Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 351 Powerful Brick Flies!

At this moment, the Purple Moon Civilization's fleet has been away from the H11 Piscis Austrinus system for about 50 years. At their current speed, including the time spent accelerating initially, they have traveled a total distance of about 40 light-years.

The distance isn't too far. Not much time has passed either, and there's still a possibility that Li Qingsong is tracking the trailing flames.

Of course, given the current speed of Li Qingsong's fleet, it would be impossible for them to catch up with the Purple Moon Civilization fleet under normal circumstances. After all, the Purple Moon Civilization's speed is much higher, and the longer the chase lasts, the greater the distance between them will become.

But Li Qingsong still did not give up.

The reason is simple. First, their technology can be continuously improved during the voyage. Especially now that they have the wreckage of the Purple Moon civilization's warship, which allows them to perform reverse engineering.

Secondly, no matter how urgently the Purple Moon Fleet is sailing, it will eventually need to stop at star systems for resupply. Li Qingsong also needs to resupply, but based on his superior industrial capabilities, Li Qingsong's resupply time can be shorter, thus allowing him to make up for some lost time.

The combination of these two factors allowed Li Qingsong to maintain a glimmer of hope in catching up with the Purple Moon Fleet.

As long as there is hope, that is enough.

The massive fleet set sail at high speed, still in the acceleration phase, enduring the ever-present gravity, which is about one-twelfth the size of Earth's gravity, and the enormous scientific research mission had already begun.

Every day, tens of thousands of heavy transport ships gather around that flying star and dock in the space elevator's berths.

Numerous intelligent robots and transport vehicles operating on the spacecraft extract almost inexhaustible resources and transport them to heavy transport ships. From there, these ships transfer the resources to scientific research spacecraft, ensuring the continuous operation of millions of research bases, including deep space observation bases, computational science research bases, coating research bases, metal laboratories, and structural laboratories.

At present, after so many years of cultivation, the 18 races rescued from the Black Mountain Civilization have completed their genetic optimization, possess sufficient brainpower, and have completed the initial knowledge accumulation, and can now join scientific research.

At this moment, including the Blueprint Clan and the Veler Clan, the total population of intelligent life in 20 races has reached approximately 1000 billion.

After Li Qingsong took full responsibility for logistics and industrial tasks, the 1000 billion people could focus entirely on scientific research and dedicate themselves to cultivating scientific research talent.

Thus, with a population of only 1000 billion, a total of 5 million scientists from various disciplines have been cultivated, even in Li Qingsong's view.

These scientific researchers, distributed across various industries, played an indispensable and crucial role under Li Qingsong's unified command, working alongside billions of clones.

As a result, Li Qingsong's technology began to develop rapidly once again.

Every major field, every sub-field within that major field, and specific projects, etc., are all progressing in tandem.

Under these circumstances, it took more than a decade for Li Qingsong's fleet to reach the place where the Purple Moon Civilization fleet had shut down its tail flames and started a low-power random turning maneuver at 80% of the speed of light.

This is a vast expanse of starry sky completely devoid of macroscopic celestial bodies, where matter is so sparse that there is less than one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter.

At the same time, the previously very obvious traces of the interaction between the fleet's exhaust flames and interstellar dust also suddenly disappeared.

Clearly, with reduced propulsion power, the interaction also weakens, making exploration much more difficult.

In a normal civilization, even one with the same or slightly superior technological level as Li Qingsong, there would be no good solution to this situation.

But Li Qingsong is different.

The interaction is weakened, the traces are subtle, and they are difficult to detect?

Then let's improve the detection accuracy by expanding the search area! As the saying goes, if you have enough strength, even a brick can fly.

As long as my search area is large enough, I can find even the smallest trace!
Under Li Qingsong's control, tens of millions of small reconnaissance ships, detection satellites, infrared telescopes, and other vessels began a comprehensive search of the area where the Purple Moon Civilization had initiated low-power random propulsion.

The farthest the detection facilities have reached is even a trillion kilometers away from the main fleet.

This has exceeded Li Qingsong's limit for long-range communication. However, it doesn't matter; tail flame detection is relatively simple and can be handed over to the Primordial AI to control those detection facilities that are too far away.

Such a massive-scale exploration would be unbearable for an ordinary civilization. Even if their AI could reach the level of primordial AI, simply manufacturing so many probes, especially in space rather than within a galaxy, would be absolutely impossible.

Not to mention that such a large number of detection devices need to be mobile at all times, returning to the main fleet or moving away from the main fleet at all times, and need to conduct data analysis, equipment inspection and maintenance, etc., requiring a manpower of more than hundreds of millions.

