Deep Space Wandering Fleet-Chapter 547 - 544 Approaching the Neutron Star

In the blink of an eye, Wang Haifeng had been involved in work for one hundred and ninety-six years.

The days seemed the same as before, unchanging, and yet, it felt like much had changed.

With the rapid acceleration of the aging population, people’s work pressure had become greater and greater. In order to meet work targets, the retirement age for seniors had to be deferred by several more years.

This policy resulted in widespread public complaints. A little overtime work was tolerable, but even extending retirement was truly unbearable. After toiling for a lifetime, who wouldn’t want to retire a bit earlier?

And on this very day, two planets once again approached the perigee of their elliptical orbits. This was the time when they were closest to the neutron star, about to use the gravitational slingshot effect for acceleration once again.

For safety, all ground personnel evacuated from the planets amidst the raging gravitational tides.

Two Mother Ships were crammed with over sixty-five million people, making them extremely crowded.

Wang Haifeng was assigned a 14-square meter single room, but he declined his superiors’ arrangement, choosing instead to live with his family. After all, saving a bit of space was good...

This many people had never been stuffed inside a spaceship before; the commercial plaza was bustling with people, where a mix of discussions and exchanges of pleasantries between acquaintances blended together, evolving into the present day New Human Civilization.

Wang Haifeng usually lived in a small town near the work site, returning to the spaceship about once every ten years. He was used to a simple life.

Listening to the various boisterous sounds and enjoying the exquisite food, he suddenly thought that this kind of liveliness was actually quite nice.

"Some people like big city life, some prefer the countryside. But most people still like the hustle and bustle of the city," Wang Haifeng thought.

Wang Haifeng spotted a very appropriately dressed elderly gentleman, drinking in the corner restaurant. It was his former boss, a man with a not-so-pleasant temper but vast knowledge.

Wang Haifeng quickly headed over and greeted, "Old Li!"

"Old Wang!"

Then they started to chat with each other.

The man glanced at Wang Haifeng, then turned to the large screen inside the restaurant, he said with a sigh, "...Sometimes I wonder, if this Planet Fortress suddenly got swallowed by the neutron star, or if some other malfunction happened, would that mean we could stop doing this?"

Wang Haifeng burst into laughter, "Of course! If this War Star really got swallowed or torn apart, the Tos People wouldn’t be able to blame us, and the government would have to give up."

"Our current state, everyone is enduring."

The man shook his head, "Yeah, I think about it, but I can’t bear the idea. If it gets swallowed, do we have the courage to develop a second War Star? Impossible! We have already lost that kind of courage... All our hopes are on this one and only War Star!"

"Working nine to ten hours a day, for two hundred years! And we must continue into the future until we can’t open our eyes. Even people from the 21st century only worked eight hours a day!"

"But... if we don’t work we’ll have to watch helplessly as the planet gets hit, isn’t this a major regression of our era?"

"A regression?" Wang Haifeng replied, "Actually, there’s been no regression. We eat well, we dress well, how is that a regression? There have been times in history when people worked hard but still went hungry."

"It’s just that there’s been no progress for so long, it’s become a bit exhausting."

The Captain in Central Square was giving a speech, apparently to inspire everyone, "...We must be hopeful, this is not just the hope of our generation, but of the previous and the next generations. It’s just our luck, good and bad, to be caught in the middle. We must struggle for this all our lives."

"But this struggle is not meaningless! It trains our spirit and willpower... because our real world is just the starting point of life, we will face the future in the Virtual World..."

"Such training allows us to calmly face all sorts of temptations, increasing the chance of passing the Extraordinary Test..."

"Screw the temptations, all that ever comes out of their mouths is empty talk!" Mr. Li seemed a bit drunk, spouting some curses.

Nobody cared whether what the Captain said was true or not.

Criticizing the government had become a new trend.

Some people looked thoughtful, some were drunkenly babbling nonsense.

A few were still ambitious, looking forward to the future, but most had slowly lost their patience.

Wang Haifeng fell silent, unsure of how to describe the feeling. Some people could accept their fate, just like he himself did; to him, this life was bearable—wasn’t any job still a job?

But there were also those who found the current living conditions unbearable.

It seemed that the rift in this era grew ever wider. A small, distant group was cheering, celebrating the completion of the second phase of the grand project. Yet in the future, there was still the lengthy third phase to be endured, a grueling project that would last at least four hundred years.

Others hid in corners, cursing softly, cursing the government’s choices back then, cursing the Decision No. 17 picked by Captain Cole.

Why did they have to make the entire project’s timeline so tight?

They cursed the era they were born into; they became the generation sacrificed.

But no matter what, people had to work hard, suppress their emotions. There was no other choice...

This was the era!

Suddenly, all the discussions stopped; people seemed to have noticed something and looked intently at the large screen ahead.

On that colorful planet, swathed in ion flames, the Planet Engine roared furiously, like a tractor belching out black fumes while struggling against the brink of an abyss!

At this point, the pushing force of the Planet Engine was inconsequential compared to the gravitational pull of the neutron star, like the difference between a firefly and the bright moon—barely having any effect. However, the smart computer still issued the most precise instructions based on the equations set from the start.

What had an effect were only the immense inertia accumulated over thousands of years by the planet and the precise calculations.

The ground trembled, the planet rumbled, and, dragging the Big Ice Ball behind, it swiftly passed the perihelion.

A scream erupted from the crowd!

Some drunken men raised their heads, their emotions complex, thinking who knows what.

The distance between the Big Ice Ball at the rear and the Planet Fortress in front rapidly closed to just twenty thousand kilometers, under the slingshot effect of gravity. freeweɓnøvel~com

This proximity was way too close, as the two planets seemed about to collide due to their mutual gravitational pull!

At that moment, a rock and dirt block, weighing a trillion tons, was suddenly ejected from the top of the Planet Fortress.

It shouldn’t be described as "ejected," but rather as being violently pulled out by the enormous gravity of the neutron star.

To cut this long, mountain-sized block of rock and soil, tens of thousands of workers had spent a full hundred years.

As the block fell from above the planet, the Planet Fortress seemed to change its direction by just a slight margin, increasing the distance from the trailing ice ball once again.

Then came the second, third, fourth...

These ejected blocks of earth and rock would become wandering meteorites, their orbits slightly lower, altering the momentum of the entire planet.

They would orbit near the two neutron stars for a very long time. Ultimately, these meteorites would crash onto a neutron star and become a part of it after a mighty explosion.

A total of sixteen blocks were pulled out by the massive gravitational force of the neutron star.

One even struck the Big Ice Ball at the rear, causing an enormous impact. The Big Ice Ball was indented, spewing massive amounts of ice shards.

After this event, the Planet Fortress deviated slightly in its trajectory, passing by the Big Ice Ball, then completely diverged from it.

After chasing each other for several hundred years, the two planets finally went their separate ways, never to meet again.

Just like the emotional world of many people—only a few can stay together forever. In the end, separation is inevitable.

The entire heart-stopping process took about fifteen days. Every morning, Wang Haifeng would see a bunch of people discussing in the Central Square whether the whole process’s error margin was within the tolerable range.

Others sighed with relief; the plan had almost succeeded, and the Planet Fortress was not devoured by the neutron star—it had survived.