Chapter 1

One of the many universes, the Milky Way galaxy, the Solar System, Earth, Mount Wilson Observatory.

A group of American teenagers in school uniforms, led by a young, curly-haired astronomer, were touring the Mount Wilson Observatory's affiliated memorial hall.

This kind of work, leading students to visit humanistic memorial museums, is usually the responsibility of teachers from schools holding off-campus activities.

However, the teacher of this group of American teenagers happened to be a beautiful blonde woman.

Therefore, this curly-haired, somewhat nerdy-looking astronomer took the initiative to take on the responsibility of leading the students on the tour.

"...Edwin Powell Hubble, born on November 20, 1889, was an astronomer, the founder of galactic astronomy, and a pioneer of observational cosmology, known as the father of galactic astronomy.

From 1923 to 1924, Mr. Edwin Hubble used the 100-inch reflecting telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory to photograph the Andromeda Nebula and M33, confirming that they were huge celestial systems outside the Milky Way—extragalactic galaxies.

Since then, mankind's worldview has expanded from the Milky Way to the entire universe.

Afterward, it was here, in cooperation with his assistant Humason, that he discovered the redshift phenomenon in the spectra of distant galaxies, and the farther away the galaxy is from us, the greater the redshift..."

The curly-haired young astronomer spoke confidently in his field, enjoying the admiring gazes of the teenage students and the female teacher, and explained with a smile, "As for what redshift is.

Well... you should have learned about the Doppler effect in school, right? Just like when a car approaches, the sound of the horn gets louder, but the wavelength gets shorter.

When a car moves away, the sound of the horn gets smaller, but the wavelength gets longer.

The same is true for light. When the distance between a luminous object and the observer increases, the spectral lines of the spectrum will move towards the red end, the wavelength becomes longer, and the frequency decreases.

When the distance is shortened, the spectral lines show a blue shift.

Hubble's discovery of the collective redshift of galaxy spectral lines proves one point—all galaxies are moving away from us, that is, the universe is expanding..."

The curly-haired astronomer led the students to a large screen and paused, "As for what the expansion of the universe can bring us.

Well... imagine, in the vast universe, there is an invisible force that separates us from the stars in the sky.

Every moment, thousands of stars fall out of our light cone.

No matter how developed our human civilization is,

We will never be able to discover those stars again, and we will never be able to contact the civilizations that may exist in those stars, and we will never know their existence.

Every moment, we are losing something forever, like an hourglass with only half left.

Space is vast and time is long, so cherish the people around you, share the same planet, and the same era."

The curly-haired astronomer smiled slightly and pressed a button he took out of his pocket.

Whoosh—

The huge LCD panel behind him changed, revealing a scene of countless stars.

"Wow!"

The teenagers sincerely marveled at this spectacle.

The young astronomer, with his back to the LCD panel, smiled at the students and said, "Thanks to the latest technological achievements, we can now see the spectral lines of many planets in the Milky Way on the LCD panel in real time, clearly and intuitively.

That's really spectacular, when I first saw this picture..."

"No, no, Carl."

The beautiful female teacher, who had been following the student group, called out the astronomer's name and stammered, "Do you think this picture is normal?"

"Huh?"

The astronomer turned his head to look, and in the next second, his heart was shaken.

On the LCD panel, countless stars in the Milky Way (some of which were marked with constellations) emitted blood-like light.

The red light was intertwined, like a majestic river of blood, surging from far to near.

"This, this is impossible!"

The astronomer named Carl trembled. Just as he took out his phone from his pocket, a staggering colleague with a panicked expression ran from the corner of the corridor.

Carl hurriedly shouted, "Is there something wrong with our telescopes?"

"No, if you're talking about all the stars collectively redshifting, observatories elsewhere in the world have also observed it."

The colleague said breathlessly, "Go, the doctor is gathering all of us. The National Security Agency's helicopter will be here soon."

The female teacher finally couldn't hold back her anxiety and doubt, and asked, "What's going on?"

"This..."

The astronomer gritted his teeth, "There are four types of redshift.

Doppler redshift, due to the radiation source moving away in a fixed space—such as the revolution of stars.

Gravitational redshift, due to photons escaping from the gravitational field and radiating outward—such as white dwarfs with extremely strong gravitational fields.

Cosmological redshift, due to the expansion of the universe itself—that is, normal celestial redshift.

If the picture on the screen is real, then there are only two possibilities.

All the stars, from far to near, have been transformed into white dwarfs.

Or, they are being pulled away uniformly by some force..."

The female teacher instinctively asked, "Didn't you say there are four types of redshift?

Doppler redshift, gravitational redshift, cosmological redshift, what about the fourth type?"

"The fourth type..."

The curly-haired astronomer, ignoring his colleague's urging, hesitated and said, "All the stars, suddenly being drained of an incalculable amount of energy,

It's like a civilization beyond our imagination is draining the energy of billions of suns."

Suddenly, the alarm in the astronomical memorial hall sounded loudly, and everyone stared blankly at the window.

The sky darkened.

A red and black biomass ship as vast as a continent, obscuring the sky, appeared in low Earth orbit without any warning.

While easily destroying all artificial satellites in orbit, it also blocked the sunlight shining on the Earth.

Darkness descended.

"Saintess,

The Cerberus Swarm Fleet, the Doragon Swarm Fleet, the Gorgon Swarm Fleet, the Behemoth Swarm Fleet, the Jormungandr Swarm Fleet,

Has used the wormholes generated by extracting stellar energy,

Warped to the C11, C94, B87, and d351 star regions to participate in the local star region's planar war.

There are some rebellious forces there, but with the Lord of Flesh and Swamps above, all acts of resistance will lead to destruction."

The hoarse and turbid report from the Overmind echoed through the broadcast system of the grand and empty bridge.

The only figure on the bridge—a woman in gorgeous attire—smiled slightly and strolled to the floor-to-ceiling porthole of the swarm flagship.

Through the porthole, which was printed with a huge, flamboyant, translucent character "Chai,"

She overlooked the planet below, plunged into darkness.

"It's rare to encounter a planet with such a high degree of similarity to Earth. Let the swarm protect them.

Oh, right, find out if there's any delicious food on their planet when the time comes.

I'm hungry again."

...

ps: There will be extras.