Ou Zhanpeng, aboard the expeditionary vessel "Expedition Two," awoke once again, his vacant eyes staring into the darkness of the cabin, the phantom images from his dream still lingering in his mind.
He hadn't been jolted awake from a dream in a long time, but today was different. The dream hadn't begun with the printing of warships. Instead, all the warships were completed, forming a resplendent expanse beneath his feet. At that moment, he felt an overwhelming sense of looking down upon all beings.
But his blueprints weren't finished yet, so why were the warships being built?
The dream didn't change according to his will. Hundreds of warships gradually took flight, forming a vast, sky-obscuring spectacle in the air.
Ou Zhanpeng couldn't help but feel a surge of longing. If humanity possessed such a powerful fleet, what would there be to fear from alien species? They could be crushed no matter how many came.
As swarms of warships ascended, wormholes suddenly tore open in the sky. The warships plunged into them and vanished in an instant.
Ou Zhanpeng's mind struggled to comprehend. Opening wormholes directly within the atmosphere? Wouldn't the air escape?
However, his perspective immediately followed one of the warships through a wormhole, appearing near an unknown planet.
It was a blue planet, remarkably similar to Earth. Several orbital elevators stretched from its surface into outer space. A ring-shaped structure, still under construction, was being built along these elevators, appearing as scattered, discontinuous points, like a peculiar necklace adorning the planet.
Ou Zhanpeng immediately concluded that this civilization's technological level far surpassed Earth's.
He felt a sense of unease, worrying that the warships were meant for invasion.
His worries proved unfounded. The warships flew towards a space station at the end of an orbital elevator and docked there. Various strangely shaped aliens disembarked, and among them were two humans!
At least, they looked very much like humans.
Ou Zhanpeng suddenly realized with a jolt – these weren't warships at all, but interstellar cruise liners!
The "shrimp people" were merely the shrimp people, a highly advanced interstellar civilization, having nothing to do with the "brain fish."
The question was, how did this ship end up in the hands of the brain fish, and how did it appear near Earth?
In the time that followed, this interstellar liner traveled between various planets. Each time it traversed a wormhole, it arrived in a new world.
Ou Zhanpeng had always assumed Earth was the template for habitable planets, needing to be blue with more water than land.
But in reality, it was nothing like that. Similar habitable planets were exceedingly rare. Most planets looked far from habitable, some even bizarrely shaped.
The harsher the environment of a planet, the more ferocious the aliens living there appeared, embodying the saying "poor mountains and bad waters breed difficult people."
This was hardly surprising. Natural selection, survival of the fittest. To excel in a harsh environment and evolve into an intelligent civilization, they couldn't be ordinary contenders.
Even Earth wasn't entirely suitable for habitation everywhere. Compared to those planets with harsh environments, humans were like flowers in a greenhouse.
As his knowledge grew, Ou Zhanpeng gradually became desensitized, unable to recall how many planets he had visited or how many civilizations he had witnessed.
However, one thing was clear: the shrimp people's cruise liner always jumped directly to its destination and never entered true interstellar space!
Upon traversing another wormhole, Ou Zhanpeng expected another routine journey. Instead, what unfolded before him wasn't a peaceful planet, but a world engulfed in the flames of war!
Over a dozen ships of varying sizes and designs encircled a poor planet, with countless fighter craft repeatedly entering and exiting the atmosphere.
Ou Zhanpeng clearly saw the situation on the battlefield, and his pupils constricted violently – those things swarming the sky were actually crude fighter craft piloted by giant species!
The cruise liner had barely arrived before it was surrounded by a horde of alien fighter craft. Chaos erupted among the passengers. The shrimp people captain decisively ordered the crew to destroy equipment and delete navigation data.
The poor captain desperately wanted to open a wormhole to escape the battlefield, but the frenzied enemy gave him no opportunity. The cruise liner lost power without warning and, with little effort, fell into enemy hands.
The universe was not a peaceful place, and relations between civilizations were not that complicated; it was merely enslavement and being enslaved, plunder and being plundered.
Ou Zhanpeng could already foresee the fate of the many crew members and passengers, but the dream did not show their subsequent encounters. The scene shifted, and a long time had passed.
The once pristine cruise liner had become old and weathered, adorned with numerous weapons and equipment it hadn't possessed before. A group of grotesque aliens had taken over, plundering and seizing with impunity.
Ou Zhanpeng personally witnessed their acts of pillaging planets and then watched as they destroyed them, his heart turning to ice.
They weren't a civilization at all, but a band of thoroughgoing brigands!
These aliens were extraordinarily powerful; any single one of their ships was beyond humanity's match.
As time passed, the ship grew increasingly derelict and was eventually disdained by the alien bandits. After a period of idleness, they finally sold the vessel.
It changed hands several times like this before finally falling into the possession of a group of brain fish.
Only then did Ou Zhanpeng realize that the brain fish were merely a low-status bandit species. They were initially unlucky victims of plunder themselves, but later, by chance, received the protection of other plundering civilizations, becoming their vassals. From then on, they experienced a dramatic turnaround.
They acted with arrogance and did all sorts of wicked deeds. Not only did they plunder everywhere, but they also enslaved inferior civilizations, treating themselves as gods. Any defiance was met with ruthless slaughter, and entire civilizations were even exterminated.
Ou Zhanpeng didn't know how to describe them. They were clearly just a bunch of clowns, yet by a twist of fate, they had become an interstellar civilization. Fate truly played with people.
He couldn't help but feel secretly fortunate. If the Solar System hadn't been located in such a remote area, it would likely have been annihilated by alien civilizations long ago.
But at the same time, he recalled the various legends about prehistoric civilizations circulating among the populace. Those prehistoric civilizations that had long since vanished into the river of history – might they have been destroyed by these bandit civilizations?
This universe was truly too dangerous. For a nascent civilization to develop into a new interstellar civilization without disaster or hardship was incredibly difficult. That Earth had remained undiscovered by plundering civilizations was nothing short of a miracle.
The scene flickered. The malevolent brain fish finally ran into a formidable opponent, their warship being entirely engulfed by a mysterious vessel.
In the very end, Ou Zhanpeng saw an ordinary, unremarkable small planet on the edge of a certain star system. The dream abruptly ended there.
Although there were no explanations or clues, he instinctively knew that this star system was the Solar System, and that small planet on the edge of the Solar System was the same one he had encountered when he first entered the dream!
At this point, all the clues pointed to that small planet. Thinking of the sudden appearance and subsequent abrupt disappearance of the alien warships, a thought suddenly dawned on Ou Zhanpeng: that small planet must hold the answers he sought!