by <unknown>
"To march into the grand universe, our first step will be to find and activate the sailing routes, repair the star beacons that the previous civilizations deployed, and expand them into space gates larger in scale!
"We have to build a great cause from scratch exactly like our earliest pioneers did. We will reconnect the dry and broken veins and nerves in the body of our civilization one by one again!
"This is exactly the significance of the 'Heavenly Road Plan'!"
On the light beam behind Si Koulie, a lot of worlds were shining brilliantly. They were connected to each other tightly by colorful roads, constituting a splendid paradise in the universe.
Although they knew that it was simply artwork, Li Yao and Ding Lingdang were still deeply fascinated by such a glorious future.
Chapter 1316: Let's Go to the Universe! |
All the participants were inspired by Si Koulie's speech. In the whole night that followed, they proposed their own amazing insights for the 'Heavenly Road Plan'.
Such an enormous plan could almost be called the 'First Project' of the New Federation. Naturally, it would be impossible to reach any result after only one night.
Thankfully, most of the participants of the meeting were staying for the Magical Equipment Exposition. As a result, the duration of the Meeting of the Nascent Soul Stage was lengthened to an unprecedented ten days.
They had plenty of time to plan everything.
After the first day's meeting was over, Li Yao and Ding Lingdang roamed the garden outside the meeting hall, hand in hand.
It was already dawn after a whole night of discussion. On the horizon in the east, the morning glow was swallowing the entire night sky like a surging tide.
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang were still dwelling on the spectacular and passionate meeting.
Occasionally, when they made eye contact, they immediately felt what was on each other's mind.
Ding Lingdang smiled and jabbed Li Yao with her elbow. "You want to join the 'Heavenly Road Plan' and explore more Sectors in the sea of stars, right?"
"Yes!" Li Yao licked his lips, with eagerness beaming out of his eyes. He looked at his fists and said, "We've spent five peaceful years on Kunlun. Although it was quite a lot of fun to study the Colossi all day, I felt that… my life was short of something. My spirit couldn't be entirely activated, and my level stagnated, too. I couldn't make any progress however hard I trained myself!
"It felt like—It felt like—Huh, how should I put it?"
Ding Lingdang smiled and bared the sharp teeth. "It felt that you were not completely alive?"
"Exactly!" Li Yao's eyes suddenly shone while he raised his thumb for his wife. "That's exactly my feeling. How do you know?"
"Because I felt the same!" Ding Lingdang sniffed. "We are the same type of person. We are not born for a peaceful life. Challenging the limits of our limits in incessant adventures and battles is our lifestyle!
"In the past five years, although my level has been improving fast through the arduous training, it never felt as gratifying as when I fought the demons in the depths of the Grand Desolate Plateau eight years ago! Such a monotonous life is like a prison for me. My bones are itching so much that I feel there must be bugs inside. I've long expected the human hibernation technology and the space jump technology to be developed enough for us to march into the universe!
"Now, the day has finally arrived. The opportunity is too great to miss. After all, there are still almost a hundred years to go before the expedition army of the Imperium of True Human Beings arrives. Being caged in the Heaven's Origin Sector and living a mundane life for the next hundred years will be a greater suffering than killing me!"
"Li Yao, let's go to Professor Mo Xuan and Leader Si Koulie and ask them about the details about the 'Heavenly Road Plan'. If we are truly marching to the universe, there are no candidates that are more suitable than us!"
Li Yao's eyes were glittering. He held Ding Lingdang's hands tightly and said, "That's exactly what I want!"
Si Koulie was the best starship specialist in the three Sectors, while Professor Mo Xuan had been studying the ancient star map left by the Pangu civilization over the past few years. The two of them were both the most crucial components of the 'Heavenly Road Plan'.
Although Li Yao was Professor Mo Xuan's student, he had been devoted to the research on the Colossi and did not pay much attention to the 'Heavenly Road Plan' before it was announced.
