Chapter 246: Towards the Ruined Star
After Lu Yuan drew the “Avatar” system blueprint, he immediately issued a quest to all players, ordering all 3D printers in Cangyuan to work overtime and urgently build a batch of player stasis pods with additional quantum pairing functions.
This almost exhausted all the zero element accumulated through biological extraction on Emerald Star, but it could still only provide “consciousness transfer” services for 40%, or about 1,000 players.
Most of these 1,000 players decided to set their three transfer points on Li Star, Emerald Star, and New Hope Space Station, respectively.
Thus, after the New Hope branch received four small 3D printers transported by the wealth key, it immediately produced several “Avatar” stasis pods.
This allowed the elite Engineer team, including Black Smoke and Moto, to “log in remotely,” connecting their consciousness to newly shaped clones there, achieving a substantial transfer, instantly arriving at the branch from Li Star, saving a 12-day journey.
Under the command of this team, the branch players piloted the Tianwen, quietly transporting two 3D printers into the Xianyang's hangar, where they urgently produced two Entropy Zero Element Furnaces.
Afterward, the elite Engineer team made extensive modifications to two “owl” heavy fighters.
“Come on, get in the cockpit and see our masterpiece!” Black Smoke said to Loulan and Chang Kong, cigar in mouth.
The two squeezed into the modified fighter cockpit and found that the space inside had increased significantly.
It turned out that the Engineers, referencing some fighter designs from the game star citizen, removed the smart missile vertical launch system from the back of the fuselage, connecting the freed-up space to the cockpit to form a mini “one-room apartment.”
By rotating the front pilot seat 180 degrees backward, one could enter this one-room living area.
The living area was 2.3 meters high, 3 meters long, and 2.5 meters wide, with a stasis pod capable of consciousness transfer on the left, along with some storage space for food and daily necessities.
On the right was the life support system cabinet and a workbench that also had simple cooking functions.
At the end of the corridor, opening the sliding door led to a fully equipped bathroom, and behind the bathroom partition wall was the installation location for the newly added Entropy Zero Element Furnace.
After the modification, the “RV-style owl” allowed the pilot to cruise in a more comfortable environment, supporting continuous flight combat missions for up to a month.
Moreover, due to the installation of the Entropy Zero Element Furnace, it could also completely eliminate waste heat.
After spraying a black light-absorbing coating on its surface, and thanks to its much smaller external volume compared to a warship, this fighter could achieve complete stealth in the infrared, radar, and visible light bands from over 100 kilometers away.
Truly achieving silent infiltration!
Days passed.
The self-service feast on the Chang'an continued for a week, receiving widespread praise from all sectors of New Hope's elite, truly establishing the gourmet culture brand.
Perhaps seeing that Cangyuan was busy with diplomacy to expand its influence and had no further desire to resort to force, Apollo, who had been extremely tense at first, gradually relaxed his guard and eased up.
Finally, on the ninth day of Cangyuan's visit to New Hope, Anya sent a secret report.
A warp yacht carrying Apollo high-ranking officials was departing, and its destination was very likely Mr. Sang's current location, the headquarters of the Dark Sun pirate group!
Upon receiving this news, the Xianyang, which had been silent for 9 days, immediately opened its hangar doors, releasing two modified “owls” piloted by Chang Kong and Loulan, forming an ace dual-plane formation for full tracking.
To prevent the other party from detecting their leaked electromagnetic waves and ensure the plan was foolproof, neither of them turned on their radar, relying only on the infrared detection system for passive observation, closely chasing the red dot on the screen.
Even if the Apollo yacht turned off its rear electric propulsion engines after accelerating, the Zero Element Furnace and warp engine would still emit a large amount of waste heat when operating, causing the yacht's metal shell, used for heat dissipation, to heat up to around 220 degrees Celsius, becoming a conspicuous “torch” against the cosmic background, detectable from over 1500 kilometers away.
Therefore, unless the other party completely abandoned warp travel and mass effect travel and entered a conventional low-speed gliding state that produced almost no heat, it would be very difficult to lose track.
“The other party is completely unresponsive, should we get closer, Ace brother?” Loulan said to Chang Kong from the fighter cockpit, using her pad for voice input through the player community.
