The stars, but they become the gray wind

The two people passed through a micro wormhole portal and arrived at the control center of this facility, which was completely automated and controlled by the Tree of Life. The control center was built on a dodecahedron platform floating in a huge weightless spherical space. Around the dodecahedron platform, five concentric rings nested in each other were constantly rotating around the central dodecahedron platform at a very regular speed.

Each face of the dodecahedron, which serves as the control center under Renlong and Elena's feet, seems to have a different direction of gravity. Renlong jumps between each different pentagonal plane of this dodecahedron, feeling the excitement brought by the sudden switch of gravity direction on each different plane.

"The design of this control center is quite interesting, isn't it?" Renlong landed firmly on the ground and jumped back to the plane of the dodecahedron where Elena was standing.

"When did you become so playful? I remember when I first met you, you didn't seem to be this kind of person, right?"

"Hmm... maybe it's because I've lived with you guys for so long? Anyway, I've become more... indifferent and indifferent to many things."

"Forget it, let's not talk about this anymore. Is the calculation and prediction program ready?"

"Okay, we can start anytime." Elena raised her hand and gently pushed the deduction program startup interface to Renlong.

"Then... the first future prediction simulation program of Tianyan Xinghuan has been launched!"

Renlong pressed the red button on the holographic interface. The Tianyan ring, encircling the planet, began to accelerate under the planet's gravity. Blue-purple arcs danced between the two undulating ring frames. The jagged gasket layer in the center of the ring frame gradually accelerated its clockwise rotation, and the strong magnetic field generated by the coil began to interact continuously with the planet's magnetic flux lines. A massive quantum computing array within the ring processed vast amounts of information, performing predictive simulations and deductions on the future of the burrowing owls seven light-years away.

The environment around Renlong and Elena in the control center also changed from the monotonous silver-white space of the control center to the dark universe. Against the background of the dark universe, there was a small blue-green planet mixed with large areas of yellow.

"Is this... the planet Kaga Kula?"

"To be more precise, it's the planet Kaga Kula, more than 22000 years from now. Hmm... let me see..."

"The atmospheric carbon dioxide content is 0.9%, and the average surface temperature is close to 40 degrees Celsius. How did it rise so much?"

"Huh? What are these?"

"what happened?"

"I'm showing here that desertification has already covered more than 36% of the planet's surface."

"More than 1/3 of the area has become desertified? What happened?" Renlong realized that the yellow parts on the surface of the planet she had just seen were completely desertified surfaces. She had observed the surface of the current planet Kagakula closely before. The entire planet was covered with lush vegetation, and only a small area on the entire planet had a small amount of savanna and lakes and swamps.

The planet Kagakula, which is more than 22000 years later, has more than one-third of its surface area completely turned into desert, and the atmospheric carbon dioxide content and temperature have soared, all of which suggest that the entire planet has undergone a catastrophic change.

On the side of the planet facing away from the star, you can still see tiny lights and traces of artificial buildings. It is clear that the burrowing owls on Kaga Kula have entered the industrial age after more than 20,000 years.

"What on earth is happening on this planet?"

"It's clear that the hidden dangers brought about by the planet's lack of certain key resources erupted more than 20,000 years later, when the burrowing owls entered the industrial age."

"Large-scale coal and mineral mining since the advent of the industrial age has released large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and severely damaged vegetation, which was originally the main source of greenhouse gas storage and purification for the entire planet."

"Unlike Sky, Kagakula's oceans only account for less than 34% of its total surface area. Ocean waters possess a vast capacity to store and absorb heat. Even on a planet like Earth, the vast oceans are the primary source of greenhouse gases and heat. However, Kagakula's narrow oceans make it so that surface vegetation is the primary source of greenhouse gases and heat. Since the advent of the industrial age, excessive mining, urbanization, and greenhouse gas emissions have severely damaged this surface vegetation, causing the entire planet to begin warming at an extremely rapid rate."

"Subsequent, more advanced industrialization further accelerated this process. After mastering the internal combustion engine, they expanded the planet's fossil energy extraction, causing carbon dioxide and methane levels to soar. The exploitation of more types of fossil energy further damaged surface vegetation, and the entire planet began to rapidly degrade into desertification."

