bookbashuk Chapter 285 The Destruction of the Tri-Body Fleet
Chapter 285 The Destruction of the Tri-Body Fleet
Chapter 285 The Destruction of the Trisolaran Fleet
The moment Xu Qing grabbed him, Luo Ji felt dizzy. Before he could react, the next second, a feeling of weightlessness enveloped him like a tide, as if he had suddenly fallen into a helpless void.
He instinctively closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the world before him had completely changed.
It was as if someone had shattered a crystal goblet containing a galaxy; billions of points of light surged toward him, so bright that he could barely open his eyes.
Luo Ji's heart clenched.
He was only led a step forward by Xu Qing.
But he clearly saw that the earth beneath his feet unfolded with that one step, and the blue Earth seemed to have been thrown by the Creator, and the whole world slowly fell behind Xu Qing and himself, like a glass ball placed at random. The life-bearing planet that once carried human civilization had now become the background behind them.
Before he could recover from the shock of crossing the planet, Xu Qing had already taken the second step.
This step completely overturned Luo Ji's understanding of the universe.
"OMG----"
Those stars that were once so distant in the telescope that they were just points of light are now so close that the patterns on their surfaces can be seen.
And it was reversing at a speed visible to the naked eye! He saw the surging flares on the sun's surface suddenly contract in reverse, and the plasma that was originally erupting outwards was pulled back as if by an invisible hand.
The Great Red Spot on Jupiter's surface no longer rotates clockwise, but instead rolls counterclockwise, with the airflow at the edge of the storm following its trajectory back to form that iconic vortex.
The ice particles in Saturn's rings no longer spread out with the planet's rotation, but instead flow backward one by one back into place, weaving together the dazzling rings once more.
Even distant comets have changed their appearance; their shattered tails are no longer dissipating mist, but rather ice crystals gathering back along their orbits, dragging increasingly clear comet tails, pointing directly towards the Kuiper Belt.
The stars of the entire solar system seemed to be rewound, flashing past him one after another, as if the flow of time had been completely disrupted at this moment.
Luo Ji stared, his mouth agape, forgetting even to breathe, his mind filled with only one thought: "What is this?!" His voice trembled, and even the fact that he was still alive seemed as unreal as the scene before him.
"What you're seeing isn't time travel, but the memories the universe left us after we exceeded the speed of light. These are the traces of past matter; we've simply caught up with them, which is why we can see everything that happened in the past," Xu Qing's calm voice suddenly appeared.
"But—" Luo Ji suddenly snapped back to reality, a series of questions welling up in his mouth, "If it's faster than light travel, why am I still alive? Why can I still breathe normally? And how could my naked eyes possibly see the details on the surface of a star? This doesn't make sense."
"It's very simple," Xu Qing said calmly.
"I transformed the surrounding cosmic dust to create oxygen for you to breathe."
What you see and feel right now is just a tiny bit of thinking ability that I'm sharing with you. In the real world, not even a ten-thousandth of a second has passed.
"If we don't do it this way, how can we see the entire star system transform into a dazzling fireworks display? In that case, wouldn't it be meaningless to take you to see this grand fireworks show?" Xu Qing's words carried a hint of nonchalance.
As soon as he finished speaking, Luo Ji's vision was suddenly filled with boundless ice dust.
Tiny ice crystals shimmered in the darkness, like scattered diamonds from a spilled Milky Way, layer upon layer, boundless and endless.
He instantly realized that this was an Oort cloud.
The entire solar system, with Pluto as its radius, stretches for tens or even hundreds of billions of kilometers, making the sun appear like a speck of dust within it.
How big is the entire Oort cloud? It's about several light-years in size. The solar system, which he once thought was vast, is now as small as a grain of sand in this icy dust cloud.
Just as Xu Qing said, the things he was sensing at this moment were not things that he, as a carbon-based monkey, could perceive.
His subtle perception at this moment was trillions of times stronger than the most advanced telescopes of his time, allowing him to "see" even the tiny ice crystals floating in the Oort cloud with perfect clarity.
Xu Qing stopped in her tracks.
What first entered Luo Ji's field of vision was a cluster of bright spots, like a thousand small suns.
They are not shooting stars, but they are more dazzling than shooting stars.
Each point of light is many times larger than a human aircraft carrier. If it were to fall into the Earth's atmosphere, the sheer light it pierces through the sky would dim the daytime light of the entire country of Australia.
In the vast Oort cloud, they are as small as dust particles. Countless points of light travel at one-hundredth the speed of light, passing through ice particles and dust, leaving thin trails, just like a brush.
