Since the initial data was still incomplete, Xiao Yu didn’t yet know exactly how much matter and space needed to be ejected before his small universe’s velocity would decrease to zero and ultimately merge with the main universe. But he figured that this dwarf planet, with a volume of approximately twenty billion cubic kilometers, should probably be enough.
Under Xiao Yu’s command, several billion engineering robots were deployed onto this dwarf planet, working tirelessly day and night. This figure only included humanoid engineering robots, not even counting the various large-scale machinery and the more than two million Town-Class ships tasked with transport duties. Space Three and Space Four had already been completed, and along with Space Two, they were all transported by Xiao Yu to the vicinity of the dwarf planet. This saved a great deal of time and significantly accelerated the pace of the project.
Thus, within this silent star system, an astonishing sight unfolded. Countless robots and mechanical devices bustled across the planet like ants, tearing into it as if gnawing on bread, savagely ripping chunk after chunk from its surface. These fragments were quickly transported by spaceships to designated locations, where spatial weapons ejected them along with the surrounding space.
A line segment, when arranged into a circle, yields the largest area. Similarly, a surface, when curled into a sphere, provides the largest volume. To eject the greatest amount of matter with the smallest amount of power, Xiao Yu even performed preliminary processing on the transported materials. Specifically, once a sufficient mass and volume of material was collected, a gravitational bomb would be placed inside and detonated.
Upon detonation, the gravitational force would compact the scattered materials into a near-perfect sphere. Then, before the gravitational effect dissipated, a spatial weapon would tear away that region of space and hurl it outward.
Each time a spatial fragment was ejected, hundreds of millions or even billions of tons of material would be expelled. After three months of continuous operations, the planet’s diameter had already shrunk by a full 500 kilometers.
This meant it had lost a considerable portion of its mass. Yet its kinetic energy remained unchanged, and it continued orbiting the white dwarf at its original velocity. The reduced mass also meant weakened gravity, and with less gravitational restraint, its orbit expanded by several hundred thousand kilometers.
Calculations regarding the small universe’s orbit had been ongoing. The ever-shrinking number displayed the decreasing distance between the small universe and the main universe. Success lay ahead, and Xiao Yu was moving forward, step by step.
This was a mad undertaking. In the more than ten thousand years since leaving Earth, Xiao Yu had destroyed more than one planet, whether by direct explosion or by hurling them into stars. But this kind of methodical annihilation, such an insane form of destruction, was a first even for him. Moreover, Xiao Yu suspected that even within the main universe, there likely wasn’t any other entity employing such a method.
To completely disassemble a planet, what a massive and deranged task that was!Fortunately, this planet was a dwarf planet. It had no liquid magma in its interior, and its extremely low temperature prevented the existence of liquid water or other fluids, sparing Xiao Yu from a great deal of trouble.
During the operation, Xiao Yu also took the opportunity to thoroughly study the planet’s geological composition, refining his planetary evolution theory significantly.
Time passed bit by bit, and everything proceeded just as Xiao Yu had anticipated. The small universe drew closer and closer to the main universe, and its spatial stability continued to decline. This in turn meant an increase in the efficiency of spatial weapons. Up to this point, a single spatial weapon could eject tens of cubic kilometers of material in a single launch.
A year had already quietly passed, and Xiao Yu had completely reshaped the appearance of this small universe. The once-scattered wreckage of warships had been entirely retrieved by Xiao Yu, those with value were carefully stored away, while those without were mixed with material from the dwarf planet and directly ejected into space.
Up to this point, the dwarf planet’s diameter had decreased to less than two hundred kilometers, turning it into a true asteroid. Due to its internal pressure, while it couldn’t form liquid magma, a general increase in temperature was still possible. In fact, during the excavation process by the robots, the closer they got to the core, the higher the temperature became, rising to nearly 300 degrees Celsius.
There was another factor, also due to internal pressure, the material density at the planet’s core was extremely high. Though not to an exaggerated extent, it still posed a significant obstacle to Xiao Yu’s engineering progress.