"After mastering atomic energy, the burrowing owls' situation didn't improve; it actually worsened. The planet Kagakula itself was already pitifully low in heavy elements. The burrowing owls, still in the stage of fragmenting into separate nations and political groups, used the planet's already scarce heavy elements primarily to manufacture nuclear weapons and defend against their own kind, rather than using them as energy or as the foundation for their journey to the stars."

"While promoting the atomic energy industry, the already scarce heavy elements were also being used to mass-produce nuclear weapons, accelerating the depletion of the planet's heavy element resources. To maintain armaments to defend against our compatriots, fossil energy extraction had to be expanded, and the already serious problem of planetary desertification became increasingly irreversible."

"This isn't the worst part. The most serious issue is the alarming resource consumption of the industrial system of the information age. Kaga Kula is a planet extremely short of rare earth elements and metals."

"The scarcity of these critical resources has directly triggered global conflicts and wars between different burrowing owl regimes that have continued since the Industrial Age.

"We are now seeing several major burrowing owl regimes on Kaga Kula on the brink of global nuclear war."

"This is the ultimate outcome of the Burrowing Owl civilization if we hadn't intervened and intervened beforehand. On a planet inevitably on the verge of death, the various political systems would have used their already limited resources not to reach the stars, but to prevent their own kind and engage in civil war."

"If the burrowing owls continue to exploit and consume resources at this rate, all heavy elements needed for the planet's atomic energy industry will be completely depleted within half a century, and fossil energy will be completely exhausted within 150 to 200 years. At the same time, the entire planet will become completely desertified, and Kaga Kula will be completely transformed into a desert planet, unsuitable for most life forms."

Chapter 241 Two Paths, Two Options (6000 words)

"Is the entire planet's ecosystem slowly collapsing?" Renlong stared at the strange planet, more than one-third of which had become completely desertified, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content had soared, and the ecosystem was almost completely out of balance.

"If it's just a slow collapse, it would be fine. What's more serious is... this..." Elena zoomed in on the surface of the planet. Renlong saw large areas of some kind of crops planted on the surface, but there seemed to be something wrong with these crops. All the growing crops had more or less black spots on them.

"The large-scale infectious disease that spread among several major crops consumed by burrowing owls is not... so much an infectious disease as it is a targeted biological genetic weapon deliberately developed and spread to protect the agricultural security of hostile political forces."

"It's just that the victims of this genetic weapon are all crops on the entire planet."

"The lack of energy and some key resources may not be that urgent, but the lack of basic survival supplies like food is a serious problem."

"And this... is the straw that broke the camel's back..."

Elena zoomed her view to the entire planet. It was like the calm before the storm. The lights on the planet, a symbol of civilization, were still shining. But without any warning, a mushroom cloud rose from the surface of the planet, followed by countless objects with white trails cutting through the atmosphere. Mushroom clouds rose one after another in various places on the planet. In Renlong's field of vision, he observed that the radiation dose on the surface of the planet soared.

"Is this... a cobalt bomb?" Ren Long checked the radiation readings in the air, which were obviously different from those of normal nuclear weapons. The originally clean atmosphere was now filled with a large amount of cobalt-60. The gamma rays released by cobalt-60 made the areas that had been bombed by nuclear bombs truly barren. Countless lives were reduced to ashes in the flames of this nuclear war. Even those who survived by chance could not last long under the radiation brought by the highly toxic cobalt-60.

"This... is a bit too desperate, isn't it?"

"Haha, this is the true consequence of a civilization that has been left in a completely natural state of development spiraling out of control."

"Targeted genetic weapons targeting crops were the trigger. They pushed the burrowing owls on the planet Kaga Kula into a desperate situation, ultimately escalating from a localized hot war into an uncontrolled global nuclear war. The massive production of cobalt bombs for greater killing efficiency further exacerbated the already fragile ecosystem of the entire planet."

"After a nuclear war, some of the survivors might be able to eke out a living in underground bunkers, but the collapsed civilization system would be almost impossible to rebuild."

"What's more... even though most of the forces on both sides were destroyed in the nuclear war, it doesn't mean they will stop."

Elena sped up the flow of time on the entire planet. After this global nuclear war, Renlong saw several nuclear fireballs and mushroom clouds appearing sporadically on the planet.

