Chapter 1, The Sun's…

“The sun’s,” the data terminal replied succinctly.

“A bunch of sun’s… ashes?” Hao Ren was a little surprised. “A dead star? What else?”

“Nothing else. No planets, no asteroid belt, no artificial celestial bodies. The drone swarm's collective thinking program cross-referenced the star charts in the Nu Ling's (Wrathful Spirit) memory, and it found a location here where a similar starry sky could be observed. The star chart overlap rate reached 99.99%, which basically confirms that this is the place where the Nu Ling once looked up at the stars—but that location is just a vast expanse of space, and the closest solid object is a dead star. The only good news now is that the star is slightly farther away from the location we previously judged, about two astronomical units away, so the Nangong couple shouldn't have been thrown into the sun, but onto one of the sun's original planets, it's just that those planets have disappeared.”

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Lily leaned on the back of her seat: "Let's go take a look."

Hao Ren nodded and ordered the ship to disconnect the direct data connection with the outpost. The Petrified Tortoise Rock Table retracted its beam of light and disappeared into space as a streak of silver light, while the small outpost readjusted the angle of its crystal panels and quickly returned to work.

After a short voyage, the ship arrived at its destination. The observation platform at the top of the Petrified Tortoise Rock Table slowly protruded from under the armor belt, and after the light-shielding layer was lowered, the vast space appeared before everyone's eyes, dark and boundless.

The data terminal indicated a certain direction in space with a beam of light. In the direction pointed to by the light, a small, egg-sized, dim reddish glow could be seen: "That is the ashes, a sun that has been extinguished for a long time. It failed to become a black hole, and now only a slightly warm core is emitting residual heat. It can be said that there is almost nothing left of the entire star. The remnants of this star are floating in the space around us... thin gas, fragments of the big bang, etc., very, very thin, negligible."

Hao Ren nodded. He could see an abnormal grayish-brown color in the background of the universe. This was the ash left over after the star burst. Since these thin gas clouds had spread so far, the current position of the ship should have been swallowed by the erupted star corona at one point. If there were any planets here, they would probably have been burned into slag by that scorching nuclear flame.

But even if they were burned into slag, at least some "slag" should have been left behind.

"Have you checked the possible orbits?" Hao Ren looked at the distant remnants of the star. "Even if the star burned all its satellites, it should at least leave some dregs."

The terminal emitted a series of beeping sounds: "Checked, there is nothing."

"Expand the search range," Hao Ren nodded, "The star may blow away the celestial bodies around it when it explodes."

"Did you think that I couldn’t think of that," the data terminal swayed its body, "I want to remind you: according to calculations, the star in front of you exploded more than ten thousand years ago. Even if it blew away its satellites, it should have happened at that time, and the starry sky in the Nu Ling’s memory was a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago, it was already calm here—so if we can’t find anything here now, then there wouldn’t have been anything here a hundred years ago either.”

Izhaks suddenly said from the side: "Unless there was a planet here a hundred years ago, and then it grew legs and ran away in the past hundred years."

Elizabeth nodded, imitating her dad's usual aura, and crossed her arms: "What Dad said makes sense."

Vivian waved her hand to tell the little girl not to make trouble: "Do you know what your dad is talking about to make sense."

Elizabeth puffed out her chest: "Anyway, what my dad says is sustainably right! This is a natural law!"

Just as Hao Ren was about to say something, a halo suddenly appeared out of thin air in the space near the ship. A small, silver-glowing rectangular device jumped out of the halo and approached the Petrified Tortoise Rock Table silently. Hao Ren recognized that this was exactly the kind of detector he had released in the first place—of course, it was definitely not the original one, it should be a "descendant" of the detector that had been copied for who knows how many generations, and it was currently responsible for mapping this area. Sensing the location of the main controller, this clever drone flew straight to the observation platform of the Petrified Tortoise Rock Table. The rear half of its fuselage opened to both sides, and a small metal device floated out of its "belly" and landed in front of everyone through the shield of the observation platform.

Lily immediately curiously caught the gadget and found that it was a broken part, and its manufacturing process was obviously not from Xiling equipment.

