I handed over to another world

"Deep space exploration record AL-2273... coordinates NGC2237 Rose Nebula core area."

"Timestamp: 15:47:33 GMT"

The main screen of the Skyhawk's bridge flashed with quantum interference patterns, and the black geometric shape floating in the center of the nebula was reflected in Captain Zhou Rui's pupils.

It was like a seed woven from dark matter, with blue-purple energy veins flowing on its surface - those veins were exactly the same as the marks on some ruins on the planet Kinorian, except that each vein was several kilometers wide, forming a dizzying topological structure in the vacuum.

"Gravity readings break threshold!"

The engineer's voice trembled behind him, "This thing has a mass equivalent to three Jupiters, but is only the size of a space station... This violates all the laws of physics!"

"There are no more laws of physics,"

Zhou Rui's fingertips hovered over the tactical holographic table: "Release the probe group and scan the full frequency band."

"Yes!"

Twelve nanoprobes were ejected from the belly of the ship, spreading out in a fan shape in the dark blue tail flames of the thrusters.

When the front "Probe-7" was 3000 kilometers away from the black cocoon, something strange happened. In the last frame of the image sent back by the probe, the lines on the surface of the cocoon suddenly began to rotate counterclockwise.

A dimension beyond human visual perception unfolded in the vacuum - the black cocoon was like a Rubik's Cube disassembled by invisible hands, instantly expanding into a plane composed of a hexagonal grid, and its area soared to ten times the distance between the Earth and the Moon in 0.3 seconds.

"Oh my God..."

The weapon operator was stunned. "It's imitating the structure of a neural synapse!"

In the center of the unfolded grid, three dark blue "nodes" suddenly lit up, and the locked probes immediately disintegrated into elementary particle streams, which were spiraled into the nodes like juice being sucked through a straw.

A series of alarms exploded in the quantum communication channel: ["Night Owl" lost power! ]

[The shield of "Iron Curtain" fails! ]

[Deep Blue's engine overloaded——]

Zhou Rui looked at the three reconnaissance boats entangled by the golden threads projected by the grid. Those threads were not physical entities, but were made up of distorted space-time itself.

When the silk thread touched the hull, the alloy armor melted like ice cream under the scorching sun, revealing the pipes inside that were flashing with electric sparks.

The most horrifying thing is the end of the crew members.

The high-powered camera of the "Skyhawk" captured the scene inside the bridge of the "Deep Blue": the bodies of the officers and soldiers were being decomposed into colorful light spots, and each light spot extended a thin filament connected to an invisible existence in the center of the grid.

Their mouths were opened so wide that they were dislocated, but no sound came out.

"Emergency warp for the entire fleet!"

Zhou Rui's roar and the space distortion alarm sounded at the same time.

But the navigation officer looked as if he was dead: "The spatial coefficient has exceeded the critical value... We are nailed to the reality membrane!"

The main screen suddenly switched to gravitational wave imaging mode. From a higher-dimensional perspective, the grid was not a weapon at all, but a finger of some giant creature!
Behind the Rosette Nebula, the outline of a hypercube appears faintly, so large that the Orion Arm lies in its palm like a toy.

"That's not a spaceship..." The science officer slumped in his chair, "It's... a life-support module for an ecosystem."

When the first golden thread pierced the shield of the "Skyhawk", Zhou Rui pressed the fingerprint lock of the black box.

A distorted voice came from the quantum communicator: "Immediately execute the memory erasure protocol! Don't let it read your-"

The signal stopped abruptly.

The last thing reflected on Zhou Rui's retina was a blue face emerging from the center of the grid - it was a strange face magnified a million times.

……

Chen Lin's fingertips hovered over the holographic star map, and the image of the Rose Nebula glowed with a blood-red halo in the dark room.

Zhulong's core array suddenly emitted a piercing quantum howl, and data streams washed over the main screen like a rainstorm.

[President, deep encryption protocol discovered]

Zhulong's voice was cut into pieces by some high-frequency interference. [In the code of Ai'an's consciousness... there are... nested memory layers...]

The lights in the laboratory suddenly went out, and only the central holographic screen lit up an eerie blue.

The final battlefield of the Pioneer civilization emerged on the screen - tens of thousands of Kinorian warships twisted and disintegrated in the dark space, and what destroyed them was not the familiar acidic secretions and bioplasma of the Kara Zerg, but something more terrifying: countless translucent black pyramids emerged from the void, and they cut into the quantum engines of the Pioneer warships as accurately as a scalpel.

