“Ship Commander, something’s wrong. They don’t seem to be slowing down. Their speed away from us is too fast, more like… they’ve come to a complete stop.”
The calculation results were quickly available.
The speed at which the two sides pulled apart was equal to their flight speed.
Those warships had indeed stopped moving.
This was almost impossible.
Units like warships required extremely long-distance deceleration, plus the repulsion devices built into the Starport itself, to come to a complete stop.
Otherwise, imagine the inertia of a behemoth weighing hundreds of billions or even trillions of tons, traveling at over 50% the speed of light.
A standard Federation warship weighs 2.2 trillion tons.
Its average speed is 160,000 kilometers per second.
The energy required for acceleration is 2.816 × 10^31 joules, approximately equal to 782 quintillion kilowatt-hours.
A standard warship itself only stores 431 joules of energy.
This means that without mastering mid-flight refueling technology, such as the Advancing Civilization’s technique of directly extracting energy from the Quantum Field, a warship, once accelerated to its standard speed, cannot reduce its own speed to 0.
“It must be the Advancing Civilization’s doing.”
“Contact the warships behind us and ask about the situation.”
Soon, the communications officer replied.
“No response.”
It was expected, but it still made Ju Yintuo’s heart sink slightly.
“Fire an attack to affect their surroundings. See if there’s an energy field restraining them.”
Actually, it was useless.
Once a warship’s speed drops to 0, the remaining energy makes it difficult to accelerate again.
“Ship Commander, a God!”
A series of photos were sent over.
They were quite far from the location of the three Gods dispatched by Luo Yanchen.
The photos taken were also very blurry.
However, it could still be seen that during the period these photos were taken, the Gods in the rear also remained motionless.
They should have been continuously pulling away from the Advancing Civilization warships.
“No need for such an unnecessary act.”
“That entire space has been confined.”
In layman’s terms, it was time stop.
Time paused.
Even Ju Yintuo had only seen this ability in various fictional works.
Those were virtual illusions.
But now, he was seeing it in reality, truly, and a time stop with a range calculated in astronomical units.
This feeling was even more shocking than the material suspension caused by absolute zero.
They detected no change in temperature, or even radiation, from that area.
This meant that it wasn’t a true pause, but a targeted pause. This kind of technology is actually much more difficult to achieve; it’s not something that can be done by simply applying brute force.
“What happened?”
Luo Yanchen, on the other end of the communication, hadn’t quite heard what had just happened on Ju Yintuo’s side.
Ju Yintuo, with a grim expression, told him what was currently happening.
Luo Yanchen sighed.
“The enemy’s strength is still too great.”
“Many of their methods are beyond our imagination.”
“You all need to act quickly, or the result will be the same.”
“Retreat. I hope civilization's home universe can hold them back for a while.”
They could only give up.
After all, they had no idea of the principles behind the technology the Advancing Civilization was using.
Luo Yanchen himself had given up on advancing to provide support, fearing he would be affected.
However, the incomprehensible things were just beginning.
That static space suddenly erupted with terrifying energy.
The direction of this energy was precisely towards the fleet Ju Yintuo was about to evacuate.
