Li Qingsong knew that abandoning everything he currently possessed and transferring his consciousness to those backup clones he had previously hidden away would result in losses far exceeding the numerous spaceships within his massive fleet, the intelligent AIs running on supercomputers that embodied countless training data and his own painstaking efforts, and the various large-scale scientific installations.
The real losses were far greater than that.
Li Qingsong understood that his ability, as the primary consciousness, to remember so much scientific knowledge, experience, and skills was actually achieved through numerous clones.
That is, these memories did not exist in isolation. Instead, in this mode, the clones' brains became the "hard drives" for Li Qingsong's primary consciousness to store knowledge and memories.
That knowledge and those memories were stored in the clones' brains.
How much can one brain remember? The various knowledge, data, experiences, and skills that Li Qingsong had researched were so vast that even describing them as boundless was an understatement; even bursting a brain would not suffice to contain them all.
Abandoning these clones meant abandoning that portion of knowledge as well.
His primary consciousness could, at most, only remember some key information and memories.
Restarting would mean not only rebuilding the fleet but also re-researching the technology from scratch.
Therefore, as long as there was a sliver of hope, Li Qingsong was absolutely unwilling to give up everything he currently possessed.
But at this moment, Li Qingsong still decided to take a risk and pull off something big.
Li Qingsong was going to use a Type II electroweak civilization to fight against a Type III strong force civilization!
Everything Li Qingsong knew and had experienced told him that this was almost impossible, but Li Qingsong still made this decision.
Firstly, of course, because there was really no other way.
Secondly, because...
Li Qingsong also had a temper!
From leaving the solar system to leaving the Altair system, and then to starting interstellar escape again, it had been over two thousand years in a flash.
I have been running for over two thousand years!
I've had enough!
This time, either I break through to a strong force civilization, or we all perish together!
If worst comes to worst, I'll restart again. I want to see if you, the synthetic intelligence scourge, have any hope of recovering!
Li Qingsong had made up his mind and drafted a plan that could be described as both crazy and risky.
"To execute this plan, some prerequisites are needed. First, a relatively young star system is required, because only when it is young enough will the internal environment be sufficiently chaotic.
Second, a relatively active main star is needed. Only if the main star is active enough will I have opportunities to exploit."
Li Qingsong quickly searched through the existing star database and immediately identified a suitable target.
V342 Pegasi! Or another designation, HR 8799!
This star has a mass approximately times that of the Sun and is only 60 million years old, still in its stellar infancy.
Because of its young age, this star is very active, and its luminosity is also changing rapidly, sometimes dimming and sometimes brightening, with a cycle of only two days.
This means it has extremely strong and rapid stellar activity.
Because the boundary between the convection zone and the radiation zone of the star is unstable, the surface of the star can even exhibit wave-like structures, like ocean waves. It is this fierce stellar "wave" that causes the periodic changes in its luminosity.
At the same time, the interior of this star system is also very chaotic.
Particularly noteworthy is that it has a full seven large planets, including three rocky planets, the smallest of which is times the mass of Earth.
The number of gas giants is four, the largest of which is 12 times the mass of Jupiter – which is probably on the mass boundary between planets and stars. If it were just a little larger, it could ignite helium-3 fusion or deuterium-tritium fusion in its core and become a brown dwarf.
The smallest has 6 times the mass of Jupiter.
The behemoths of the solar system are just insignificant little guys in the V342 Pegasi system.
It not only has many large planets, but also has numerous small celestial bodies comparable to the Altair system due to its young age, with material-rich dust disks, asteroid belts, and so on.
To sum it up in one sentence, this is like a plus version of the solar system. Not only is the main star larger, brighter, and more active than the Sun, the rocky planets are larger than Earth, the gas giants are larger than Jupiter, and even the asteroids are more numerous than in the solar system.
"This is the place!"
Li Qingsong made up his mind: "Either I will be reborn here, or I will... perish together here!"
Adjusting the fleet's course again, Li Qingsong flew towards this star system, which was still light-years away.
In the blink of an eye, several decades passed, and Li Qingsong's massive fleet finally docked about 50 million kilometers away from this star.
The most ⊥new⊥ small ⊥say⊥ in ⊥six⊥9⊥⊥book⊥⊥bar⊥⊥first⊥ hair!
There is also a large planet here.
It is the smallest in mass among all the large planets in V342 Pegasi.
Although it is the smallest, in theory, a mass times that of Earth is still sufficient to give it enough gravity to attract gas to form an atmosphere.
At the same time, sufficient mass can also create sufficient internal pressure to keep the interior hot and flowing, thereby creating a magnetic field, and protecting its atmosphere from being stripped away under the huge radiation pressure of the main star.
But unfortunately.
Although it has enough mass and a strong enough magnetic field, it is too close to the main star, and the radiation from the main star is too intense.
As a result, its atmosphere was still ruthlessly stripped away, leaving it with only a bare sphere, with no gas on it.
In the solar system, Mercury is about 40 million kilometers away from the Sun, and the surface temperature of the Sun is fully 2,000 degrees Celsius lower than that of V342 Pegasi, and its brightness is only about one-fifth of it.
Even so, Mercury is scorched by the Sun to a surface temperature of several hundred degrees Celsius.
The situation of this large planet is even worse than that of Mercury.
Its surface temperature is as high as 700 degrees Celsius, which is enough to melt metals such as zinc, aluminum, lead, tin, and magnesium.
So, such a spectacle appeared on this planet: although it has no atmosphere, there are "lakes" on the surface, shining with their respective colors under the yellow and white starlight, dazzling like pieces of gemstones, exceptionally gorgeous.
These lakes are beautiful, but extremely dangerous.
Because these lakes are not actually water, but liquid metals, or alloys!
