“Oh? Why do you suggest this?” Xiao Yu asked somewhat surprised.

“The reason is very simple,” Luka Two replied. “Since you have already disclosed your plan to this aging Specter, and at this stage, the Molian Civilization is indeed passing technology on to you, isn’t that great? The Molian Civilization and the aging Specter both believe they know the truth, yet they fail to realize that the ones who truly know the truth are only ourselves. That’s why I suggest that you reveal the dictionary to this aging Specter, or simply stop using the current dictionary. Doing so will help enhance this aging Specter’s trust in you.”

Xiao Yu pondered for a moment.

“It does seem to be the case. The Molian Civilization and the aging Specter each grasp only a portion of the truth but believe they have mastered everything. In this asymmetry of information, I can maneuver between the two sides and extract the greatest benefit. Under these circumstances, there is indeed no need to continue concealing from the aging Specter.”

“You are right, I accept your suggestion. From now on, all communications with the Molian Civilization will be conducted in plaintext. Moreover, there is another advantage to doing this. During the development of stellar weapons, complete secrecy is impossible due to the number of scientists involved and the extensive communication among them. In this situation, plaintext communication can serve as a cover for these research activities.”

Ever since receiving the message from the Specter companion, Xiao Yu and Luka Two had step by step engineered the current situation. Up to this point, every step of the plan, every scenario, had unfolded precisely within Xiao Yu’s expectations. Luka Two and the psychosocial sciences division under its leadership possessed excellent overarching control, while Xiao Yu’s vast computational power allowed for every part of the plan to be meticulously detailed and fully considered. It could be said that without either Luka Two or Xiao Yu, such a plan would have been impossible to devise.

Once again, Xiao Yu deeply felt the correctness of his decision to establish the Psychosocial Sciences Institute and to have risked his safety to rescue Luka Two in the Azure Market.

After accepting Luka Two’s proposal and switching to plaintext communication, Xiao Yu turned his attention to Luka Three and Luka Four.

“At the current stage, how far have our scientists progressed?” Xiao Yu inquired.

“Respected master, regarding the stellar weapons, our scientists are progressing rapidly. It is estimated that in three more days, we will be able to officially begin the research and development work. However, there is one issue: the Molian Civilization has imposed very strict technological restrictions on us. In other words, in the development of stellar weapons, we can only play a supporting role. Even if the stellar weapons are eventually developed, without the Molian Civilization, we would not have the capability to reproduce them,” Luka Three replied.

“The barrier between civilizations is not so easily broken, especially between two civilizations like ours who are destined to be enemies. To have reached this point, the Molian Civilization is already being quite generous. Everything else can wait until after the aging Specter has been eliminated,” Xiao Yu said somewhat helplessly.

While conducting calculations and deductions for the new technology, Xiao Yu was also contemplating the plans for what lay ahead.

That was… if he truly managed to eliminate the aging Specter, how would his fleet confront the Molian Civilization afterward?

Let us not forget, the existence of his Specter companion had already been detected by the Molian Civilization. Xiao Yu did not believe that during this time, they would not have devised countermeasures. In other words, when facing the Molian Civilization, he no longer had any trump cards left. His entire strength had already been exposed.

“One crisis after another, any mishandling of a single crisis could mean total annihilation for me,” Xiao Yu sighed.

Three days later, the construction of the stellar weapon finally began. Since the stellar weapon was fundamentally different from ordinary negative matter cannons, all of its various components had to be newly manufactured. More importantly, at this stage, neither Xiao Yu nor the Molian Civilization had fully mastered the complete technology for constructing the stellar weapon. Under such circumstances, Xiao Yu could only adopt a rather helpless approach, conducting manufacturing and research simultaneously.

This posed a troublesome issue. Perhaps, according to the current level of technology, the components Xiao Yu was producing were qualified and usable, but once new technologies were developed, these components might become obsolete. As a result, the construction of the stellar weapon often required rework, which increased the difficulty of the project by at least several dozen percentage points.

But there was no other choice. The current plan was already a desperate gamble for survival. Xiao Yu could only force himself to stay focused, immersing himself in endless streams of data calculations every day.

