The submarine had just descended a few meters when complete darkness enveloped its surroundings. This was a realm of absolute silence and utter darkness. Nothing could be seen, nothing could be heard, only torrents of powerful underwater currents collided against the hull.

This was the deepest trench in the ocean, estimated to be more than twenty thousand meters deep. Upon reaching the bottom, the submarine was expected to endure pressure equivalent to thousands of atmospheres. However, with the materials technology available to Xiao Yu, the instruments he had constructed could easily withstand such pressures, greater pressures posed no problem at all.

During the slow descent, Xiao Yu was reminded of the time he piloted a spaceship inside a gas giant within the Aquila Nebula to harvest Liquid Gold Material. This expedition was very similar to that experience.

Because this planet lacked sufficiently large moons, its oceans did not experience tides. To be precise, there were tides, but they were caused by the gravitational pull of the primary star and a nearby gas giant. Due to the distance, these tidal forces were extremely weak, barely noticeable.

The absence of tides meant that the planet’s oceans were calm, with extremely weak and sparse ocean currents. It was easy for certain regions of the sea to become rich in potassium while others were rich in magnesium, with no effective exchange of materials between these regions.

The emergence of life requires a wide variety of elemental materials. This type of elemental isolation was highly unfavorable to the development of life. However, in some special locations, life could still possibly emerge. Xiao Yu had not given up hope because of this.

While piloting the submarines, Xiao Yu simultaneously gathered data from the surrounding environment and precisely measured the composition of the seawater, continuing his descent, deeper and deeper.

Xiao Yu was searching for an undersea volcano. The emergence of life required heat. On the planet’s surface, because the atmosphere and magnetic field had not yet fully developed, harmful radiation from the star and from space could not be effectively blocked. So although the surface temperatures were sufficient, it was unlikely that life could evolve there. In such a scenario, the environment around deep-sea volcanoes perfectly matched Xiao Yu’s expectations.

The ten-thousand-meter-thick layer of ocean water could provide substantial protection for life, while submarine volcanoes could offer the necessary heat and vital minerals required for biological development.

Currently, the depth had reached nineteen thousand meters. If a human were placed at this depth, they would be instantly crushed, their bones pulverized, their blood forced out of their body. But with Xiao Yu’s advanced materials technology, the submarine showed no signs of abnormality.

Xiao Yu was closely monitoring the subtle changes in the elemental composition of the surrounding seawater. A powerful, penetrating searchlight swept the darkness in all directions.

At last, he reached the seafloor. Due to the absence of life, this planet’s ocean floor differed from Earth’s. There was very little sediment here, most of it consisted of fine, soft gravel. Under the searchlight’s illumination, it reflected a faint yellow glow.

It was desolate here. The silence was so profound, it felt as though he were drifting through the vacuum of space.

“According to the sensor data, about five kilometers in that direction, there should be an active volcano… Let’s go check it out.”

Xiao Yu piloted the submarine slowly toward the target location.

The surrounding seawater grew hotter and hotter, rising to over 500 degrees Celsius and still climbing.

At one standard atmosphere, water can only reach a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius, beyond that, it boils and dissipates heat through evaporation. But here, the pressure far exceeded standard atmospheric levels. Under such conditions, even if the water reached 1,000 degrees Celsius, it would not boil.

After slowly traveling several kilometers, Xiao Yu witnessed a stunning sight.

There, an undersea volcano was erupting. Massive flows of dark red magma surged from its crater, slowly spreading downward along the surrounding rocky terrain. As it flowed, it transferred heat into the surrounding seawater. The hot water rose, and cold water sank, in this process of convection, a thorough exchange of substances occurred.

“This… this is the ideal cradle for simple lifeforms. If they really exist, there’s no better place than here,” Xiao Yu thought silently. He opened the submarine’s intake valves, allowing some seawater to enter as samples. Braving the near 1,000-degree heat, he maneuvered close to the volcano and collected some volcanic ash from its slope.

Once the sampling was complete, the submarine resumed its voyage. It would carry out a three month long seabed operation. At the end of that period, it would return to the surface, and Xiao Yu would retrieve the samples to analyze them thoroughly in the lab.

