Wasteland Development Diary

Gazing at the distant, shimmering light, Zhou Yi felt a sliver of doubt.

Could that truly be the sun?

If it were the sun, then this place should be within the solar system. The dark environment was certainly reminiscent of space, but he couldn't see any meteorites or other celestial bodies in any direction.

Nor could he see any other planets in the distance.

Moreover, the light it emitted was red.

Zhou Yi summoned Xiaofu.

"That's a star, what we call a Light-Creating Star over there," the Streamtracer immediately declared.

"As for the lack of other floating objects around, it's likely because they implemented some kind of technological measure."

"This is the space where the Celestial Gem Bodies operate. Like human houses, with their power, it's not difficult to block external floating objects from approaching."

"It seems they live around the star, belonging to a comprehensible realm of life."

What Zhou Yi was concerned about was this:

The previous sun had been a tranquil blue, but now it had turned into a blazing red.

Yet, from a human perspective, the sun should be white or golden.

Zhou Yi pondered, "It's understandable that the Gem Bodies observe the sun differently from humans, because of the vast differences in physiological structure and sensory organs… but this color change also drives changes in the Gem Bodies."

"The blue sun was more like a pure energy body, effective on sapphires, but now the sapphire isn't reacting. The red sun is reacting to the ruby in my body."

"The ruby is more active than ever, and the observation of consciousness is no longer compressed, able to extend further in all directions."

He asked Xiaofu, "Does this seem to represent two different cycles?"

"Possibly."

The Streamtracer suggested, "It's worth a try."

For the sake of caution, Zhou Yi first directed his observation towards the direction away from the sun.

He gazed into the distance.

His vision continued to advance into the darkness.

With the sun's amplification, the range of this outward expansion was enormous. After passing a peculiar black boundary, the outside suddenly opened up, and he finally saw numerous stars in the dark space.

He was indeed in space.

Zhou Yi noticed a larger gray celestial body.

After observing it for a while, he continued to gaze outward and saw another pale yellow celestial body.

Were those Mercury and Venus?

But that wasn't enough.

However, projecting his consciousness here, his vision had become somewhat blurred, making it difficult to push further.

Zhou Yi gritted his teeth and chose to consume his own sapphires. As the energy of one sapphire after another was ignited and extracted, he gained power to fly further into the distance once more.

Then he encountered a blue planet.

Its surface clearly showed white clouds and island-like landmasses. These scattered continents were brown, yellow, and green, and most of the planet was shrouded in gray mist.

Zhou Yi was almost immediately certain.

That was Earth.

It was just that, because of the Dead Sea's coverage, the land on Earth was obscured, making it look as if the continents had been shattered.

Xiaofu also said, "It should be. Every world is actually very different. It's hard to find another world with such similar environment, shape, and internal structure."

Having completed the external observation, Zhou Yi returned his perspective.

Now that he had determined the location of the Celestial group, it was between Mercury and the sun, extremely close to the sun.

Strangely, from the Celestial's perspective, the energy released by the sun itself was not high.

It wasn't even enough to support the charging of white gems into sapphires.

Logically, since they were closer to the sun than Earth, and obtaining the Huan flow energy through the star as a channel, it should be much stronger here.

Zhou Yi clearly remembered:

In the memories left in the ruby, a Celestial had descended part of their body into the Dead Sea, using the Huan flow to quickly complete the charging.

Could it be that distant Earth could absorb more energy?

To figure this out, he would have to go towards the sun to investigate.

After thinking about it, Zhou Yi decided to give it a try.

He first slowly flew towards the red sun, getting further and further away from his main body.

Along the way, Zhou Yi also observed other Gem Bodies.

They were all dull in luster, without any consciousness fluctuations, floating in the void, already in corpse form.

Carefully avoiding them, Zhou Yi traversed the space.

He finally reached his destination.

A crystalline wall spanning the starry sky blocked the way forward, like some kind of giant "No Trespassing" sign. Upon arriving here, his vision could not advance any further, as if it were subject to some kind of powerful constraint, impossible to cross.

The wall was entirely composed of gems, its surface shimmering with dazzling red light.

Zhou Yi discovered that the light wall also had white, blue, black, and red gems.

The gems of various colors were slowly moving, making this high wall in the starry sky like an electronic screen.

However, at this time, almost all the rubies were gathered in the middle, releasing a high-brightness red flash that suppressed its peers, completely obscuring the other colors.

The ultra-long-range consciousness perspective could only advance through the light formed by the rubies, unable to jump out of this track.

"What's going on?"

