were destroyed, destroyed by the rules!"

Seeing the other teams listening attentively, the leader of the Silverheart Civilization thoroughly enjoyed it. He blinked his four eyes and explained, "Yes, that's right. We've encountered a destructive rule-modification zone. We don't know the specific type, but I can tell you for sure that the spread of that rule-modification zone is at the speed of light!"

Upon hearing that the diffusion speed was the speed of light, scientists from other technologically advanced civilizations immediately showed expressions of understanding. Although many of them were no longer the same group of scientists as before, civilizations have memories, and they knew what this situation meant.

The four-dimensional fragments encountered by the Galactic Grand Expedition were shrinking at the speed of light, while the two-dimensional regions were expanding at the speed of light. There were also failed regions in quantum entanglement communication; based on the compiled data, the Galactic Grand Expedition also considered these to be shrinking regions of rule modification.

Now, a region that expands at the speed of light has emerged, which undoubtedly reaffirms the claim that "the universe is riddled with holes."

So what rule changes could expand at the speed of light?

A number of Level 6 civilizations raised questions about this, but none of them could answer them.

Just as everyone was at a loss, a voice that rarely spoke in the virtual conference room rang out: "There are many kinds. As far as I know, there is vacuum decay and spacetime two-dimensionalization. Of course, it could also be other things, such as the collapse of the fast world. After all, the damned Dayan civilization is not omnipotent, and they may not have seen all cosmic-level disasters."

The speaker was clearly a guardian of the stars, whose knowledge came from the Dayan civilization, so everyone felt that the truthfulness of his words could withstand scrutiny.

However, different civilizations have different focuses when it comes to the defenders of the stars.

The first thing everyone should rule out is two-dimensional spacetime, because every civilization here has witnessed that phenomenon, back when they encountered paper-based civilizations.

We can rule out the possibility that this area is not a two-dimensional disaster.

That leaves only vacuum decay and fast world collapse. Even the Star Guardians, who possess much knowledge of the Great Evolution Civilization, are unaware of the others, let alone other civilizations.

Of these three, vacuum decay is well-known; it is caused by the excessive use of vacuum zero-point energy by numerous cosmic-level civilizations, which is a consensus.

However, the origin of vacuum zero-point energy was not well understood by various civilizations before. They thought it was in a very distant part of the universe. Otherwise, there would not have been the claim that a group of level 7 civilizations in ancient times tried to solve vacuum decay.

However, with the arrival of the Star Guardians, everyone finally learned some of the truths, namely that the location of vacuum decay is not fixed. It is not that vacuum decay will occur wherever a large amount of vacuum zero-point energy is used. On the contrary, it is a kind of cosmic random number.

In other words, it can appear and spread anywhere in the universe, and the mechanism behind it is currently unknown to any civilization.

(End of this chapter)