Over the years, while Li Qingsong hadn’t focused heavily on technological development, he had nonetheless made some progress.
During his years in the Oriental Star System, he had integrated these advancements into his starship construction, improving the fleet’s overall performance compared to when it first departed the Solar System.
This was why Li Qingsong was able to increase the fleet’s acceleration by 50%, from 0.04 to 0.06 meters per second squared.
As the fleet continuously accelerated, its distance from the Oriental Star grew ever larger. Li Qingsong observed the density of matter around him rapidly decrease. The once-ubiquitous asteroids grew sparse and then vanished, becoming impossible to spot without a dedicated search.
However, Li Qingsong did discover some peculiar asteroids.
These asteroids had highly eccentric orbits, meaning their apoapsis—in relation to the Oriental Star, of course—could be extremely distant, while their periapsis could be extremely close.
Observing their orbits, Li Qingsong slowly began to understand.
These were clearly small celestial bodies that had been flung out by the Gravity of larger bodies like giant planets and the Oriental Star itself.
Over the course of their long future evolution, their orbits would expand, taking them ever farther from the Oriental Star. Eventually, at a distance of about 10 billion kilometers, they would converge into an Asteroid Belt, much like the Solar System’s Kuiper Belt.
Some other asteroids had even more peculiar orbits. Based on his simulations of celestial mechanics within the Oriental Star System, Li Qingsong concluded that in the far-flung future, their orbits would become so vast that they would circle the Oriental Star from over a light-year away.
Furthermore, as the Oriental Star System evolved, more inner bodies would be ejected and assimilated into these two types of orbital paths, causing their populations to grow in both number and scale.
By then, the Oriental Star’s Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud would have formed, and the inner system would stabilize, drastically reducing the frequency of asteroid collisions.
The Solar System’s today is the Oriental Star’s tomorrow.
However, there were some differences between the two.
The Oriental Star has greater mass and a faster rate of fusion, giving it a shorter lifespan. In approximately three billion years, it would enter the final stage of its life.
It might not even have time to form a mature Oort Cloud before evolving into a White Dwarf Star. Who could say for sure?
There were simply too many variables involved; not even Li Qingsong could be one hundred percent certain.
While maneuvering the vast fleet at full-power acceleration, he meticulously observed everything within the Oriental Star System, seizing every opportunity to expand his knowledge and deepen his understanding of stellar evolution.
Time passed slowly. In the blink of an eye, more than six years had gone by.
By this time, Li Qingsong’s fleet had reached 4% of the speed of light—approximately 12,000 kilometers per second—and its distance from the Oriental Star had grown to over a trillion kilometers.
Viewed from this distance, the Oriental Star’s apparent magnitude was still a brilliant -10, bright enough to make objects cast shadows.
The Sun, by contrast, while still bright at this distance, would no longer be able to cast shadows.
A velocity of 4% the speed of light already matched the fleet’s maximum speed upon leaving the Solar System.
Yet, Li Qingsong’s fleet didn’t stop accelerating. It was still maintaining its full-power acceleration of 0.06 meters per second squared.
This continued for another 3.2 years, by which time the fleet’s velocity had reached 6% of the speed of light, or approximately 18,000 kilometers per second.
This velocity already matched the target Li Qingsong had originally set. But even then, he did not stop accelerating!
The massive fleet continued to increase its speed for another 3.2 years.
Only when the fleet’s velocity reached 8% of the speed of light—approximately 24,000 kilometers per second—did the Thrust Devices, which had been running continuously for over a decade, finally shut down in unison.
Acceleration ceased. The inertial cruise began.
For an Electroweak Civilization, a velocity of 8% the speed of light would be almost unimaginable. Leaving aside the problem of Particle collisions, they simply wouldn’t have enough fuel to support it.
Yet in the short time since arriving in the Oriental Star System, Li Qingsong had managed just that. By dedicating a mere fraction of his mental capacity—even while preoccupied with industrial production and Quantum Supercomputer research—he had integrated the conjectures and breakthroughs from his journey out of the Solar System. This alone improved the fleet’s overall performance by over 5%, laying the foundation to achieve such a high speed.
Furthermore, the fleet’s sheer scale—twenty times larger than the one that left the Solar System, carrying five times the non-fuel resources—provided the material foundation for this feat.
As for the problem of Particle collisions?
It wasn’t a major issue.
After entering the inertial cruise, Li Qingsong immediately dispatched a large number of robots and Clones in specialized vessels. They retrieved rolls of "plastic sheets" from the warehouses and applied them to the exterior hull of every starship, much like putting a screen protector on a phone.
These plastic sheets were a special development of Li Qingsong’s, a highly advanced material with excellent radiation-resistant properties.
Ultimately, however, they were still just hydrocarbons, so calling them "plastic sheets" was not inaccurate.
As a result, interstellar dust Particles could only collide with these plastic sheets. Any damage would be inflicted on the sheets’ structure, leaving the starships’ armor unscathed.
Once the sheets sustained a certain amount of damage, they were simply removed, melted down to be recycled, and replaced with a new layer.
In this way, Li Qingsong transformed the issue of Particle collisions from a technological problem into a logistical one—’As long as I have enough plastic sheets, impacts are no longer a threat. Problem solved.’
This was the first time Li Qingsong had ever reached 8% of the speed of light, and the first time these plastic sheets had been deployed on such a massive scale.
Throughout the journey, Li Qingsong closely monitored the changes in the sheets. He watched as their initially black, tough, and smooth surfaces, over time, became a mottled mixture of gray, black, red, and green.
Their texture also became porous, brittle, and less dense.
This process took only five years.
’One set of sheets can last five years? Acceptable. That meets my projections.’
After applying a new set of sheets, Li Qingsong had the old batch thrown into a furnace to be melted down and reforged.
And so, when the sheets—originally composed of only carbon and oxygen—were melted down, they unexpectedly yielded dozens of other elements: gold, silver, copper, iron, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, and more, like a cosmic chowder.
After the first batch of several hundred thousand tons of plastic sheets had been purified and reforged, Li Qingsong stared at the roughly 150-gram gold bar sitting before him. The gold was just one of the impurities that had been extracted, and the sight of it gave him a rather wry feeling.
’Heh, I never thought this stuff could be used for Alchemy.’