The stellar weapon that Xiao Yu and the Molian Civilization had planned would reach a power of one hundred fifty trillion tons. In other words, this stellar weapon would be able to fire a tachyon torrent equivalent to negative one hundred fifty trillion tons in a single shot. These tachyon torrents would pass unimpeded through the outer layers of the star, without reacting with the surrounding matter. Only upon reaching the star’s core, where they encountered high-density matter, would these tachyons interact with the positive matter and instantly annihilate it. The sudden disappearance of one hundred fifty trillion tons of mass would carve out a cavity nearly one cubic kilometer in size inside the star. Deprived of the support of this matter, the star would quickly collapse inward under its own pressure, thereby triggering a supernova explosion.

The tachyons traveled many times faster than light, and once the star lost its internal support, the supernova explosion would occur instantaneously. Therefore, in Xiao Yu’s plan, once the stellar weapon was fired, the aging Specter would be doomed.

However… one hundred fifty trillion tons of power was simply enormous. To put it into perspective, the negative matter cannon the Molian Civilization previously built on a planet only had a power output of less than one hundred million tons. Even so, the diameter of that cannon’s firing port reached five kilometers, and the combined area of all the equipment occupied several dozen square kilometers. Now, with the power increased by more than a thousand times, just how terrifyingly massive would this stellar cannon be?

Its immense size made it impossible to build in orbit; it could only be constructed on the planet’s surface. But building it on the surface brought numerous problems. First, suitable terrain was required; the construction site’s geology had to be stable. Due to the enormous footprint, even the curvature of the planet’s surface introduced challenges, not to mention the planet’s own gravitational effects.

These countless issues left Xiao Yu feeling completely overwhelmed. What’s more, beginning construction without fully mastering the related technologies meant that Xiao Yu couldn’t create a comprehensive plan for the stellar weapon’s construction. He couldn’t predefine where the energy supply zone, reaction zone, or firing zone would be. If not for Xiao Yu’s immense computational power, these complex problems would have been enough to make the minds of even one hundred million scientists explode.

Nevertheless, the stellar weapon still had a glimmer of hope of actually being built. After completing the site selection, Xiao Yu began the intense construction process.

The first section to be built was the energy supply zone. Since breakthroughs in energy technology were unlikely in the short term, constructing the energy supply zone first was the most reliable approach.

According to the initial plan, the energy supply zone would cover fifteen square kilometers. To prepare for contingencies, Xiao Yu also reserved an additional five square kilometers as a backup area. This meant that if the fifteen square kilometers of the energy supply zone couldn’t provide sufficient energy, Xiao Yu would still have those five square kilometers to expand into.

Commanding over one hundred million robots, Xiao Yu arrived at this carefully selected location. In the month prior to the start of construction, Xiao Yu had completely leveled the area: more than ten peaks over three hundred meters tall had been flattened, three rivers had been dammed, and new channels had been excavated for them within the designated zone. Beneath the surface, Xiao Yu carved out hollow spaces measured in cubic kilometers. Inside these cavities and on the surface, Xiao Yu began building massive quantities of various instruments…

Replacing the power of nature, Xiao Yu completed in just one month what would have taken nature hundreds of millions of years.

Even the Molian Civilization was astonished by Xiao Yu’s capability for action. Such power hardly seemed like something an intelligent lifeform should possess.

After reevaluating Xiao Yu’s capabilities, the Molian Civilization was forced to accelerate its stellar weapon research progress. Otherwise, if development continued at the current pace, they would soon face the awkward situation of having no technology ready for construction.

Naturally, this Molian Civilization fleet maintained contact with its central civilization. Behind the scenes, the full power of the Molian Civilization had been mobilized. Tens of millions of scientists entered an intense work state, and the strength of the entire society was focused on this single endeavor. The same was true for Xiao Yu’s side. While the psychosocial sciences division was busy studying lies and conspiracies every day, the science and technology division scientists wished they could split each second in half. The utilization rate of Xiao Yu’s main computer consistently remained above ninety percent.

For the great goal of constructing the stellar weapon, the full power of both civilizations was truly being concentrated.

In their desperate bid for survival, both civilizations were being pushed to their absolute limits.

Under such circumstances, the technology for the stellar weapon was gradually being developed, bit by bit…