Over the years, Li Qingsong had never relaxed his efforts to receive information from the Solar System.
Although the vast distance between them caused these messages to be delayed by more than a decade, and the images he saw were of events that had occurred more than ten years ago, this was still the most direct information available to Li Qingsong.
This was only possible thanks to the connection between his consciousness and his clone, the principle of which even he didn't understand. Other weak electromagnetic civilizations wouldn't even be able to obtain information with such a long delay.
Thus, Li Qingsong, through pairs of eyes hidden in the vast depths of the Solar System, and with the help of automatically operated observation equipment, personally witnessed that dim star gradually brighten, its volume slowly expand, and now, it resembled a bright nebula, appearing several times larger than the Moon.
Li Qingsong's heart grew heavier.
After observing and estimating through telescopes, Li Qingsong saw that the overall size of this fleet was even larger than his own Solar System migration fleet.
There were at least 800 super-giant aerospace carrier ships, each covered with densely packed medium and small spacecraft, along with numerous giant cylindrical ships, and countless unmanned warships!
Including the unmanned warships, the total number was at least 50 million!
"Such a massive fleet..."
Li Qingsong narrowed his eyes slightly.
Based on the information obtained from the Lantuk Civilization and the knowledge he had gained from developing intelligent AI over the years, Li Qingsong knew that what constrained the size of this machine civilization's fleet was probably not technological level, but the number of captives it had.
Only with enough captives, through the transformation of special algorithms, could the AI have more intelligence, sufficient productivity, and the precise control capabilities to produce spaceships.
Judging from the size of this fleet, the number of intelligent lives currently living in this fleet as "brain mines" was probably no less than one hundred billion...
The total population of the entire Lantuk Civilization was only around one hundred billion.
Adding in the extremely high rate of intelligent life attrition within the machine civilization, this "brain mine" population of over one hundred billion probably came from at least two or more civilizations, possibly even three or four.
If the Lantuk Civilization had not been destroyed by him, the intelligent lives of the Lantuk Civilization would have faced the same fate of becoming "brain mines," allowing this machine scourge's fleet to grow even larger.
Under Li Qingsong's close watch, the fleet finally completed its deceleration and docked in the Jupiter system.
Li Qingsong saw countless mining ships leave the fleet and land on numerous planets.
During this process, one detail caught Li Qingsong's attention.
He saw that when faced with an asteroid that unexpectedly appeared, one of the small warships flew out and launched only an unknown projectile, and the asteroid, which was over 20 meters in size, exploded and disintegrated.
What kind of weapon is this! How can it have such power?
Even his most powerful electromagnetic railgun weapons could only penetrate this asteroid. It would be impossible to shatter it with a single blow.
This seemed to indicate that their projectiles had a higher energy release mechanism.
After being shattered, the fragments of the asteroid were still moving forward at extremely high speed. However, the ships in their path did not dodge or avoid them, as if they hadn't noticed the debris.
When the asteroid fragments flew close to the ships, Li Qingsong saw that the ships were simultaneously surrounded by a faint yellow light curtain of some unknown material, which flashed and disappeared. Blocked by this light curtain, the asteroid fragments were directly bounced off, failing to cause any damage to the ships.
Energy shields?!
Li Qingsong felt another wave of shock.
Such technology actually exists? And... a Tier 3 strong-force civilization can master it?
If that's the case, the energy shield technology is what allows a strong-force civilization's fleet to reach seventy or eighty percent of the speed of light, and solves the problem of particle collisions?
No wonder their speed can be so high...
Even such small ships can be equipped with energy shields, so it goes without saying that the larger ships have them.
In terms of offense, Li Qingsong didn't know how many types of weapons they possessed. But one can infer the whole from a part, judging from the weapon that shattered the asteroid earlier.
Now, with the appearance of ultra-strong defensive facilities like energy shields, if he were to face this machine scourge in his current state, how would he fight?
No matter how strong his armor is, it probably couldn't withstand the attack of that weapon. No matter how powerful his electromagnetic railguns, missiles, and mines are, they probably couldn't penetrate that energy shield!
In this situation, even if his warships outnumbered the opponent by ten or a hundred times, it probably wouldn't be of any use.
This isn't a gap that can be made up for with numbers like against the Lantuk Civilization!
But after observing secretly for a period of time, Li Qingsong discovered something even more shocking.
The scale of this fleet was extremely large, and the spread was also very wide, with a fleet width of up to hundreds of millions of kilometers.
Normally, this would mean that there would be a significant delay in communication from one side of the fleet to the other. Because electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light.
One hundred million kilometers is at least a delay of more than 5 minutes.
However, judging from the overall movement of this fleet, their actions were extremely coordinated, as if there was no communication delay at all.
Then...
Superluminal communication?
A technology that can communicate in real-time, regardless of the distance, ignoring communication delays?
If he could master this technology, then why would he have to endure the communication delay of up to a dozen years from the Solar System to the Altair system?
With superluminal communication, how high could the coordination of the entire fleet be, and how much combat power could it bring to the battlefield?!
More importantly...
After realizing that this machine scourge fleet was very likely to possess superluminal communication technology, Li Qingsong's heart instantly rose, and his mind instantly tensed.
If they possess superluminal communication technology, and can communicate in real-time between two different star systems that are more than a dozen light-years apart...
Their main fleet may not need to personally reach a certain star system to determine whether there is a intelligent civilization present.
They can completely launch a probe with superluminal communication capabilities to every suspected target star system, every star system he might reach, or launch a probe fleet, and determine whether that star system is his destination without the main fleet having to move.
In this way, all his disguises would be rendered ineffective. After figuring out where he is, the main fleet can directly attack, and can reach his star system in a very short time, and then complete the capture!
