Under Li Qingsong's watchful gaze, the Machine Calamity fleet swiftly completed its resource gathering mission.
Simultaneously, Li Qingsong observed that they dispatched numerous ships, seemingly science vessels, following the routes of his previous six fleets that had departed the solar system, conducting extensive scientific investigations.
This seems to be…
Li Qingsong pondered for a moment, gradually understanding.
“Indeed, their confirmation of a fleet's trajectory isn't solely based on observing the exhaust plume.
While the plume is bright, its directionality is extremely high, only projecting in a specific direction. Deviate from this direction, and it becomes unobservable at a slight distance.
At close range, the fleet's trajectory can be directly confirmed by observing the exhaust plume. At a distance, other means must be used.
I haven't mastered this technology yet. However, I speculate that it involves examining the interaction between the plasma ejected from the plume and the interstellar gas, observing the specific traces left behind to confirm the fleet's trajectory? That must be it.”
The numerous science fleets moved throughout the solar system, soon dividing into six groups, their paths essentially overlapping with the orbits of his six fleets as they left the solar system.
Li Qingsong knew they had determined the trajectories of these six fleets.
Only 20 years had passed, and having confirmed the trajectories of these six fleets, Li Qingsong saw the Machine Calamity fleet begin to reassemble, seemingly preparing to travel to the next star system to continue searching for his traces.
Li Qingsong's heart skipped a beat.
Having determined the trajectories of six fleets, it was clear that the Machine Calamity fleet's next long-distance target would be one of these six star systems.
The probability for each star system is about .
If their navigation target is the Altair system…
Including communication delays, and based on their navigation speed, they would arrive at the Altair system in just ten years at most.
His fleet was still under construction, and ten years was not enough time to do anything.
At that point, he would have no choice but to immediately activate his contingency plan, abandon everything he had, and relocate to another star system for development.
His original plan to develop technology during the escape would be completely abandoned.
After some time, the massive Machine Calamity fleet slowly set sail, heading out of the solar system.
Calculating their trajectory, Li Qingsong quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
Their target was Wangliang San—a binary star system about light-years from the solar system, consisting of a yellow dwarf star similar to the sun and an orange dwarf star, one of the destinations for Li Qingsong's disguised fleets.
Considering the relative positions of the six star systems of his six fleets, Li Qingsong immediately understood.
The Machine Calamity fleet intended to follow the principle of proximity, using the shortest path to complete the search of all six star systems.
According to this search path, his location in the Altair system should be ranked fifth.
Based on their fleet speed, plus the time for resupply en route, the Machine Calamity fleet was expected to reach the Altair system in about 300 years.
300 years was a much shorter time compared to their pursuit from the Lantuke star system to the solar system, which seemed to indicate that their search circle was constantly shrinking, and that the noose that was originally around the Lantuke civilization's neck, and now around his, was tightening.
But… for himself, 300 years was still acceptable.
Under normal circumstances, 300 years was barely enough time to complete an interstellar migration.
After all, Li Qingsong's fleet could only reach a maximum speed of a few percent of the speed of light.
But this time, Li Qingsong had decided not to stop at any star system for the time being.
He would fly in interstellar space for a thousand years!
Yes, a full thousand years of interstellar travel, without stopping at any star system during that millennium!
The universe is vast, and star systems only occupy a small part of the universe.
As long as he didn't stop at star systems and hid himself in interstellar space, the Machine Calamity would almost never find his tracks.
Even tracking along the departure route of his main fleet would not find him. Because during the voyage, his fleet would constantly fine-tune its course.
Even if this Machine Calamity fleet mastered the technology to determine the fleet's trajectory by analyzing the interaction between the exhaust plume ejecta and the interstellar gas, the jet power of the orbital fine-tuning would be extremely low, and the interaction with the interstellar gas would also be extremely low.
It was unlikely that they could confirm the course through this.
They still could only confirm where he eventually went by searching star system by star system.
And in spaceflight, a slight difference in course leads to a huge deviation.
Even Li Qingsong didn't know where he would eventually fly to, or which star system he would stop at.
Li Qingsong was confident that this plan would be extremely effective in shaking off the pursuit. But this plan was completely unfeasible for ordinary civilizations.
For example, the Lantuke civilization back then. If they had chosen this plan, the only result would have been that they would have run out of supplies and all died in the empty space.
Because their industrial strength was limited, their fleet size was limited, and the amount of supplies they could carry was limited, they simply couldn't support such a long voyage.
But Li Qingsong was different!
The original solar system migration fleet was already large enough, and the fleet Li Qingsong was building now was 20 times larger than the original solar system fleet.
Such a huge fleet could carry an astonishing total amount of supplies, enough to support this long voyage of thousands of years.
At this moment, the Machine Calamity fleet had already set sail for the Wangliang San star system.
In the Altair system, Li Qingsong's massive construction was also coming to an end.
There were still six fleets, five of which were disguised fleets, and one of which was the real main fleet.
A total of six fleets, each with the same tonnage and specifications. This meant that the exhaust plume traces would also be exactly the same.
The fleet construction was completed, and the resource gathering work was also completed.
Countless material compartments, numerous aerospace motherships, and heavy transport ships were fully loaded.
At this moment, only the last thing remained.
To migrate the more than 1,500 large scientific devices he built into the fleet.
Based on the working principle and environmental requirements of each large scientific device, this work was extremely troublesome, extremely difficult, and there was no unified placement method. It was necessary to customize a migration plan for each large scientific device.
“Customize it then! It's just building more spaceships!”
