The universe where Harlan is currently hiding is located on the edge of the Void Zone. It is desolate and remote, and we have never set foot in it.**
We usually divide the void into several areas based on the degree of radiation of the empire's power: including the capital of the empire, the area that is completely ruled by the empire and has various military fortresses is the inner territory of the empire, or simply called the empire zone, which includes The universe where the servant army lives and the hundreds of universes that have been built in the past five years; the macro world is managed by the empire, but the world where we have not declared dominion over the entire universe is a subordinate zone, or an empire frontier. ——Well, we have a quite vast frontier, which is quite crazy; outside the macro world, it is not governed by the empire at all, but the area that can be monitored by the imperial reconnaissance force or scanning system is called the far frontier. This area is called the far frontier. The area is nicknamed the "low-security zone". Basically, once you reach Far Frontier, you will not get any military protection from the empire. It is even difficult to ask for help from the macro world. Except for the imperial army, civilians are absolutely not allowed. You can easily travel to remote areas.
And there is an endless vast void beyond the far frontier. Excluding the Star Territory, the Huron Clan and the fallen apostles' territory, this unexplored void is collectively called the "White Zone" by us.
Nothing is known, there is no guarantee, the information about this place is as clean as a blank sheet of paper, this is the white area.
The world that Harlan hides is located on the border between the White Zone and the Far Frontier. We have never set foot in this world, but as long as its information deviation moves closer to the empire's territory by another ten percent, it will fall into the Garden of Death. Within the range of rational scanning every day.
This world is still quite a "distance" from the universe where we discovered the matter in our hometown. This is something that makes Sandora and I very comfortable. It seems that Harlan didn't find anything in the few days he wandered here. They There is a big gap between the information on the materials in her hometown and the actual situation. Sandora is also worried that once the two sides start a war, the scale of the battle will endanger the clues of her hometown world. Now it seems that she does not need to worry about this for the time being.
During the few hours we rushed from home to the front line, Sivis had already sent a large number of probes and three waves of scouts to the universe that was as airtight as a jar surrounded by the Imperial Army. She originally wanted to use this to find out Harlan faced the imperial army's counterattack plan, but the situation inside the world barrier seemed a little strange.
"We saw the fallen apostle's spaceship operating in the main material plane for a short time at the beginning," Sivis reported to Sandora, "They must have discovered the probe and the imperial army outside the world barrier, but They quickly hid in deep space, or lost their trace in some kind of space fold. This universe is very strange. It should be formed naturally, but the state of space inside it is not very stable. The subordinates detected large-scale space The folds open and close as if there are many small closed worlds inside it - these things are not like natural formations, perhaps a civilized civilization stayed in this universe for a short time and modified its structure."
"Is Harlan hiding in such a space fold now?" Sandora looked at Sivis.
"Yes, they all hid in, neither preparing to break out nor prepare to attack. Hiding in the folds of space can only keep safe for a while. It is not smart to rely on this hiding method to fight against the imperial army, and Harlan's hand There are obviously enough troops to meet the attack. What he did does not seem like a normal person..."
"It's not like a normal imperial soldier," Sandora nodded. "You don't even care about basic military knowledge... Okay. Regardless of what Harlan thinks, the imperial army will fight all the way in sooner or later. First of all.
Let’s talk about the situation in this world. It seems that there are more than just some abnormalities in the spatial structure - I see traces of the activities of intelligent creatures.”
Shandora pointed to the holographic projection on the officer's platform, which showed a dim and reddish space. Artificial objects clearly appeared in the space: it might be some kind of space station, and it was definitely not produced by the empire.
"Yes. Your Majesty, there are aboriginal people here, and they have spread throughout the entire universe." The expression on Sivis's face was still full of confusion. "This is the most incomprehensible part - Harlan seems not to have invaded at all."
He may have been lurking in this world for several days with these natives, but... his subordinates found no trace of this world being destroyed at all."
Are fallen apostles living harmlessly in a certain world? I understand what's going on with the expression on Sivis's face.
"Have you ever had contact with the aboriginal people?" My sister suddenly interjected.
"Not yet," Sivis replied, "Most of our attention is focused on searching for the fallen apostles. The technological level of those indigenous people seems to be very average. They have not yet mastered the technology to escape from this universe. They are a group of people with limited potential.
species, the Imperial Army has no extra energy to pay attention to them until they deal with the enemy in front of them."
In other words, Sivis still knows nothing about the indigenous races of this universe. I can understand her standard Xiling way of thinking, and the biggest problem now is to deal with Harlan, the indigenous race of this universe.
Residents - as long as they watch calmly and don't get involved, the Imperial Army really doesn't have the extra energy to take care of them. But I think it's better to get in touch with these natives. They have spread all over the universe. Although they have not jumped out of the world, according to Imperial standards
It is also civilized. If the imperial army fights the fallen apostles, they will definitely be discovered by these natives. If you contact them in advance, you may be able to avoid a lot of trouble.
