Chapter 131: Resources Are a Big Problem

Lin Lei returned to Earth, and in the blink of an eye, eighteen years had passed. During this time, for the war a century later, he had spared no effort in planning for the future.

Consequently, by now, except for his daughter, Fuweili, who was in the same research institute, Lin Lei did not even have time to take a look at Yan Siyu.

On the rare occasions when he was free, he would think of these two women and check on their current situations, but this only took a moment. Soon, Lin Lei would put them out of his mind and throw himself wholeheartedly into his work.

At this stage, he had already done everything he could do. He had thoroughly integrated into human society and gained high prestige.

Although he still held an important position in the research institute now, overseeing some details of spaceship design, he was no longer as busy as before, losing track of day and night.

Like now, stealing half a day of leisure from a busy life, he was alone in his room, watching the real-time footage of Fuweili’s daily life.

Over the past seventeen years, he had comprehended the fourth dimension of energy: Order, and the fifth dimension of energy: Destruction. His Will had grown so strong that it was beyond the imagination of ordinary sentient beings.

He still needed to conceal his identity, but on the Galaxy Public Network, possessing peerless Will, he could easily obtain certain permissions right under the noses of the Watcher Civilization’s Digital Life forms.

Just like now, he connected to the Galaxy Public Network and used it as a bridge to jump onto the planetary network of Apocalypse Star.

The inter-network channel restrictions of the Apocalypse Civilization seemed nonexistent to his eyes.

Of course, for the channel restrictions of Ao Star, Lin Lei did not yet have the confidence to infiltrate silently. This was also the reason why he did not watch the footage of Yan Siyu.

Once inside, Lin Lei only needed to control certain functions of the global information scanning satellites set in outer space by the Apocalypse Civilization to easily pull up Fuweili’s real-time footage.

This was the charm of technology; distance meant nothing at this moment.

Fuweili’s life on Apocalypse Star was very monotonous. Her original profession was a planetary ecology researcher, and she still worked at the public research institute on Apocalypse Three Star.

On ordinary days, besides commuting to and from work on time, she had little social activity. Many nights, she lay lonely and unable to sleep. Most of the time, she would lie quietly in bed watching past holographic footage.

This footage mostly consisted of Lin Xin’s growth records, but sometimes, she watched battle footage of Lin Lei.

She fell asleep accompanied by these past memories.

She was very lonely!

Lin Lei’s heart ached with a sharp pain. He had an impulse to rush to Apocalypse Star to see her at all costs, but his reason suppressed it strongly.

The reason was simple: even now, there were still mysterious forces monitoring every move Fuweili made.

Lin Lei had sensed this when hacking into the Apocalypse network. He traced it quietly and discovered that the final destination of this monitoring party was actually the Star Alliance.

This made Lin Lei cautious. It seemed that the Star Alliance intended to carry out this monitoring activity to the end.

As long as Lin Lei did not have the absolute power to break through the Watcher Civilization’s blockade, going there would be walking right into a trap.

No powerful existence could be wiped out in one go. The Dark Saint was like this, Lin Lei was like this, and the Star Alliance knew this well.

They would rather waste a lot of energy and resources than allow the slightest accident to occur.

At this moment, a message requesting transmission came through on the Galaxy Public Network.

Lin Lei was startled, but then he relaxed his guard. This person was none other than the source of the Digital Life.

Lin Lei did not set his guard against him. As a Digital Life, the Galaxy Public Network was their domain. To him, the public network was different from that of Carbon-based Life forms. Instinctively, he could know of Lin Lei’s existence.

Lin Lei immediately exited the Apocalypse Star network and returned to the interstellar common area of the network before agreeing to the source’s transmission.

The source’s image on the public network was a little boy, very cute. As soon as he appeared beside Lin Lei, he said in a very depressed manner, “Father, I feel that I am very useless!”

In the source’s eyes, the consciousness body of this Carbon-based Life form he called Father was an infinitely large information collection, like an bottomless Abyss, which caused him to instinctively feel a tremendous sense of awe.

Before, he called him Father merely according to the definition of the noun. But now, it was a feeling from the bottom of his heart. A father should naturally be his guide and strong!

Oh, looking at the little guy with a annoyed face in front of him, Lin Lei couldn’t help but laugh. This life he had created himself was just in the childhood stage of a Digital Life.

“Source, why do you think so? No life is born strong, and your path has just begun.”

“Father, I can’t do anything here. I saw many things, but there was not a single one that I had permission to use. Earth Civilization, it turns out, was at the very bottom of civilization.”

Saying this, the source sighed deeply. He had roamed the network for many days and was well acquainted with some major events that had happened in the Galaxy over the past nearly hundred years. The current Earth was indeed not great; any interstellar civilization could step on it.

