Rebirth of the Super Battleship
Chapter 234: Rapid Development

Dark matter could not be transported, nor could it be stored, so the only viable location for antimatter production was outside the stellar system.

One month after this operation began, Xiao Yu finally managed to collect a full kilogram of antimatter. Because any contact with regular matter would result in a reaction that annihilated the antimatter, it had to be stored in a specialized containment vessel. This vessel had to maintain an extremely pure vacuum inside, and it also needed to generate a powerful magnetic field to suspend the antimatter so it wouldn’t come into contact with any positive matter.

Now sealed within a County-Class transport ship, that one kilogram of antimatter was no less than a ticking time bomb. If there were any malfunction in the containment system, even the smallest leak could result in the entire ship being annihilated from the inside out.

Just like regular matter, antimatter could be formed from fundamental particles. What Xiao Yu had produced this time was one kilogram of antihydrogen. After carefully transporting it to the planetary base, the long-anticipated first antimatter engine test was about to begin, observed by thousands of alien scientists and monitored by countless sensors operated by Xiao Yu.

The engine had been installed in an enormous hangar. Hundreds of intricately engineered robotic arms acted as the operators. Under Xiao Yu’s precise control, they delicately placed the antimatter container into the designated slot. Once secured, the antimatter engine was activated.

Inside the engine, a series of controlled reactions began.

First, the antimatter container was opened. However, thanks to the magnetic confinement, the antimatter remained stable, suspended and contained, not drifting or scattering.

Then came the next step. A small portion of the antihydrogen was separated by the magnetic field and directed into the reaction chamber. Within that chamber, a prepared mass of positive matter was already waiting for it.

Fusion occurred as expected. The instant the two substances met, a blinding burst of light erupted. In fact, it wasn’t just visible light, X-rays and gamma rays were also emitted in tremendous quantities.

When matter and antimatter collide, they mutually annihilate, converting all of their mass into high-energy photons.

These photons radiated outward from the reaction point. But along the inner walls of the chamber, Xiao Yu had long since installed energy collection systems. Through a series of mechanisms, these systems absorbed the emitted energy and distributed it to devices throughout the facility for practical use.

After the matter-antimatter annihilation, Xiao Yu measured a powerful energy output flowing steadily from the engine.

He exhaled lightly, relaxing just a little. This meant that the first antimatter engine test had been a complete success.

This experiment yielded a vast trove of data, all of which Xiao Yu chose to share openly with the alien scientists under his command. He assigned specific research tasks to each race. Each group of scientists had its own clear mission, and inter-species communication was made possible through custom communication devices designed by Xiao Yu.

He was doing everything in his power to maximize their efficiency.

Under these conditions, more than seven thousand scientists, including those from the Luka Civilization, launched into intense collaborative work, digesting experimental data, and exploring avenues to enhance load capacity, reduce energy loss, and improve safety protocols.

These were the research operations within the star system, but Xiao Yu hadn’t left his vast network of mining, forging, smelting, and fabrication bases idle either. During this same period, he manufactured and launched a massive number of observational satellites and space gun turrets. The satellites were dispatched in all directions, forming a 360-degree spherical distribution around the binary system. Xiao Yu hoped they would act as an early warning network, capable of alerting him in time should the Molian Civilization or any other force appear.

As for the space gun turrets, there was no need to elaborate, they were the cornerstone of trench warfare and defensive battles. In fact, during the raid on the Azure Market, had Xiao Yu not destroyed all of the Molian Civilization’s space turrets and ground defenses via the data world at the outset, he wouldn’t have had even the slightest hope of victory.

Beyond defense, Xiao Yu had also begun the construction of a massive number of new ships. However, this time he only produced Village-Class and Town-Class ships, and none of them were built using rare alien beast flesh or Swarm body parts. These ships were designed to be expendable, cannon fodder in any future war, intended to exhaust the enemy’s resources.