"No... sis... We've already gotten into such a mess, why don't you stop? Are you still going to drop a nuclear bomb on them?"

"Tens of thousands of years of brutal competition with nature and other compatriots has completely transformed their social development model into a zero-sum game mentality."

"That is, they will not stop until their opponent is completely destroyed and wiped out physically."

"So, starting with the Industrial Revolution, almost every local conflict eventually evolved into a world war on a planetary scale."

"Will intelligent creatures born in a cruel competitive environment eventually become cruel?" Renlong shook his head in disappointment as he looked at the owls who were still obsessed with pouring nuclear weapons on their enemies' heads in the radioactive wasteland after the nuclear war.

"They destroyed themselves before even the fossil fuels were exhausted." Under Renlong's witness, the numbers in the species size column in the simulation calculations performed by Tianyan Xinghuan were rapidly decreasing, from 92 billion at the beginning to 8600 million after the nuclear war. Afterwards, this number continued to decrease until 127 years after the nuclear war, when this number finally returned to zero one day, and the simulation picture calculated by Tianyan Xinghuan also showed a line of blue annotations.

【It is confirmed that the civilization on this planet has been destroyed. 】

"This result is really sad..." Renlong looked at the ruins left on the planet after the demise of civilization. Due to the indiscriminate use of cobalt bombs, these ruins remained barren even after the demise of civilization. The desertified land that bloomed all over the planet continued to erode the surrounding vegetation, and the soaring atmospheric temperature further fueled this process. Except for a small number of insects and small rodents, the entire planet suffered an event that was no less than the level of mass extinction. Even in space, the scars left by the nuclear war on the surface of the planet were still clearly visible. The planetary ecosystem that had begun to collapse did not stop because of the demise of civilization. The desertified areas eroded the few remaining green areas on the planet bit by bit. Hundreds of years after the demise of civilization, only the small ocean area on Kagakula still had green that symbolized life.

"Even if civilization were to perish, it would take tens to hundreds of thousands of years for the planet's ecosystem to recover to the scale we see today. Although this might not be a big deal compared to the planet's geological history, it's impossible for such a habitable planet to evolve intelligent life."

"It's a shame that a civilization that took tens of thousands of years to finally enter the information age was ultimately destroyed by its own hands."

"It is undeniable that the bloody competition with the natural environment and their own kind led to this outcome that is not happening now."

"If that little guy Klar saw this kind of future, he would probably be scared, right?"

"Rather, wouldn't anyone be terrified to see a future where their civilization is destroyed in a terrible disaster?"

"Perhaps the best news for him is that this future is likely no longer going to happen."

"This simulation is based on the premise that there is no interference from us. If our interference is taken into account, the outcome of the species' trajectory will be completely different."

"As a result... the harsh living environment has led them to create a society that only knows how to engage in zero-sum games. Is the way of life for intelligent life born in a purely natural state without human interference really that bad?

"Under these circumstances, a society that evolves is one where the strong prey on the weak. If entire species and civilizations operate and develop within such a social structure for thousands of years, it will ultimately lead to the birth of a society characterized by selfishness, extreme violence, and hatred of both the same species and those who disagree with them."

"It's really too difficult to expect species born in such an environment to maintain the rationality to cooperate with each other."

"Let's look at the other one... The result of our interference in the evolution of civilization is definitely better than the previous one, no matter what."

"Before that, you need to know one thing."

"what?"

We ourselves are the largest interfering variable in Tianyan Xinghuan's calculations and simulations of the future. While we can be included in the calculations to a certain extent, this will inevitably increase the error. Therefore, after accounting for some uncalculated variables caused by our interference, the calculation results given by Tianyan Xinghuan may have certain errors.

.........

The second deduction and simulation of the Burrowing Owl civilization by the Tianyan Star Ring was launched again. Unlike the last time, this time, Renlong did not see the yellow sand and desert eroding the entire surface of the planet, but the green that still covered the entire planet.

Just like the dotted lights on the planet's surface in the previous simulation, this time, Ren Long saw no ordinary city lights on the planet, but an orbital star ring continent built around the entire planet. A large number of burrowing owls lived in this comfortable artificial environment. In the deduced simulation, they seemed to have some kind of auxiliary device implanted in their bodies.

