At the final, most critical moment, Xiao Yu displayed his quick wits, successfully persuading the Guardian Civilization’s warship to leave without interfering further in the struggle between him and the Molian Civilization.
The few words Xiao Yu had spoken seemed simple, but they carried deep implications. First of all, the situation of the Guardian Civilization was clear both to Xiao Yu and to themselves.
The Guardians were in a poor position. At present, they did not have the ability to risk conflict with another powerful civilization. That ‘powerful civilization’ naturally did not refer to Xiao Yu.
What Xiao Yu had hinted at was that he, too, had a powerful backer. After all, without support, how could a mere Level 5 Civilization obtain technologies like Four-Dimensional shields and space weapons? If a Level 5 Civilization had a backer, that backer could only be a Level 6 Civilization, or some existence on par with one. And which civilization could that be?
The most obvious candidate was the enigmatic Taihao Civilization. From the intelligence Xiao Yu had gathered, he knew that the Taihao did not exist in the same form as ordinary civilizations. They seemed not to involve themselves in the usual struggles. At least, if during the war against the Sweepers, even a single Taihao Civilization had intervened, the Sweepers would have suffered far heavier losses. If two Taihao Civilizations had joined, the Sweepers would have perished. And if all three Taihao Civilizations hidden in the galaxy had come forth, the Sweepers would not even have had the chance to flee.
The Taihao behaved in strange ways. Sometimes, they might casually assist a Level 5 Civilization, gifting them certain technologies, perhaps only for the sake of conducting an experiment. If Xiao Yu were destroyed, it was possible that such an action would offend that hidden, mysterious enemy. Was it worth it to antagonize a Taihao Civilization just for the sake of one Level 5 Civilization?
Obviously not. That calculation was simple enough for anyone to make. So at this crucial moment, the City-Class ship of a Level 6 Civilization decisively abandoned the idea of destroying the Stellar Cannon and left outright.
That was the logic hidden within Xiao Yu’s words. Whether the Taihao Civilization was good or evil, what they thought of him, Xiao Yu did not know. But he did know that the Taihao had some profound connection with him. At such a critical time, borrowing their name as a banner to frighten the Guardians carried no psychological burden for him.
Fortunately, Xiao Yu succeeded. The Guardian ship’s departure meant that the last obstacle to him acquiring the technologies of a Level 5 Civilization was gone.
“Molian Civilization, I have no interest in exterminating you completely. But in this battle, you have lost so much military strength, even your capital planet has fallen. I wonder, does your civilization still have the potential to rise again? Hmph… whether you do or not has nothing to do with me anymore. Your fate has nothing to do with me.” Xiao Yu thought to himself, turning his focus once more to the distant star.Up to this moment, only seven minutes had passed since the Stellar Cannon had fired upon it. The energy released by the explosion would travel at the speed of light, and at a distance of seven billion kilometers, it would still take over six hours to reach. So from the perspective of the Stellar Cannon, the star looked the same as ever, unchanged.
But from the capital planet’s perspective, things were very different. Even before the raging energy of the exploding star arrived, Xiao Yu’s biological fleet had already begun rushing toward the planet’s far side. This sudden and peculiar maneuver left many Molian ships puzzled. But in the very next moment, they understood.
Xiao Yu had not had time to deploy detectors near the star, but the Molian Civilization had. They had cultivated this star system for countless years, and there were inevitably numerous detectors of various kinds stationed near the star. Those detectors could easily sense what was happening on the stellar surface and transmit the data back to the planet through superluminal communication.
“All of our detectors around the sun have been destroyed! Wiped out in an instant! The energy burst seems to have come from the sun itself! The energy is far too powerful, our detectors didn’t even have time to analyze it before they were obliterated!”
“Based on the time intervals at which detectors in different orbits were destroyed, we’ve calculated the speed of this raging energy, it’s the speed of light!”
“A cataclysm of unimaginable scale is happening on our sun!”
“It’s the Stellar Cannon! The Stellar Cannon! The Divine Ark Civilization fired the Stellar Cannon at our sun and destroyed it! Our sun has now undergone a supernova explosion! In just eight minutes, the raging energy from the sun will reach our capital planet!”
“Our sun has been destroyed! For millions of years it nurtured us, generously shone upon us, allowed us to evolve from aquatic life into terrestrial life, and then into intelligent beings. Like a father and mother to us, the sun has been destroyed by the Divine Ark Civilization!”
Intelligent beings have a special attachment to their stars, just as humans of Earth once did with their sun. A star is a generous giver of energy, and the energy it radiates nurtures the birth of life. Without stars, life would never arise. Even when humanity of Earth reached an advanced level of technology, they still constantly drew energy from the sun.
The clothes people wore were made from cotton, and cotton required the sun to grow. The sun provided the energy for it to synthesize elements and bloom into white flowers. Looms required electricity, which came from hydropower, coal power, or wind power. Rain, snowmelt, and rivers were all driven by imbalances of heat and air pressure created by the sun’s warmth. Without the sun, there would be no rivers, no hydropower. Coal power required coal, which came from ancient plants that also grew under the sun’s light. As for wind power, it hardly needed explanation, without the sun, there would be no wind on Earth at all.
When carefully analyzed, the source of energy behind all of humanity’s food, clothing, shelter, and activity, all of it traced back to the sun. Ancient humans had realized this truth long ago. That was why, in Western mythology, the greatest god was the sun god, and why humanity worshiped the sun as a heavenly father.
The sun is the father of all life. Imagine if some foreign civilization destroyed the sun, what would humanity feel in their hearts?
That is exactly what the beings of the Molian Civilization felt now. Their star, which had nurtured them for eons, had become more than just a source of energy, it had become a spiritual anchor, an object of devotion.
Xiao Yu had destroyed their sun. He had shattered their spiritual pillar, their inner reliance, their god.
“Our sun has been destroyed! Our common father has been killed!”
This was the unified cry in the hearts of all the Molian people.
The immense grief and fury clouded their reason. When the news arrived, many Molian ships failed to respond at all. They simply froze where they were, staring blankly as Xiao Yu’s biological fleet rushed to the far side of the planet.
That brief hesitation marked the difference between life and death. In their final moments, they witnessed an astonishing sight.
In an instant, their sun’s brightness multiplied countless times. Bathed in searing light, its body suddenly expanded, as though a bomb had detonated at the core of a stone sphere, shattering it entirely.
Xiao Yu knew well the exact mechanism of this process. The Stellar Cannon’s stream of exotic negative-matter tachyons easily pierced through the star’s outer, lower-density layers without interacting, driving straight into the core.
Compressed by immense gravity, the density of matter at the core of a star was extreme, more than two hundred times that of water. It was here that stellar reactions were most violent, energy generation fastest.
This place was the foundation of the star. A star is like a great tower; its magnificence rests on its firm foundation. Now, the Stellar Cannon had ripped that foundation away.
A tower stripped of its foundation collapses immediately. A star stripped of its core is no different.
Deprived of core support, its outer matter plunged inward under crushing gravity, approaching the speed of light. The immense kinetic energy released upon impact was instantly converted into energy.
Under overwhelming reactive force, the star could no longer maintain its structure. Its matter was hurled outward by the titanic energy. The violence triggered another round of nuclear fusion, and in that instant, the star created every element in the universe.
Indescribable amounts of energy erupted outward, blasting into space in every direction. The first to be struck were the many detectors positioned around it. They were instantly obliterated, without even a chance to record or transmit what had happened.
The overwhelming energy continued to surge outward into the void…