That is the Trisolaran fleet.
That is the world that will truly destroy Earth's civilization.
At that moment, Luo Ji, in that strange state of mind, even heard sounds coming from within the Trisolaran fleet.
He didn't understand the Trisolaran language before, but now he could understand its meaning. The language automatically transformed into clear semantics, etched into the depths of his mind:
[Commander of the Trisolaran Fleet: The probe is destroyed? What does that mean?]
[Fleet Observer: The last message from Zhizi—an unknown figure appeared near Dangerous Target 1 (Luo Ji), the danger level spiked, and they were preparing to initiate a destruction program. The signal was then lost.]
[Fleet Observer: Commander! Sophons have detected two unknown matter units suddenly appearing ahead of the fleet!]
[Fleet Observer: Zhi, Zhizi has reacted! Two unknown substance units have suddenly appeared ahead of the fleet! It's Danger Target 1! And another one—Danger Target 2 (Xu Qing)! What are they doing in the Oort Cloud?!]
The Trisolarans' panic came through his thoughts. Luo Ji was still in a daze of "understanding alien language" when he suddenly heard Xu Qing laugh.
"hehe."
The next moment, Luo Ji's pupils dilated to their maximum size.
He saw—a pair of giant hands suddenly appear in the darkness.
It's not an illusion; it's a real, giant hand.
The knuckles are distinct, and a mysterious power flows between the textures of the skin. Each finger is hundreds of millions of kilometers long, and the width between the fingerprints on the fingertips alone is enough to contain all the planets in the solar system.
These hands hovered in front of the Trisolaran fleet, moving slowly yet with irresistible power. With a gentle scoop, the starry sky adorned with the Trisolaran behemoths was held firmly in the palm of the giant hands, like a veil being lifted.
A thousand Trisolaran warships, traveling at 1% of the speed of light, were crammed together in the palm of the hand, like goldfish swimming frantically in a fish tank, with no room to struggle.
[Fleet Observer: Sir, sir! We—we were scooped up by a pair of hands!] The voice trembled like shattered ice, its frequency erratic like a malfunctioning instrument. [A giant hand! It really is a giant hand! The ship's hull has detected—an unanalyzable energy field, all engines have failed!]
[Trisolaran Fleet Commander: Nonsense! What kind of hand could salvage a fleet? Where's the Sophon's data? Send me the images!]
When the full image of the giant hand appeared on the screen in the fleet's main control room, all communications came to an abrupt halt.
Immediately afterward, the screen began flashing wildly, lines of data scrolling across the page, all displaying red warnings of "Unable to resolve" and "Out of measurement range." And the owner of the giant hand was slowly revealing himself—
Its body, spanning hundreds of billions of kilometers, is indistinguishable from that of an Earthling, yet the entire Trisolaran fleet is nothing more than dust before it.
The sophon, capable of traveling at the speed of light, tried its best to probe, but couldn't even touch the boundary of a finger; it could only rely on supercomputers to deduce the outline.
The moment the simulation results appeared, a series of "overload alarms" blared in the control room: [Supercomputer: Target size estimated — 120 billion kilometers. Material composition: Unknown. Gravitational field strength: No signs of collapse detected. Conclusion: Exceeds current understanding of physics.]
[Commander of the Trisolaran Fleet: Impossible! Has the Sophon malfunctioned?!]
The commander's roar was hoarse, as if it had been torn apart; his composure as a commander had vanished completely.
[Commander of the Trisolaran Fleet: "A single star is only a million kilometers in diameter! The entire mass of the Milky Way galaxy, piled up, would only be a few billion kilometers in diameter! Are you implying that a life form composed of the entire mass of the Milky Way galaxy could appear before me?"]
[Commander of the Trisolaran Fleet: Even if it really exists, why didn't it collapse into a black hole?!]
[Fleet Observer: Commander, Commander, the image transmitted by Tomoko ————]
An image appeared on the screen, and Xu Qing's face slowly approached at faster-than-light speed.
[Fleet Observer: He—he seems to be looking at us.]
All the Trisolarans had now awakened, and they were all staring at the screen in horror.
What appeared before them was a creature whose pupils alone were larger than the entire sun of the Trisolaran system.
A fear unseen for centuries now gripped the bodies of all the Trisolarans.
[Commander of the Trisolaran Fleet: Shut down all weapon systems! Quickly!]
[Fleet Observer: Sir, we've lost control of the fleet. Somozuru has been imprisoned.]
[Commander of the Trisolaran Fleet: What?!]