"The besieging troops continue to interfere with the world barrier. I require that the relay base station can be operated within 24 hours," Sandora thought for a while before ordering. "The main force begins to sink to the main material plane. I want
Let’s see if Harlan can continue to hide safely at this time.”
Facts have proved that that guy can really do it!
When the main force of the Imperial Army entered the universe with great swagger and even quickly set up their positions, the fallen apostles didn't even show their shadows!
"Confirmed that no enemy reaction has been detected - throughout the universe." Sivis reported at the command seat.
I opened my mouth: "There's not even a little movement? Even if a reconnaissance plane or probe pops up to check the situation!"
"There's no movement at all. The Fallen Apostles didn't even put out a probe. We didn't even detect the enemy's radar response." Sivis confirmed the data in front of him again and nodded to me seriously, "They just
Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, pretending not to exist..."
This time even Sandora was a little helpless: "What the hell is that Harlan doing... prepare a broadcast for the whole universe for me."
The communications department immediately prepared the high-power broadcast tower. This set of giant towers installed on the longitudinal arms of the Imperial Admiral can allow the psionic energy to reverberate throughout the universe in the form of signal waves, making it easy to broadcast around the world without delay.
, Shandora asked Haran to come out to fight immediately. She ordered the broadcast to be adjusted to the Haran Army's own frequency. This frequency was intercepted by us during the last border battle. Using this frequency to broadcast is a serious hazard.
An act of provocation. However, ten minutes after the Imperial Army announced that the universe had been controlled and asked the fallen apostles to fight immediately, Harlan still pretended that he did not exist, as if he was a cat in a certain space fold...
I suddenly started to wonder if Sivis' intelligence was wrong. Are the remnants of Harlan really in this world?
Sivis immediately risked her life to guarantee the accuracy of the information. Not only was she convinced that Harlan's legion was somewhere in this universe, but she had definitely not escaped. So we conducted a second broadcast, this time the content of the broadcast was Bingdi
Sri Lanka’s friendly proposal was very concise: “Harlan has the guts to come out and fight until it hurts!”
Of course, the enemy still hasn't made any movement.
This is not the reaction that Xiling soldiers should have, but no one knows what happened to Haran. Sandora finally ordered the establishment of a space fortress on the spot and began to scan the entire universe: No matter where Haran is hiding, waiting for the entire world
After all the space anomalies have been analyzed, he will have to come out to fight sooner or later. I really don’t know what the point is of him being like this now. Does he still plan to build a new warship that is enough to compete with the imperial army in three or two days?
?
Or... he is using this time to recharge the King's formation?
The last one was the only possibility, but I soon felt that it was unreliable. If Harlan still had any brains, he should know that he was on the run. It is common sense for the King to keep charging at all times.
After all, it is better to reduce the life of the spaceship a little than to be blown up. So he is probably not hiding now to recharge the King's Lander.
In any case, what should have been a fast and intense volley battle entered a brief stalemate due to Harlan's abnormal behavior. When the two sides began to stalemate, I focused my spare attention on other parts of this universe.
The next day, I started to look at the various scenes captured by the probes from deep space, as well as the real-life scenes captured by ship-borne observation equipment. What I saw was surprising.
I saw a world that was extremely old and on the verge of decay.
When the fleet first arrived, I noticed that the starlight in the surrounding space was dim, and I could barely see the stars and distant nebulae. At that time, I thought that the fleet had just teleported to an area with few celestial bodies, or that the universe itself had few celestial bodies.
However, when the pictures taken by the probe were sent to me, I discovered that it was not that there were few celestial bodies in this universe, but that all the stars had entered their twilight years - the world had entered the late stage, and star creation was taking place across the entire universe.
The movement is on the verge of stopping. We don't see bright nebulae because those nebulae have exhausted their fuel and resources. Ninety percent of the stars they created have been extinguished, and now only dim embers remain. According to detection, this
The universe is still expanding slowly, but the expansion rate is almost stagnant. According to the calculations of the shipboard host computer, the total amount of matter in this world is just at the critical point. Its ultimate fate is to stop at a certain time, neither expanding nor contracting.
, becomes a solidified space, and all the celestial bodies inside it will be extinguished one by one after a long time. Eventually, the universe will become a dark bubble, the entropy tends to infinity, and no phenomena will occur anymore. Wait for the complete flow of information.
The moment it stops, it will be quietly swallowed by the void.
In my room, I looked through the pictures from deep space one after another, with a little doll girl hanging on my body. The little girl couldn't understand those things at all, but she pretended to be very professional.
This aspect is quite similar to myself...
A universe that is about to come to an end is in a bleak state.
Space is filled with ancient black holes and cooling matter. The dark pictures captured by the probe in deep space are not actually nothing. There are a large number of black holes there. High-density objects formed after the stars have exhausted completely occupy the starry sky of this world.