The hit battleship did not explode, but began to "dissolve" from the atomic level, like a pencil drawing erased by an eraser.

"This is not the way the Kara Zerg attack..."

Lin Yuchen's breath stagnated in the protective mask. The holographic image suddenly switched, showing the ultimate warning recorded by the pioneers using gravitational waves:

[Kara Zerg is just a shepherd dog]

[The real shepherd is hidden in the vacuum fluctuations]

[They sow civilization only to harvest quantum state fruits]

We were all deceived

Chen Lin's pupils contracted violently as the screen finally froze on a set of cosmic string vibration graphs - that was exactly the "Kara Zerg Summoning Frequency" discovered by the Red Dragon Association in the Kinorian ruins, but at this moment Zhulong highlighted the hidden modulation waveform in red.

[Detected the characteristic entropy reduction pattern of the universe]

Zhulong's quantum processor began to overload and smoke. [The evolutionary tree of the Kara Zerg has traces of human editing... The Reaper's trademark is written in their genome! ]

……

The Red Dragon Association is in the emergency operations meeting room in Shangdu.

The holographic projection projected the tragic scene of the Rose Nebula onto the circular conference table, with twisted metal wreckage and human body light spots still slowly decomposing.

Chen Lin's knuckles rapped on the titanium alloy tabletop, and every crisp sound echoed in the silent room like a death knell.

"Twelve starships, 263,000 men."

Chen Lin's voice was colder than absolute zero. "It turned into quantum foam in 73 seconds."

He called up the last black box data of the Skyhawk, and the picture froze on the blue face that occupied the entire nebula. "Who can tell me what we are facing?"

Lin Yuchen from the Biological Defense Department was the first to break the silence: "According to the comparison of Ai’an’s memory bank…"

Her holographic board projected a DNA helix structure, in which several base sequences were strangely rewriting themselves. "There is a certain program buried in the genome of the Kara Zerg. When civilization develops to the point where it can interpret the pioneer technology, it will activate this code--"

“—like the shock collars they use on the farm.”

Director of weapons research and development Zhou Yan suddenly interrupted, the particle collision model in front of him was collapsing, "We thought we were studying the black domain, but in fact we were helping them test new weapons."

The conference room was suddenly enveloped by a blinding red light. Zhulong's core projection forcibly intervened: [Latest analysis completed]

[The Harvesters are not destroying civilization][They are collecting some kind of "traits"]

[The pioneers were chosen because of quantum consciousness technology]

【And we...】

The holographic screen exploded with a blood-red warning, showing a scan of the human brain. At the junction of the frontal lobe and the hippocampus, a group of neurons was emitting quantum signals that were exactly the same as those in the Rose Nebula.

"God..."

Old Wu smashed his teacup to the ground. "Have they planted receivers in our brains?"

Chen Lin suddenly stood up, his shadow cutting through the entire conference room like a blade in the red light of the alarm: "Zhulong, the Rock Agreement."

The pupil identifiers of all participants lit up blue at the same time, a sign that a top-secret procedure had been initiated.

Lin Yuchen took a deep breath, she realized that what she was going to say next would definitely not be simple.

"Three days ago, Zhulong discovered this when analyzing Ai'an's data."

Chen Lin called up a distorted video: Near the event horizon of a black hole, there were millions of transparent cubes floating, each containing a frozen Pioneer consciousness. "The Reapers made specimens of the losers to study how to optimize the next test site."

Zhou Yan suddenly slammed his fist on the table: "So we are just another petri dish?"

"Do not."

Chen Lin's mouth curled up coldly, "We are the first bacteria to discover the cracks in the culture dish."

He waved his hand and unfolded the solar system defense map, "Zhulong, show me the anti-entropy matrix."

The host array projects a dizzying eleven-dimensional structural model: [Constructed using the genetic collapse data of Phoenix-7 - the principle is to create a consciousness dimensional trap in local space-time]

[Price: Requires stellar energy...]

"So we're going to blow up the sun?"

Old Wu's voice was trembling.

"We're going to create a decoy that's brighter than the sun."

Chen Lin called up a space station near Jupiter's orbit. "The space folding engine designed by the Spark Project has been completed. It can transform Jupiter into a quasar that lasts for 0.7 seconds - enough to make the Reapers think we have attempted a collective dimensional upgrade."