The working conditions began to deteriorate, and the pace of the project was severely hindered. After some thought, Xiao Yu decided to go all in. He deployed specialized engineering robots to drill several deep holes, each hundreds of kilometers deep, into the remaining planetary core. Large-yield nuclear bombs were buried in these holes and then detonated. With a blinding flash of light, what remained of the planet was completely blasted apart.
This planet had finally vanished entirely at Xiao Yu’s hands, without even a trace of a corpse left behind.
Once the planet was shattered into fragments, the project’s progress became much smoother. However, Xiao Yu began to grow increasingly anxious. By now, he had amassed a vast amount of experimental data and could roughly calculate how much matter needed to be ejected to bring the small universe to a halt.
The calculation results seemed to confirm Luka Three’s speculation. According to Xiao Yu’s math, to bring the small universe to a complete stop, the total mass that needed to be ejected was roughly equivalent to the mass of the dwarf planet.
This could hardly be a coincidence. That fact indirectly validated the Trolor Civilization’s arrangement. Xiao Yu began to believe that this dwarf planet truly had been left behind by the Trolor Civilization, meant specifically for the Dwarf Race who came later, to be used for decelerating the small universe.
But this result was only an approximation. Xiao Yu still couldn’t derive highly precise data, meaning that the actual mass required to bring the small universe to zero velocity might differ slightly. It could be a bit more or a bit less than the total mass of the dwarf planet.
If it turned out to be less, then there would be no problem. But… what if the required mass was greater than the planet’s total mass?
Don’t forget, even if the discrepancy were only 0.1%, and given that the Trolor Civilization left this relic behind hundreds of thousands of years ago, a 0.1% deviation over such a span isn’t exactly surprising.
But once you do the math, the problem becomes far more serious.
The dwarf planet’s total mass was about two trillion trillion tons. A 0.1% deviation would amount to two hundred billion billion tons. Where on earth was Xiao Yu supposed to find that much mass?
The white dwarf star certainly had a tremendous amount of mass, but with Xiao Yu’s current technological level, he simply didn’t have the ability to do anything to a white dwarf.
Apart from the white dwarf, the small universe also contained a large number of warship fragments, but their total mass didn’t exceed a billion tons, which was negligible.
With no external resources to draw from, Xiao Yu would have to turn to his own possessions. But here’s the problem, even a Nation-Class spaceship only had a mass of several hundred million tons. If there really was a 0.1% margin of error, even dismantling all of Xiao Yu’s ships wouldn’t be enough to fill the gap.
“If things really come to that.” Xiao Yu thought to himself, “then I might have no choice but to carve up the corpse of that Level 4 Alien Beast.”
“The corpse of that Level 4 Alien Beast has a total mass of roughly a trillion tons. But I was planning to use it for constructing a ship… Ah, hopefully things won’t get to that point.”
“For now, let’s just finish ejecting what’s left of this planet.” Xiao Yu sighed inwardly, pulled himself together, and began wrapping up the task.
Now, in this small universe, the dwarf planet had completely vanished. All that remained of its massive body were a few asteroid fragments, each only a dozen or so kilometers in diameter. Xiao Yu had no intention of sparing even its remains. He activated the spatial weapons, and soon, those fragments were ejected as well.
After completely dismembering and ejecting the entire dwarf planet, Xiao Yu conducted another massive cleanup across the small universe. All broken components, unrecyclable warship debris, and general trash were gathered together, amounting to around 300 million tons, and launched all at once.
Everything was now complete. Xiao Yu began to wait in silence.
At this moment, the small universe was overlapping with the main universe. To verify whether the small universe had fully lost its kinetic energy, there was a simple method, observe whether the small universe would drift away from the main universe again. If it did, that would prove it still had kinetic energy, and his work was not yet finished. If it didn’t, then he had succeeded. From that point on, all he needed to do was wait patiently. At most, within a month, the small universe would be assimilated by the main universe.
And verifying this was simple, just keep firing low-powered spatial rifts and analyze the rift strength to infer indirectly.
Space One aboard the China spaceship was currently doing just that. Tiny spatial rifts, invisible to the naked eye, continued to flash and vanish before it…