At the cost of a planet being dismantled, its entire remains now drifting through the Four-Dimensional universe, Xiao Yu had finally returned to the main universe. It was a strange journey across space and time, but the experience was anything but pleasant. In fact, it had been utterly miserable.
Even now, countless unanswered mysteries still lingered in Xiao Yu’s mind. For instance, during the small universe reversion test he had conducted while still trapped in the small universe, why had the results shown discrepancies? What was the real solution to the Dwarf Race’s dilemma? What was with Intelligent Program One’s strange behavior? And so many other unresolved issues. But it seemed unlikely he would ever find the answers to them.
“No matter how many hidden undercurrents there may have been behind the scenes, the final result is this, I made it out. That’s enough.” Xiao Yu thought, gazing at the star that had once again entered his field of vision, now only a few hundred million kilometers away. His heart was filled with emotion.
Upon returning to the main universe, Xiao Yu immediately calculated the time based on the star’s movement trajectory. The conclusion, while over a year had passed inside the small universe, the same amount of time had passed in the outside world as well. It hadn’t been hundreds of billions of years, as he had once feared. That realization allowed Xiao Yu to breathe a deep sigh of relief.
“It seems that within the small universe, it’s just the rate of entropy increase that’s faster, but the flow of time remains the same. Good thing, too. Otherwise, if hundreds of billions of years had passed, the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies would’ve already merged. The state of the Milky Way would be completely different by now, that would’ve been a real mess.”
This star system was as empty as ever. Apart from the lone star, there was nothing else.
Xiao Yu had returned with bountiful rewards. The billion ton of Level 6 Civilization warship fragments were just a minor gain. The true prize was the corpse of that Level 4 Alien Beast, its mass exceeding one trillion tons. With something so massive, there was no way Xiao Yu could load it into a ship.
Instead, he devised another solution, he built numerous engines and directly mounted them onto the corpse, giving it the ability to engage in curvature flight on its own.
Xiao Yu’s plan was to leave this place and find a material-rich star system where he could begin large-scale processing. Using the beast’s corpse as raw material, he would manufacture a fleet of Nation-Class ships, further boosting his combat power. Then, it would be time to head to the star system once inhabited by the Specter elder. There was no doubt that the Molian Civilization had that system under surveillance. Once he showed up there, they were bound to detect him. What followed would be simple, Xiao Yu would command a fleet numbering in the millions or tens of millions and crush the Molian Civilization, forcibly seizing the complete Level 5 Civilization technology tree.
“If the Molian Civilization had known earlier that their schemes at the Azure Market would lead to such catastrophic consequences, would they have regretted it?” Xiao Yu thought darkly. “But times have changed. Back then, I could only flee in panic while you hunted me. But now, my combat power has far surpassed yours.”Had those past events not happened, had the Molian Civilization never made an enemy of him, Xiao Yu would’ve chosen to acquire the complete Level 5 tech tree through fair trade. For example, he might have offered Level 4 Alien Beast flesh or Level 6 Civilization warship fragments in exchange. This had nothing to do with whether the universe was dark or whether people were evil, it was simply Xiao Yu’s personal code of conduct, the principles he upheld as a human.
But things were different now. The hatred between him and the Molian Civilization ran too deep to be resolved. In such a case, the only path forward was to take what he needed by force.
Xiao Yu was commanding his massive fleet, carrying with it the even more colossal corpse of the Level 4 Alien Beast, slowly proceeding on a conventional course. His plan was to reach a certain distance from the star before initiating curvature flight in search of a new, resource-rich star system. But very quickly, something caught his attention.
“Hm? This phenomenon is extremely rare… it’s worth a closer look.” Intrigued by what he saw, Xiao Yu ordered the fleet to come to a halt. Numerous observation instruments were launched and moved into position near the star.
What Xiao Yu observed was that the white dwarf star, liberated from the small universe along with his fleet, was now rapidly approaching the yellow dwarf star.
