Chapter 276: Magnetar in a Shell

ghost ship?

Ma Lou knew that the legend of the ghost ship had been circulating in the Star Alliance for over a year, and it was very likely the latter half of the cangyuan one colony ship!

But what in the world was the "Golden Fleet"—

He looked at the strange man in the cell.

The man appeared to be close to 60 years old, with long, unkempt hair, a thin build, and somewhat erratic behavior, likely due to prolonged solitary confinement and malnutrition.

"When were you locked up? Why did Apollo capture you?"

"Who are you?"

The man was wary.

"Moonlight Ma Lou! Cangyuan Future Technology employee!" Ma Lou reached his hand through the bars and shook the man's hand.

"Hello, my name is Jia Henry. If I haven't miscounted, I've been imprisoned here for almost a year."

The man pointed to the marks carved on the wall behind him, used to count the days.

"You just said you're a Cangyuan employee? Do you mean the Cangyuan from the golden age?"

"Yes. We've eliminated Apollo and the Dark Sun Pirates, and taken over this place. You're free!"

Lao Jia didn't speak for a long time, half in disbelief.

Ma Lou gestured for the player guards to open the cell.

"Has he been scanned?"

"Scanned. No explosives, no dangerous pathogens."

"Then release him."

He politely invited Lao Jia to an office.

"Please tell me more about the ghost ship!"

The Executive Officer had always hoped to recover the complete cangyuan one, to bring this kilometer-long behemoth into his possession.

The branch players had been inquiring, and Lao Yu's group was also helping, but progress had not been smooth.

The adventurers from "Purgatory" could indeed provide many "ghost ship" sighting reports, but a large portion of them were difficult to verify, and the video quality was very poor.

Moreover, these cunning individuals, realizing that there was a buyer in the market massively collecting "ghost ship" intelligence, exploited their merchant nature and hiked up prices.

Driven by high profits, the possibility of fabrication further increased.

After all, this only required fabricating a story and then using AI to forge a blurry video, with no real cost to fake and no risks to bear.

"I invented an algorithm to locate the ghost ship. Apollo was very interested, too interested, to the point of kidnapping me and making me calculate routes for them—"

Lao Jia said, gasping for breath.

It seemed he was also an interstellar tomb raider, and a more technically inclined one.

"An algorithm? So it relies on science, not mysticism, to find it? Didn't Apollo force you to hand over this algorithm?"

Ma Lou, being very meticulous, asked.

"Not a program," Lao Jia pointed to his head, "it's all hidden in my mind!"

"Apollo didn't force you to teach them?"

"Couldn't teach them—"

"Why?"

"Because, because—"

Lao Jia sighed.

"Alas! It's actually because this algorithm requires a large amount of archaeological data, specifically, the jump records of golden age ships."

"When Apollo broke into my house and kidnapped me, they shot and destroyed the hard drive storing this data. The data couldn't be recovered, so I could only try my best to recall it slowly."

Ma Lou's eyes darted twice; he understood the hidden meaning.

"I guess you actually memorized the data, and the 'needing to recall it slowly' is a fabricated reason to stay alive."

Lao Jia said nothing.

It was clear he had been severely beaten by Apollo. Now, to avoid further beatings, he neither wanted to make meaningless concealments nor could he reveal the truth.

He was very conflicted.

"Alright."

Ma Lou knew that building trust took time and was not in a hurry.

"Cangyuan is also very interested in the ghost ship. I hope you can continue to work for us and calculate the ghost ship's route."

Lao Jia bowed his head and nodded twice, not at all surprised by this decision.

All these big companies were equally ruthless!

Who defeated whom, or who annexed whom, would not change his tragic fate.

"We will provide you with a place to work and live at the corporate branch, as well as three meals a day. Do you need anything else?"

"ghost ship sighting reports," Lao Jia looked up and said.

"We've collected many, but most of them are probably fake," Ma Lou said. "It's alright, I can distinguish between true and false myself!"

"Hmm—" Ma Lou gave the man a meaningful look, "Then please follow me."

Lu Yuan expressed satisfaction after learning that there might be a major breakthrough in the whereabouts of cangyuan one.

Lao Jia said his algorithm required the navigation records of ancient jump ships, which indicated that he realized cangyuan one likely also carried a jump engine.

From this alone, Lao Jia was not a charlatan; he had real skills.

Maybe it could actually work!

Very good.

An excellent company should constantly set new goals for itself.

Employees had evolved from passively waiting for tasks to actively developing task lines, truly getting into the swing of things!

He called Caoyuan into the office.

"Continue to interrogate Mr. Sang and find out how much route prediction information Apollo previously obtained from Lao Jia, whether they used it themselves or resold it to other forces. I feel the latter is more likely."

"Understood!"

Now, the list of tasks awaiting him on New Hope had grown, making his schedule very full!

Of course, before leaving Ruins Star, the players here had also made some progress that needed to be communicated with the Executive Officer.

In the past few days, the Scholar and Engineer teams had discovered many intricate maintenance pipelines within the Big Squid.

