Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 341: Camouflage

This change was extremely brief and extremely subtle. If Tom hadn’t been observing it with all his might, he wouldn’t have been able to detect it even if he was within ten light-years of it.

These signals also indicated two things.

Firstly, it was almost certain that the change in Southern Fish H11’s brightness was not due to natural factors, but almost certainly caused by a sentient being.

Combining this with the intelligence provided by the Cloud Civilization, the identity of this sentient being became clear.

The Purple Moon Civilization.

After a thousand years of relentless tracking, at this moment, the Purple Moon Civilization’s traces had finally been truly found!

At this moment, even with Tom’s composure, his heart couldn’t help but surge with emotion.

Secondly, this change in brightness meant that a large number of artificial spacecraft appeared at an extremely close distance to the star—most likely no more than 5 million kilometers, and even more likely within 4 million kilometers.

The Purple Moon Civilization very likely brought a large number of ships to this distance.

But...

Facing a white sub-giant star with a mass 1.6 times that of the Sun (1.6 M_\odot), approaching its surface to a mere 4 million kilometers, what level of thermal insulation, radiation resistance, and overall stability would their spacecraft need to achieve?

At least with Tom’s current technological level, it was impossible. Even with special design, specifically increasing armor thickness, energy shield strength, etc., at most, they could only briefly reach approximately 6 million kilometers.

For long-term presence, the distance would have to be extended to around 9 million kilometers.

This alone undoubtedly showcased the Purple Moon Civilization’s advanced technological capabilities to Tom.

And, combined with what Electric Disaster said, that its predecessors were still controlled by the Purple Moon Civilization, then what the Purple Moon Civilization was doing now seemed to be... herding?

Releasing the Electromagnetic Life onto the star’s surface, dispatching relevant spacecraft as ’sheepdogs’ to train, monitor, and control these Electromagnetic Life forms?

Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the Purple Moon Civilization would do this.

"Facing the Purple Moon Civilization, which also possesses Electromagnetic Life, my ’Stellar Cannon’ trump card will probably be unusable."

Now that the Purple Moon Civilization’s presence was confirmed, Tom once again accelerated the pace of various industrial constructions, doing his utmost to prepare for war.

More than a hundred years passed under these circumstances, and Tom’s massive fleet finally arrived at a location only about 3 light-years away from it.

With Tom’s fleet’s current overall acceleration/deceleration capability of 0.8 \text{ m/s}^2, and its current cruising speed of 80\% the speed of light, Tom needed to begin decelerating at this distance.

Thus, countless high-power, high-speed ion thrusters, which had been dormant for centuries, finally activated, spewing jets towards the massive white sub-giant star, slowly reducing the fleet’s speed.

Tom knew that his fleet’s exhaust plume would inevitably be detected by the other side, and they would certainly react accordingly.

It was just that the distance was too great, and even with Tom’s best efforts, he could not detect subtle changes within the solar system, nor could he know what arrangements the Purple Moon Civilization had made.

Limited by the power of electromagnetic wave communication, the two civilizations could not communicate at this distance.

That would only be possible when the distance was at least shortened to about half a light-year.

Time continued to pass slowly, and the white star grew brighter and brighter, and the radiation detected from it became increasingly intense.

At this moment, there was still about 4 trillion kilometers remaining.

A powerful electromagnetic wave signal finally traversed this long distance, and as Tom expected, it reached his fleet.

> "Respected extraterrestrial civilization:

> We are the ’Rovik Civilization’ from the depths of the starry sky. This solar system has become the temporary base of our Rovik Civilization.

> To avoid misunderstandings and friction between our two sides, we respectfully request your civilization to move to another solar system for stationed.

> The Head of the Rovik Civilization, along with all its people, wishes your journey a smooth one, and wishes for eternal peace in this vast galaxy."

Rovik Civilization?

Tom scoffed.

Clearly, the Purple Moon Civilization was deliberately concealing its identity.

The possibility of a misunderstanding certainly existed, but it was almost negligible. Besides, the probes released by his side were already close to reaching the interior of the solar system, and by then, whether this civilization was the Purple Moon Civilization or not would be immediately clear.

Tom did not reply to this message, but continued to carry out the deceleration maneuvers as planned.

Finally, the long-range probes that had arrived in the solar system’s interior first transmitted the information they had collected.

Around the five large planets within this solar system, Tom saw a massive fleet like a swarm of bees, saw the enormous industrial construction taking place on each large planet, and saw the endless, river-like transport fleet in space.

All of this indicated that the civilization currently stationed within the solar system possessed an enormous population scale, immense industrial strength, and... extremely formidable war capabilities.

The Abyss Civilization was already advanced enough in the past, and its industrial scale was also large enough. But at this very moment, merely observing from the outside, the Purple Moon Civilization displayed more advanced and larger technological and industrial capabilities than the Abyss Civilization.

Furthermore, this strength was fundamentally different from the strength of the Abyss Civilization in the past.

Although the Abyss Civilization was strong then, Tom only needed to dispatch an unmanned fleet to force it into a state of full civilization-wide mobilization.

And now, Tom clearly realized that not to mention dispatching only an unmanned fleet, even if he went all out, he might not be able to gain an advantage against the Purple Moon Civilization.

The reason is simple: being slightly stronger in one field is nothing, but in every field—a Strong Nuclear force civilization’s entire technological system can be divided into dozens of major fields, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of minor fields, and up to millions or tens of millions of different directions.

In so many fields, so many directions, if every direction is just a little bit stronger—a little stronger in maneuverability, a little stronger in stability, a little stronger in temperature control technology, a little higher in fusion efficiency, a little more optimized in hull structure...

It seems that their technology is only slightly superior to the Abyss Civilization and himself, but when aggregated, their overall strength has risen to a height that the Abyss Civilization and himself can hardly surmount.

But Tom had already known all these things.

He had long known the power of the Purple Moon Civilization.

What truly concerned Tom was the construction style and technical characteristics of the ships in this fleet.

After a brief discernment, combined with the intelligence provided by the Havilah Civilization and the Cloud Civilization, Tom immediately confirmed that this was indeed the Purple Moon Civilization!