Yet, even these small vessels were growing more powerful by the day as Xiao Yu’s technology advanced. It reached the point where ships built today could significantly outmatch those built yesterday. Still, Xiao Yu had no plans to retrofit old ships, doing so would be inefficient. If they were just going to be sacrificed in battle, it was better to build new ones than waste time upgrading old hulls.

Meanwhile, Xiao Yu had reassembled his large-scale ringed particle collider in orbit around the local star. Removed from his flagship and now deployed on-site, it resumed operation under Xiao Yu’s direct control, processing vast amounts of experimental data each day. He shared this data with the seven thousand-plus scientists under his command, and under this almost frantic atmosphere of research, Xiao Yu’s technological development progressed at lightning speed.

Through disassembling the Molian Civilization’s Province-Class ship and analyzing the mechanical storage devices, Xiao Yu had acquired vast amounts of advanced knowledge. His current research was merely the process of mastering what had already been revealed, a smooth path free from bottlenecks or dead ends. That was why his progress was so rapid.

Three months after the first successful antimatter engine test, Xiao Yu successfully constructed and launched his first spacecraft powered by antimatter.

Outside of propulsion, he was also studying antimatter weaponry. He had already built prototypes of antimatter bombs, but because his technology was still evolving rapidly, he had not yet modified his fleet of nearly 100,000 large ships. Xiao Yu planned to wait until the tech had stabilized, and then perform a full-scale upgrade to equip his fleet with true Level-5 Civilization-tier firepower.

“Although my tech tree is far from complete and I’m still missing plenty of technologies even Level-3 Civilizations possess, when it comes to military power, with Four-Dimensional Shields, and once I’ve digested all this knowledge, my combat capability should be on par with a Level-5 Civilization.”

That was Xiao Yu’s assessment.

“In a Milky Way where the Sweepers and Guardian Civilization have vanished entirely, being a Level-5 Civilization should finally give me the power to survive on my own terms. At that point, maybe I can settle down in one star system, build a foundation and i’ll no longer need to keep running.”

Stability and safety had always been luxuries Xiao Yu couldn’t afford. But now, for the first time, he was beginning to glimpse the possibility of that long-awaited future.

At this point, Xiao Yu had been stationed in this binary star system for ten years. All the while, he had never given up on studying the mysterious star ten light-years away. By launching satellites and observing it from multiple angles, he finally confirmed something critical: the darkened hemisphere of the star was real and intact, it was simply being obscured by something.

The logic was simple. If it were obscured, its visible profile would shift depending on observation angle. The satellite imagery confirmed this. Probes moving in one direction observed more luminous surface, while those moving in the opposite direction captured increasing darkness.

This phenomenon validated Xiao Yu’s theory.

But this raised a new question.

What kind of object could possibly obscure an entire star?

And do so with such precision, almost as if it had been engineered?

A vague unease began to creep in. Xiao Yu couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not a place to linger. That star might be hiding something extremely dangerous. And yet… the insatiable curiosity of a scientist wouldn’t let him walk away.

“If I just leave… who knows when I’ll ever get a chance to come back? And the mechanisms behind this strange phenomenon might be exactly what I need to push my technology even further,” Xiao Yu thought.

Besides, this was a time of scientific flourishing. Leaving this star system and entering curvature travel would mean an immediate halt to all research.

“I’ll stay a bit longer,” Xiao Yu decided, conflicted. “At least until I’ve finished digesting all this knowledge.”

He couldn’t bring himself to leave, nor dare venture closer. Caught in this tension, Xiao Yu chose to maintain his distance, he was stationed ten light-years away, conducting full-spectrum scans of the anomalous star.

First, Xiao Yu studied the gravitational lensing of nearby light, allowing him to estimate the object’s mass. Then, using density calculations, he deduced its volume. Comparing these values against his direct observations, the data confirmed his theory once again.

If the object were a full sphere, the numbers matched perfectly. But if it were only a hemisphere, its volume would be half of what calculations predicted.

“Which means… it really is being obscured by something…” Xiao Yu concluded.