The two fighters maintained strict radio silence and certainly couldn't shout at each other directly.
“Alright, let's slowly close in.”
“Let's go!”
The two gradually crept forward from 1700 kilometers, approaching 1000 kilometers, then 500 kilometers, and the Apollo warp yacht still showed no reaction.
“It seems their detection methods are indeed weak. They should be the same model as the Tianwen before its modification, with a rear-view radar detection range of within 150 kilometers for stealth targets.” Loulan said to Chang Kong.
The Apollo warp yacht suffered from its size disadvantage.
In fact, for targets like the “owl,” which are about 30 meters long, using meter-wave and sky-wave radar, leveraging resonance effects and Rayleigh scattering for anti-stealth detection, would be much more effective than simply increasing the power of microwave and millimeter-wave radar.
However, due to physical laws, the transmitting antenna apertures of meter-wave and sky-wave radars are often tens or even hundreds of meters, which is simply too demanding for a warp yacht that is only about thirty meters long and twelve meters wide.
Thus, the two aces of Cangyuan closed in to within 90 kilometers of the enemy's rear.
At this point, let alone IRST, even visible light cameras could vaguely capture the bright spots produced by the warp yacht reflecting starlight.
This luxurious vehicle was entirely silver, which was beautiful, but unfortunately, it now became a natural disadvantage that exposed itself.
From then on, tracking became very simple. Since the coordinates of all wormholes along the way were known, even if the target deviated from its course midway to do something else, Chang Kong and Loulan could ambush it near the Jump Point in advance.
According to the pre-departure estimate, entering the secret route would require seven wormhole jumps, taking about four and a half days, after which they would have to pursue relentlessly to discover the “secret passage” currently only known to the Dark Sun pirate group.
“Why don't you go level up on Emerald Star first,” Chang Kong said to Loulan, “I'll set it to auto-cruise, and I'll notify you to transfer over if anything happens.”
It must be said that the “Avatar System” completely changed the gameplay.
“No need, I'll take the first shift,” Loulan said, “I have a flight scheduled in twelve hours, so I have to go offline. You can take over then.”
“Alright—you're something else. You have flight missions both in and out of the game. Your hands must be welded to the joystick.”
“Haha, isn't that the truth!”
Time flew by, and four days passed.
On this day, Chang Kong and Loulan logged in early, and after three continuous hours of manual tracking, they finally discovered an unknown, brand new Jump Point in front of the warp yacht.
“Star light distortion observed, confirmed to be a natural wormhole, approximately 60 kilometers in diameter!” On the bridge of the Xianyang, Lu Yuan simultaneously saw the wormhole through Chang Kong's live feed, and the effect was excellent and clear.
As for the super-game cheating method involved in this real-time communication, let's just pretend not to see it—
“Very good. First, be careful not to expose yourselves, then continue to follow!”
“Understood!”
Ten seconds after the warp yacht passed through, Cangyuan's dual-plane formation also traversed the wormhole.
In just an instant, Chang Kong's live feed, which had shown filamentary light during the wormhole traversal, returned to normal. Now he and Loulan were in another star system.
“This is!” On the bridge, more than half of the players stood up.
On the other side of the wormhole, the star system was filled with a large amount of debris.
Most of the debris was unidentifiable in shape, under 10 meters in size, clearly the result of an explosion, but there were also some larger, relatively intact pieces of debris that were clearly identifiable as parts of a ship.
The largest piece in sight was over 300 meters long, and due to its close proximity, densely arranged hexagonal “holes” could be seen on its outer shell.
Those were missile launch bay doors!
This meant the debris came from a warship, and from the shape of the debris, it appeared to have broken in half, with an “original” length between 600 and 800 meters, which was the standard for a golden age destroyer, and by the current Star Alliance's reduced standards, it would be classified as a battleship.
“This looks like an ancient battlefield—” Cao Yuan looked at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan nodded.
“Chang Kong, zoom in on the largest piece of debris, I think I see text on it.”
“Okay!”
As the camera zoomed in, everyone clearly saw the white “UEG” lettering on the simplified outer shell.
“Executive Officer, based on the number of debris fragments currently observable, at least 30 million tons of Earth United Government ships were lost here!”