Zhou Yi asked Xiaofu, "Is it the ruby cycle now, so the consciousness domain can extend on a large scale? Before, it was a blue light belt composed of sapphires, so energy propagation was active?"

The Streamtracer fell silent.

After a while, it said:

"They are locking the sun."

"The Celestials use gems as basic life units, and this wall surrounds the sun, maximizing energy acquisition from the source. This should be a unique Celestial technology…"

After Xiaofu's reminder, Zhou Yi remembered a concept from the Old Human era.

Dyson Sphere.

It described surrounding the sun with a giant spherical structure, so that most of the sun's radiation energy could be intercepted and utilized.

However, this was only a theoretical hypothesis. The peak of the Old Human civilization was still far from this goal.

But the Celestial civilization could already do it.

They just used a high gem wall.

"Da Zhou, I understand!"

"The use of this special gem structure is for converting energy in different ways."

The Streamtracer suddenly said, "The blue light band we saw before was absorbing the purest energy from the sun. Now, switching to the red wall phase is collecting consciousness information released by the sun."

"We Streamtracers enter worlds where the Huan flow is erupting in order to collect the spark of local civilizations, which is actually collecting and storing consciousness information."

"Their method is to wrap the source, to do large-scale centralized collection, and then filter out the parts they need."

As Zhou Yi listened, a thought popped into his head.

"Are you saying that the Celestials' goal isn't Earth, but to take the sun away?"

"No, the sun cannot be taken away. Even if they had the ability, they wouldn't do such a meaningless thing."

Xiaofu corrected, "They are building a device that can completely utilize the sun, which is this wall. Let's call it the Circum-Solar Wall for now."

"The energy that supplied the Celestials before should have also come from here."

"We are now outside the wall, and the areas outside the wall are full of dead Celestials. I guess there should be at least one inner wall inside. All the acquired energy and information are serving the inner wall."

"Technically speaking, it's like squeezing peanut oil twice, minimizing energy spillage and maximizing utilization."

Zhou Yi was a little worried, "It seems that eventually they will completely wrap the entire sun, gathering all the energy."

Xiaofu said again, "Judging from the Celestials' behavior, I don't think they will do that either. If their goal was just this one sun, there would be no need to enter Earth, no need to have any interaction with the local life, that would just be wasting their time."

"But the Celestials are continuously projecting onto Earth. From the initial direct landing attempts, to adopting the method of consciousness projection, using the local life's bodies for exploration."

"There should be something important on Earth that they need."

Images of those glass people appeared in Zhou Yi's mind.

In a corpse he had just captured, there were Celestials cultivating human infants, trying to transform them into glass fiber structures.

"Could it be that they want to find a substitute for the glass people?"

"Very possible."

Xiaofu pondered for a while, "But there is too little information about that humanoid civilization, and I can't judge."

Zhou Yi thought.

Perhaps only by going to the Outer Sea, through those Skywalkers, could he get a glimpse of the truth.

"But this time, we have obtained very important information."

The Streamtracer said happily, "I don't have the data on the Celestial civilization group, and I was very uneasy before, afraid that they were a truly advanced civilization, a group leading in dimensions. Then we would have no way to resist them."

"Now it seems that the technology and life characteristics they exhibit, in your language system, should be a Level Two civilization."

"Level Two civilization?"

Zhou Yi asked, "What level was the Old Human civilization?"

"Barely Level One. A Level One civilization is one that can rule the world they live in, transform the local environment, and monopolize and control all resources… But according to the information I have, the Old Humans could not directly control the weather and underground, so even Level One is barely. This stage is also called a Low-Level Civilization."

Xiaofu explained, "A Level Two civilization can efficiently utilize the energy of stars, and can traverse and operate on stellar-radiated celestial bodies. Their societies have their own unique forms, relatively developed, and are also called Intermediate Civilizations."

"If they reach Level Three civilization, they can collect the energy of a large number of stars in the galaxy, and can also use extreme celestial bodies for their own use… This is already in the category of Advanced Civilizations."

Zhou Yi couldn't help but ask, "What level does a Streamtracer belong to?"

"Level Two."

Xiaofu said, "However, the Streamtracer society itself is very loose, so strictly speaking, it shouldn't be considered a civilization, but rather a profession."

"Although it will be very difficult and dangerous for us to start from scratch, our upper limit is very high."

"In fact, every Streamtracer may eventually connect into a Spark Civilization by collecting various civilization sparks, and it is not impossible to evolve an Advanced Civilization."

Zhou Yi did not refute this.

This profession is like a civilization garbage collector, a bit like a librarian, both with extremely high upper limits.

It's just that the difficulty of reaching the upper limit is a bit high.