From the number of black holes, we can judge that this universe must have once had an idyllic era of twinkling stars - at that time, there must have been several times more active celestial bodies in space than those black holes.
In space, you can also find some things that are releasing light and heat, which are some dark red celestial bodies: red dwarf stars. These stars that have exhausted their fuel but are not enough to form black holes are burning at an extremely slow speed, squeezing
Some of the last bits of energy in their bodies have been completely exhausted, and now they are just releasing the heat accumulated inside them. These low-temperature stars are like small lights dotted on black velvet, twinkling in the final moments of the universe.
Ambiguous glimmer. The end of this universe belongs to the most classic situation in the end of the world: cooling.
There are many ways for the universe to end. The natural and end-of-life ending methods are mainly divided into three types: expansion to a big tear, collapse to a singularity. Or it is just at the critical point, slowly cooling in a black bubble state, and the cold winter of space will kill it.
Everything. The world in front of me is slowly heading towards the third kind of doomsday. Of course, this "heading" is viewed from the perspective of the length of the evolution of the universe. It will take more time for this world to completely cool down to the point where all living space disappears.
About 100 million years. Those dim red dwarf stars are far from being completely extinguished, and they still have some time to survive.
And the last indigenous people of this universe are living around those dying stars.
According to the images collected by the probe, there are almost all settlements around the dim star embers, including natural celestial bodies and man-made space fortresses. The remaining indigenous inhabitants of this universe live there, gathering around the cooling red dwarf stars.
Collecting the already limited stellar energy. Just like the refugees who warm themselves around a small pile of bonfire embers when the winter night comes, except that the winter night they face will no longer have the sunrise, and the embers in front of them have already
It is the last bit of fuel in the universe.
"If it weren't for what happened in Harlan, we should start a doomsday assessment of the indigenous people here now."
I gently raised my arm and tipped the little doll on my elbow. Bingtis was right, she should teach this child something, even if she won't become a commander. As a member of the royal family, she also
You must at least understand the basic principles - you cannot have unlearned and unskilled naughty children in your family. They are already naughty enough now...
"Doomsday Apple?" The little doll was already confused by the groggy space pictures and the messy annotations on the pictures. At this time, he replied to me in an almost sleepwalking state, "I don't like apples, they are too big.
, but also to hold and eat..."
I:"……"
After I repeated it to the little girl, the doll girl became interested: "What is that?"
"This universe is gradually extinguishing," I pointed to the things on the data terminal. "Look at these dark red light balls and red dwarf stars. If you can see dark lines on their surfaces, it means that the red dwarf stars are almost completely dead. Many of them are dead.
The total amount of matter in the universe is limited, and there are only so many materials that can be used to make stars. Now the world is dying. After these stars are extinguished, there will be no new stars naturally produced in space, but the origin of this world
The residents have not yet mastered the technology to escape from the world.”
"They will die, right?" the little puppet thought for a while, "I remember, if a civilization is about to become extinct and the empire happens to be free, it will help."
I think there's something wrong with the little doll's understanding, but it basically means: "It's almost the same, but it's not as simple as helping out. Any rational civilization belongs to the order side. In the face of the abyss, the order side
All creatures belong to the same camp. The empire is based on this logic and will help other species - well, we will not discuss the 'helping methods' of the old empire for the time being. In short, the empire has a specialized evaluation group and logical system to judge a civilization.
What level of guidance is required? If the assessment concludes that the natives of this world do not have the ability to spontaneously research boundary crossing technology, then they may be directly sent to a new world to survive. If the assessment concludes that they can proceed with limited guidance.
If there is a technological breakthrough, the empire will help them create equipment for cross-world navigation. However, no matter what kind of assistance, unless the target civilization voluntarily becomes a vassal of the empire, it will strive not to exert monopoly control on this civilization. The last one was just added by the new empire.
rule."
The little doll seemed to understand, and nodded matter-of-factly. Then her eyes were suddenly attracted by a picture on the data terminal, and she grabbed my arm in surprise: "Hey, look at this, it's so bright!
Is this an artificial sun made by local people?”
I quickly turned back the picture I just jumped to. This was a deep space picture just uploaded by a probe. The probe should be passing by a dead star system. It glanced at the nearest red dwarf star.
——So I uploaded a picture more than ten seconds ago. In the center of the picture is an almost completely extinguished sun, very far away, and in the lower left corner of the picture is a planet at close range, with a particularly bright spot above the planet.
striking.
After watching it for a long time, I felt that the spot looked familiar, so I immediately directed the probe to go back and take a few more looks.
A minute later, the picture observed by the probe was transmitted in real time, and I was stunned:
That light spot is not an artificial sun made by local indigenous people at all, but an... an eop-03!!
(It is expected that the Man King magazine has spread to most outlets. It seems it is time to go out and bask in the sunshine and buy a book.)