Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1478 The Level Is Different
Lifespan is a necessary breakthrough for interstellar travel. Human civilization has made continuous progress and reached its current level, which is considered longevity in the context of Earth's era.

However, scientists are still not satisfied with the status quo of human civilization at this stage, because ten million years is just a blink of an eye in the vast universe. What they want is a life that can last as long as Yue Yuan. Therefore, research on the anti-entropy factor continues.

The universe is so vast that even traveling at 2770 times the speed of light, considering the current diameter of the observable universe, it would take human civilization approximately 34 million years to travel from one end to the other. Human lifespan is far from sufficient to allow human civilization to traverse the observable universe on a scale equal to that of light.

However, that is only the observable universe. The 930 billion light-year diameter is just the limit of optical observation. It is because the expansion of spacetime exceeds the speed of light, and light from any further distance can no longer reach human telescopes. In reality, the universe is much larger and more expansive.

For this reason, even at the level of a cosmic civilization, the diameter of the universe as observed by human civilization will still be 930 billion light-years, and this will not change no matter how far human civilization continues to travel.

The diameter of the universe observed from both the Milky Way galaxy and the center of the Boötes Great Void is 930 billion light-years. This 930 light-year radius acts like a field of view; moving your position forward by light-years changes the field of view forward by that same amount, and conversely, shrinks the field of view by the same amount.

If one day, human civilization truly moves forward 465 billion light-years, then at that time, the Milky Way will become the edge of the observable universe in the coordinate axis of human civilization. Moving a little further forward, the Milky Way will fall into the unobservable range.

The real universe is larger than 930 billion light-years, and its vastness makes all civilizations below the cosmic level feel despair.

Even at the level of cosmic civilizations, the vastness of space remains awe-inspiring, and to travel through it, one must rely on stargates. Since stargates are cosmic highways, they cannot exist out of thin air; they must be constructed by various civilizations. Therefore, without a doubt, the first pair of stargates must have been built by a civilization that first traveled to a distant location.

So, is it possible to build mobile stargates? A mobile stargate is one that can be carried around and deployed whenever you want to travel through a stargate.

The answer is yes, but it's not very meaningful because stargates have a limit to the distance they can cross, and ordinary cosmic-level civilizations can't build those kinds of stargates. They would rather put more stargates within their own operational range.

This is why most stargates in the universe are fixed in spacetime, existing permanently at their original locations, but as time goes by and the universe expands, they move further and further away from their paired stargates.

Because the universe is constantly expanding, cosmic-level civilizations typically leave redundant distances when building stargates.

Since spacetime is constantly expanding, causing stargates placed between two locations in the cosmos to move further apart, why don't the bodies of creatures living in the expanding universe grow larger? The answer is electromagnetic force and gravity.
That said, the Great Voyage Organization, after leaving the Xuyu Galaxy, traveled a long distance in the void, and then crossed more than ten million light-years through a stargate.

This stargate is a transportation point marked on the star map provided by the Star Defenders. Finding this stargate can indirectly prove that the Star Defenders' star map is correct.

After exiting the stargate, the four civilizations of the Great Voyage Organization continued to travel in the void without star systems for about five thousand years, covering more than 14 million light-years, in order to avoid possible searches by the degenerate civilization, before finally exiting warp drive and stopping in a certain star system.

Why stop?
Development, of course!
The four civilizations thus made a stopover in the galaxy, simultaneously constructing Nebula-class warships. Fearing that an excessively large fleet would attract the attention of god-like civilizations like the Ruins Returners, the planned fleets of the four civilizations were not particularly large.

As far as human civilization is concerned, the plan is to build only about 20 billion warships, which would be enough to match the Awakeners. Following humanity's example, the Daya civilization also announced its intention to build 20 billion Nebula-class warships.

As for the Galactic Heart Civilization, they even felt that 20 billion Nebula-class warships were too many, and called on the human civilization and the Daya civilization not to build so many. After all, the four civilizations together would become a large-scale fleet, and they were afraid that the use of vacuum zero-point energy would be too noisy and would be discovered by the Ruins Returners.

They also advised the Awakeners not to expand their ranks for the time being. If the Awakeners weren't special, existing as individuals with only one ship each, the Silver Heart Civilization would probably have wanted them to reduce their military strength.

Finally, considering safety, human civilization and Daya civilization agreed to the proposal of the Galactic Heart civilization to reduce the original plan of 20 billion Nebula-class warships to 5 million, and add another 5 million other types of functional spaceships.

The same applies to the Galactic Heart civilization itself.

In other words, the total number of ships of the four civilizations combined is only about 5 billion, which is very concise compared to the hundreds of billions of ships of a Level 6 civilization.

As for why they went to the galaxy instead of staying in the void, the reason is also vacuum zero-point energy.

The main reason is that the Galactic Center civilization is cautious. They are afraid that if the four civilizations directly extract vacuum zero-point energy on a large scale for energy-mass conversion, it will cause a great disturbance.

Therefore, for safety's sake, it was decided to go into the galaxy to dig up ready-made materials.

This excavation has been going on for five thousand years.

Four civilizations spent five thousand years hollowing out countless star systems to complete their fleet construction plans.

During this period, the four civilizations also discovered several ordinary level-six civilizations within this galaxy, but they ignored them and were not discovered by them either.

There were no conflicts of interest, and the Awakeners had no need to replenish the lives of their individual civilizations; therefore, none of the four civilizations had any interest in contacting them. Furthermore, these civilizations had not yet embarked on their great voyages, and given the current spread of cosmic catastrophes, their fate was already sealed.

As for those vanished stars, in a galaxy spanning tens of thousands of light-years, the loss of hundreds of millions of stars is not a big deal. Those level-six civilizations have destroyed quite a few stars in their battles.

After completing the fleet construction, the Great Voyage Organization, composed of four civilizations and the Star Guardians, left the galaxy and continued into the void, heading towards the Martial Immortal Northern Crown Great Wall as indicated by the star map.

During this period, the four civilizations of the Great Voyage Organization seemed to have encountered a bottleneck in warp speed and had stopped making progress. Apart from life sciences, their progress in other areas was also lackluster.

It can be said that the technology in all aspects has been hit by some kind of minor barrier, and it will be difficult to achieve a major breakthrough in a short period of time.

However, with the current state of development and the near-maturity of various technologies, coupled with the completion of the fleet construction plan, the four civilizations have also matured their technology for manufacturing Nebula-class warships. Therefore, the construction of flagships has naturally been put on the agenda.

(End of this chapter)