Li Qingsong knew that abandoning his current self and transferring his consciousness to the backup Clones he had hidden away would mean losing far more than just the numerous ships in his massive fleet. It wasn't just about the intelligent AIs running on his supercomputers, the culmination of countless training datasets and his own painstaking efforts, nor was it just about the large-scale scientific instruments and other such assets.
The true loss would be far, far greater.
Li Qingsong knew that as the primary consciousness, his ability to retain such a vast amount of scientific knowledge, experience, and skills was only possible through his many Clones.
In other words, these memories did not exist independently. In this model, the minds of the Clones had become the "hard drives" for Li Qingsong's primary consciousness to store knowledge and memories.
That knowledge and those memories were stored in the minds of the Clones.
How much can a single mind remember? The sheer volume of knowledge, data, experience, and skills Li Qingsong had amassed was beyond astronomical; it was more than enough to make a single brain burst at the seams.
To abandon these Clones meant abandoning that part of his knowledge as well.
His primary consciousness could, at most, retain only the most critical information and memories.
If he started over, not only would he have to rebuild his fleet, but he would also have to redevelop all his technology from scratch.
Therefore, as long as there was even a sliver of a chance, Li Qingsong was absolutely unwilling to give up everything he currently possessed.
But Li Qingsong still decided to take a risk—to make a big play.
Li Qingsong was going to use the power of a Second-level Electroweak Civilization to fight a Level Three Strong Core Civilization!
All the knowledge and experience Li Qingsong possessed told him this was nearly impossible, but he made the decision anyway.
The first reason, of course, was that he had no other choice.
The second reason was because…
Li Qingsong had a temper, too!
From leaving the Solar System, to leaving the Oriental Star System, and now to embarking on another interstellar flight, over two thousand years had passed in a blur.
'I've been running for over two thousand years!'
'I've had enough!'
'This time, either I break through and become a Strong Core Civilization, or we all perish together!'
'Worst case, I'll just start over. I'd like to see if you, the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity, have any hope of recovering a second time!'
Li Qingsong had made up his mind and formulated a plan that could only be described as insane and risky.
'To execute this plan, I need a few prerequisites. First, I need a relatively young interstellar system. Only a young system would be chaotic enough inside.
'Second, I need a fairly active primary star. An active enough star will give me an opportunity to exploit.'
Li Qingsong quickly searched his current stellar database and immediately identified a suitable target.
Pegasus V342! Or by its other designation, HR 8799!
This star's mass was about 1.5 times that of the Sun, and it was only 60 million years old, still in its stellar infancy.
Because it was so young, the star was extremely active. Its luminosity fluctuated rapidly, brightening and dimming on a cycle of just two days.
This meant it exhibited extremely intense and rapid stellar activity.
The unstable boundary between the star's convective and radiative zones caused its surface to ripple like ocean waves. It was precisely these violent stellar "tides" that caused its periodic changes in luminosity.
At the same time, the interior of this interstellar system was also extremely chaotic.
Particularly noteworthy was that it contained a full seven massive planets. Three of them were large terrestrial planets, with the least massive one still having 1.3 times the mass of Earth.
There were four gas giants. The largest had a mass a full 12 times that of Jupiter—placing it right on the dividing line between a planet and a star. Any larger, and it could have ignited helium-3 or deuterium-tritium fusion in its core to become a brown dwarf.
The least massive one was still 6 times the mass of Jupiter.
The giants of the Solar System were mere runts in the Pegasus V342 Star System.
Not only did it possess numerous large planets, but due to its young age, it also had a number of small celestial bodies comparable to the Oriental Star System, including a material-rich dust disk, an Asteroid Belt, and so on.
To sum it up in one sentence, it was like a 'plus' version of the Solar System. Not only was the primary star larger, brighter, and more active than the Sun, but the terrestrial planets were larger than Earth, the gas giants were larger than Jupiter, and it even had more asteroids than the Solar System.
"This is the place!"
Li Qingsong made up his mind. "Either I am reborn in fire here, or... we all perish together!"
After adjusting the fleet's course once more, Li Qingsong flew toward the interstellar system, still 4.6 light-years away.
「Decades passed in the blink of an eye.」
Li Qingsong's massive fleet finally came to a stop approximately 50 million kilometers from the star.
There was a large planet here as well.
It was the least massive of all the large planets in the Pegasus V342 system.
Though it was the smallest, its mass of 1.3 times that of Earth should have theoretically been enough for its Gravity to attract gas and form an atmosphere.
At the same time, sufficient mass should have also created enough internal pressure to maintain a hot, flowing core, thereby generating a magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from being stripped away by the immense radiation pressure of the primary star.
Unfortunately, while it had sufficient mass and a powerful enough magnetic field, it was too close to its primary star, whose radiation was far too intense.
As a result, its atmosphere had been mercilessly stripped away, leaving behind a barren, gasless sphere.
In the Solar System, Mercury is about 40 million kilometers from the Sun, and the Sun's surface temperature is a full 2,000 degrees Celsius cooler than Pegasus V342, with only about one-fifth of its luminosity.
Even so, Mercury is scorched by the Sun to a surface temperature of several hundred degrees Celsius.
This large planet's situation was even worse than Mercury's.
Its surface temperature reached over 700 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt metals like zinc, aluminum, lead, tin, and magnesium.
This led to a strange spectacle on the planet's surface: despite having no atmosphere, it was dotted with "lakes." Under the yellow-white light of the star, they shimmered in various colors, dazzling and brilliant like scattered jewels.
These lakes were beautiful, but extremely dangerous.
Because they weren't filled with water, but with molten metal, or alloys!