Rebirth of the Super Battleship
Chapter 232: Half a Star

With technology having developed to its current stage, Xiao Yu had both the confidence and the resources to make such promises. To him, everything came down to computational power. Whether it was building entertainment facilities, crafting fine cuisine, or using biotechnology to breed creatures that the alien scientists considered “beautiful,” all of that consumed far less computational power than the intense demands of scientific research.

This was a guaranteed win with no losses.

The Luka Civilization, however, enjoyed a different treatment compared to the other captured civilizations. After so many years of interaction, the capabilities and loyalty of Luka scientists had been fully verified. In addition to the material benefits equal to or even surpassing those offered to the others, Xiao Yu granted them something far more precious, something the other civilizations desperately yearned for yet dared not even dream of: dignity.

No matter how many luxuries and comforts Xiao Yu provided to the alien scientists he had captured, in his eyes, they were still just commodities. If danger arose or their value no longer balanced the costs, he would abandon them without hesitation. The Luka beings, on the other hand, were not like that. If, back in the Azure Market, it had been scientists from some other civilization instead of the Luka scientists, Xiao Yu might not have gone to rescue them at all.

During the time spent in curvature flight, Xiao Yu held an extremely grand award ceremony for Luka Two, granting it the highest status within the Luka Civilization. Watching Luka Three and Luka Four cast glances filled with subtle jealousy and envy, Xiao Yu felt quite satisfied.

“Exactly. I want you to envy and covet Luka Two’s position. That’s what will motivate you to work harder for me.”

In stark contrast to this was the group of captured Molians. Xiao Yu had completely lost patience in trying to convert them. He had found that no matter what methods he used, psychological manipulation, preferential treatment, or even bloody punishment, none of it had any effect.

“I really don’t get it. How can creatures in their civilization have such insanely strong loyalty?” Xiao Yu muttered in frustration. Eventually, he had them all cryogenically frozen, not only to reduce his headaches, but also to save resources. His plan was simple: once he came across another trade market, he would defrost and revive them, then sell them all off.

Time slipped by in this energetic and ever-advancing environment.

Gradually, twenty years passed. The Molian Civilization’s fleet had never caught up. This gave Xiao Yu some peace of mind, though it also left him puzzled.

“Could it be that tachyon-based FTL detection devices have some kind of limitation? Or maybe I just fled too quickly, and they didn’t have time to lock onto me? Either way, the fact that they never showed up is a good thing. I’ve already escaped over 250 light-years. That’s far enough, this place will do. There’s a star here, and a planet orbiting it. A perfect location for scientific development,” Xiao Yu thought as he disengaged from curvature travel.

“To see the starry sky again… so beautiful.” Having exited curvature travel and begun receiving visible light signals again, Xiao Yu gazed at the brilliant starlit sky and couldn’t help but sigh in awe.

The pitch-black universe looked like an enormous shroud covering all of space, with stars glittering like jewels scattered across its surface. There was a noticeable pattern in their distribution: the farther back in the direction he had come from, the sparser the stars; the farther ahead, the denser.

From here, the Milky Way could be seen clearly, and its appearance was somewhat different from how it had looked from Earth. On a clear summer night, the Milky Way had appeared as a long band. But from Xiao Yu’s current position, it looked more circular, an extremely flattened ellipse rather than a strip.

Furthermore, from his vantage point, Xiao Yu could clearly distinguish several of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, such as the Perseus Arm and the Cygnus Arm. Even the Orion Arm, where the Solar System resided, stood out distinctly.

This confirmed that, over the past ten thousand years since leaving Earth and wandering across the galaxy, Xiao Yu had now exited the boundaries of the Orion Arm. By comparing his Chronicles of Heroes Across the Cosmos with measurements of several standard neutron stars, Xiao Yu pinpointed his current location.

“I’m… somewhere around the outer-middle region of the Sagittarius Arm. I’m now nearly five thousand light-years away from the Sun.”

Xiao Yu sighed with emotion. “If I ever get the chance… I should go back and see my homeland again. I wonder if any other beings have entered the Solar System during this time. I wonder if the base I left behind on Titan is still there. What about the Phantoms on Jupiter, and Venus… Mars… I wonder what they’ve become now.”

