Chapter 289: Needle in a Haystack

Words : 1579 Updated : Oct 5th, 2025

The issue Xiao Yu had overlooked was actually quite simple, what exactly was the Specter Heart? Did it have mass? Did it have volume? How big was it? What did it look like? Xiao Yu had no answers to any of these questions. It seemed that, subconsciously, he had simply assumed that such a unique thing as the Specter Heart would be easy to spot as soon as he arrived in this star system. But now, Xiao Yu realized how terribly wrong he had been. Before him was an extremely chaotic scene. One must understand that the planet that had been collateral damage from the Stellar Cannon blast had contained vast amounts of water. Matter neither appears nor disappears out of thin air. Even if this planet exploded, its constituent matter remained the same; water was still water, at most breaking down into hydrogen and oxygen. Under the radiation of this highly unstable star, whose intensity was now hundreds or even thousands of times greater than normal, water would sublimate and condense. Thus, the scene before Xiao Yu was endless asteroids and debris fields stretching out before him. These asteroids and fragments varied greatly in size, some weighing hundreds of billions of tons, others only a few grams. They had formed a new asteroid belt, now orbiting this star. This planet had been slightly larger than Earth. Assuming each fragment averaged one hundred million tons, even after the planet exploded, it would still have produced tens of trillions of fragments. And most of the fragments here were far smaller than that. With such calculations, the number of fragments here was far beyond mere tens of trillions. Their quantity was simply like the sands of the Ganges river, utterly incalculable. If that weren’t enough of an obstacle, then consider the comet tails formed from volatile materials like water, carbon dioxide, methane, liquid hydrogen, and liquid oxygen. At this moment, most of the asteroids here were shrouded within the comet tails, which created immense interference with visible light detection. And because of their proximity to the star, infrared detection methods were also rendered useless. So... how was he supposed to find the Specter Heart among these countless fragments? Especially when Xiao Yu had no idea what the Specter Heart even looked like. It was simply an impossible task. Staring at this chaotic star system, Xiao Yu was filled with frustration. “How did it come to this? How did it come to this?” Xiao Yu muttered, his mind racing. “Damn it! Why didn’t I think of this earlier? Why didn’t I ask clearly while the Specter elder was still alive? My Specter companion might also know something, but I forgot to ask it too!” This was a mistake that absolutely should not have happened. Xiao Yu was deeply vexed, but after his frustration, he began to think about how to solve this problem. “What’s done is done. Regret won’t help; I need to figure out how to deal with the situation before me. Hmm... Since the Specter elder entrusted this Specter Heart to me, he surely wouldn’t have left me with an unsolvable obstacle. If the Specter Heart were as small as a speck of dust, then even a Level 6 Civilization wouldn’t be able to find it among these countless fragments.” “Therefore, I can conclude that the Specter Heart’s appearance must be clearly distinguishable from these asteroids, and it wouldn’t be hidden inside any of them. If it were, I’d have no way of finding it.” “This asteroid belt stretches for several hundred million kilometers, with a width and height ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of kilometers... In that case, there’s no other choice but to use the most primitive method.” Xiao Yu calculated silently and began his work. This method was indeed primitive, but also practical. In theory, as long as there was enough time, Xiao Yu would definitely be able to find the Specter Heart. But there was another problem: Xiao Yu was not sure how much time he actually had, or whether he could escape before the Molian Civilization’s fleet arrived. “Time... I’ll set it to five years. If I still can’t find the Specter Heart within five years, then I’ll simply give up and come back for it later. After all, if I can’t find it, the Molian Civilization won’t be able to find it either.” Xiao Yu made up his mind as he thought about it. The method was simple, produce an enormous quantity of robots and scatter them throughout the asteroid belt to search. The operation resembled the idiom ‘looking for a needle in a haystack,’ only with a vastly larger number of participants. “First, I’ll modify the current mechanical equipment. Hmm... the design for the detection robots is simple enough... All right, the blueprints are complete. For now, I’ll use the stockpiled materials for