Light Speed ​​War

Chapter 220: Strange Space

"Uncle, how long have we been here?" Panna's voice was broken and echoed.

"I don't know either, there's no time here." Zhou Yuan's voice was intermittent, with a series of echoes.

Zhou Yuan looked at the torn Pan Na and Chu Xiaolu and gently shook his head.

Zhou Yuan, too, was fragmented, his body separated like a shattered mirror. Yet, each of the scattered fragments could be pieced together to form a complete Zhou Yuan body. Even more remarkably, Zhou Yuan could see his own heart pounding not far ahead, the veins clearly visible. Zhou Yuan tried placing his right hand on Panna's shoulder, and saw his right hand move from behind Panna's head to the front, precisely resting on her right shoulder, halfway down her body. They were already accustomed to this strange, distorted space.

The Earth Empire activated its time machine, but became trapped in this strange, distorted space. They have no idea how much time has passed—a year? Ten years? A hundred years? Or perhaps a thousand years, ten thousand years?

Zhou Yuan shook his head, and it was this head shake that made his head appear to Chu Xiaolu's right side.

The four of them looked as if they had been torn apart into eight pieces, but each part was transparent. Their movements, if pieced together, were still instantaneous and continuous. However, you would have to think about it and piece the fragments together for a complete and normal image to appear in your mind.

Like their own bodies, this warship was also fragmented and torn apart. Even inside the warship's metal interior, they could see the unevenness of the steel, with patches and spheres. The photon communication lines that originally flowed along the warship's internal walls now appeared as tiny circular spots, each with concentric ripples. The entire photon communication line resembled the surface of a pool of water being struck by dense raindrops, creating ripples that then collided with each other.

Zhou Yuan glanced at the sun outside the ship's hull window. The sun was like a bulging bronze mirror, spinning and trembling in the sky, constantly producing rotating and moving illusions. The sunlight was also like ripples colliding with each other.

Zhou Yuan withdrew his hand, bringing it closer to Chu Xiaolu. He then used a small piece of chopstick to precisely pick up the food from the dish behind Chu Xiaolu. Zhou Yuan then brought his mouth close to the small piece of chopstick.

Panna watched as the vegetable leaf traveled from Zhou Yuan's mouth to the right side of her throat, then to the stomach behind Chu Xiaolu's head, where stomach acid enveloped the finely chopped leaf.

"I wonder how Sister Huo and the Imperial scientists are doing with the deciphering?"

"Little beauty, I think it's unlikely."

"Brother, why don't you participate in their hacking activities? If this keeps up, I'm going to go crazy."

“Beautiful lady, you should probably go into deep hibernation. I’ve never encountered anything like this before. I was just suggesting to the Earth Empire’s Academy of Sciences that we might have stumbled into a fifth-dimensional space, a sixth-dimensional space, or even a higher-dimensional space? Hmm, it seems like the sun is about to change again.”

Pan Na and Chu Xiaolu looked up at the sun together. The sun that had been bulging like a bronze mirror had stopped rotating and shaking, and had broken into many fragments. There were many fragments of the sun in the sky, and the ripples of each fragment collided with each other, but the ripples between the fragments did not interfere with each other.

The planets revolving around the sun, as well as the Zhou Yuan golden statue satellite orbiting the capital Earth, all became fragments and floated, filling the entire sky along with the fragments of the sun.

This bizarre space and its strange changes forced many people in the Earth Empire to enter a deep hibernation on their respective planets, losing consciousness and thus avoiding further trouble and nausea.

Zhou Yuan and Pan Na were perhaps somewhat special; they didn't seem to react strongly to this strange space and its unpredictable changes. Chu Xiaolu, however, was different. She simply couldn't bear it any longer; as she said, she was going crazy. Although Chu Xiaolu knew that Huo Jing and the Imperial scientists were working hard to analyze, decipher, and try to escape this strange space, she didn't know when they would succeed.

"Beautiful lady, beautiful lady, you two should take a break. You don't need to keep me company anymore, I'm fine."

"Alright then, we're going to sleep. Wake us up if you need us." Pana was also tired of this unpredictability. Zhou Yuan nodded, then moved half of his body closer to Pana and Chu Xiaolu. His left and right hands circled around from a distance and grabbed Pana and Chu Xiaolu's hands. The three of them left the warship's command room together, their three half-bodies floating, with their heads and internal organs following behind.

Pan Na and Chu Xiaolu carefully lay down in the hibernation pod, their internal organs and heads floating outside. After kissing Zhou Yuan goodbye, they closed their eyes, and their hands inside the pod waved. Zhou Yuan waved back, closed the pod lid tightly, and their hearts, which had been pounding, slowly stopped beating, the blood-red veins in their hearts gradually turning purple.

Zhou Yuan, halfway through his body, left the hibernation chamber and arrived at the command room. He snapped his fingers, and a small bee's head appeared in front of his head, while its body appeared near half of his body.

"Sage, what are your instructions?"

"Well, I'm afraid you'll be spending a lot of time with me, chatting, playing cards, chess, games, drinking..."

"Sage, I do not drink alcohol."

"How about a beverage?"

"No."

"You can make and pour drinks, right?" Zhou Yuan smiled slightly.

"Sage, what would you like to drink?"

"Quanwei Herbal Tea".

"Please wait a moment." The little bee turned its head and flew out of the command room. A moment later, the little bee spaceship brought over several large boxes. Zhou Yuan could clearly see that each of these boxes contained dozens of bottles, each containing less than half a bottle of liquid. The remaining liquid was moving around along the sides of the boxes.

Zhou Yuan picked up a can of herbal tea and gulped it down while watching the changing sun outside.