The holographic image of the medical department suddenly forced its way in: "President! Xiao Li's brain waves are assimilating the entire medical center!"

The screen showed that the walls of the ward were covered with the same patterns as the Rose Nebula, and the young man suspended in the air was repeating in Ian's voice: "It's too late... They have already passed the Orion Arm..."

Chen Lin's pupils shrank to the size of a needle tip: "Zhulong, calculate their arrival time."

The cooling system of the quantum computer groaned as it was overwhelmed: [Originally estimated to be 73 days, but according to the entropy growth rate provided by Xiao Li…]

[Corrected to: 73 hours]

The floor of the conference room suddenly began to shake.

Zhulong's alarm sounded throughout the base: [Quantum communication contamination detected]

[All personnel who have come into contact with Nebula data experience memory reconstruction]

[Repeat: Don't think about those hexagonal grids!]

Chen Lin looked at the conference table that was gradually crystallizing and knew that the cruelest countdown had begun.

He pressed the black button on his watch, and all the defense platforms in the solar system lit up with scarlet light at the same time.

"Everyone," his voice penetrated the gradually distorted space, "now we are going to do something that even the pioneers dared not try-"

"Drag the harvested civilization into a trap of their own design."

……

Thirty-six hours later, Chen Lin's pupils reflected the rapidly flashing red spots on the holographic star map. Those were the gravitational ripples left by the Reaper fleet in the warp channel.

His voice was transmitted through the quantum communication network to the bridges of every battleship in the solar system:

"Attention all Spark Fleets, execute Shadow Protocol!"

"Target: The third planet outside the Alpha Centauri system."

In the combat command room, Zhou Yan's hands flew over the holographic console, calling up the information of the barren planet: "President, there are only methane oceans and silicon-based crystal forests there, and even the atmosphere is unstable——"

"That's why." Chen Lin interrupted him, his fingertips running across a set of data streams, "Zhulong, calculate the energy required to project the space folding engine onto the planet."

The host array burst into a dazzling blue light: [Needs to consume 0.73% of Jupiter's mass of hydrogen]

[Warning: This action will cause a permanent change in the gravitational balance of the solar system]

Lin Yuchen suddenly looked up from the medical data screen: "Wait! Xiao Li's brain waves are resonating with that planet!" The screen showed that the young man in the medical cabin had methane crystal patterns all over his body. "He seems to be receiving some kind of... welcome signal?"

"It's not a welcome." Chen Lin called up the Pioneer database, and a set of ancient holographic records began to play - on the same methane planet, countless transparent cubes were forming, "That's the Reaper's test site mark, we can take action now."

As the order was given, the giant ring-shaped facility in Jupiter's orbit began to rotate.

Twelve space folding engines lit up at the same time, tearing a crack in space spanning 3 astronomical units.

At the other end of the rift, the methane planet in the Alpha Centauri system was suddenly wrapped in some silver substance, as if it was put into a mirror sphere.

[Quantum barrier charged to 97%...] Zhulong's alarm suddenly changed, [Consciousness contamination detected!]

Chen Lin suddenly pressed the golden button on his watch, and then the space of the entire solar system began to distort, like tinfoil crumpled by an invisible hand.

All planetary orbits shifted simultaneously, forming a new gravitational equilibrium in a mathematically perfect chaotic motion.

“Remember this moment.”

Chen Lin's voice spread across all ships in the quantum communication, "From now on, the solar system will be just a ghost on the star map of the universe."

When the last set of space folding engines started, the starry sky on the observation screen suddenly went out.

Not darkness, but complete nothingness—as if someone had used an eraser to wipe out all traces of the existence of the entire solar system.

The holographic projection switched to a real-time image of the Alpha Centauri galaxy: the planet wrapped in silver was collapsing, and the huge black net formed by the Reaper fleet had enveloped the entire galaxy.

"Did you make it?"

Everyone was looking at the scene light years away with great nervousness. Their human fleet had left unmanned intelligent ships there to monitor the situation on site. It was obvious that the Reaper civilization did not notice the little tricks made by the Earth, but instead devoured the planet that was used as bait, and then there was no follow-up action.

"It seems to be successful?"

Chen Lin squinted his eyes and looked at the scene in front of him. Since human civilization entered the interstellar era, various interstellar disasters have occurred one after another, and various civilizations and invaders have also begun to appear in their sight one after another. In just a dozen years, all that humans have experienced is enough to be carefully written in a thick book. (End of this chapter)