In total, tens of thousands of submarines were undertaking this task. Besides these underwater survey devices, Xiao Yu also dispatched a vast number of robots to explore the planet’s various caves.

Like Earth, this planet also had numerous caves, some even extending tens of kilometers deep. These caves were the other most likely places, besides the seabed, where life might exist. Additional robots and devices were also sent to the planet’s polar regions to search beneath the ice caps and in deep crevasses for signs of life…

With such all-encompassing methods, Xiao Yu was confident that if this planet harbored life, he would find it.

The search for native life was a personal endeavor for Xiao Yu. Scientific development and the enhancement of strength, however, were shared responsibilities between Xiao Yu and the more than one hundred races aligned with him. In truth, the biological exploration consumed only a small portion of Xiao Yu’s computational power. The vast majority remained devoted to scientific research and base construction.

Currently, the most pressing issue before Xiao Yu was how to truly integrate antimatter technology into both his offensive and defensive systems. Of the two, offense was the priority. For defense, Xiao Yu already possessed Four-Dimensional Shield technology inherited from the Taihao Civilization, so there was less urgency on that front.

On the offensive side, Xiao Yu was certain that even the Molian Civilization had not yet achieved miniaturization of negative matter cannons. Many of their attack methods still relied on the Grand Unified Theory mastered by Level 4 Civilizations. However, with enhancements from Level 5 Civilization technology, their firepower had increased by several dozen times.

Xiao Yu had suffered greatly in this area. During the raid on the Azure Market, it was common for dozens of his ships to gang up on a single enemy vessel, this was a direct consequence of insufficient firepower.

Xiao Yu’s current main weapons were antimatter shells, material disintegration beams, high-energy laser rays, and gravity bombs. These were also the standard weapons of the Molian Civilization. The difference was that the Molian weapon systems seemed to incorporate antimatter technology, giving them significantly greater power.

Xiao Yu’s current mission was to discover new combinations and integrations. Now that he had mastered the properties of regular matter, dark matter, antimatter, and negative matter, there were no more theoretical barriers, only technical ones remained.

These technical challenges and obstacles, now numbered over 100,000. And it was foreseeable that as old problems were solved, new ones would inevitably emerge. At present, Xiao Yu had delegated approximately 30,000 of these issues to scientists from various races. The remaining 70,000 challenges, he had taken on himself.

Within the vast Central Research Academy of Science, robots and scientists of many different races were constantly coming and going, hard at work. To ensure that these scientists could all operate in the same environment, collaborate, and communicate effectively, Xiao Yu had specially developed an ultra-lightweight spacesuit. This suit was smoother than the finest silks of Earth, yet far superior in function to even the most advanced Earth-era spacesuits. It not only provided a comfortable micro-environment for various biological forms but also had a built-in translation system that could convert any language seamlessly into any other.

To overcome racial differences and divergent customs, and to maximize efficiency and collaboration, Xiao Yu established unified etiquette protocols and technical standards for all scientists from the hundred-plus races. He was earnestly working to integrate these races into one cohesive whole.

As a result, within the Central Research Academy of Science, scenes like this were common: in a wide corridor, a tentacled octopus-like being and a lizard-like creature would pass each other. Despite their vastly different appearances, they would speak the same language, perform the standard greeting gestures simultaneously, and even stop to briefly chat about their recent research achievements before hurrying off to their respective laboratories.

The labs were just as diverse, giant-bodied races worked alongside winged, mid-air-hovering intelligent species. All sorts of beings mingled together, but they shared one commonality: knowledge. Their academic foundation was unified. Here, there was no distinction of race or size, they were united in pursuit of a common goal.

The enormous Central Research Academy of Science covered an area of at least several dozen square kilometers. Within it, Xiao Yu had designated a Biological Science Institute, a High-Energy Particle Institute, an Antimatter Technology Institute, and hundreds of other large research branches, subdivided into tens of thousands of specialized labs. He also allocated dedicated living quarters where scientists could rest and recuperate. An advanced internal transportation system connected it all. This place, was like a city.