Chapter 344: Chapter 343 Cosmology Common Sense

“Ceremony complete!”

After the ceremony, following the bugler’s loud shout, all the military personnel briskly snapped their salutes down and marched back into the cabins with uniform steps.

The baptism of a war had made all soldiers understand its cruelty, shedding any last vestige of illusion, maturing past their youthful faces, and turning them into real men…

One by one, men capable of bearing the weight of civilization!

And so, amid this atmosphere of crying, mourning, silence, and pain, the Kunlun Mountain restarted and gradually left the star domain, heading for–187j3x2.

Estimated time, 11 years!

…

After the Kunlun Mountain recommenced its journey, the repair work throughout the spaceship and the population’s hibernation rotation continued in an orderly fashion.

The number of people awake for long periods had increased from the original 800,000 to 2 million. With this, Kunlun Mountain would essentially be repaired upon reaching the target star domain.

After allocating all the work tasks to the various departments, Zhang Yuan finally had a moment to catch his breath. He went for a comprehensive check-up at the hospital under Lin Xuanyuan’s insistence and, finding no major issues, he felt relieved.

He was truly exhausted; over the past many days, his rest had been reduced to four hours a day, and he had operated non-stop like a wound-up clock.

Suddenly having some pressure lifted felt as though he had fallen apart.

Unwittingly, he leaned over his desk and dozed off for a short while.

“What a blissful moment that was.”

After he awoke, he couldn’t help but shake his head with a wry smile, reflecting on the contradictions of the human species.

Zhang Yuan couldn’t resist philosophizing, “If such stolen moments of rest count as happiness, then the world is far too simple… This happiness, it’s just a fleeting instant.”

Now there were more important matters to attend to, namely–the knowledge review submitted by the Badit people.

He had sufficient leisure time now to deal with these fellows.

Soon, Zhang Yuan dialed the phone of Wang Junpeng, the head of the Foreign Affairs Department, to understand the situation.

Regrettably, the majority of these surviving Badit people were soldiers, and only a small portion were scientists, frantically cobbling together papers in a bid for survival.

As a result, the recent submissions had been of mixed quality.

“Alas… Most of the knowledge is of no significance to us. I’ll select some of the valid reports to send to you; these few seem pretty decent,” Wang Junpeng said on the other end of the video call.

A small portion of knowledge indeed holds great importance for humans, such as the common sense in trade among interstellar civilizations. When two interstellar civilizations encounter each other on the Cosmic String Route, there should be protocols for how to make contact, communicate, and the principles of trading, among other things. Every bit of this content is detailedly described.

In this expanse of stars, the common currency widely adopted by various civilizations are AmiBa Points.

The Amoeba Civilization, being a Level 6 Civilization, has maintained a neutral stance for a long time, and naturally, their reputation is excellent. The liquidity of this currency is quite high, and with this knowledge, people will have a much higher assurance for interstellar voyages.

Another example is the detection and prevention methods for the digital virus “Ten-thousand-year Worm”. Like the AmiBa Points, it is also a kind of digital life; one is a currency, while the other is a weapon.

“So that’s how it is. This digital life form, the Ten-thousand-year Worm, was a common war weapon during the interstellar wars a million years ago. It can be purchased in the interstellar trading markets… A large-scale electromagnetic broadcast can easily infect the machinery of an entire Planet System. If Earth Civilization were infected by this virus, all the electronic chips would be destroyed, leaving no room for resistance. Earth, with a population of hundreds of billions, would face extreme difficulty in cleaning up.”

“Yes, now most interstellar civilizations are prepared to guard against it, and ordinary civilizations don’t have the capability to improve upon it. Thus, this kind of digital virus can only be used against some rookie civilizations or those that do not communicate with the outside world,” Wang Junpeng casually cited an example: “There are some civilizations that, due to their own high racial potential, have independently developed to a high level of technological advancement.”

“But because of their poor geographical location, or the belief that the universe is a dark forest, or even out of a fear of the universe, there are always some civilizations that are reluctant to communicate with the outside world and indulge in their own pleasant homeland…”

“One must know that the Milky Way is also constantly moving. Sometimes, planets with poor geographical locations can move close to a Cosmic String and get discovered by other civilizations.”

“Then, such civilizations that isolate themselves but lack cosmic common sense, once discovered by other interstellar civilizations, can be taken down by a single Ten-thousand-year Worm and plundered. Even a Second-level Civilization can easily defeat a third-level or even a Fourth-level Civilization!”

Zhang Yuan nodded seriously. This was indeed the biggest downside to isolation. A civilization developing on its own couldn’t possibly be aware of all the strange and marvellous things in the outside world, so how could it possibly defend itself?

The Ten-thousand-year Worm was, after all, a remnant technology of a Level 6 Civilization. How could a civilization possibly develop to Level 6 in isolation?

Impossible!

As for this digital virus, the specific methods of prevention are quite straightforward and there are even various types.

On the lower end, there are some special recognition programs; on the higher end, special hardware can be developed. If these pieces of hardware are incorporated into the network system, they can block the spread of the Ten-thousand-year Worm and even eradicate it.

Wang Junpeng sighed, somewhat dissatisfied, “But that’s about it. The information provided by the Badit people is a good supplement to our cosmic knowledge, but most of the scientific papers submitted have been deemed by our experts as lacking in innovation. The Badits’ understanding of the universe is not much more advanced than that of humans.”

“It’s possible that these so-called experts are of mediocre standard… Their fleet is not like ours, bringing along eight million people. It is also possible that they are holding back.”

Zhang Yuan smiled and said, “That’s indeed quite possible. But don’t be disheartened, we didn’t even harbor such expectations to begin with.”

True Science must be akin to the grand theories like the Standard Model or General Relativity, concerning the knowledge of the Universe itself, from which many more things can be derived.

Science is equivalent to the main trunk of a large tree, whereas technology is the branches alongside it. Only when the trunk grows can the branches continue to grow. However, unfortunately, concerning some issues in the Big Desert, the Badits have not yet made the leap.

Even if epoch-making science has not been gained, some new technology would also be nice, but the problem is, easy-to-develop things have already been thought of and developed by humans. Difficult-to-develop technologies are mostly the crystallization of a great deal of intelligence. Take Nuclear Fusion Engineering for instance; even middle school students know the principle, but to realize it is incredibly difficult — how many fifty-year periods has it consumed?

Such a colossal project is not something one person can accomplish, especially since humans require a full deductive process, not just a simple result. Relying on rote memorization, how could the Badits, no matter how good their Memory, possibly write it down?

Wang Junpeng was in the middle of grumbling: “Moreover, the Badits have no idea what humans need, nor do they know what information might be useful to us. Due to different technological standards, we can’t use their patents at all. In the materials they’ve submitted, even Newton’s laws of motion have been included, boldly claiming this to be the origin of Science, absolutely a great formula and so on.”

Zhang Yuan said with a smile, “I can’t believe that among these two thousand people, there isn’t a single real expert? Absence of epoch-making great papers aside, smaller ones focused on a particular aspect can also be good, like something related to the interstellar ramjet engine. Let them write slowly, recall slowly; there are five years, what’s the hurry? Even if they are undergoing reformation through labor, they can’t immediately shake off the burden of their crimes.”