As Xiao Yu gazed in the direction of the Sun, thoughts stirring within him, he proceeded toward the target star using conventional navigation.

This region of space was one where stars were relatively dense. The average distance between neighboring stars here was generally no more than five light-years, a stellar density comparable to that of the Sol’s neighborhood.

Likewise, this location’s distance from the galactic center was also similar to that of the Sol’s Sun, approximately 23,000 light-years.

Xiao Yu’s target was a red dwarf star, with a mass only 180 times that of Jupiter. This mass was less than one-fifth that of the Sun.

Such a mass implied an extraordinarily long lifespan. There were many phenomena in the universe that seemed to defy common intuition. For instance, stars lived longer the smaller their mass, whereas black holes were the opposite, the greater their mass, the longer they lived. In most cases, greater volume meant greater mass, but neutron stars and white dwarfs were exceptions, their smaller volume corresponded to greater mass.

This red dwarf’s accompanying planet or rather, its companion star, was actually a brown dwarf. It had about 20 times the mass of Jupiter. However, due to its insufficient mass, it could not sustain hydrogen fusion to maintain brightness and thus failed to become a main-sequence star. Still, internal deuterium fusion did occur, allowing it to emit a certain amount of energy, primarily in the form of infrared radiation.

It didn’t emit visible light, which made such brown dwarfs extremely difficult to detect in the universe. Typically, they could only be spotted via gravitational wobble methods or infrared telescopes.

This binary system revolved around a shared but invisible point, its barycenter.

Together, these two bodies formed a binary star system. Since the mass difference between them was not extreme, they constituted a two-body problem, a scenario with a well-defined mathematical solution, unlike the chaotic and unpredictable three-body or many-body problems. Xiao Yu observed this binary pair orbiting one another in a stable and predictable path.

What surprised Xiao Yu was that this star system even contained a rocky planet. With a mass roughly equivalent to Mercury, it orbited the brown dwarf.

Brown dwarfs were often referred to as “failed stars,” existing in the grey area between gas giants and low-mass stars. This made the classification of planet rather awkward. According to the standard planetary definition, a planet must orbit a star. But whether or not a brown dwarf qualified as a “star” was a matter of debate.

“Forget whether a brown dwarf counts as a star, and forget whether this Mercury-sized object is a planet or a moon. What matters is that it can provide me with resources,” Xiao Yu thought, brushing aside the semantic dilemma.

Aside from the Mercury-sized planet, this binary system also hosted a massive number of asteroids, estimated to exceed ten million. There were also numerous volatile gas-based comets, dwarf planets, and tiny rocky bodies, together forming a vibrant and bustling stellar system.

Xiao Yu’s massive fleet advanced through this dense rain of celestial bullets, heading straight for the rocky planet. It was here that he would set up camp, draw from the rich material resources of the system, systematically reorganize his current technological tree, and accelerate the development of new technologies. Once he had achieved new breakthroughs, he would proceed with another round of ship upgrades.

While advancing, Xiao Yu also used telescopes mounted on the ships to scan the surrounding star systems.

“Hm, the stellar types around this binary system are quite diverse. Over there, there’s a red giant… and it’s 15 times the mass of the Sun. That means it’ll go supernova soon. That one’s a yellow dwarf… and another red dwarf…”

As he observed, Xiao Yu continued logging the data.

“Hm? Something’s wrong with that star.” As the telescope’s barrel rotated and aligned with what appeared to be an ordinary star, Xiao Yu instantly noticed something unusual.

This star only had half of itself emitting light.

In Xiao Yu’s field of view, only one half of the star was luminous, while the other half was completely black, not only in the visible spectrum, but also devoid of any infrared or ultraviolet emissions. Xiao Yu couldn’t even confirm whether anything physically existed on the dark side.

“What… is this? Could something like this even exist in the universe?” Xiao Yu was deeply shaken. If such an object truly existed, it would overturn more than ninety percent of his scientific theories.

There was no doubt it was a star, analyzing the spectrum and luminosity from the bright half easily confirmed that. But only half of it emitted light. It looked bizarrely like a half-moon, presenting an unnatural semi-sphere of light in space.

Such a sight was far beyond anything Xiao Yu had encountered before.