[Multifunctional invasive brain-computer interface implant] Elena recognized it at a glance. It was an invasive brain-computer interface designed specifically for birds that seemed to use Sky Star technology. These brain-computer interfaces could even be perfectly hidden under the beautiful feathers of burrowing owls.

On the surface of the planet below the orbital ring, there is only a large city built around the space elevator. Except for the area where the space elevator ground base station is located, most of the planet's surface is still covered with dense green vegetation.

"Is this... an orbital residential star ring?" What surprised Renlong was not the orbital ring, but the fact that outside the orbital ring, there was another star ring under construction.

Unlike the inner orbital ring which clearly adopts the Sky Star technology and design style, the outer orbital ring seems to be far behind the inner orbital ring in terms of materials, technology and design ideas.

"This... they built it themselves?"

"It seems so."

"When is this simulation taking place? In the very distant future?"

"Not really. The future simulated in this game is only less than 1000 years from now."

"Oh... Not bad. In just 1000 years, it's already developed to this level?"

"It seems that the material they use to build the outer ring is not simply a substance connected by chemical bonds, but a material with properties close to that of a supersolid?"

"Is this... a hydrogen-boron fusion reactor?" Elena saw a giant hydrogen-boron fusion reactor as big as a mountain somewhere in the outer star ring under construction.

"Is it the consequence of lacking isotopes like deuterium, tritium, and helium-3? Even with our help, they can only develop the more difficult hydrogen-boron fusion reactor?"

"This is a truly interesting technological development path. Intelligent life born under relatively normal circumstances wouldn't choose hydrogen-boron fusion as a technological path for large-scale promotion within civilization, right?

In the simulated image of the Sky Eye cycle, Renlong could even see the hollow metal sphere of the hydrogen-boron fusion reaction core, which was as big as a mountain. A very heavy hydrogen-boron nuclear fuel block fell into the hollow metal sphere, and a proton beam and laser at nearly sub-light speed hit the hydrogen-boron nuclear fuel block, followed by a small nuclear explosion. The chain reaction triggered by the impact of the sub-light speed proton beam ignited the nuclear fusion of the hydrogen-boron fuel block.

At the same time, a large number of solar sails were launched into orbit from devices similar to mass accelerators on the orbiting star ring, forming a circle of shadows near the stars that was enough to block the sun's rays.

Renlong roughly calculated the energy power output of the primary Dyson swarms of solar sails that blocked the sunlight near the planets, and was surprised to find that the burrowing owls seemed to have reached an energy output close to 0.2% of that of a star.

"It's really surprising in another sense. It seems that they are already steadily moving towards a Type II civilization."

"The natural ecological environment of the home planet seems to be well preserved. It seems that our little help has worked?"

"But...are the resources for building the next layer of the star ring mined from asteroids within the galaxy? That's not that close."

Renlong glanced at the asteroid belt more than 30 astronomical units away. In the dock of the orbital ring, Renlong looked around for the thing he was most familiar with - a fission or fusion torch ship. Sure enough, Renlong soon saw a row of fusion torch cargo ships equipped with iconic magnetic nozzles docked in the busy space port. These were obviously one of the most popularized highest technological crystallizations of that era.

In the fast-forward mode of accelerated time, the orbital ring around the planet Kaga Kula took shape at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the number of Dyson cloud solar sail components that would briefly block the sunlight in the sky increased. After just 120 years, the energy captured and collected by the solar sails had reached 1% of the total power of the star. Kaga Kula itself was surrounded by two orbital rings with an angle of 30 degrees. At the Lagrange point around the planet, millions of space cities and Dyson cloud facilities that collected stellar energy in the low orbit of the star formed the most spectacular man-made miracle in the galaxy.

"What's the current time?"

"More than 1100 years from now." Elena looked at the timestamp on the interface and replied.

"It's faster than expected. They already have the qualifications to be called a qualified interstellar civilization."

"Having reached this level, they are already a qualified Type II civilization, and interstellar travel is not far off."

"Compared to the results from the last simulation, this is absolutely far better."

"I'm curious. If I were one of these adorable little burrowing owls, what would I choose? Would I flounder alone in bloody, coordinated conflicts for over twenty thousand years, a path that ultimately wouldn't guarantee the continuation of civilization? Or would I give up some "freedoms" that only add to my suffering and allow civilization to possess the power to control and soar across the stars in just a few thousand years?"