"Little bee, let's go down."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The little bee unfolded into a spaceship. Zhou Yuan entered the spaceship, and the little bee left the warship, beginning its flight towards Earth. In a conference room at the Earth Empire Academy of Sciences, more than a hundred scientists stood up to welcome Zhou Yuan as he entered.

"How's your research going?"

"Sage, based on calculations and simulations, we unanimously believe that the strange, distorted space we are in is a manifold topological space, somewhat similar to Kachu space. According to the 'fragmented mirror' effect, this space has at least five dimensions, and is very likely six-dimensional."

The shattered mirror effect is that kind of fragmented, broken-in effect.

"Then how do we get out?"

"This manifold space is closed; if we want to get out, we must open a passage."

"Opening the passage won't be that easy, will it?"

"Yes, it's difficult. But we believe that creating a small, localized passage should be feasible."

"How to do it?"

“We conducted simulations, and the results show that if we destroy the sun to create a passage to a higher dimension, we can get out. In three-dimensional space, this higher-dimensional passage would manifest as a wormhole.”

Zhou Yuan remained silent in thought, while everyone watched him.

The Earth Empire's five nine-star orbiting systems accidentally stumbled into this strange, manifold space. Perhaps the time machine was too powerful, or perhaps it was a trap deliberately set by the Earth Empire's enemy—the Overlord—that trapped the Earth Empire here.

"If we destroy the sun, can our warships carry so many people?" Zhou Yuan knew that if the sun was destroyed, the Nine Stars Sun-Circling System would have to be abandoned, and humanity would have to travel by warships and leave this distorted space at maximum speed through the high-dimensional passage created by destroying the sun.

"My lord, with so many people gathered on the warship, it must be quite crowded."

"As long as it can fit, that's fine. I'll wake up Thomas and the others. Prepare to destroy the sun; we must get out."

"Yes, sage."

The little bee carried Zhou Yuan to the advanced commander's deep hibernation chamber. Zhou Yuan activated the artificial intelligence, which began to automatically initiate the hibernation awakening program.

An hour later, more than two hundred high-ranking commanders of the Earth Empire, dressed in uniform, arrived at the hall outside the hibernation room. Upon seeing Zhou Yuan, they all saluted in unison.

Thomas stepped forward and faced Zhou Yuan, "Sage, may we go out now?"

"Thomas, the reason I woke you up is because those hundred-plus scientists believe that in order to get out of this strange space, we need to destroy the sun to create a passage to a higher dimension. Then, all of us can board a warship and leave this place at maximum speed through the passage, and then enter normal three-dimensional space."

"Destroy the sun?"

"Yes. That's why I've awakened you so that you can make the decision together."

Among the more than two hundred senior commanders, some began to whisper among themselves.

"Everyone, please be quiet," Thomas shouted, and the whispering stopped. "I know that if we destroy the sun, we will lose the nine-star orbiting system, which means we will lose a lot. But we must get out of this hellhole. Even if our warships are overcrowded, we must get out of here."

"Yes," many people echoed.

"Those who agree to destroy the sun, raise your hands." Thomas was the first to raise his hand, and more than two hundred commanders followed suit.

"Alright, in that case, everyone get ready. Wake everyone up and prepare to migrate to the warships." Thomas gave the order, and the commanders began to leave and go about their separate tasks.

Zhou Yuan left the senior commander's hibernation room, left Earth, and returned to his own warship, where he woke up Panna and Chu Xiaolu.

"Sorry, ladies, you've only been asleep for a little over an hour, and I'm waking you up."

"What's wrong, big brother?" Chu Xiaolu asked.

"We're getting ready to leave."

“That’s great!” Panna exclaimed excitedly, waving her hands and legs around in different places.

In this strange space, fragments of warships drifted everywhere. These fragments flew towards many broken planetary blocks, and then flew back from the broken planetary blocks.

Zhou Yuan, aboard the Little Bee spaceship, brought Huo Jing and over a hundred scientists to his warship. These people then watched from the warship's command center as the Imperial Fleet destroyed five suns.

The warship's artificial intelligence has activated its energy shield and propulsion system. Once the sun is destroyed and becomes a passageway, the warship will accelerate and sprint away.

Five suns were destroyed simultaneously. The shattered copper mirrors of the suns spun rapidly around a hollow, manifold "pipeline." Fragments of a warship converged into the manifold "pipeline" and were instantly sucked in. In the instant they were sucked in, the warship regained its solid hull in three-dimensional space and was no longer fragments.

The Earth Empire, with one million warships, rapidly entered five manifold "pipelines" in batches.

In a dark space, spacetime ripples appeared, and five warships appeared in five different locations. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of ultra-high-energy laser beams shot towards the five warships, while more than a million ultra-high-energy laser beams simultaneously fired fiercely at the centers of the five spacetime ripples. More than thirty Death Star weapons, each one kilometer in diameter, also fired fiercely at the centers of the five spacetime ripples.

Everything seemed to be planned perfectly; all 365 fleets and 365 Zhou Yuanke/Long bodies simultaneously issued the order to attack.

The five warships that had just appeared in three-dimensional space from the center of the spatial ripples activated their energy shields, but they were destroyed in a moment by the powerful attack of tens of thousands of warships. Then, these tens of thousands of warships also began to fire at the center of the spatial ripples.

In the dark space, the five ripples were bombarded by hundreds of thousands of high-energy particle beams, causing them to tremble even more violently. At the center of the spatial ripples, five flashes of light suddenly erupted, and gamma-ray bursts, X-rays, and intense light swept through the dark space, obliterating all 365 fleets.

After a brief appearance of light, the space dimmed again, and everything returned to darkness and silence.

In the originally empty, dark space, a small bright spot appeared. Then, the bright spot grew larger and larger, eventually becoming a warship with a halo. The warship accelerated and quickly entered hyperspace.