Rebirth of the Super Battleship

Chapter 803: I Am the Sweeper

Xiao Yu had already led all his warships into the Star Gate. The Star Gate was intact, this much Xiao Yu could be sure of. However, he did not know what the process of traveling through a Star Gate was like, nor did he know where the destination actually was. This meant there was a certain level of risk, but Xiao Yu did not care.

Compared to the possible gains, this bit of risk was completely within the acceptable range. The ruin of an eighth-level civilization was not something easily encountered, and Xiao Yu hoped that during this journey he could glimpse a little of the mystery behind an eighth-level civilization’s Star Gate technology.

According to speculation, Star Gate technology was created based on the principle of extreme spatial curvature. It was like drawing two points on a sheet of paper, then folding the paper so the two points overlapped. You did not need to move in order to arrive at your destination. There was no doubt that Star Gate technology was a more advanced form of spatial travel than curvature flight. If he could obtain data in this area, Xiao Yu’s future path would become much smoother.

This Star Gate looked more like something that travel-direction eighth-level civilization had secretly left here for its own future use. Xiao Yu detected traces that the Star Gate had been used once, roughly more than three hundred thousand years ago. More than three hundred thousand years ago, Earth was still in a primitive age, humans were still eating raw meat and drinking blood. The Sweepers Civilization and the Guardian Civilization were still constantly at war, the Taihao Civilization was still hiding in the shadows. While all the powerful forces in the Milky Way Galaxy remained unaware, a mighty eighth-level civilization had quietly set off from the Milky Way Galaxy and gone to another place.

Now, Xiao Yu would follow the path that powerful eighth-level civilization had once taken and repeat that journey.

After obtaining sufficient energy, the Star Gate was activated. The scene before Xiao Yu’s eyes suddenly changed, from a sky full of stars to complete emptiness. However, this emptiness only lasted a very short time. A moment later, the view in front of him changed yet again.

What appeared before Xiao Yu was still not the normal scenery of the universe. It was more like the shifting light and shadows within a space distortion shield, as if he were inside a kaleidoscope.

“I may already have left the original three-dimensional main universe and entered another three-dimensional world. Just as infinitely many two-dimensional worlds make up a three-dimensional world, so only infinitely many three-dimensional worlds can make up a four-dimensional space. This is one of the other three-dimensional worlds.” Xiao Yu silently pondered. “Light and gravity can both propagate on the four-dimensional level, which means they can be transmitted from the three-dimensional main universe into this space. The shifting lights and shadows here should originate from the space I came from.”

Only infinitely many three-dimensional spaces could compose a four-dimensional space, but this did not mean the theory of parallel universes had been verified. In fact, with technology developed to its current level, the parallel universe theories that had once been all the rage back in Earth’s era had already been completely rejected by Xiao Yu.

The current situation was more like this, one could imagine the following scene. In an empty room there is a single sheet of paper, suspended in the air. Around it, there exist infinitely many other two-dimensional planes. Yet all those other two-dimensional planes are entirely meaningless. Only this sheet of paper bears matter, energy, and living things.In relation to four-dimensional space, three-dimensional space was the same. At this moment Xiao Yu had already left the meaningful three-dimensional space and entered a ‘meaningless’ three-dimensional space.

“It seems that the Star Gate created by this eighth-level travel civilization is not truly complete Star Gate technology.” Xiao Yu thought. “True Star Gate transmission should not consume time. No matter how far the distance, it should be reached instantaneously. But up to now, I have already stayed in another three-dimensional space for over five hours.”

Xiao Yu was controlling his fleet, pushing forward continuously. The function of this Star Gate felt more like providing a shortcut, but even for a shortcut you still had to move your own legs to walk it. It was not a fully automatic conveyor belt.

As for what might be called complete Star Gate technology, using a two-dimensional sheet of paper as an analogy again, it would be like taking the two points on the paper and folding the sheet so that they directly overlap. In that case, the distance between the two points becomes zero. Since the distance is zero, naturally there is no need to consume any time.

The current situation was more like an incomplete folding of the sheet of paper. That is, it was only folded to a certain angle. The distance between the two points was still shorter than the straight-line distance, but it had not been completely reduced to zero. It was a shortcut. As for how much distance this shortcut could save, that depended on the technological level of the Star Gate itself.

