A Colossus rushes in at the start

Chapter 78 The Mesa Galaxy Really Exists

A fierce space war is taking place in the Mesa Galaxy, and the Babel Bees are aware of it. By conducting a simple survey of some debris on the edge of the galaxy, they were able to detect the beginnings of the war.

On the outer edge of the galaxy, many star systems are littered with the wreckage of various warships, which anyone with a modicum of common sense would know were caused by war.

In addition, along the outer edge of the river system, there are many battlefields littered with the wreckage of warships. The style of these wrecked ships is similar, clearly indicating that they came from the same civilization.

The scale of this war can be easily deduced.

However, because it was only a simple survey, the Babel bee swarm did not know exactly who was fighting whom in the galaxy.

Although there were many crystalline remnants scattered on the battlefield, the appearance of the crystals was so misleading that the Babel swarm, upon a glance from afar, all thought that these warships were fighting each other in an asteroid belt, and thus concluded that a large-scale civil war was taking place in this galaxy.

Most importantly, the Babel swarm doesn't care about this interstellar war. No matter who wins this interstellar war, it won't fundamentally shake the Babel swarm's strategy.

Once the Babel swarm completes its strategy of enveloping the entire Mesa galaxy in a microcosm, the civilizations in the galaxy will be left with only two options: escape or death.

Escape, naturally, is a way for civilizations that have mastered technologies such as microcosms and wormholes to migrate as a whole, rather than be trapped in a cage.

Death, naturally, represents the Babel beehive's massive purge of numerous civilizations within the river system.

Since it cannot shake the fundamental strategy, what is the point of caring?

Planetary beings, after escaping the wormhole, will warp spacetime again, trapping themselves in a microcosm, leaving only the microscopic wormhole behind.

By using psionic energy to pull these wormholes, planetary life forms can travel at speeds exceeding the speed of light.

This is not the planetary life form itself moving faster than light. The planetary life form does not move in the microcosm. What moves is the wormhole. What is a wormhole? It is a spacetime tunnel. This thing is made entirely of spacetime. Spacetime is not matter, so it can naturally move at speeds far exceeding the speed of light.

These planetary beings, whose phantoms have been removed and who now only have microscopic wormholes in the main universe, serve as planetary beings that distort the spacetime nodes within the galaxy. Some of them will also be drawn into the outer regions of the galaxy through these microscopic wormholes. Their purpose is to handle simple intelligence gathering and cleanup work, preventing any obstructive elements from interfering with strategic planning.

The discovery of the galactic war taking place in the Mesa system was made by these planetary creatures that entered the outer edge of the galaxy. After discovering the existence of the galactic war, these planetary creatures began to patrol more frequently and densely.

Although the probability is relatively low, as long as the swarm's strategy is not completed, there will always be unforeseen variables. Planetary life forms must resolutely eliminate such variables.

They hope the strategy will succeed simply because it is all a strategy that benefits the bee colony.

On this day, while passing through a cloud of dust, two patrolling planetary beings sensed a gravitational wave and immediately traveled at faster-than-light speed to the source of the gravitational wave, a distance of several light-minutes.

I saw a nebula formed by the wreckage of warships, with piles of crystals mixed in.

The two microscopic wormholes, separated by only a few light-minutes, observed each other from afar, showing no intention of getting closer.

One of them couldn't help but exclaim, "It's truly horrific, so many wrecks."

"I really don't understand why these warships always like to fight in the asteroid belt. Could it be that these are important resources for their civilization?"

The other planetary creatures agreed with this conjecture; otherwise, they simply couldn't understand why a bunch of warships would fight each other in the asteroid belt.

"That should be the case. I remember that in the Vorsotis system, some civilizations really liked mining meteorite deposits, and they even fought wars over some of them."

Then, with some concern, it asked, "Recently, there has been an increase in these battlefield debris in the outer regions of the galaxy. Does this mean that the galactic war is spreading in this direction?"

"That's possible, and it's not good news." The clansmen also agreed with this guess.

Planetary beings aren't afraid of war, but they dislike variables, especially those that could affect their strategy. If the galactic war were to spread to the outer regions, they would be confident that they wouldn't be discovered. After all, the node that sets up the spacetime distortion is 300 light-years away from the nearest star system in the galaxy, and the light cone is an excellent cover. Even if the planetary beings that act as the spacetime distortion node don't hide in their microcosms and instead openly appear in space, it would still take 300 years for their light to enter this galaxy.

However, the variables have increased, and that alone is enough to make them hate it.

Thus, the planetary beings urged other members of their kind, who were distorted spacetime nodes but had not yet arrived at their designated locations, within the swarm network.

