Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1408 The Organization Has Not Abandoned Us

This matter either involves the destruction event cone entering the target galaxy, or the cosmic disaster zone spreading to the area between the three major voyage organizations and the target galaxy.

Generally speaking, cosmic catastrophes spread at the speed of light, so after this was determined to be a cosmic catastrophe, people were not too panicked, since it was only the speed of light, and all civilizations could escape by relying on warp speed.

The reason everyone's hearts sank to the bottom was entirely because of the destruction of the target star system.

Five hundred and fifty civilizations had painstakingly traveled for over ten million years, and were about to reach their destination and be reborn, when unexpectedly, their target galaxy was destroyed—a cosmic catastrophe that none of them could resolve.

The destruction of the forward probes speaks volumes; the disaster zone has expanded into this area of ​​space.

Subsequent observations confirmed this judgment: the brightness of the target galaxy was decreasing precipitously, and its optical image was disappearing at the speed of light.

All civilizations know that this phenomenon is a cosmic catastrophe that extends to the target galaxy and destroys it at the speed of light. Based on the distance between the target galaxy and itself, the disaster zone has already expanded to this point two million years ago.

As for what type of cosmic catastrophe it is, the civilizations that have made initial contact with it cannot make a judgment yet; they only know that there is no light in that kind of catastrophe zone.

Based on the current understanding of cosmic catastrophes among various civilizations, there are probably only two possibilities for such a scenario: one is vacuum decay, and the other is the fourth phase transition of the universe.

Vacuum decay would lower the energy level of the universe to its lowest point, so the photons carrying energy would naturally no longer be the photons they are today. Furthermore, the fourth phase transition of the universe is the separation of electromagnetic forces; once electromagnetic forces are separated, photons, as carriers of electromagnetic force, would naturally cease to exist.

Neither of these is something that the three major maritime organizations can solve.

Therefore, everyone now has only one option: to change course and find a new star system as their destination.

This direction must be towards the center of the Great Hollow of Boötes.

Because everyone had carefully observed the Great Hollow before and during the voyage. They had also planned the route in advance; it wasn't a reckless voyage. The 300,000 years of preparation hadn't been for nothing.

Therefore, identifying a new target galaxy is relatively easy. The problem is that after this cosmic catastrophe, no one knows whether there will be other cosmic catastrophe regions blocking the way to the next destination.

It's important to understand that in this vast and boundless darkness, cosmic disaster zones are extremely difficult to detect. Even if they are detected, they're practically right in front of you, just like the probe spacecraft located ahead this time.

However, with all 515 civilizations out of options, they couldn't possibly take the risk of going around to find a way to reach that target star system, since it was most likely already gone. No civilization would dare to take that risk.

So no matter how far the next destination is, whether there are other disaster zones along the way, or whether the target galaxy has already been destroyed by the catastrophe, everyone has to go. They have to gamble on a smooth journey and on whether the new target galaxy will still exist when they arrive. There is no other way.

Each civilization acted decisively, immediately dispatching more probes to explore and determine the approximate size and coverage of this cosmic catastrophe zone. After gathering this information and confirming that the catastrophe zone had not yet spread to the direction of the new destination, everyone immediately slowed down and then turned their fleets around to accelerate towards the new destination.

Since the catastrophic zone was already very close to their own locations, after completing their turn, each civilization tacitly engaged in warp drive for a period of time to increase the distance between themselves and the catastrophic zone.

And so, after traveling at warp speed for about 10,000 to 20,000 light-years, the 515 civilizations re-entered the normal near-light-speed travel phase and headed toward their new destination.

It was a dim galaxy about 1209 million light-years away from the current location of various civilizations. Its direction was significantly off from the center of the Great Hollow, but it was still one of the previously planned routes.

There's no way around it. Of the 515 civilizations in the three major long-distance voyage organizations, none of them are confident enough to travel 1.5 million light-years in one go. So, they inevitably have to travel laterally, just like the long-distance voyages before the civilizations entered the Great Void, which involved many detours. Therefore, the actual distance that the three major long-distance voyage organizations need to travel to reach the end of the Great Voyage is much more than 1.5 million light-years.

However, some civilizations simply couldn't withstand this shift.

These are civilizations that had already consumed a lot of resources and were about to reach their destination. They felt they could hold on with their current resources, but now they have to change course and head to a more distant star system.

Isn't this just blatantly courting destruction?

Based on their energy consumption estimates, they felt they wouldn't be able to reach their next destination.

And so, the conflict arose.

These civilizations initially made their requests to their respective Great Voyage Organizations, asking the organization's decision-makers to allocate resources so that they could reach their destinations.

When it comes to allocating resources, each civilization doesn't even know if it can reach its destination, let alone where the resources will be available for them.

The organization's decision-makers naturally didn't want to pay attention, but ignoring it wasn't an option, because those civilizations already knew they couldn't reach their destination. Under these circumstances, they didn't care about anything else and simply went all out, launching attacks on those civilizations that seemed to have lower combat power than themselves.

This incident first occurred within the Abyss Grand Voyage organization, and was quickly quelled by the organization's two leaders with overwhelming force.

Although the conflict has subsided, the incident has had a huge impact, especially on those civilizations that know they cannot reach their new destination. They have already united and adopted a "what's the use" attitude.

Under pressure, and also because they did not want to waste resources due to a large-scale war, the decision-makers of the three major voyage organizations finally made a compromise.

As for the Galactic Grand Expedition Organization, a general meeting was immediately convened to resolve this issue.

After the meeting, the organization led by the Human Civilization, the Awakener Civilization, the Divine Ruler Civilization, the Falcon Civilization, the Silver Heart Civilization, the Daya Civilization, the Flying Feather Civilization, and the Star Defenders gave a relatively satisfactory answer to those civilizations.

The organization decided to share its technology on equipment maintenance and creation lifespan from the Pudorad civilization with all civilizations under its umbrella, while the Daya civilization also decided to share its long-term hibernation technology with other civilizations.

On the other hand, it is also suggested that those civilizations reduce their scale, such as reducing or canceling their combat fleets, reducing the number of habitable ships, or starting a civilization seed project. In short, whatever method can reduce energy consumption should be adopted.

This decision also relieved the various civilizations under the organization, because the organization had made its stance clear, letting all civilizations know that the organization had not abandoned them and would not use its members as fuel.

To stabilize the situation, the two major expeditionary organizations, Abyss and Blue Ocean, followed suit and managed to calm down the restless civilizations.

Having resolved the internal problems, what followed was naturally another tedious and boring voyage.

Although the journey was tedious, the civilizations could not let their guard down. Everyone was afraid of encountering the disaster zone again, and they were also afraid that they would end up in the disaster zone or a region that was about to be protected by the disaster zone.

That would be a complete disaster.

(End of this chapter)