Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 353: Searching

At this moment, the Purple Moon Civilization Main Fleet had already been traveling for about 50 years since departing the Southern Fish H11 System.

At their cruising speed, accounting for the time spent accelerating, they had covered a total distance of approximately 40 light-years.

The distance was not too far yet.

Not too much time had passed, so there was still a possibility of Tom tracking their exhaust trail.

Of course, with Tom’s current fleet speed, it was normally impossible to catch up to the Purple Moon Civilization Main Fleet.

After all, the Purple Moon Civilization Main Fleet’s speed was higher, and the longer the chase, the greater the distance between them.

But Tom still did not give up.

The reason was simple: first, his technology could continuously improve during the journey, especially now that he had the Purple Moon Civilization battleship wreckage, allowing for reverse engineering.

Second, no matter how urgent the Purple Moon Fleet’s journey was, they would eventually have to stop in solar systems for resupply.

Tom also needed to resupply, but based on his stronger industrial capabilities, Tom’s resupply time could be shorter, thus allowing him to make up some time.

Combining these two factors, Tom still maintained a glimmer of hope of catching up to the Purple Moon Fleet.

As long as there was hope, that was enough.

The massive fleet quickly set sail, still in the acceleration phase, enduring the constant gravity, which was about one-twelfth of Earth’s, as vast research tasks already began.

Every day, tens of thousands of heavy transport ships would gather around the Flying Star, docking at the space elevator’s berths.

Numerous intelligent robots and transport vehicles working on the Flying Star would extract almost infinite resources and transport them onto heavy transport ships, which would then transfer them to various research spacecraft.

These resources supplied hundreds of thousands of deep space observation bases, computational science research bases, coating research bases, metal laboratories, structural laboratories, and various other research facilities, keeping them operational at all times.

At this stage, after many years of cultivation, the 18 races rescued from the Black Mountain Civilization had all completed genetic optimization, gained sufficient brainpower, and completed their initial knowledge reserves, allowing them to join the research efforts.

Currently, including the Bluetoth Clan and the Viller Race, the total intelligent life population of 20 races had reached approximately 100 billion.

With Tom fully undertaking logistics and industrial tasks, these 100 billion people could be entirely research-oriented, focusing all their efforts on cultivating scientific talent.

Thus, with only 100 billion people, they cultivated a staggering 500 million scientists across various disciplines, a number that even Tom considered qualified.

These research personnel were distributed across various industries and, under Tom’s unified coordination, combined with billions of clones, played an indispensable and important role.

Consequently, Tom’s technology once again began to develop at a rapid pace.

Every major field, every sub-field within those major fields, and specific projects, etc., all advanced simultaneously.

Under these circumstances, after more than a decade, Tom’s fleet, traveling at 80\% of the speed of light, arrived at the location where the Purple Moon Civilization Main Fleet had shut down their exhaust trail and began low-power random maneuvering.

This was a vast expanse of deep space completely devoid of macroscopic celestial bodies, where matter was so sparse that there was less than one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter.

At the same time, the previously very obvious traces of the fleet’s exhaust interacting with interstellar dust suddenly disappeared.

Clearly, as the propulsion power decreased, the interaction also weakened, making detection significantly more difficult.

For a normal civilization, even one with a technological level consistent with or slightly exceeding Tom’s, there would be no good solution in such a situation.

But Tom was different.

Interaction weakened, traces subtle, difficult to detect?

Then increase the detection accuracy with a larger search area!

As the saying goes, with enough strength, even a brick can fly.

As long as my search area is large enough, no matter how subtle the traces, I can find them!

Under Tom’s control, tens of millions of small reconnaissance ships, probe satellites, infrared telescopes, and other equipment began a dragnet-style search forward, centered on the location where the Purple Moon Civilization began low-power random propulsion.

The farthest point reached by the detection facilities even extended to a trillion kilometers from the Main Fleet.

This had already exceeded the limit of Tom’s long-range communication distance.

However, it didn’t matter; exhaust trail detection was relatively simpler and could be handled by Primal to control those distant detection facilities.

Such a massive scale of detection would be unbearable for an ordinary civilization.

Even if their intelligent AI could reach the level of Primal, simply manufacturing so many detection devices, especially in deep space rather than within a solar system, would be absolutely unaffordable.

Not to mention that so many detection devices also needed to constantly maneuver, constantly return to or move away from the Main Fleet, and required data analysis, equipment inspection and maintenance, etc., needing hundreds of millions of personnel.