manufacturing. There’s no time to build large mining and refining bases. Damn it, if I had just asked earlier, none of this would be so troublesome.” Frustrated, Xiao Yu began his work. In Xiao Yu’s massive fleet, since there was no need to carry life support systems or reserve space for biological activity, at least half of the ships had been loaded with various supplies and mechanical processing equipment using the freed-up space. The enormous production capacity required to build such vast numbers of robots posed no difficulty for Xiao Yu. Under Xiao Yu’s command, countless machines began operating, producing a great number of miniature robots equipped with both elemental decay and antimatter hybrid engines. These robots could operate freely within the chaotic asteroid belt, refueling on-site once their fuel ran out. To resolve communication issues with these miniature robots, Xiao Yu also manufactured numerous satellites and scattered them throughout the asteroid belt. Half a month after arriving in the star system, the first batch of miniature robots was dispatched. Under Xiao Yu’s command, the first batch of one hundred million miniature robots launched from the exits of various ships, like a handful of sand thrown into the sea, quickly blending into the chaotic asteroid belt. These miniature robots would scan every object with a radius greater than half a centimeter. If they determined it was an asteroid, they would mark it to indicate that it had been scanned, preventing other robots from wasting time on it again. This meant an enormous volume of data exchange and a database system of unimaginable scale. However, since all the data could be processed by automated analysis programs, they did not occupy the computing power of Xiao Yu’s flagship, the Beijing. To handle the data load, Xiao Yu created a sophisticated distributed system, dividing the data among the central computers of the Tianjin, Chongqing, Shanghai, Hebei, and other Province-Class ships. Working together, these Province-Class ships managed to bear the tremendous computational demands. If any asteroid appeared to have unusual characteristics, the miniature robots would conduct further observation and transmit the data to Xiao Yu for his personal analysis. Xiao Yu would not let any suspicious target escape his scrutiny. Time passed quickly. Six months later, over ten billion miniature robots and tens of thousands of communication satellites were active within the asteroid belt. Together, they formed a massive net, tirelessly searching this sea of stars for the ‘needle’ that was so critical to Xiao Yu. So far, Xiao Yu had found nothing. Yes, although over ten trillion asteroids had already been scanned, he still hadn’t found what he was looking for. But Xiao Yu had made some other gains. “Huh? Another one? Mass... about eight kilograms. Good, retrieve it.” Upon receiving a report, Xiao Yu responded quickly, dispatching another retrieval robot, which grabbed a pitch-black object. That’s right, these were the remnants of the device responsible for the planet’s explosion and disintegration, the remains of that preliminary Stellar Cannon. Xiao Yu hadn’t forgotten that, in order to build this Stellar Cannon, he had thrown in all the flesh of the White Dwarf Alien Beast. These remains still contained at least seventy percent Alien Beast flesh content, which, for Xiao Yu, was extremely valuable. “Six months now, and I’ve already recovered several hundred thousand tons of Alien Beast flesh in scattered bits. But Specter Heart... where on earth are you?” Xiao Yu thought gloomily. During this time, aside from searching for the Specter Heart, Xiao Yu had also been working on upgrades, modifications, and repairs for his existing fleet. In fact, these tasks had been ongoing the whole time, though time constraints and material shortages had prevented large-scale efforts. Time continued to slip away bit by bit. With every passing second, Xiao Yu’s sense of crisis grew heavier. “Now this is a good find... diamonds formed during the planet’s explosion? Quite valuable, but useless to me.” “Huh? Such a large lump of gold? Still useless...” Xiao Yu analyzed these reports one by one, growing more and more frustrated. Diamonds and gold, treasures worth untold fortunes during Earth’s era, couldn’t even motivate Xiao Yu to bother recovering them now. Amid this tedious process, suddenly, another message was transmitted to Xiao Yu. Any message that reached Xiao Yu had already been filtered by automated programs. He was doing his best to reduce his workload, but since no automated program was perfect, many useless messages still came through, like the diamond, like the gold. However, this message seemed... different from those.

Chapter 289: Needle in a Haystack

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