Hao Ren was immediately surprised: "Where did it pick this up from?!"

The data terminal went up to communicate with the detector: "Several light-years away from here, it was found in space. At that time, this fragment was flying through space at three percent of the speed of light."

Hao Ren thought of something and immediately ordered: "Track in that direction!"

A burst of blue light radiated from the surface of the probe drone, and it disappeared from everyone's eyes in an instant. The data terminal then turned on the holographic projection, which showed the radar images constantly sent back by the probe - this image was rapidly extending in a certain direction from the Petrified Tortoise Rock Table as the starting point. After a while, the data terminal suddenly made a loud whistle, and a bright red dot appeared on the image: "The detector has found a planet! But it is being pushed by a lot of thrusters, at least eight light-years away from here..."

Suddenly everyone was silent, and a circle of eyes focused on Izhaks, who scratched his bald head and chuckled: "It really grew legs and ran away..."

Elizabeth continued to cross her arms with a proud face: "So what my dad says is sustainably right."

The Petrified Tortoise Rock Table immediately followed the navigation signal sent by the detector and quickly caught up with the planet that was running wildly in the vast space. The scene before them stunned everyone.

A dim, generally grayish-white planet was traveling alone in space. Its surface was covered with neat and huge grooves and lines, which were traces left by deep artificial modification of the entire planet. At the intersection of those lines were a large number of thrusters arranged symmetrically along the ground axis. The scale of those thrusters was like mountains. Looking at them from outer space, they were unbelievably huge. Some of them were roaring and operating, erupting with brilliant flames hundreds of thousands of miles long from their huge nozzles. These lights pushed the planet forward in space and maintained a slow acceleration process.

This planet showed a kind of "rough technical power" everywhere. The propulsion method it used was obviously still the original reaction engine, which was incomparable to the "coordinate-driven method" used by many space civilizations. However, it was precisely this simple and crude propulsion method that gave the entire planet a kind of breathtaking sense of power.

The Petrified Tortoise Rock Table was flying synchronously above this dim planet. Hao Ren looked down at the grayish-white earth under his feet from the observation platform: "The probe drones didn't find this planet before?"

"The early drones were just mapping sketches, and what they detected were basically stars. As for planets and wandering celestial bodies in space, they were obscured by larger gravitational sources or light sources," the data terminal explained. "In addition, the planet in front of us happens to be on the boundary line between the cruise areas of two probe drones, so there is a high probability that it will be ignored. After all... it neither emits light, nor has a large mass, and it is at a low temperature."

"Gollum" was lying on the side of the observation platform, meowing in surprise, its tail swaying gently in the air: "Is that the place Da Da Cat is looking for?"

"Is this it?" Vivian also turned her head and asked.

The data terminal was calculating the trajectory of this wandering star, and using its current course and acceleration to extrapolate its position a hundred years ago. This required complicated calculations, and could only produce approximate values under ideal conditions - the universe of stars is a constantly changing frame of reference, and all celestial bodies are in motion, so when calculating, many things must be reversed at the same time. Fortunately, the data terminal only needed to consider a time span of a mere century. Within a hundred years, the relative positions of the stars would not change much.

"We first assume that this planet has maintained its current thrust to accelerate after leaving the star system, then assume that it has not changed its course in the past hundred years, and has not been captured by other massive celestial bodies, and finally comprehensively consider the perturbations caused by all the gravitational sources in this vicinity..." The data terminal babbled while calculating, and Hao Ren's head was as big as a bucket: "Just speak human language."

"Oh, this should be the star we're looking for," the data terminal slapped Hao Ren on the forehead, "A hundred years ago, it should have been located at the coordinate point we found before... with a deviation of dozens of astronomical units before and after, but on the scale of space, this deviation is almost seamless."

Lily poked Nangong Wuyue in the lower back: "Your parents should be down there. Probably."

(Seeking monthly tickets=.= everyone check to see if you have monthly tickets on hand, if you do, please vote, there should be no double at the end of the month, and even if there is a double, I may not remember...)