These pipelines were originally for drones; normally, drone swarms would act like immune cells, constantly moving within the mother ship to perform internal maintenance.

This brought an almost directly applicable advanced model to Cangyuan Future Technology's larger ship designs, helping to further improve warship automation and damage control capabilities.

After thoroughly scanning these pipelines, more astonishing facts about the "Big Squid" finally came to light.

It turned out that because Dark Sun had not obtained full authorization before, the main gun's power was limited to 30%, and its true strength was far beyond what had been previously demonstrated. Another partially unlocked function was self-sufficiency.

The "Big Squid" contained two complete production lines that could provide maintenance services and also ingest various raw materials to build drone swarms with different functional modules inside its belly.

With insufficient authorization, Dark Sun could only use it to build camouflage drones and the close-range ground weapons carried by attack drones.

The latter had been modified into plasma shotguns, becoming a secret weapon.

All the previous mysteries were now being unraveled by the players.

"Research on the reactor has also made decisive progress!"

In the spacious bridge, Jubian reported to Lu Yuan with immense pride.

"This thing is just too advanced, too violent!"

"How is it advanced?"

Lu Yuan expressed great interest.

"Well, I'll let my assistant explain that to you!"

Jubian looked at Fashi: "Hurry up, this is your chance to shine."

Fashi sighed.

"What can be confirmed is that the civilization that built this mecha possessed more than one type of Zero Element Furnace that is very novel to us."

"One of them, by simultaneously consuming quantum zero element and Warp Zero Element, can generate a special force field that shields the electronic Coulomb repulsion within its range."

"This allows the nuclear fuel in the reactor chamber to be easily compressed by powerful lasers into super-dense matter similar to electron-degenerate states, or, in layman's terms, compressed into a white dwarf."

Lu Yuan's eyes widened.

"Are you saying that each of the eight reactors here contains an artificial miniature white dwarf?"

This was the power of taming stars—

Fashi nodded.

"Yes, each has a diameter of 6 centimeters, a mass of about 110 tons. Unlike natural white dwarfs, these artificial celestial bodies can still undergo various nuclear fusion reactions internally, with the final reaction product being iron atoms."

"Moreover, under the action of a special Entropy Zero Element Furnace, the reaction method is low-temperature cold fusion, and the waste heat produced accounts for less than 1% of the energy output. Most of the energy is converted into extremely powerful electromagnetic fields, making it easy to collect as electrical energy."

Oh, Lu Yuan realized that Jubian had been right earlier.

This was the giant cold fusion nuclear reactor that the entire Star Alliance dreamed of! Who would have thought it was forged through artificial degenerate white dwarfs!

The discoveries on Ruins Star truly elevated Cangyuan's technology level from 8.0 to 7.0!

"If we can obtain full authorization for the 'Big Squid,' then when the eight reactors operate at maximum overload, 60 kilograms of nuclear fusion fuel will be consumed every second, with approximately 100 grams of mass converted into pure energy, equivalent to 75 Hiroshima atomic bombs."

Jubian continued to introduce, helping his "assistant."

"Then the total power at that time would be…" Lu Yuan, using his intelligence quotient of several tens, quickly calculated, "4.6 EW!"

Jubian gave a thumbs up.

"Even without entering overload mode, the power is around 8000 TW."

4.6 EW is equivalent to 1400 times the total global power generation in reality, and 2.5% of the sun's power hitting the entire Earth.

On average, every 50 seconds, it could "fully charge" the largest nuclear bomb ever tested by humans, the Tsar Bomba.

"Undoubtedly, the 'Big Squid''s charging rate for its particle beam main cannon exceeds that of the giant electromagnetic cannons on Super Democratic Empire capital ships, estimated to be two to three times theirs," Fashi said. "And this isn't all of our discoveries."

"What other discoveries have you made?!"

These Scholar twins, playing off each other, truly whetted Lu Yuan's appetite.

Jubian raised an eyebrow.

"Your Excellency, according to the original design of this 'Big Squid,' it should be able to fly!"

Fashi: "Its tentacles can not only be used to walk on the planet's surface, but also have photon rocket thrusters installed internally. After some external armor deformation, the engine nozzles inside should be revealed."

"But the Warp Engine and suspected jump engine were dismantled by someone," Jubian added. "Current authorization is also insufficient to unlock flight mode."

Good thing it couldn't be unlocked!

Otherwise, Dark Sun would have truly found a super battleship, and coming here would have been suicide!

Lu Yuan: "So, when it goes into space, its front and back directions would be reversed, becoming tail-first, with the head tentacles providing flight thrust?"

Jubian: "Precisely! This navigation posture, I must say—is exactly like a squid on Earth."

Fashi: "Convergent evolution, it's not surprising."

Lu Yuan was still savoring the shock of the new discovery when the corporate internal broadcast suddenly blared.

"This is the 'Big Squid' main engine room, calling the bridge! There's been a major breakthrough in decoding, please notify Executive Officer Lu Yuan immediately!"