Si Koulie and Professor Mo Xuan had not rested yet. They were still sorting the presentations of the participants in the meeting hall now.
Seeing that Li Yao and Ding Lingdang returned, the two seniors showed no sign of surprise at all.
"Li Yao, perfect timing. Come here and take a look at this!" Si Koulie greeted Li Yao with a smile.
Back in the riot of the Immortal Cultivators, the two of them had become comrades who fought side by side with each other. When the communication between the Heaven's Origin Sector and the Flying Star Sector went deeper, Li Yao's Glorious Sunlight Group and Si Koulie's Star Fighters' Alliance formed a strategic partnership. They shared a lot of mutual interests and were in an unusual relationship. Therefore, even the title of 'Fellow Cultivator' was saved.
Si Koulie activated a rune array softly, triggering a hologram right in front of them, which turned out to be a super small starship around ten meters long and as brilliant as a diamond.
At first glance, the starship did not carry any metal materials and was in a completely different style from what was seen in the Heaven's Origin Sector, the Flying Star Sector, or the Blood Demon Sector. The flawlessness of the starship actually had a primeval air around it, just like…
"Isn't it the escape capsule of the Pangu Clan?" Li Yao scratched his hair and finally recalled what it was.
Five years ago, deep inside Kunlun, he and three Immortal Cultivators had once found an escape capsule of the Pangu Clan and even fought the hibernating warrior of the Pangu Clan inside hard.
At that time, the escape capsule had been blown up into countless pieces.
The super small starship in front of his eyes right now, however, was eighty percent similar to the escape capsule of the Pangu Clan and looked like a reduced version.
"Yes, precisely!" Si Koulie declared proudly. "Although the escape capsule was blown into smithereens, we collected the debris carefully and tried our best to analyze it. Together with our latest starship technology, we have finally produced this feather-level super starship, which we have named 'Spark'!
"Don't underestimate it just because it only has the space to accommodate one passenger. It has in fact been embedded with hundreds of units excavated from Kunlun, allowing it to perform dozens of space jumps in a row or accelerate to 'sub-lightspeed'. As the fastest and most agile starship of the three Sectors right now, it is most suitable for the universal exploration!"
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang looked at each other, their eyes shining.
"Professor, Uncle Si, you must know what we are here for, mustn't you?" Li Yao went directly to the topic. "I believe that there shouldn't be a problem if we want to join the 'Heavenly Road Plan' and explore the new Sectors with our capabilities, right?"
"Regarding the issue, we would've gone to you if you hadn't come to us." Professor Mo Xuan walked close and said, "According to the internal discussion of the team of the 'Heavenly Road Plan', it is indeed necessary to send out experts in the Nascent Soul Stage at the beginning phase of the universal exploration.
"But it is not because those in the Building Foundation Stage or the Core Formation Stage are surely unqualified for the task. This is mainly for safety reasons.
"We don't know the first thing about the worlds beyond the Heaven's Origin Sector, the Blood Demon Sector, and Flying Star Sector. Assuming that there are local forces in the new Sectors, we are unaware whether they are friendly or hostile, how developed their civilization is, and if they pose a threat to us!
"Even if the overall development level of their ci
vilization is not as good as ours, it doesn't mean that their top experts cannot kill or even capture our explorers alive.
"It's just like us. Our comprehensive capability is far behind that of the Imperium of True Human Beings, but with a delicate scheme and some luck, we were still able to capture the explorers of the Imperium of True Human Beings!
"In the perilous universe, information is one of the most valuable resources! After we captured an explorer of the Imperium of True Human Beings, we received tremendous information from both them and their war base, which significantly increased our capability and will make us grow into a serious threat for the Imperium one day.
"Should locals who are hostile to us encounter and capture our explorers while we are exploring the universe, and they elicit crucial information about the federation from the captives, it will be a terrible disaster for us!
"Therefore, the first echelon of explorers must boast high self-protection abilities… In the worst case-scenario, they must be capable of destroying all the information about us before terminating their own life when they are caught in a desperate situation!"