Right now, Xiao Yu had no idea what that technological level was. He did not know just how powerful the technology of an eighth-level civilization could be. All he could do was quietly wait.

By this point, one year had already passed. Using curvature flight, Xiao Yu was moving forward in this unfamiliar three-dimensional space at two hundred times the speed of light. The scene before him never changed, always the same kaleidoscopic shifting of light and shadow.

When the second year came, Xiao Yu was still on this long voyage. He could not help but feel a trace of unease. If he were to become lost in this endless expanse of three-dimensional spaces and never find his way back, that would be quite a problem. Since these other three-dimensional spaces were ‘meaningless,’ there would be nothing meaningful within them. No stars, no planets, no nebulae, no matter and no energy. With his current level of technology, getting lost in a place like this could only end in complete death.

“Perhaps my earlier choice was somewhat reckless.” Xiao Yu thought to himself. “But even so, if I had to choose again, I would still enter the Star Gate. If I did not choose the Star Gate, then with my current technology, plus the time needed to lay out a star route, it would take at least over one hundred thousand years to reach the Andromeda Galaxy. The Guardian Civilization toiled for close to one million years to lay down their entire star route. Up to now they have already been traveling for several thousand years, yet they have probably not even completed one third of the distance. Sigh, the universe is vast, and no matter how fast you go, in the face of the endless cosmos it becomes meaningless.”

Xiao Yu continued to wait silently, waiting for the moment he would reach his destination. His heart was very calm. A few years, even a few decades, meant very little to Xiao Yu. In fact, the scenery, the physical properties, and all else in these other three-dimensional spaces aroused great interest in him. Once again he began conducting scientific research here.

He discovered many interesting things. For example, under normal circumstances these ‘meaningless’ three-dimensional spaces did not contain time. After photons entered these three-dimensional spaces from the three-dimensional main universe, their physical properties also changed. They even lost all mass and energy.

In the three-dimensional main universe, photons had relativistic mass but no rest mass. Yet here they had lost even their relativistic mass. They became purely and simply a kind of particle, so pure that there was no physical quantity attached to them. Any physical quantity used to describe them was zero, except for velocity.

The speed of photons here also changed. They moved at irregular speeds, sometimes reaching thousands or even tens of thousands of times the speed of light, sometimes slowing down to a crawl. Time is a physical quantity used to describe the motion of matter. Since there was no matter here, time had no meaning. Temperature is a physical quantity used to describe the motion of particles. With no matter here, temperature also had no meaning.

All physical laws failed here. Any law regarded as truth in the three-dimensional main universe became as ridiculous as a joke. Yet strangely, physical laws still functioned inside Xiao Yu’s fleet. His normal cruising speed still could not exceed the speed of light in the three-dimensional main universe, and he still needed to curve space itself in order to perform curvature flight.

This greatly piqued Xiao Yu’s interest. In addition to light speed, temperature, and time, he measured many other parameters of this three-dimensional world and observed many physical phenomena. Everything here was new to him, leaving him confused yet exceptionally excited at the same time.

To be able to encounter physical phenomena at the advanced Level 7 or even Level 8 Civilization level before fully reaching Level 7 himself was not an opportunity that came often.

In the end, the Star Gate journey did not last too long. It had proven with real data just how superior it was for interstellar travel. After two years, the view in front of Xiao Yu finally changed once more.

The familiar starry universe finally appeared before his eyes again. What presented itself to him was a sky of stars utterly different from that of the Milky Way Galaxy. Xiao Yu knew he had already arrived at a new galaxy.

He had appeared here abruptly, and behind him there was no pitch-black hole or anything like what he had imagined. The space in all directions seemed perfectly normal, and Xiao Yu could not find any trace of spatial travel. The Star Gate voyage seemed to be a one-way trip. He had come here from the Milky Way Galaxy via the Star Gate, yet did not have the ability to use Star Gate technology to return to the Milky Way Galaxy.

“Where is this place?” Xiao Yu looked around with some confusion. “I wonder how many light years I have crossed in these two years of travel.”

Within this galaxy, Xiao Yu was working hard to observe the stars or neutron stars, trying to find any celestial body he recognized, so that he could determine his position.

However, before Xiao Yu could find any familiar star, an unexpected message arrived.

“Civilization from afar, welcome to this place. From this moment on, you are the Sweepers Civilization of this galaxy…”