Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 34 The Ladder Project (Please continue reading)

The Third Special Session of the PDC Passed the Participation Ladder Program Act.

Luo Qing obtained this five-year-old newspaper from Hu Wen, and the front page of the newspaper had such an eye-catching headline.

The newspaper was published in 2010, which is the fourth year of the Crisis Era.

The fourth year of the Crisis Era was also the fourth year since Luo Qing transmigrated to this world, the first anniversary of the Wallfacers taking office, and the first anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's first observation of the Three-Body First Fleet's trajectory.

There were too many historic events this year.

So what did Luo Qing do that year?

He cultivated the Inner Heaven, using the spirit stones in his hands to push his cultivation to the limit of the Nascent Soul stage, and explored a cultivation path that did not require breaking through realms. In his spare time, he constantly summarized all the knowledge from his previous life, as if he wanted to completely inherit that ethereal immortal cultivation civilization.

Luo Qing alone represents the only remaining cultivation civilization in this world.

But precisely because of this, Luo Qing kept a low profile and hardly used his Wallfacer powers to do anything, which was also the main reason why his Wallbreaker was so anxious in the early stages.

From 2010 to 2011, Luo Qing maintained an extremely low profile, almost completely fading from public view, just like Luo Ji next door who was enjoying life in Eden.

Starting in 2012, after figuring out the basic logic of how this world works, Luo Qing creatively launched a Wallfacer project called "Even if the Nascent Soul Old Monster transmigrates to another world, he still has to work hard to become an idol!" Within three years, he produced dozens of films and published more than 20 different Xianxia novels with the energy of updating 100,000 words a day.

Using his Wallfacer powers, he forcefully filled the world with the concept of cultivation, and the popularity of cultivation culture once rivaled that of film and television works based on the Three-Body Problem.

This is why Luo Qing's understanding of historical events that have occurred over the years is often delayed.

Every time the Planetary Defense Council releases its annual summary of major events, Luo Qing belatedly realizes: Oh, so many things happened this year.

The completion of Project Ladder, the rise of Project Stars, the proposal of Project Reinforce the Future, the construction of the Space Elevator 1...

The world doesn't revolve around the five Wallfacers, and humanity is also frantically pushing forward the development of applied science amidst a lot of dramatic emotions.

After learning a little about Yun Tianming and the 'Ladder Project' from Hu Wen, Luo Qing belatedly realized that four years ago, PDC had creatively come up with such a big project.

Send people to the Trisolarans.

Sending only the brain? That's really ingenious.

The Ladder Project piqued Luo Qing's interest. He suppressed his own idea of ​​extracting the essence of the spirit herb, hurriedly said goodbye to Hu Wen, and then made a phone call to Sai.

It was a long night in New York, but even so, Sai answered the phone quickly.

Luo Qing: "Chairman Sai, how far has that brain of Yun Tianming flown?"

Sai: "Yun Tianming?"

Sai on the other end of the phone clearly thought for a moment, then recalled: "Is this Yun Tianming, volunteer number five of the Ladder Project? I remember now, you're interested in the Ladder Project?"

Luo Qing: "I'd like to know more about it."

Sai: "The Stairway Project's spacecraft, after four years of flight, has traveled approximately 378 billion kilometers."

"How much?!" Luo Qing suddenly sat up straight.

Say's tone was quite calm: "378 billion kilometers, which is four times the distance from the Sun to Pluto."

Luo Qing calmed down and silently abandoned his plan to pursue the Ladder Project spacecraft and intercept Yun Tianming's brain.

This is something that the Nascent Soul stage cultivator cannot catch up with; it requires the Mahayana stage cultivator.

Luo Qing remembered that in his previous life, the most powerful cultivator in the ancient world, the most powerful cultivator at the Ascension stage, Senior Jiang Renhuang, would need a day to traverse the Nine Provinces. The size of the Nine Provinces, converted to modern units, was only about 300 million kilometers. Its surface area was roughly equivalent to 175 billion Earths combined, far smaller than the cross-sectional area of ​​the entire solar system, and roughly equivalent to the diameter of the Sun traveling back and forth between Earth and the Sun.