Without spatial barriers between them, the two stars were naturally subject to each other’s gravitational pull. Their mutual approach was thus easy to understand. The moment Xiao Yu saw the white dwarf moving closer, he calculated its trajectory. The result, the white dwarf and the yellow dwarf would form a binary star system, with a separation of no more than three million kilometers.
At such close proximity, the white dwarf would inevitably draw in a tremendous amount of stellar material from its companion. This material would accumulate on the surface of the white dwarf, and once the mass reached a critical threshold, it would erupt into a supernova explosion.
In other words, Xiao Yu was about to witness the formation of a binary star system with his own eyes. In the universe, no, even just within the Milky Way, binary and multiple star systems were common. But they typically formed slowly over immense cosmic timescales. To see one form in just a few months, or even a few days, was virtually impossible in natural processes.
This was of great significance to Xiao Yu. By observing the process of two stars being drawn into each other’s gravitational dance, from chaotic beginnings to a stable orbital trajectory, he would gain incredibly valuable data.
Thus, Xiao Yu remained on standby with great interest. Not only him, all the scientists even remotely involved in astrophysics had gathered to observe this rare cosmic phenomenon through three-dimensional holographic imagery.
At that moment, the 3D image presented a dramatic scene. Compared to the immense star, the tiny white dwarf appeared no larger than a sesame seed. But it possessed the same, or even slightly greater, mass than the yellow dwarf. Now, it was hurtling directly toward the star along a perpendicular trajectory.
If the two stars were to collide, it would trigger a cataclysmic event on par with a genuine supernova explosion. But Xiao Yu and the scientists knew that wouldn’t happen. The white dwarf would pass by the yellow dwarf at a distance of only one million kilometers before speeding off into the distance, only to be pulled back again by their mutual gravity.
After countless oscillations and near-misses, the two would settle into a stable orbit.
Back in the Earth era, Xiao Yu had once witnessed a similar event. But that time, the object that passed within a million kilometers of a star was a comet. The event was famous across Earth; astronomy enthusiasts around the world had tracked that tiny visitor from the distant stars.
It was the famous ISON comet perihelion event. The comet had originated in the distant Oort Cloud, where it, like countless other icy bodies, orbited the Sun. Likely due to gravitational perturbations from other stars, it was ejected from its stable orbit and began a long journey toward the Sun. It traveled alone through the cosmos for tens of thousands of years, and was only discovered upon nearing the solar system.
Its perihelion distance was just about one million kilometers, possibly even less. It skimmed past the Sun at that distance. But its luck wasn’t great. After disappearing behind the Sun, when it emerged again, only fragments remained.
The Sun had destroyed it. Like a moth drawn to flame, it perished. After tens of thousands of years of darkness, it had existed only for that single, fleeting moment of brilliance. Xiao Yu remembered mourning the destruction of comet ISON for a long time.
But this time was different. The object grazing a star at a distance of one million kilometers was a white dwarf. A yellow dwarf star didn’t have the power to destroy a white dwarf, if anything, it was the other way around.
Under Xiao Yu’s captivated gaze, the once nearly spherical star began to deform into an oval. One side of it stretched upward, sharpening into a point aimed directly at the fast-approaching white dwarf. As the distance shrank even further, the white dwarf’s gravitational force surpassed that of the yellow dwarf. Stellar material began to strip away from the parent star, spiraling toward the white dwarf.
As these materials fell, their speed increased drastically. In the midst of collisions and friction, they generated massive amounts of energy. Intense radiation burst forth, along the white dwarf’s polar axes, ejecting massive jets of matter stretching tens of millions of kilometers into space.
More stellar material continued to flow in. Having broken free from the star’s body, it formed what looked like a massive hand reaching out to grasp the white dwarf. But Xiao Yu knew, it wasn’t the hand grasping the white dwarf; it was the white dwarf’s gravity pulling everything in.
An hour later, the white dwarf had completed its closest approach and was now hurtling off into the distance, awaiting its next encounter. As the distance grew and gravitational force weakened, the massive jets ceased, and the yellow dwarf returned to its spherical form.
The spectacular scene left all the scientists stunned into silence.