With so much energy devoted to this matter, ordinary civilizations can forget about doing anything else.

But for Li Qingsong, the large-scale exploration being conducted at this moment was entirely within his capabilities.

There's not absolutely no pressure, but it's not much either.

With a radius of one trillion kilometers, the cross-sectional area reaches approximately 3.14 trillion trillion square kilometers. Li Qingsong's main fleet and numerous detection devices are like a vast net covering 3.14 trillion trillion square kilometers, leaving no blind spots in this sea of ​​stars and not missing any tiny clues.

In this situation, numerous subtle clues that would have been impossible to detect before surfaced. Through the intelligent analysis of the Primordial AI, Li Qingsong gradually mapped out the sailing trajectory of the Purple Moon Civilization fleet.

"After shutting down the main engine, it maneuvered in this direction for about 30 days with a tiny thrust of about 0.006 meters per second squared, causing the orbit to deviate by about 2000 million kilometers, and then continued to deviate at a speed of about 15.5 kilometers per second."

Having discovered this, Li Qingsong then assigned a corresponding deviation speed to his fleet, allowing it to continue exploring along the discovered trajectory.

After that, the Purple Moon Fleet's navigation trail disappeared again.

After comprehensive investigation, Li Qingsong finally concluded: "It seems that after a month of maneuvering, they have chosen to enter inertial navigation mode. Continue the investigation."

After continuing along the route in inertial mode for 50 days, covering approximately 1.3 trillion kilometers, the faint trace reappeared.

"From here, they deviated in this direction at an acceleration of 0.009 meters per second squared for a period of... about 100 days."

Li Qingsong adjusted the flight path again.

No matter how the Purple Moon Fleet's course changed, Li Qingsong could always find it through his massive detection network, relentlessly pursuing them and refusing to let go.

Time passed quietly in this way.

While tracking the situation, Li Qingsong did not put down his scientific research tasks.

He always knew that advancing technology was the most important weapon against the Purple Moon Civilization.

Don't forget, the Purple Moon Civilization's war strength is not weaker than yours. In the previous war, you could at best have fought the Purple Moon Civilization to a draw.

If the Yunluo fleet hadn't suddenly appeared, it's hard to say how the war would have ultimately turned out.

If one's technology fails to improve, even if one catches up with the main fleet of the Purple Moon Civilization, one might still be the one to be destroyed in the end.

Thus, Li Qingsong's total of tens of billions of consciousness links were completely consumed by two things: technological research and space tracking that he dared not stop for even a moment.

When each clone is connected to consciousness, even when walking, they run all the way, and when eating, they simply stuff a few special energy bars and nutrient solutions into their mouths.

The hundreds of millions of researchers from other races have much more lenient schedules than the clones, but they still have a much heavier workload compared to normal working hours.

But they had no complaints; instead, the different races were competing with each other.

At this moment, Li Qingsong brought his technological development potential to its fullest potential.

In this context, within just over a hundred years, Li Qingsong's various technologies had achieved significant breakthroughs. Looking at the overall picture, Li Qingsong knew that his technological level was now sufficient to support a complete overhaul of his spaceship.

In this vast expanse of space devoid of any natural macroscopic celestial bodies, relying on that flying star, the massive dismantling and recycling of spacecraft and the manufacturing of new spacecraft officially began.

As a result, Li Qingsong had to withdraw some of the clones that were carrying out scientific research tasks, at the cost of slowing down the pace of scientific research development, but he finally managed to gather enough engineering resources to carry out this upgrade mission.

Fortunately, the Primordial AI can replace Li Qingsong in performing most of the underlying tasks, which allows Li Qingsong to simultaneously support tasks such as search, scientific research, and construction—tasks that would otherwise require all the resources of an ordinary civilization to handle.

One spaceship after another disappeared, and another appeared. After the new fleet took initial shape, Li Qingsong then piloted them in live-fire exercises to improve his tactical skills and better control these warships, which had superior performance and were closer to the capabilities of the Purple Moon civilization's warships.

It took more than 60 years for this upgrade to be fully completed.

Not only warships, but also super-giant space carriers, large residential spacecraft, various industrial spacecraft, scientific research spacecraft, and so on, have all been replaced with new ones.

Those space-based carriers consume less energy, are more reliable, and have stronger energy shields. Large habitation spacecraft operate more smoothly and have higher efficiency in recycling internal resources.

Under these circumstances, Li Qingsong finally issued an order.