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang looked at each other, not very surprised.
Although the two of them were Cultivators who believed in humanity, they were not innocent children who did not know the darkness in the universe.
Danger lurked everywhere in the sea of stars. Professor Mo Xuan's concerns were definitely valid.
If the explorers from the federation ran into powerful and hostile locals, they might confess the coordinates, combat ability, civilization level as well as other critical intelligence under the vicious secret arts such as the 'soul-searching technique' before they had the chance to figure out the new world's situation. In that case, the federation would be losing a lot instead of gaining anything from the exploration missions!
It was needless to say that the explorers might run into the scouts from the Covenant Alliance or the Imperium in the vast universe, who might be tough characters like the star child.
Only the experts in the Nascent Soul Stage were capable of competing with them. Even if they could defeat the enemy, they would still be able to destroy themselves and all the information they carried cleanly so that the federation could still be hidden in the mist at the edge of the cosmos.
Li Yao clapped his hands and said, "Then, the two of us will go for the mission. We're perfect for it!"
"You are indeed perfect for the mission, but you cannot be in each other's company on the mission," Professor Mo Xuan said. "In our plan, every exploration team will be supervised by a Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator. However, two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators will not be on the same team."
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang were both dazed for a moment. They asked simultaneously, "Why?"
"Two reasons. Firstly, you cannot put all your eggs in the same basket," Professor Mo Xuan explained. "Although the space jump technology is quite mature, passing through the four-dimensional space is a highly-risky endeavor after all. If anything goes wrong, the vehicle may be caught in a cosmic storm of the foreign dimension until it drifts to the end of the universe!
"One space jump may be not that dangerous. However, while the 'Heavenly Road Plan' is implemented, the explorers will jump continuously like the star child of the Imperium of True Human Beings. When the risks of dozens of space jumps are accumulated, the final result can be extremely high!
"There are only slightly more than two hundred experts in the Nascent Soul Stage in the three Sectors. Subtracting those who are too old and the non-battle ones who are unsuitable for the universal exploration missions, there are few suitable candidates for the job.
"Assuming that the two of you are on the same starship, should an accident take place, we will lose two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators who are of paramount importance at the same time!
"Such a loss is too heavy for us to shoulder. Therefore, we cannot be as extravagant as the Imperium of True Human Beings who put two in the Nascent Soul Stage and one at the peak of the Core Formation Stage on the same exploration team. We can only put one Nascent Soul Stage Cultivator in each team at best!"
Chapter 1317: A Greeting |
Li Yao and Ding Lingdang both nodded, somewhat helplessly. They had never considered the issue from that perspective before.
On second thought, it was indeed a conundrum that could barely be bypassed.
"Secondly, the complexity of the universal exploration. We have to try everything we can to increase our odds of discovering a new Sector," Professor Mo Xuan said. "For the ordinary people who live on a planet, with a blue sky above their heads and a solid land below their feet, when they are faced with the night sky brimming with brilliantly shining stars, it is often impossible for them to truly understand the vastness and enormity of the universe!
"How many stars are scattered in the three-dimensional universe to our knowledge?
"By the preliminary estimation of generations of astronomers, there are approximately ninety sextillion, which means a nine with twenty-two zeros behind it!
"What does 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 mean exactly?
"Let me put it this way. We are now on the Grand Desolate Plateau at the north of the continent of the Heaven's Origin Sector, which is a famous desert. There is another boundless desert at the south of the Blood Demon Sector known as the White Silver Death Desert!
"Say that every grain of sand in the desert stands for a star, then, even if all the grains on all the planets in the Heaven's Origin Sector, the Flying Star Sector, and the Blood Demon Sector are combined, their total number will still be smaller than the number of stars in the universe!
"But although there are so many stars, only a tiny fraction of them can generate stable galaxies, and of the stable galaxies, only a tiny, tiny fraction are qualified to be called a 'Sector' with abundant spiritual energy!