"Regarding this, it's better to leave it to them in the future. Since we've decided to help, let's help them to the end."

Elsewhere, the battle in the Iserlohn Corridor had reached a complete stalemate.

Just as Yang expected, Kemp was now forced to make a choice. Although the Iserlohn Fortress had suffered considerable damage, it was still standing. No soldier from the Empire had successfully invaded and occupied the fortress. The Iserlohn Fortress was still firmly controlled by the Alliance. This stalemate could not last long. The support fleet from the Alliance was on the way. If the stalemate continued, the Empire would inevitably be defeated.

Now, Kemp still has two options: to retreat to save face and strength, or to directly crash into the fortress and die together. The longer this battle drags on, the more disadvantageous it will be for the empire.

"So far, the enemy has only been able to deplete the forces within Iserlohn through day-to-day attacks. If you were the enemy commander, how would you defeat a fortress like Iserlohn head-on?" During the interval between the Empire and the Alliance preparing for the next round of attack and defense, Yang's adjutant

"Well... if it were me, I'd probably use Vulture City to ram Iserlohn Fortress first, let them collide with a loud bang, and then that's it. After both are reduced to ash, I'd just move a fortress from somewhere else. If the Empire had used that tactic right from the start, even I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. But it seems the Imperial commander leading this battle just isn't thinking straight."

“Is this approach a bit too radical?”

"It's indeed radical, but it cannot be denied that it is the simplest, crudest and most effective solution."

"If he had used this tactic from the beginning, we would have had no choice but to wait for death. However, if he has only just thought of using it now, then this is his only option left."

"If he had crashed into the fortress right from the start, he would have had complete control of the battlefield. But if he used it now, he would be the one who would lose the initiative."

…………

After another round of attacks by the Imperial Army failed, and they suffered heavy losses under the firepower of the 13th Fleet and the fortress, Kemp finally reached the point where he had no choice. The Fifth Fleet of the Alliance rushing to support would arrive at the battlefield where the two fortresses were facing each other in a day at most. If he did not do something to save the situation, this battle would end in failure.

The alarm sounded again in the control center of Iserlohn Fortress, breaking the brief silence.

"Report! Vulture City is moving again!"

"It's accelerating straight towards Iserlohn! Is this... a collision course? Could it be... is it trying to collide the two fortresses directly?"

"You finally thought of this trick... But it's too late."

The circularly arranged thrusters at the rear of the Vulture City Fortress were rapidly pushing the massive fortress towards Iserlohn, but at this moment, Yang Weili issued an order that the naval guns could not cause enough damage to the well-defended fortress, and that they only needed to aim at the running propulsion engines at the rear of the fortress, and all firepower was to be concentrated on one of the engines on the left side of the Vulture City's direction of travel.

Tens of thousands of neutron beams, railgun shells, and missiles were all concentrated on the propulsion engine on the left side of the Vulture City's direction of travel. The engine casing burst open, and white flashes and explosions appeared at the tail of the Vulture City.

The huge fortress deviated from its original planned navigation path under the unstable thrust, and the entire fortress began to spin rapidly.

At this critical moment when the enemy was paralyzed, Iserlohn Fortress certainly would not just stand by and watch. It fired a hammer of Thor's hammer at the out-of-control Vulture City Fortress and directly penetrated the entire outer wall of the fortress.

The fortress was filled with fire, smoke, and sparks from a short circuit. Kemp endured the excruciating pain of a metal fragment piercing his abdomen and issued an order: "Hurry... Get everyone out of the fortress."

Before Kemp ordered the Vulture City Fortress to crash into the Iserlohn Fortress, he had already evacuated most of the personnel in the fortress, leaving only a few thousand people inside. When Kemp was on the verge of death from excessive blood loss due to a metal fragment piercing his abdomen, he seemed to see a woman with long red hair, a halo on her head, and light wings on her back appear in front of him. She opened her lips and seemed to say something, but Kemp's mind was already in a trance. At this moment of his death, he saw an angel that only existed in ancient human myths and legends. Even the kaleidoscope of his life so far began to flash through his mind.