In his previous life, Luo Qing never left the Central Plains until his death.

Therefore, the diameter of the cultivation world is only... two astronomical units?
Compared to the diameter of the universe, it is approximately zero.

In total, the escape speed of a Mahayana cultivator is exactly 1.13% of the speed of light, which is about the same as the speed of Yun Tianming's brain.

Of course, the speed of the ancient Jiang Renhuang cannot be calculated in this way. These powerful beings can directly tear through space and travel through physical bodies. Ancient books in the previous life recorded that this ordinary Jiang Renhuang tore through space to travel to other Xu Realms hundreds of times, but it still took time rather than instantaneous arrival. The farther the Xu Realm, the more time it took. However, considering the exaggerated distance between Xu Realms, Jiang Renhuang's true speed was probably above the speed of light.

Here, Luo Qing only calculates Jiang's normal escape speed.

but.

Luo Qing doubted whether Mahayana cultivators could tear apart a universe interwoven with purely physical rules, since this place didn't have the laws of the Great Dao, the laws of space, or the will of Heaven; it only had mathematics and physics.

If it works, it works; if it doesn't, it doesn't. 1+1 can only equal 2. Let alone the Mahayana stage, even if a Great Luo Golden Immortal came, it would only equal 2.

Here, no one stacks boxes. No one can stack boxes as well as these mathematicians and big number enthusiasts from Earth. Luo Qing remembered that in the first two years after he transmigrated here, he had browsed a very interesting question about Graham's number. Without understanding Graham's number, he made up a challenge question about exponential big numbers, but he couldn't even get two arrows together. He was ridiculed by the big number enthusiasts.

To get back to the point, Yun Tianming's brain damage is irreversible unless Luo Qing can instantly become an immortal. Thinking of this, Luo Qing asked with a slight toothache, "If I remember correctly, Voyager 1, launched by the United States in 1977, has only traveled 20 billion kilometers to date (2015), right? The Staircase Project's spacecraft has far surpassed Voyager 1 in just four years?"

Sai said dismissively, "Voyager 1 is an old relic from the last century, and the investment was limited. It can't compare to the current ones. The speed of the spacecraft in the Stairway Project is 1% of the speed of light."

Luo Qing's impression of the maximum speed of macroscopic man-made objects was still based on intercontinental ballistic missiles such as the "Dongfeng," "Topol," and "Minuteman" that flew within the atmosphere. The terminal strike speed of these intercontinental ballistic missiles could reach about Mach 40, which was equivalent to one-third of Luo Qing's normal escape speed.

This is also why Luo Qing looked down on human technology when he first arrived in this world.

Humanity's most powerful delivery system, the intercontinental nuclear missile, cannot hit him.

But how long has it been? How come they've already developed a spacecraft that travels at 1% of the speed of light?

Faced with Luo Qing's silence, Sai asked suspiciously on the other end of the phone, "You're not planning to catch up with Yun Tianming's brain, are you?"

Luo Qing quickly explained, "No, no, that's impossible. 1% of the speed of light, who can catch up with that? I certainly can't."

Upon hearing this, Sai sighed with some regret: "Indeed, I thought you could catch up. The Trisolaran fleet's speed is also 1% of the speed of light. If your flight speed could reach that level, I believe the Trisolaran fleet would not be a match for you."

Luo Qing coughed awkwardly and changed the subject: "Tell me more about the Ladder Plan, I'm very interested."

Sai countered, "Aren't you going to visit Wallfacer Hines and Wallfacer Rediaz? They've been waiting ever since they heard you came back from Wallfacer Luo Ji."

“They’re not in a hurry. I see their work is going quite smoothly. I’ll go again when I have time.”

