126: Chapter 126 Arrival at the Shengyang Star System

The Lizardman Civilization was gone. With one shot from the Tianyuan Mothership's main cannon, the entire Proxima Centauri b had been transformed into a world of magma!

Su Fan sighed; such was war between cosmic civilizations—cruel and heartless!

The next step was to establish ore smelting plants within the Proxima Centauri System and then transport the finished ore back to the Great Xia Kingdom.

Although the Solar System also possessed rich mineral resources, it was better to leave them untouched if possible. If they had the capability to use resources from the outside, they would use those first.

Frantically mining until the Solar System's mineral resources were depleted would be irresponsible to future generations!

Su Fan stayed at Proxima Centauri for another year. During this year, a large number of space smelting factories were established.

The Tianyuan Mothership carried a vast amount of machinery and equipment for various purposes; setting up a few space smelting plants was a simple task.

These space smelting plants were fully autonomous, controlled by the Red Queen. Specialized intelligent mining ships would gather minerals from the planet and then fly back to the smelting plants to refine the ore.

The refined metal would be automatically stored in massive warehouses, waiting for Su Fan to send people to collect it later.

These served as the Great Xia Kingdom's resource reserves. While they might not be used immediately, they would play a significant role in the Great Xia Kingdom's future development.

Once all the space smelting plants were operating normally, Su Fan and the others set off once again.

This time, their destination was the Shengyang Star System, located 20 light-years away from the Proxima Centauri System.

The Shengyang Star System was named by Su Fan; it was the massive star system where the Lizardman Civilization had discovered a primitive civilization.

This journey would take 20 years to complete, destined to be incredibly long.

However, Su Fan and the other crew members only needed to log into the Tianyuan Mothership occasionally. For the rest of the time, they could stay on Mars or the Blue Planet.

...

20 years later.

In the year 2070, after a long and lonely journey, the Tianyuan Mothership finally arrived at the Shengyang Star System.

Over these 20 years, Su Fan had spent most of his time on Mars.

The independent research and development of a mothership-class vessel like the Tianyuan Mothership was extremely difficult. Despite having detailed data, progress remained slow even after 20 years.

Even with Su Fan personally joining the effort, only half of the R&D had been completed in these 20 years.

Technology truly became more difficult the further one advanced.

While the independent R&D of the Tianyuan Mothership's systems was mired in slow progress, other relatively simpler Level 3 civilization technologies experienced an explosion of growth.

Beyond technology, the population of the Great Xia Kingdom also saw explosive growth.

By the beginning of 2070, the population of the Great Xia Kingdom had reached 3 billion.

An increase of 1 billion in 10 years might not seem like much, but it was actually quite significant. This meant an annual growth of 100 million people. With a base population of over 2 billion, 100 million people represented nearly a five percent growth rate!

Population growth is usually calculated in parts per thousand; calculating growth by percentage meant it had increased by an order of magnitude.

Thinking back 47 years, when Su Fan had just lost his job and turned to grinding in games, the annual number of births in the entire Great Xia Kingdom was only a little over 8 million!

And that was with a base population of 1.4 billion!

Therefore, whether in technology or people's livelihoods, everything in the Great Xia Kingdom was flourishing, and the lives of the people were becoming more and more comfortable.

Su Fan's son, Su Mingxia, was now 30 years old.

At 30, he should have already started a family and a career, but Su Mingxia had not married. Instead, he had plunged headfirst into the Academy of Sciences to conduct scientific research.

Zhou Xiaoxiao was so worried she couldn't stop sighing. The average marriage age in the Great Xia Kingdom was now 25. Seeing all their neighbors getting married and having children while Su Mingxia remained unwilling made her anxious.

Su Fan was also worried, but there was nothing he could do. Su Mingxia was completely stubborn, seemingly possessing a natural aversion and fear toward marriage.

Eventually, having no other choice, Su Fan had the Red Queen conduct a brief investigation and finally discovered the reason.

During his university years, Su Mingxia had an unhappy romantic experience, which led him to stop believing in love altogether.

Faced with this revelation, Su Fan and Zhou Xiaoxiao could only laugh helplessly, and they stopped interfering in Su Mingxia's marital prospects.

...

Outside the Shengyang Star System, the Tianyuan Mothership floated quietly in space.

Standing in the captain's quarters and looking at the massive star system before him, Su Fan once again marveled from the bottom of his heart at the wonders of the universe.

Shengyang Star, the only star in the Shengyang Star System, was a blue star. According to measurements, the diameter of this star was 100 times that of the Sun.

In the Shengyang Star System, it wasn't just the Shengyang Star that was large; the other planets were all enormous as well!

The Shengyang Star had only seven planets, but the volume of each one was comparable to Jupiter!

The largest planet, which was also the one closest to the Shengyang Star, even had a volume five times that of Jupiter!

"Red Queen, activate the Quantum Radar and scan this star system for any electronic products," Su Fan ordered.

"Yes! Master!"

"Scanning..."

"Scan complete. No electronic products found."

Su Fan nodded and continued, "Proceed forward. Start exploration from the outermost planet, Planet 7."

The Tianyuan Mothership was already inside the Shengyang Star System and not too far from Planet 7.

The radiation range of the Shengyang Star System was vast, reaching a staggering 3 light-years, which was three times larger than the Solar System's 1 light-year.

However, this did not mean that Planet 7—the planet furthest from the Shengyang Star—was at a distance of 3 light-years.

This star system was somewhat similar to the Solar System. The seven major planets were just the ones closest to the Shengyang Star. Beyond them lay a vast Asteroid Belt and meteorite belt, which accounted for the bulk of the system's area.

Planet 7 was approximately 20 light-days away from the Shengyang Star. This distance was roughly equivalent to over 100 times the distance from Neptune to the Sun.

Half a month later, the Tianyuan Mothership arrived outside Planet 7.

Planet 7 was a planet with a volume about twice that of Jupiter. It was a gas giant, and its density was relatively lower than that of a solid planet.

Under normal circumstances, life would not emerge on a gas giant, but Su Fan still had the Red Queen turn on the newly developed life detector.

The life detector was an instrument developed over the last 20 years, possessing the capability for ultra-long-range and wide-area detection of life signals.

After the R&D was successful, Su Fan had used materials collected along the way to build one on the ship.

There was plenty of basic industrial equipment within the Tianyuan Mothership, fully supporting Su Fan in hand-crafting new devices.

As for why he didn't manifest it, it was because the system was tied to his main body. At such a great distance, the system currently lacked the ability to manifest items remotely.

"life detector activated."

"Scanning in progress..."

The Tianyuan Mothership began to orbit Planet 7.

"Scan complete. No detectable life found on this planet," the Red Queen said sweetly.

Su Fan nodded. It was normal for there to be no life; if there were life, it wouldn't be a normal form of life.

"Let's go inside for a look." Su Fan thought of the cosmic rarity he had discovered on Jupiter—the cloud-patterned black gold.

He wondered if this massive gas giant contained the same or a similar cosmic rarity.

"Yes! Master!" the Red Queen replied.

The Tianyuan Mothership slowly began its descent into Planet 7.

...