Cataclysmic Era: I can unlock the tech tree

"etc!"

Lu Yongchang abruptly stopped waving his hand and shouted, "Zero! Play back the video, find that point of light!"

Lü Yongchang's shout broke the silence of the command center.

Everyone cast questioning glances at Lü Yongchang.

"Yongchang?" Fang Xu's voice came from afar. "What happened?"

The holographic projection, which had dissipated by half, coalesced again, and the images playing within it began to rapidly rewind.

When he saw the bright spot of light reappear on the sun's surface, he shouted, "Stop!"

The video immediately stopped.

On the surface of the crimson fireball, an object far brighter than the sun appeared.

Lu Yongchang reached out and swept his hand through the air, and the holographic projection in front of him instantly collapsed.

Subsequently, the same image appeared on the giant holographic projection directly in front of the command center.

"This!" Fang Xu's eyes widened suddenly, and he blurted out, "What is this?!"

"Is the sun acting up again?"

"No, I'm afraid it's not the sun..."

In an instant, countless noisy discussions arose in the command center.

Ignoring the crowd's discussion, Lü Yongchang said directly, "Zero, process the image."

"Okay, Professor."

The images in the giant holographic projection changed rapidly.

The bright spot on the surface of the sun is continuously magnified.

Gradually, the image became slightly blurry.

But with zero processing, the image became clear again.

After repeating this process several times, and after a series of processing steps by Zero, a clear image of the light spot gradually appeared before everyone's eyes.

"Holy crap..."

"WTF..."

"..."

When they saw the clear image of the light spot, everyone in the command center simultaneously swore.

There is no other reason.

It was an object covered in signs of human intervention!

A spherical, silvery-white object with an extremely smooth surface.

At least, in the holographic projection, Lü Yongchang did not see any roughness or protrusions on its surface.

Perhaps because of the distance, or perhaps because its manufacturing process is a one-piece molding, Lü Yongchang did not find any trace of splicing!

"Zero, slow down the video and see where it went," Lu Yongchang said with a grim expression.

Zero didn't say anything, but simply started playing the video silently.

The silver-white sphere vanished from everyone's sight in the next instant.

"Zero?!" Lu Yongchang panicked and exclaimed instinctively.

"Professor, we are searching for a target, please wait..."

As Zero responded, the holographic projection in front of them began to change rapidly.

Countless pixels were jumping wildly in front of everyone!

Time ticked by, and the atmosphere in the command center grew increasingly tense.

More than ten minutes later, the jumping pixels suddenly stopped.

The light spots against the dark background emitted a faint glow.

Compared to the previous scene, the surface of this silvery-white object appears to have dimmed considerably.

"Is it moving away from the sun?" Lü Yongchang frowned slightly and voiced his guess.

"Yes, Professor."

"Can you calculate its direction of travel?" Lü Yongchang asked in a low voice.

"..."

After a brief wait, Zero gave his answer: "The central region of the Milky Way."

Lu Yongchang's expression changed slightly, and he asked again, "Are there any other scenes?"

"I'm sorry, Professor. I only found these two seconds of footage in all the video materials," Zero replied quickly. "In the second second, it's already in the far corner of the video."

The command center fell into a deathly silence.

The footage lasts only two seconds.

This unidentified flying object covered such a vast distance in just two seconds!

This astonishing speed of flight seems to be proclaiming to humanity the technological gap between the two!

"Gulp..."

Lu Yongchang swallowed hard.

After swallowing his panic and shock, he took a deep breath: "Zero, based on the image proportions, roughly estimate its data."

After a short wait, the estimated dimensions were revealed to everyone.

Diameter: 3000 km

Current speed: 0.5-0.8 times the speed of light

[Top speed: Insufficient data, unable to estimate]

【…】

The data in front of them seemed like a pair of strong hands, gripping the throats of everyone present!

"This...this is impossible!" Cao Liangcai's horrified voice came from the side. "How could there be such a powerful man-made object!"

"3000 kilometers in diameter...that's almost the size of the moon!!"

"Just think about it, the moon accelerating to 0.5 times the speed of light in such a short time... This is just too outrageous!"

"The zero must have been miscalculated!"

"Or perhaps there's an error in the footage captured by the detector... Yes, that must be it!"

"Impossible, there's absolutely no way such a flying machine could exist..."

Cao Liangcai's low murmur echoed in the command center.

Lu Yongchang sighed softly, turned to look at Cao Liangcai, whose face was filled with terror, and slowly shook his head: "Old Cao, don't lie to yourself anymore."

"The facts are already laid bare before us."

"If nothing unexpected happens, our sun was probably destroyed by this object." Lü Yongchang lowered his eyes, concealing the horror in them. "It absorbed 30% of the sun's mass and completed its mission."

"A mission? What mission?!" Cao Liangcai gasped for breath, asking in terror, "To destroy human civilization?"

"It's not that bad," Fang Xu's bitter voice rang out from the side.

"Probably, it's for energy extraction."

"To exterminate humanity, it wouldn't be necessary to use weapons of this caliber... no, perhaps it's not even a weapon."

"Energy extraction? Just because we extract energy, we have to..." Cao Liangcai excitedly broke free of the magnetic closure on the seat.

Fortunately, thanks to the electromagnetic boots securing him, he didn't "fly" to the ceiling.

But that momentary pulling sensation wasn't pleasant either.

Cao Liangcai exhaled several hot breaths, suppressing the excitement that arose in his heart due to fear.

"I'm sorry, I lost my composure." He lowered his eyes and apologized softly.

Then, as if deflated, he sat back down in his chair.

"Click".

The sound of the magnetic attraction device snapping into place rang in everyone's ears.

Lü Yongchang shook his head with difficulty: "It's nothing."

"It's human nature, and it's understandable."

No one responded to his words.

Lü Yongchang didn't pay much attention to this minor issue.

As the chief scientist, he naturally knew how much of a shock this scene had to everyone present.

The thought that human civilization could be destroyed simply because of an energy harvesting device of some advanced civilization sent a chill down Lü Yongchang's spine.

He closed his eyes and whispered a sentence that had surfaced in his heart.

"What does it matter to you if I destroy you?"