Breakthroughs in fundamental physics needed to be made within the Star System, as only there were the material supplies sufficient. However, subsequent research into applied physics and the development of various facilities could be done entirely in space.
Other civilizations couldn’t do this, but Li Qingsong could. In fact, Li Qingsong had already proven this during his long voyage of over two thousand years.
So, what Li Qingsong had to do next was obvious.
It wasn’t technological R&D, nor was it fleet upgrades—at this stage, Li Qingsong had yet to master any Strong Core Level applied technologies, so there was no way to upgrade the fleet. Instead, it was to once again gather resources on a massive scale, build another massive fleet of hollow decoys, and then, flee into Deep Space!
Once he escaped the Interstellar System and entered Deep Space, not even the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet would be able to track him for some time.
This would buy him the time to translate his breakthroughs in fundamental physics into industrial and military power.
Thus, with large-scale technological research on hold for the moment, the vast number of factories didn’t shut down. Instead, they ramped up to an even higher level of efficiency.
This time, the resource stockpiling effort Li Qingsong planned to undertake would dwarf any of his previous attempts.
The reason was simple: with his improved technology, conducting further scientific research to advance it even more would naturally require a far greater quantity of resources.
The last time he set out, including the mass of the ships themselves, Li Qingsong’s fleet had a total mass of about ten trillion tons.
This time, however, not even counting the mass of the ships, Li Qingsong planned for the total stockpiled resources alone to be around 200 trillion tons!
And even a stockpile of this immense scale was, by Li Qingsong’s calculations, barely enough.
If time weren’t so tight, Li Qingsong would have wanted to bring even more resources.
But even these 200 trillion tons of resources presented Li Qingsong with a monumental challenge.
Namely, how was he going to transport all those resources?
The maximum payload of a single giant Space-Air Carrier was about a few hundred million tons.
Wouldn’t 200 trillion tons of resources mean needing several hundred thousand Space-Air Carriers?
Space-Air Carriers weren’t Mercury-class Warships; you couldn’t just build hundreds of thousands of them without breaking a sweat.
Wasn’t every single Space-Air Carrier incredibly time-consuming and difficult to manufacture?
Even if Li Qingsong dedicated all his remaining time to constructing Space-Air Carriers, it would be impossible to build hundreds of thousands of them.
Even with Li Qingsong’s industrial might, he was unequal to a construction project of such a massive scale.
Even if Li Qingsong achieved a future breakthrough in the biological applications of the Grand Unification Formula, doubling his current 1.5 billion consciousness connections to 3 billion, he still wouldn’t be able to complete such a colossal construction task.
This was simply not something a Strong Core Level civilization was capable of.
So then...
Li Qingsong gritted his teeth and made up his mind.
’Then I won’t build Space-Air Carriers!’
’I’ll build a Flying Star!’
Once he settled on this plan, the transport ships that had been carrying vast quantities of resources to the fleet immediately changed course, heading for a region of empty space far from any large celestial bodies.
Here, approximately ten million tons of steel were unloaded and dumped directly into space.
Based on their intended use, these steel materials came in various forms: ingots, plates, coils, bars, and so on.
They were packed into massive containers, each with a volume of about 300 cubic meters, for a total of over four thousand containers.
Using fasteners, these containers were locked together to form a huge, irregular sphere with a radius of about 100 meters, left to float silently in space.
This was the "core" of the Flying Star.
Around this core, one heavy transport ship after another arrived from various planets, depositing all sorts of resources stored in a multitude of ways. There was protium, deuterium, and helium-3 gas in giant tanks; chemicals like sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and hydrochloric acid in massive vats; various plastics, biological products, and machinery in containers; and huge ingots of steel and aluminum, blocks of tin, gold, silver, copper, and iron, and so on. Bit by bit, it was all piled onto the core of the Flying Star.
Like a rolling snowball, under Li Qingsong’s relentless "feeding," the core of the Flying Star gradually grew and developed, becoming larger and larger.
During its ongoing "development," Li Qingsong also left various pre-built pipes and channels to ensure that he could conveniently retrieve even the resources pressed into its very center.
Countless mines and factories on multiple planets roared day and night. Trains thundered endlessly on the heavy-freight rail lines leading to the space elevators. Like water from a pump, vast quantities of resources were constantly "drawn" up from the planetary surfaces into orbit by the space elevators, and then loaded onto heavy transport ships.
Like diligent bees, one transport ship after another collected "nectar" from distant sources and brought it to the Flying Star’s construction site.
With every heavy transport that arrived, the Flying Star grew a little larger.
On average, more than 1,500 heavy transport ships arrived each day. That was over sixty per hour—almost one ship every minute!
Each heavy transport ship carried a payload starting at ten million tons. The types of cargo were dazzlingly diverse, covering practically everything.
From something as small as the spoons the Clones used to eat, to something as large as a full starship Thrust Device assembly, the total number of item categories reached nearly ten million!
In short, Li Qingsong was stockpiling everything the fleet could possibly need for its voyage into Deep Space, piling it all onto this "Flying Star" as if it were free.
Li Qingsong maintained this pace, with a heavy transport arriving less than every minute, and kept busy for a full thirty-two years.
In thirty-two years, the total number of round trips made by the transport ships between the industrial bases and the Flying Star reached 19 million!
The total mass of the various resources that had been transported reached a staggering, unprecedented figure.
A full 202 trillion tons!
This mass of assorted resources, piled together, had in effect created an entire artificial planet out of thin air.
This artificial planet’s average density was about 0.38 grams per cubic centimeter—the reason for such a low density was that Li Qingsong had stockpiled extremely large quantities of light gases like protium and deuterium within it.
It had a radius of 50 kilometers and maintained an overall spherical shape.
A near-spherical celestial body with a 50-kilometer radius, to put it bluntly, had already surpassed the vast majority of celestial bodies in this Star System in both volume and density.
Even an asteroid that was over 100 kilometers at its longest point would have a far smaller total volume than the artificial planet Li Qingsong had created, simply because it was not spherical.
This was a bona fide planet-ship, which Li Qingsong abbreviated as the Flying Star!