"Have you all reached your positions yet?"

"Why the rush? Those who were assigned positions are closer to the wormhole, so of course it'll be over quickly. Our assigned positions are 150,000 light-years away from the connecting wormhole," the planetary creatures who hadn't yet reached their designated positions responded with dissatisfaction.

Some planetary organisms offer their opinions within the bee colony network.

"If I had known this would happen, I should have brought more wormholes over and placed them in different locations around the galaxy. That way, planetary life could have emerged from multiple wormholes and surrounded the galaxy, saving a lot of time."

"This must be included as a suggestion for improvement in the next galactic strategy," some planetary beings asserted.

"That's right."

……

Time flew by, and after a while... well, Lu Shang himself didn't know how much time had passed, the planetary creatures finally finished their preparations.

Because of the constant experience of time accelerating and decelerating—a second can be a year, and a year can be a second—Lu Shang's perception of time has become somewhat distorted.

It has to be said that humans are a very fragile species.

Even so, he had no intention of completely abandoning his humanity. After all, this was his true self, capable of joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, birth, aging, sickness, and death. He would like and appreciate beautiful women and express disgust at ugly things. If he were to have a different set of genes and everything were reversed, would he still be himself?

The thought of this is terrifying; if you have a choice, there's no need to do it.

"Everything is ready; the planetary life forms have completed the encirclement of the entire galaxy."

After receiving the message from the mastermind, Nanali, Lu Shang snapped out of his debate with the mastermind, Rabi, about the cultivation of psionic races.

Within the swarm network, many masterminds exhibited unprecedented excitement, including Nunnally, the former mastermind, who had never imagined such a day would come.

"Many stars in the Vorsotis system were dismantled to create more planetary life, but it was all worth it. The swarm will have a ranch dedicated to a specialized breeding civilization, and they will no longer need to rely on luck to increase their psionic level."

"Yes, the bee colony will stride towards even greater glory and prosperity."

"Any life or object that obstructs the survival of the bee colony will become a stepping stone for the bee colony to reach a higher level."

From this day forward, the history of the entire Babel bee colony will be divided into two pages: one for the past and one for the future.

As the mastermind behind this strategy, Lu Shang ordered, "Begin! Isolate this galaxy from the main universe, making it entirely the property of the Babel Swarm!"

As this command from the swarm's mastermind spread throughout the swarm network, numerous dark spheres appeared three hundred light-years away from the Mesa Galaxy.

These spheres are neatly arranged in the universe. At first, they were only the size of a human head, but in the blink of an eye, they became as big as a truck. Then, these dark spheres began to expand at a speed visible to the naked eye.

If the aliens of the Star Alliance saw this scene, they would definitely recognize what these dark planes were.

They are black curtains, spacetime structures similar to those around a black hole singularity, created when psionic energy warps spacetime to the extreme to the level of a black hole.

The sphere's volume decreases as the black plane expands, while the black plane continues to extend in four directions until it connects with other black planes.

This extension is faster than light because the black curtain itself has no mass; it is a manifestation of spacetime itself, which is not limited by the speed of light.

In just over two months, the Mesa Galaxy, with a diameter of 150,000 light-years, was completely enveloped by a pitch-black plane, forming a huge pitch-black sphere with a diameter of about 150,000 light-years. The huge gravitational lens generated by the sphere made it look like a supermassive black hole with the diameter of a galaxy from a distance.

The darkness sealed off all the light in the Mesa Galaxy. Even at the very center of the galaxy, where the highest-energy particle jets are concentrated, only a few particles managed to penetrate this pitch-black plane through quantum tunneling, requiring sophisticated instruments to observe.

The reason this massive project took more than two months was mainly because the bee swarm had to pay attention to the spacetime structure at each location to ensure that the spacetime distortion reached the ideal value. After all, this was a large-scale project spanning 150,000 light-years, and it was the first time they had done something like this, so it was always better to be careful.

As this dark sphere enveloping the entire Mesa galaxy gradually shrinks, the gravitational lensing effect it exhibits also gradually weakens.

The sphere shrinks very quickly, also faster than the speed of light, because this shrinkage is only visual; nothing is actually being 'compressed'.

Since there is no mass involved, it is possible to achieve faster than light speeds, and it does not require more than 70,000 years to shrink this colossal, pitch-black sphere with a diameter of 150,000 light-years.

It took only half a month for this sphere to completely disappear from the universe, as if it had never existed. The only way to find out about it was by catching up with the photons that the Mesa galaxy had scattered before it was enveloped by the dark sphere at faster-than-light speed.

In this universe, there is also the Mesa Galaxy, a galaxy-sized object that once existed in this universe.

(End of this chapter)