Suddenly, a force instantly bound all the Trisolarans.
"Yes, you killed the entire solar system fleet, destroyed more than 2000 warships, and killed millions of humans on Earth."
"But it seems you don't have enough lives to repay this debt."
"
Xu Qing's icy voice reached the minds of every Trisolaran.
The Trisolaran fleet commander cried out in terror, "Great being, we are willing to surrender, we are willing to leave!! Please spare us!!"
Bang! Bang bang!!
But there was no response.
All that could be heard were sudden vibrations.
Before they could even react to their fear.
Suddenly, it sounded like a series of fireworks explosions. The Trisolaran fleet commander saw on the screen that countless ships of the entire Trisolaran fleet were disappearing like bubbles in an instant, one after another destroyed.
One after another, powerful and terrifying interstellar warships appeared like fireworks before Luo Ji's eyes.
Fireworks depicting the destruction of hundreds or thousands of fleets now bloom once again on a world hundreds of billions of kilometers away.
There wasn't even a day between them.
Luo Ji, however, only felt a sense of shock.
Those fireworks represent deadly fear.
That represents death.
Those interstellar warships that once terrified humanity and nearly brought down human society are now just fleeting specks of light in the universe.
The fireworks were beautiful, beautiful enough for Earth, hundreds of billions of kilometers away, to see clearly.
Luo Ji felt neither the satisfaction of avenging his great enemy nor sympathy for the Trisolarans; all that remained was a deep-seated fear.
The Trisolaran fleet, capable of easily destroying human civilization, was so easily annihilated?
He turned his head to look at Xu Qing beside him.
Unlike the Trisolarans' perspective, Xu Qing before him still appeared in human form.
But this being, which seemed no different from humans, had now become, in his eyes, something beyond the so-called gods.
It is a terrifying existence that can be controlled at will and subvert the laws of physics.
In the darkness of the universe, the "Pihua" annihilated by the Trisolaran fleet has not completely dissipated, and fragments of light float like dust.
Luo Ji remained frozen in place, his heart still reeling from the shock of annihilating the fleet, when his gaze was suddenly drawn back by Xu Qing's actions.
The giant hand that had once gripped the Thousand Porcelain Warship slowly released its grip, revealing two porcelain triplane spaceships lying in its palm, like fragments of art pieces left behind in a extinguished fire.
Kang subconsciously held his breath, watching the pale blue halo appear on Xu Qing's fingertips.
The energy that originally belonged to its annihilation warship has now transformed into countless slender energy strands, wrapping around the porcelain spaceship like silk.
The moment the energy was injected, the spaceship's hull lit up with a blinding white light, and the energy reading, which was originally on the verge of being depleted, soared at a speed visible to the naked eye.
That was all the energy reserves of the Trisolaran fleet.
Not only was the commander of the remaining Trisolaran fleet unaware of what had happened, but Luo Ji's throat was also throbbing, with countless questions stuck in his chest.
Why leave behind this artistic posture? What was the purpose of injecting so much energy? He clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white, but he still didn't dare to speak.
The sheer power Xu Qing wielded when he destroyed the fleet still weighed heavily on Kang's mind, causing him to ask questions with an instinctive sense of awe.
As if seeing through Kang's thoughts, Xu Qing's voice rang out in the universe.
"Don't hold back, just ask if you want to."
Luo Ji hesitated for a moment before tentatively speaking, his voice still trembling slightly: "Why did you get off this Yizi spaceship? And why did you inject energy into it?"
Even if only this Yizi warship remains, it can still destroy human civilization!
Do not!
To be precise, even if only one droplet detector were still alive, it could destroy the entire human civilization.
Although the Trisolaran fleet was destroyed so easily, Earth's civilization was so insignificant in the face of the Trisolaran civilization.
Xu Qing looked down at the Yizi spaceship. The pale blue energy flow had gradually converged, leaving only a soft halo around the spaceship.
"I am here to solve the problem of the Trisolaran civilization threatening Earth, not to be an executioner."
"The core of the problem is the threat, not the Trisolarans." Xu Qing's gaze swept over the still-floating wreckage of the warships in the distance, his tone completely calm. "The fleet has been destroyed, and the Kang have already tasted fear. This kind of fear is more effective than annihilation."
"Besides, Earth has already been exposed in our interactions with the Trisolarans. Even after killing the Trisolarans, more advanced civilizations will inevitably take notice of Earth. Am I supposed to wipe out every civilization in the entire universe?"
Xu Qing chuckled and looked at Luo Ji, saying, "It's time to go see another Pihua show."
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