CHAPTER 905: CHAPTER 150: THE MYSTERY OF OLORUN

When Argon II was discovered, it was passing through the Oort Cloud. Its trajectory merely grazed the outer edges of the Oort Cloud. According to computer calculations, its orbit might have been affected by the gravitational forces of the Solar System, causing a slight arc at the Oort Cloud. It will not truly enter the core regions of the Solar System, but will skim past at a distance of hundreds of thousands of miles from the orbit of Neptune...

Ah, no. Although "hundreds of thousands of miles" is used in everyday language to describe something as "extremely far," in the scale of the universe, "hundreds of thousands of miles" is actually very small.

The trajectory of Argon II is at least tens of thousands of astronomical units away from Pluto’s orbit.

After skimming past the edge of the Solar System, it will head once more toward the unknown beyond.

And aside from the Godspeed Court, there is no other spacecraft capable of conveniently retrieving this thing.

However, for the Godspeed Court, "how to retrieve" it is also a significant challenge.

It’s not about "being unable to catch up" or anything like that.

In fact, the biggest challenge for the Godspeed Court in retrieving Argon II is...

Argon II is too fragile and weak.

Using the Godspeed Court to intercept and tow Argon II is akin to using a sixth-generation fighter from the age of chivalric wars to tow a WWI military hot air balloon—the gap might be even larger.

If the Godspeed Court tows Argon II forward, Argon II will be immediately torn apart by the acceleration of the Godspeed Court. Even if Argon II is broken down into large pieces and fixed onto the Godspeed Court, it would still be crushed during the acceleration phase of the Godspeed Court.

Moreover, many of the current deceleration technologies humans have cannot be directly applied to Argon II. For instance, the robust hull of the Godspeed Court relies on a special magnetic field enveloping its entire frame, quickly distributing pressure across the whole. The alloy capable of achieving this requires specific magnetic properties, not just any material can do it. Modern human spacecraft are essentially designed based on this principle.

Of course, these are minor issues, and there are many ways to resolve them. For example, if the shear resistance is insufficient, you can reduce the volume by cutting. If that’s still not enough, you can use a gel to provide protection, and so on.

For the Godspeed Court, the most troublesome part is still "slowing down to the speed of Argon II and maintaining relative stillness with it."

The Godspeed Court has indeed decelerated in the outskirts of the Solar System to release cargo, which then decelerates individually using rockets. But the Godspeed Court rarely decelerates to the extent of Argon II. Currently, the Godspeed Court is essentially a test vessel, with fuel reserves still being a "project in need of breakthroughs."

If the Godspeed Court expends a large amount of fuel to decelerate to the level of Argon II at the outskirts of the Solar System, it would struggle to achieve maximum speed when breaking through the Hero’s stronghold around Saturn and Uranus.

The Godspeed Court has always relied on the advantages of speed and small irregular evasive maneuvers to avoid interception. Many heroes have tried to "anticipate trajectories in advance" to snipe the Godspeed Court. But the skill of the King of Godspeed is truly extraordinary.

Moreover, the most terrifying aspect of the Godspeed Court is precisely this. Even if the Godspeed Court sustains heavy damage, it remains a massive object with a speed exceeding ten percent of the speed of light. If the driver judges that "the situation cannot be salvaged," it can instantly transform into a Destroyer God, obliterating an entire array of giant space structures, or even demolish industrial bases on the gas giants. At the very least, attackers surely cannot escape this ultimate move of mutual destruction with Heaven and Earth.

The risk of attacking a full-speed Godspeed Court is too high, so heroes have never made a firm decision to organize an ambush.

However, if the Godspeed Court expends too much fuel to decelerate, and is unable to return to full speed on the way back, the heroes will certainly not remain polite with them.

Of course, the solution to this problem is also very simple.

The Godspeed Court only needs to make multiple round trips, dropping fuel at predetermined locations each time, which would suffice.

The fuel tanks will intersect with Argon II’s orbit in several years.

The Godspeed Court used this method to send the first batch of Scientific Knights up.

Su Zhan was among them. After becoming a Scientific Knight affiliated with the Godspeed Court, he was immediately dispatched to research Argon II, where he stayed for some time, only returning recently.

The performance of Argon II almost overturned many of humanity’s speculations about the Olorun civilization.

The reactor structures and sizes of Argon I and II are identical, and most likely, the uranium content in their fuel blocks is the same as well. Based on the half-life identification of the uranium fuel blocks in Argon I and II, the launch years of Argon I and II are absolutely within one hundred years of each other, or they may even have been completed simultaneously.

Thus, the statement "Olorun civilization is highly similar to the old human civilization" becomes very questionable.

The old human civilization would go bankrupt building a spacecraft like Argon, let alone two.

If the Olorun people merely wanted to spread their genetic information, there would be no need to send two spacecraft in the same direction. They may have built more Argons, sent them in all directions, and Earth just happened to receive two.

Of course, the Scientific Knight Order proposed another hypothesis, suggesting that the destination of Argon I and II might be Venus. The Olorun civilization, when observing the Solar System, inferred that Venus was most likely their habitable zone, so to ensure the genetic information successfully arrived, they launched Argon II again.

Argon I and II were indeed constructed simultaneously.

This can also be gleaned from the technology used inside Argon I and II.

Argon I and II have almost no differences.

Even the results of comparing the steles are highly consistent.

Indeed, three hundred years ago, the Conquest Heavenly King and the Martial Ancestor, in their youth, proposed the hypothesis that "this might be the limit of cosmic scientific technology."

But now, no one mentions this conjecture anymore.

The reason is simple: human technology has far surpassed Argon.

The level of technology at which Olorun launched Argon could not possibly be the cosmic limit.

In other words, the resource level of the Olorun people’s mother planet is most likely extremely abundant, and being close to a star makes energy acquisition simpler.

But another question arises.

If the mother planet of the Olorun civilization is so outstanding, why didn’t they develop further?

In the direction from which Argon I and II came, humans have meticulously observed all stars within ten thousand light-years. Among these stars, not a single one shows evidence of a Dyson Cloud structure similar to a Throne, nor any seemingly unnatural giant space structures.

Argon I and II may have been traveling for millions of years. If lucky, humans should be able to observe what the Olorun civilization looked like a thousand or ten thousand years ago. If the Olorun civilization has not gone extinct, it should have developed over millions of years by now.

But apart from Argon, humans have found no further evidence of its existence.