If so much effort were put into this one task, ordinary civilizations wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

But for Tom, such a large-scale detection currently underway was completely manageable.

It couldn’t be said there was no pressure at all, but it was generally not significant.

With a radius of one trillion kilometers, the cross-sectional area reached approximately 3.14 times 10^{24} square kilometers.

Tom’s Main Fleet and numerous detection devices were like a massive net with an area of 3.14 times 10^{24} square kilometers, sweeping through this stellar ocean without leaving any blind spots, not missing any tiny clue.

Under these circumstances, numerous subtle clues that would have been impossible to detect otherwise surfaced.

Through Primal’s intelligent analysis, the Purple Moon Civilization Main Fleet’s trajectory was gradually plotted by Tom.

"After shutting down the main engines, they maneuvered in this direction with a faint thrust of approximately 0.006 m/s^2 for about 30 days, causing the orbit to deviate by approximately 20 million kilometers, after which they continued to deviate at a speed of about 15.5 km/s."

Upon detecting this, Tom immediately assigned the corresponding deviation speed to his own fleet and continued to investigate along the determined trajectory.

After this, the Purple Moon Fleet’s travel traces disappeared again.

After comprehensive investigation, Tom finally concluded: "It seems that after a month of maneuvering, they chose to enter inertial flight mode. Continue the investigation."

After adopting inertial flight mode and continuing along this route for 50 days, covering approximately 1.3 trillion kilometers, the faint traces reappeared.

"From here, they deviated in this direction with an acceleration of 0.009 m/s^2, lasting for... about 100 days."

Tom adjusted the course again.

No matter how the Purple Moon Fleet’s course changed, Tom could always find it through his ultra-large-scale detection network, constantly clinging to them from behind, never letting go.

Time quietly slipped away under these circumstances.

While tracking, Tom also did not neglect his research tasks.

He always knew that technological advancement was the most important weapon against the Purple Moon Civilization.

Don’t forget, the Purple Moon Civilization’s combat strength was not weaker than his own.

In the previous war, he could at most be considered to have fought the Purple Moon Civilization to a draw.

If it weren’t for the sudden appearance of the Cloud Fleet, it was truly hard to say how the war would have ultimately turned out.

If his technology had not improved, then even if he caught up to the Purple Moon Civilization Main Fleet, it might be himself who would ultimately be annihilated.

Therefore, Tom’s total of tens of billions of consciousness connection shares were completely occupied by the ceaseless technological research and deep space tracking at this moment.

Every clone, when connected by consciousness, even ran while walking, and only casually ate a few specialized energy bars and nutrient solutions when eating.

The hundreds of millions of other race scholars were much more relaxed than the clones, but their workload was still far heavier compared to normal working hours.

However, they had no complaints whatsoever; instead, the different races were competing with each other.

At this moment, Tom pushed his technological development potential to the extreme.

Under these circumstances, in just over a century, Tom’s various technologies all achieved significant, even groundbreaking, breakthroughs.

Looking at the overall picture, Tom knew that his technological level was already sufficient to support a complete overhaul and upgrade of his spacecraft.

In this vast expanse of deep space, devoid of any natural macroscopic celestial bodies, with the Flying Star as a base, the ultra-large-scale work of dismantling and recycling old spacecraft and manufacturing new ones officially began.

To do this, Tom had to withdraw some clones performing research tasks, sacrificing a decrease in the speed of scientific development, but finally gathering enough engineering power needed to carry out this upgrade task.

It was also fortunate that Primal could perform most of the low-level tasks on behalf of Tom, allowing Tom to simultaneously support searching, research, and construction—tasks that, for an ordinary civilization, would occupy all their strength if even one were undertaken.

One by one, spacecraft disappeared, and one by one, new spacecraft appeared.

Once the new fleet began to take shape, Tom then maneuvered them to conduct actual combat drills to improve his tactical skills and better control these superior warships, which had a smaller gap with the Purple Moon Civilization’s warships.

This upgrade work took more than sixty years to complete.

Not only warships, but even the super-gigantic aerospace carriers, large habitat spacecraft, various industrial spacecraft, research spacecraft, and so on, were all replaced with new ones.

Those aerospace carriers had lower energy consumption but higher reliability, and their energy shields were also stronger.

The large habitat spacecraft operated more smoothly, and their internal material recycling efficiency was also higher.

Under these circumstances, Tom finally issued an order.