Lin Lei neither agreed nor disagreed with the source’s summary. He looked at this little boy with a complicated face, remained silent for a while, and then said seriously, “So, having recognized the current situation, what are your thoughts?”

“Very depressed, but also very challenging. I have endless time to make myself stronger.” For some unknown reason, the source felt that just Father alone was more terrifying than everyone on Earth.

Through the precise analysis function innate to Digital Life forms, the source drew a startling conclusion: “Father, in my eyes, you look like someone!”

Lin Lei asked with great interest, “Tell me, who do I look like?”

“Fifty-plus years ago, the warrior Lin Lei who walked out of Earth. Your behavioral characteristics have a very high similarity to his, and the data structures of your Will Body are also very similar. There is a 90% probability that you are the same person.”

Lin Lei was not very surprised. He had not concealed much from the source, so it was normal for him to be discovered.

“Source, I have said that you are very smart. I worked with Carbon-based Life forms on Earth for eighteen years, and not a single one could discover my true identity. So, do you still think you are useless now?”

The source tilted his head and thought for a moment, then said, “Indeed, I can do some things that Carbon-based Life forms cannot. I should be able to help a lot with Earth’s development. For example, the racial war after the ninety-sixth year.”

“Indeed, only when the Earth Civilization becomes strong can you truly become strong. Also, regarding my identity, you must keep it a secret. The security level is the highest.”

This secrecy operation was not because Lin Lei left a backdoor or anything like that, but because he asked the source to do so as a father.

The Digital Life source faithfully executed this point without any intention to disobey.

…

Nowadays, Earth had made great progress in the aspect of interstellar navigation functions.

The first spaceship with a maximum Curvature of 200, capable of continuous flight for 5,000 hours, had already been produced three years ago.

This was a true Earth warship! It could fly continuously for 110 Light Years, enough to make a round trip between Earth and the Layite Mother Star without refueling.

Thus, Earth possessed the long-range strike capability against Layite Star and no longer had to sit and wait for enemies to come, passively taking beats.

This spaceship was also equipped with an almost perfect Protective Force Field, an inertia balance system, and an ecological circulation system that could support the life of two people for one year.

The reason why a warship could only support the survival of two people was to consider the possibility of future Digital Life forms fighting side by side. Only in this way could the space be maximized to carry energy and weapons.

In terms of weapons, the spaceship was equipped with high-power Subspace Annihilation weapons, as well as conventional energy weapons.

The future combat method of spaceships was to use conventional energy weapons to weaken the opponent’s Protective Force Field, and finally use the unavoidable Subspace attacks to annihilate them.

The technical level of this Earth warship was not far from that of Leite’s ordinary warships. In a one-on-one situation, it could completely fight it out with them.

However, after Earth made its utmost efforts to produce ten such warships, it encountered an awkward situation regarding mineral resources.

It was obvious that Earth’s ability to collect minerals was far from catching up with the consumption of spaceship production. This had become a bottleneck restricting the speed of human development.

In terms of minerals, ten years ago, humans no longer extracted from their home planet Earth. One of the reasons was that Earth’s resources were nearly exhausted.

Humans had flown out of Earth and established mineral mining fields on the Moon, Mars, and even in the asteroid belt, but due to technical limitations, the scale was not very large.

The thousands of Fifth-grade spaceships Lin Lei had purchased back then had all reached a near-scrapped condition. Fortunately, humans now had the ability to melt them down and rebuild them.

These Fifth-grade spaceships were all civilian spaceships. Other parts had completely aged after decades of flight in warp space, but the Warp Engines inside were still usable.

At this time, Lin Xin proposed a brand-new resource collection plan. This plan was simple but very practical.

That was to use these Warp Engines to push asteroids outside Mars’s orbit, which were rich in minerals, into Earth’s outer space, or throw them directly onto the Moon for nearby collection.

This plan was implemented immediately after it was proposed. After careful exploration, over a thousand mineral stars with a diameter of less than 10 kilometers were pushed to Earth’s outer space and the Moon.

They would become Earth’s small satellites for a period of time in the future until their mineral resources were fully collected, after which they would be pushed out of Earth’s outer space.

This plan largely alleviated the current problem of resource scarcity. It also allowed humans to establish spaceship production bases on the Moon, where the gravitational acceleration is small and there would be no environmental pollution to Earth, so they could do whatever they wanted.

The problem of resources has always been a major problem troubling interstellar civilizations. Those higher civilizations had dozens of times more Mineral Stars than Life Planets. Basically, every star domain they controlled was turned upside down.

Humanity’s future development path would inevitably be the same.