The fleet began to accelerate again!
It's important to understand that the main fleet's speed has already reached 80% of the speed of light. Further acceleration would exceed the original fleet's optimal economic and stable speed, not only greatly increasing various risks but also linearly increasing energy consumption.

But now, all those past obstacles have lost their resistance in the face of this completely upgraded spaceship.

One after another, giant engines with more rational configurations, higher efficiency, and higher ion jet speeds began to spray simultaneously, applying a continuous stream of power to these spaceships with an acceleration of 0.9 meters per second squared, which continued for about four months before stopping.

At this moment, Li Qingsong's main fleet has reached 83% of the speed of light, covering an average distance of 24.9 kilometers per second.

But this is still not the end.

Li Qingsong clearly recognized that within the existing theoretical framework of fundamental physics, that is, within the framework that unifies the three basic forces of electromagnetism, weak nucleus, and strong nucleus, there were still many applied physics technologies that he could explore.

If pushed to its limits… according to Li Qingsong's estimate, the main fleet's speed could reach up to 90% of the speed of light—exactly the speed of the Purple Moon civilization's fleet. After that, further increasing the main fleet's speed—specifically, the speed of a large main fleet, not just a small fleet or a single ship—would become virtually impossible.

This is the limit of conventional travel speed. To increase it further, it would be necessary to unify gravity as well and master faster-than-light travel technology.

At this moment, our main fleet's speed is only 83% of the speed of light, and there is still room for further improvement.

Having completed the fleet acceleration work, Li Qingsong did not pause for a moment and threw himself back into the seemingly endless scientific research work.

Time passed quietly, and Li Qingsong realized that even though he had expanded the detection network to a radius of one trillion kilometers, the traces left by the Purple Moon Civilization fleet were becoming smaller and weaker.

Sometimes the clues would appear and disappear intermittently. Fortunately, Li Qingsong wasn't too unlucky, and was able to reconnect with the trail after sailing a certain distance, preventing them from being lost.

If your speed is slower than the other's, you can only chase further and further away. The time between the other's track and your own detection of the track becomes longer and longer, making tracking more and more difficult—this is unavoidable.

But Li Qingsong did not give up hope and continued to persevere.

He knew that the Purple Moon civilization's fleet would eventually need to dock at a star system for resupply. At that time, he would be able to close the gap by leveraging his greater industrial strength.

After tracking the trail for countless trillions of kilometers, Li Qingsong finally detected the traces he had been hoping to find when he was less than 4 light-years away from a certain star.

The kinetic energy of interstellar free molecules has increased by about 20% compared to previous detections.

In Li Qingsong's eyes, this was almost blatantly telling him that the Purple Moon Civilization's main fleet had conducted a near-full-power maneuver here.

It is precisely because the high-speed ion thruster ejects ions at full power at speeds of tens of thousands of kilometers per second that the kinetic energy of interstellar free molecules and gas dust molecules increases through their collisions.

The direction of the jet was also calculated by Li Qingsong by statistically analyzing the motion data of countless interstellar dust and particles in trillions of cubic kilometers.

All of these plumes of flame were directed at the star next to them!

Combining the clues, Li Qingsong immediately drew a conclusion.

The Purple Moon civilization began to slow down towards that star here, and eventually docked in this star system to resupply!
The next moment, Li Qingsong mobilized almost all available remote observation equipment, spaced several light-years apart, and aimed them at that star.

This is an ordinary red dwarf star, with a mass about 35% of the Sun's and a surface temperature of about 2000 K. There are a total of three planets orbiting it, all of which are gas giants; there are no rocky planets.

Li Qingsong observed carefully, not missing any subtle traces or clues. Gradually, many noteworthy details came to light.

He observed that the atmospheric temperature of the gas giant appeared unusually high, suggesting it had been subjected to massive disturbances or impacts.

Several icy moons orbiting the gas giant have large, flat areas on their surfaces, and this flatness, based on the planet's tidal forces, seems unlikely to have formed naturally.

Stars are slightly hotter than their elemental composition and mass, and their activity is also more active.

In particular, Li Qingsong detected signs of a possible high-yield hydrogen bomb explosion on several satellites.

After considering all these factors, Li Qingsong finally came to a conclusion.

The Purple Moon civilization fleet must have stayed in this star system for a considerable period of time, carried out large-scale industrial construction, and then left the star system.

However, it is still impossible to determine exactly how long they stayed here or how long they have been gone.

That requires close observation.

"Perfect timing, my supplies are running low, so I'll stop and resupply in this star system."

