CHAPTER 502: CHAPTER 501: FORCED EVOLUTION

Along the way, the Wandering Alliance inevitably encountered many "obstacles" like the Short Spear Nebula.

Each time, the Wandering Alliance was not polite, directly absorbing all the nebula material on or near their flight path.

And each absorption action of the Wandering Alliance was clean and decisive, either cutting through nebulae with the heliosphere or directly absorbing the material into the heliosphere with a powerful gravity field.

If this process were sped up countless times for observation, it would reveal that the Wandering Star System’s absorption of the nebulae on its route was incredibly cool and smooth. Each time was almost like slicing nebulae with a star disk, followed by a thorough absorption, leaving practically nothing behind. It looked as if a star disk weapon swiftly destroyed and obliterated groups of nebulae!

Throughout this journey, whether it was Constant Star Lu Chen or the Wandering Star System, both absorbed a large amount of material, substantially increasing in mass.

Take the Wandering Star System, for instance. After the battle over the Heavenly Nebula, its mass had grown to about 1.5 billion Constant Star masses. However, since entering the Cosmic Zone and starting to vigorously absorb nebula materials, up to this moment, the Wandering Star System’s mass has explosively increased to 5 billion Constant Star masses, its size nearly tripling, with a diameter reaching about 60,000 light-years.

Constant Star Lu Chen’s growth was equally tremendous. Originally at around 2.1 billion Constant Star masses, it has now grown to 8 billion Constant Star masses, quadrupling in size. Along with that, Constant Star Lu Chen’s size has grown from fifty astronomical units to sixty, increasing its mass fourfold, yet its size only increased by one-fifth. This suggests that Constant Star Lu Chen’s density is now much greater than ever before. With such a massive increase in mass and density, the inward gravitational collapse is unprecedentedly terrifying. To counteract this gravitational collapse, Constant Star Lu Chen could only continuously increase the reaction rate of the core nuclear fusion, using thermal pressure to combat the gravity, leading to a steep rise in temperature - the core temperature went from the original 8 billion degrees to 9 billion degrees, and the corona layer temperature increased from about 200 million degrees to around 300 million degrees!

However, this wasn’t even the most frightening aspect.

The most terrifying thing was that, up to this point, the Wandering Alliance had only traversed a portion of the Cosmic Zone, still a considerable distance from the Cosmic Center. However, just this segment of the journey had allowed Constant Star Lu Chen and the Wandering Star System to multiply their mass. This highlights just how rich in material the Cosmic Zone Universe is, with the gains from this section alone surpassing the total harvest that Constant Star Lu Chen encountered in the Sky Zone and the Star Zone by a wide margin.

Witnessing this situation, Constant Star Lu Chen couldn’t help but feel emotion.

No wonder people are always so eager for fortunate encounters, because a moment’s chance might bring more gains than a lifetime of hard work. And in most cases, that "might" can easily be removed.

Returning to the richness of materials in the Cosmic Zone, this result was both within reason and beyond expectation.

After all, while creating the Universe 3D Map, the Wandering Alliance had deduced the three-layer structure of the Sky Zone, the Star Zone, and the Cosmic Zone based on the evolution of the universe, and the Cosmic Zone, being the location and remnants of the Big Bang, was bound to have the most residual material.

Thus, Constant Star Lu Chen, while marveling at his own rapid growth in mass, continued flying towards his final destination, the Cosmic Center.

When Constant Star Lu Chen led the Wandering Star System for about another five million light-years, something unexpected suddenly erupted.

It turned out that all along the way, Constant Star Lu Chen had not spared any nebula material near the flight path, absorbing everything according to the list. As a result, the mass of Constant Star Lu Chen grew extremely fast. Despite it being only a journey of five million light-years, the Constant Star Mass of Lu Chen had increased from eight billion to an astonishing eighty billion, whereas the Wandering Star System had grown from fifty billion to a terrifying one hundred billion!

The rapid imbalance of mass caused the current structure to experience a double imbalance.

The first layer of structural imbalance was due to the Wandering Star System’s hundred billion Constant Star Mass exceeding that of Constant Star Lu Chen’s eighty billion. Since Constant Star Lu Chen is the central hub of the Wandering Star System, controlling its balance and operation, the exceeding of the Solar Sphere Material mass over the central hub’s caused Constant Star Lu Chen to struggle in controlling the movement of the Solar Sphere Material. Moreover, the rotation speed of the Heliosphere was also showing signs of gradually getting out of control.

If one observes the edge of the Heliosphere carefully at this moment, they would see a large number of meteors breaking free from the Wandering Star System’s gravitational bondage, flying towards deep space.

If the first layer of structural imbalance is an external imbalance, then the second layer of structural imbalance is an internal one. The main reason is that the mass of Constant Star Lu Chen is too great, having exceeded the number of eighty billion, which seems to have reached a critical value for a structured celestial body like a constant star.

Nowadays, due to the excessive mass, in order to counteract the powerful gravitational collapse, the Nuclear Fusion Rate of Constant Star Lu Chen consumes a Constant Star Mass every minute. That amounts to needing to consume 1440 Constant Star Masses in one day. Keep in mind that the Sun of the Solar System has only 1250 Constant Star Masses; in other words, Constant Star Lu Chen is now using up a Sun every single day. Even with a terrifying mass of eighty billion, Constant Star Lu Chen cannot withstand such consumption!

If it continues to consume at this rate, then Constant Star Lu Chen would only need 150,000 years to deplete the hydrogen on its body and end the stellar phase of life.

Of course, theoretically speaking, if there was a sufficient supply of hydrogen, Constant Star Lu Chen could still maintain its current stellar form.

But don’t forget, this is just a theory.

In actual reality, Constant Star Lu Chen is not only consuming mass too quickly, but the outer corona layer is also encountering issues. Due to the rapid increase in Nuclear Fusion Rate, the internal and external temperatures of Constant Star Lu Chen are very high. The current temperature of the corona layer has reached a billion degrees, which has already exceeded the requirements for Hydrogen Nuclear Fusion. Previously, when it was two or three hundred million degrees, although it also exceeded, due to the insufficient density and pressure of the external corona layer, it was not possible to form a cyclical Hydrogen Nuclear Fusion reaction chain. But with the corona layer’s temperature rising to a billion degrees, it compensated for the collision probability issues caused by density and pressure, thus creating conditions for nuclear fusion reactions of hydrogen in the corona layer. So now, not only the core region of Constant Star Lu Chen is undergoing nuclear fusion, but the convection layer and corona layer are almost all experiencing it, just to varying degrees.

It can be said that the current Constant Star Lu Chen is a massive fireball that’s exploding all over. If the energy of the internal and external onslaught is too great, it is very likely that Constant Star Lu Chen could be entirely blown apart.

This is somewhat similar to the Type-Ia supernova phenomenon that occurred to the White Dwarf Star not long ago, which also resulted from constant conflicts between two nuclear fusion zones, leading to an explosion that left nothing but dust in the end.

Constant Star Lu Chen definitely does not want to follow in the footsteps of that White Dwarf Star.

He considered that the problems with both his own structure and the structure of the star system were not easily solvable. This might suggest that the time had come, and he should go with the flow, evolving to the next stage.