Sai sent Luo Qing an email file, in which Luo Qing saw the details of the 'Staircase Project'.

It is worth mentioning that Say described the 'Ladder Project' as a "low-tech combination of achievements".

With a foundation in physics from his predecessor, Luo Qing quickly understood where this 1% speed of light came from.

Just as Sai said, Project Ladder was a low-tech combination of 'nuclear bombs + radiation sails'. Each of these technologies is easy to understand on its own, but the first person to combine these two technologies was indeed a genius.

Sai said, "Project Ladder was originally proposed by a Chinese girl named Cheng Xin in the PIA (Planetary Defense Council Strategic Intelligence Bureau). Yun Tianming, the experimenter of Project Ladder, was her college classmate."

Luo Qing exclaimed, "What a smart girl! Students at Beihang University are all promising talents. By the way, did Yun Tianming come here voluntarily?"

Sai chuckled on the other end of the phone, though Luo Qing couldn't see the smile. She said, "It was voluntary. Wade admires her a lot. She's really a kind girl."

That's the art of speaking. Wade's original words to Sai were: "I submitted five candidate cases, and she precisely picked the only one she had an emotional connection with. Now she's using the star that Yun Tianming gave her as a pacifier, but she doesn't dare admit that she turned the other person into a cosmic can. That's fucking amazing."

In Sai's words, she became a very kind girl.

Luo Qing also knew Thomas Wade; he was the director of the PIA, and now he had another title—the promoter of Project Ladder. Luo Qing had seen him at every Wallfacer performance review meeting; Wade was one of the important hearing members of the Wallfacer project.

Vader was even one of the original hundreds of Wallfacer candidates.

Luo Qing quickly finished reading the files in the email.

The Staircase Project spacecraft uses radiation pressure propulsion generated by pre-deployed nuclear bomb explosions along its flight path. Each explosion increases the speed in a "step-like" manner, and the gravitational slingshot effect of planets along the way can further accelerate the speed.

The aircraft consists of only radial sails and a spherical cabin, with the former accounting for the vast majority of the aircraft's volume and the latter accounting for the vast majority of its mass.

Sai said to Luo Qing, "The Stairway Project's spacecraft was a desperate attempt we made at the beginning of the crisis. The 1% speed of light greatly boosted the morale of human society—after all, the Trisolaran fleet only had that speed, right? But morale aside, the Stairway Project failed."

"What kind of failure is this? Sending a brain to the Trisolaran fleet, what a brilliant plan. It's a pity I wasn't involved, otherwise I could have entrusted a wisp of my soul to it, not to mention the milestone significance of a 1% light-speed man-made object." Luo Qing sighed.

"It has indeed failed. You seem unaware that the Ladder Project has gone astray?"

"Ok?"

Sai explained, "During the final acceleration phase, the flight path aircraft experienced an abnormal velocity component due to the breakage of the sail cable, ultimately deviating from its intended trajectory. We have completely lost track of the aircraft, and Yun Tianming will likely be wandering in the dark and desolate universe forever and ever."

This Filipino woman knows how to manipulate emotions.

The three "forevers" made Luo Qing feel as if he were actually there, and he couldn't help but shiver.

I'll borrow the setting from the neighboring novel "Mahayana Stage" to give everyone a clear concept of the cultivation world, so we won't waste time arguing about the strength of the Nascent Soul stage protagonist.

For those looking for a more direct clash between cultivation and technology, Gui Gui's "Hun" next door is also quite good; the plot has progressed to the point where they're fighting immortals in warships.

The book will maintain the style of the original work, and the protagonist will change the original ending to make up for the regrets, but will not drastically alter it. As for the clash between the two power systems, we will not see that until the final battle.

Thank you for your support, dear readers.

Additionally:
Thank you for creating the sandbox world and donating 500 Qidian coins.

Thank you to Qian Mengjian for the 600 Qidian coins.

Shuizhu will always be a loyal servant of her readers. Orz
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(End of this chapter)