Li Qingsong, controlling his own fleet, also launched jets towards the star.

The faint gravity that had disappeared for so long reappeared in every spaceship.

With an acceleration of 0.9 meters per second squared, after about 9 years of jet propulsion and a distance of about 4 light-years, Li Qingsong's fleet finally anchored near the largest of the three gas giants.

At this moment, the flying star that had served as Li Qingsong's rations had long since disappeared. The only remaining supplies were those on the space carrier and transport ships.

This is sufficient for an ordinary civilization, but it is somewhat insufficient for Li Qingsong, who is a major consumer of energy and resources.

No matter, we've now arrived in the star system and can resupply without restraint.

Numerous industrial and supply ships, laden with various industrial facilities, landed on each of the larger satellites. Massive industrial construction immediately commenced.

At the same time, Li Qingsong also launched a large-scale search operation to comprehensively search for all clues related to the Purple Moon civilization in this star system.

The final results of the search gave Li Qingsong a great boost.

Data analysis shows that the Purple Moon civilization arrived in this star system about 150 years ago, stayed in this star system for about 80 years, and finally set sail from this star system 70 years ago, heading in a direction slightly away from the galactic center.

In 70 years, at the speed of the Purple Moon civilization's main fleet, they would have already left this star system by now, approximately 60 light-years away.

"They've been stuck in this star system for 80 years? Then... 40 years to complete all resupply missions, and the main fleet will set sail!"

Although 40 years later, the distance between the main fleet of the Purple Moon civilization and themselves will have increased to at least 95 light-years, it doesn't matter.

This distance may seem far, but it's closer than before. Moreover, each resupply stop can be completed in less time with our greater industrial capacity.

If I do this a few more times, I'll get even closer to the Purple Moon Civilization fleet.

Forty years have passed in the blink of an eye. In Li Qingsong's main fleet, one after another, the space carriers and heavy transport ships were fully loaded again, and the huge flying star that had disappeared reappeared in the starry sky.

set sail!

Following the direction in which the Purple Moon Civilization fleet had gone, Li Qingsong resumed his pursuit.

This pursuit lasted for over four hundred years. Li Qingsong once again found a star system where the main fleet of the Purple Moon Civilization had docked for supplies.

After the tests, Li Qingsong was once again filled with excitement.

Data shows that the Purple Moon civilization's fleet arrived in this star system about 120 years ago, spent 80 years resupplying, and left 40 years ago.

The distance between himself and the main fleet of the Purple Moon Civilization has been shortened by another 30 years!
If all goes well, I might be able to arrive before the Purple Moon Civilization fleet even leaves the star system the next time it docks for resupply!

Invigorated, Li Qingsong once again embarked on a massive industrial construction and material supply mission.

In the end, the flying star returned to its peak size and mass, and Li Qingsong's fleet set sail again.

This voyage is slightly different from the last one. During this voyage, Li Qingsong needs to do one more thing.

After hundreds of years of accumulation and breakthroughs in various scientific fields, our technological reserves are now sufficient to support another comprehensive upgrade!

A massive industrial construction project unfolded once again in the vast expanse of space. It was completed after several decades.

After that, Li Qingsong's fleet accelerated once again.

Based on the original speed of 83% of the speed of light, it accelerated again by 1 meter per square second, advancing for another 70 days.

The main fleet's speed has increased to 85% of the speed of light!

The long-term tracking continues. Decades later, Li Qingsong's deep space search network once again detected a significant increase in the kinetic energy of interstellar free molecules.

The jet was directed towards a star approximately 4 light-years away!
Clearly, the Purple Moon Civilization fleet had conducted another stop and resupply mission.

The star shone quietly and silently. The large planets orbiting it showed no unusual behavior either.

From any angle, it appears to be an extremely ordinary, uninhabited galaxy, just like any other galaxy in the Milky Way.

Li Qingsong's heart began to pound violently.

The reason is simple: the trail of flames indicates that the main fleet of the Purple Moon civilization has arrived here.

If the Purple Moon civilization fleet were to leave, it would inevitably destroy the industrial traces it left behind. This would make it impossible for the Purple Moon civilization to detect any obvious traces from the outside.

What does it mean that no traces were observed?
This means that the main fleet of the Purple Moon Civilization is still implementing an "environmental protection" policy at this moment!
This means that the main fleet of the Purple Moon Civilization has not yet left this place!

They're right here!

The heart of the clone containing Li Qingsong's consciousness pounded violently a few times, and a sinister smile appeared on its face.

"I finally found you..."

(End of this chapter)