Li Qingsong had the ability to build more proton decay detectors.
A single proton decay detector required about 110,000 Clones for routine maintenance and research computations. At this moment, after accounting for other research projects and the maintenance of his industrial systems, Li Qingsong could barely scrape together another 300 million Clones to dedicate to building and researching more proton decay detectors.
This meant he could build approximately 2,700 more proton decay detectors.
In that case, even if the proton's lifetime truly was 10^42 years, Li Qingsong could still reliably detect the phenomenon by sheer force of numbers.
But Li Qingsong had not forgotten one crucial point.
He possessed an industrial capacity that far surpassed that of an ordinary Electroweak Civilization.
At the same time, Strong Core Civilizations, which had successfully unified the Strong Core Force, must exist somewhere in the Cosmos.
This led to a paradox: if the proton's lifetime was truly that long, as high as 10^42 years, to the point that thousands of colossal proton decay detectors were needed to observe its decay…
...then how did ordinary Electroweak Civilizations ever make the breakthrough?
It was important to remember that even if they poured every last resource into the effort, a typical peak Electroweak Civilization could only support a few dozen giant proton decay detectors at most.
It made no sense that an ordinary Electroweak Civilization could achieve a breakthrough with just a few dozen detectors, while he, having already built a thousand, could not!
It was illogical.
This could only mean one thing: the problem wasn't his industrial capacity, nor was it the number of proton decay detectors. It was…
...that he had gone down the wrong path.
Only this possibility could explain his current situation.
'So, is my current theoretical framework wrong? If so, where did I go wrong?'
Scrutinizing the theoretical framework he had spent thousands of years developing and painstakingly perfecting, Li Qingsong felt a growing sense of bewilderment.
'Do protons not decay at all? Or is the decay mode different from what I predicted?'
'The Strong Core Force must be unifiable with the Electroweak Force, so what exactly is the model for that unification?'
Being wrong wasn't frightening. What was frightening was not knowing *where* he was wrong, and having no idea what the right direction was.
After going through hell and back to temporarily repel the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet and dedicating himself fully to achieving a technological breakthrough, Li Qingsong was, for the first time, truly feeling the difficulty of this path.
While continuing to maintain the operation of over a thousand proton decay detectors, Li Qingsong also diverted a massive amount of brainpower into a new round of thought and deduction.
To prevent his own singular mode of thinking from creating blind spots, Li Qingsong ordered every relevant blueprint scientist to drop their current tasks and join the search for a new framework.
「More than a decade passed in the blink of an eye.」
Li Qingsong's search had yielded nothing.
While he had proposed over thirty new theoretical systems to explain the existing phenomena, further verification led to all of them being ruled out. Not a single one could withstand experimental testing.
By now, even with his state of mind, Li Qingsong couldn't help but feel a pang of anxiety.
He had every reason to be anxious.
These three hundred-odd years were time he had fought for with all his might, through exhaustive scheming, by gambling everything he had!
In just over 200 years, the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet would return with a vengeance, yet here he was, completely stuck at this obstacle, unable to advance an inch. How could he not be frantic?
And he couldn't forget: the next time the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet arrived, it would surely be back to its full strength. Moreover, having been fooled and trapped once already, all his countermeasures would be useless the next time around. He would be no match for them.
He wouldn't even be able to escape!
At that moment, Li Qingsong even found himself envying the ordinary Electroweak Civilizations.
Their research capabilities were poor, their industrial strength was weak, and they could only support a few dozen detectors.
But they had time. They could take it slow, "grind" it out bit by bit, gradually improving through incremental optimization.
But he was almost out of time!
「Another decade passed in the blink of an eye.」
Just then, Magnetic Monopole Detector No. 559 suddenly reported a new development to Li Qingsong.
Its high-sensitivity magnetic field sensors indicated that, approximately two minutes ago, the alignment pattern of the superfluid helium-3 had been slightly disturbed.
The pattern was remarkably similar to the predicted effect of a magnetic monopole.
Li Qingsong's spirits soared. He instantly redirected all available Clone brainpower to this matter.
The Clones working in that giant detector meticulously examined all the data it had generated in the last few minutes, distributing it to numerous other research institutions.
In that instant, the massive dataset was divided into hundreds of millions of parts. Hundreds of millions of Clones, like starving men, each took one one-hundred-millionth of the data and began to rapidly read and preliminarily analyze it.
Another contingent of Clones controlled the supercomputers, inputting the various data points to begin calculations.
In an instant, the brains of over a hundred million Clones acted as the computing terminals of a single distributed supercomputer. Each performed its data processing task, and under Li Qingsong's control, the results were aggregated, collecting the reading and analysis from every single Clone before being fed back.
Hundreds of millions of brains functioned as one, moving with perfect, effortless control, with no latency and zero communication overhead.
Under these conditions, in just a few days, Li Qingsong completed the interpretation and analysis of all the data. After thoroughly eliminating all interference, he arrived at a final conclusion—one that left him more thrilled and excited than ever before.
'This is a magnetic monopole! There's no mistake!'
Millions of deuterium-deuterium fusion power plants producing helium-3, the construction and maintenance by countless Clones, the daily research and analysis—at this moment, it had all finally borne magnificent fruit!
Magnetic monopoles really exist!
In that instant, Li Qingsong found the answers to numerous scientific mysteries.
A sense of awe filled Li Qingsong's heart.
This magnetic monopole had most likely been born in the early Cosmos. It possessed a lifespan as long as a proton's and wandered through the Cosmos at near light speed.
Its interaction with ordinary matter was extremely weak, giving it a powerful penetrating ability, much like a neutrino.
It had wandered through the Cosmos like this for tens of billions of years.
It might have witnessed the birth of the Cosmos, the emergence and rapid death of the first generation of stars, the creation of heavy elements, the coalescing of stellar clouds into stars and their gathering into galaxies. It might have borne witness to countless spectacular events throughout the Cosmos.