"We must consider the investment and the possible yield before we develop the Sectors. Some of the Sectors may boast bountiful spiritual energy, but they are too far away from us, and their environment is too harsh. So, they will be of no use to us at all for the next hundreds of years!
"In the end, the Sectors that fit our filtering conditions are few to none!
"This is the difficulty of universal exploration. The 'Heavenly Road Plan' equals to a mission to locate a few grains from the billions of grains on the Grand Desolate Plateau."
Ding Lingdang could not help but interject, "But don't we have a lot of star maps?"
"Yes," Si Koulie replied with a smile. "It is exactly because of the star maps left by the Pangu civilization and the observational magical equipment passed on from the Star Ocean Imperium that such an arduous mission is 'possible'. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be able to begin the first step!
"However, there is still a long way to go from 'possible' to 'successful'.
"On the other hand, the universe is dynamic and changing all the time. Every planet, every galaxy, and every nebula is moving and rotating incessantly, affecting and interfering with each other. So, the universe can be quite mysterious and unpredictable.
"The star map of the Pangu civilization that we have retrieved is a product from hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is now incomplete and lacking a lot of critical information. But even if we manage to repair it, what it records will still only be the status of the sailing routes from hundreds of thousands of years ago.
"Although hundreds of thousands of years are just a snap of the finger for the whole universe, the relative position among the galaxies and the Sectors has still gone through drastic changes!
"Therefore, we must calculate the trajectories and the patterns of most Sectors and worlds before we deduce what the universe looks like right now based on the ancient star map.
"Or to put it more straightforwardly, the star map of the Pangu civilization is already 'outdated', and we have to 'refresh it'!
"It is not hard to imagine that, with the level of our civilization, there will be all kinds of errors wh
en the star map of the Pangu civilization is being refreshed.
"With the help of the Star Prier's House, the observatory of the Star Ocean Imperium, we have tried to narrow the errors to the minimum. Together with the historical and archeological evidence, we have determined hundreds of space zones where a Sector may exist.
"But it doesn't mean that we can jump into the core of a civilization simply based on the coordinates we have determined! The odds are basically negligible!
"Our explorers will have to jump, drift, and grope in the infinite darkness, in order to have a slim chance of finding a new Sector!
"To increase the possibility of finding a new Sector, we are preparing to send as many explorers as possible to different directions and distances!
"Every new exploration team means a greater likelihood of finding a new Sector and building up our federation. That is the only way that we can expect to resist the scourge of the expedition army in the battle to come!
"If two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators are kept in the same team, if they are unlucky and find absolutely nothing after drifting in the universe for decades, it will not just be their own time that is wasted but also the future and destiny of the New Federation!"
"So, that is the case…" Li Yao and Ding Lingdang both frowned.
The two old seniors did make a lot of sense. From the perspectives of both anti-risk and success rate, it was indeed inappropriate to keep the two Nascent Soul Stage Cultivators on the same team.
"In fact, if Ding Lingdang hadn't advanced into the Nascent Soul Stage so quickly," Professor Mo Xuan said, "Li Yao in the Nascent Soul Stage and Ding Lingdang at the peak of the Core Formation Stage would've been made a gold team!
"But nobody expected that you could march into the Nascent Soul Stage so quickly, Little Ding. Right now, you are both 'national treasures' for the Star Glory Federation. How can we send you out recklessly?"
"Okay." Li Yao held Ding Lingdang's hands tightly and immediately sensed what his wife was thinking about from her palm. Thinking for a moment, Li Yao said, "It doesn't matter even if we have to be split apart for a while. After all, the 'Heavenly Road Plan' is a well-prepared, active exploration, instead of a random, aimless shot in the dark like when I jumped to the Flying Star Sector last time. I assume that there will certainly be results after three to five years of exploration, won't there? Or maybe, can you arrange two space zones that are close to each other for me and Ding Lingdang to explore so that we may be able to take care of each other?"
