"Teacher, you are about to be 170 years old. According to past habits and your health tracking assistant, you have about 110 years to live. But it will take at least 180 years for us to reach the center of the Milky Way. Why don't you choose to sleep? The latest awakening technology only takes three days to restore a person to his original state. It shouldn't affect the overall situation, right?"

In the office, Zhou Donglai, Qin Guang's adjutant and disciple who was cultivated by him, asked with a little confusion.

Qin Guang smiled at his proud student.

He was very satisfied with Zhou Donglai. At the age of only 50, he had already ranked among the top in many simulated command trainings. In an encounter in 2812, Qin Guang transferred part of the command to Zhou Donglai, and he also completed the task very well.

As a new generation in the fleet, Zhou Donglai lived up to Qin Guang's respect, and now his reputation in the fleet is comparable to Emerson's.

However, he is still a little younger, so he takes things for granted.

Qin Guang patted his disciple on the shoulder and said, "We are now in a highly information age, and the evolution of everything has been accelerated countless times. Three days may seem short, but it is enough to turn the world upside down. After all, we are far away from the hinterland, and we can neither get external support nor even the full-scale computing support of the main brain Stars."

Zhou Donglai: "But simulation calculations show that we will not encounter the enemy again before 2830. Teacher, can you sleep for a few years?"

Qin Guang: "Most of the fleet's own artificial intelligence computing power is used to deduce external situations and support scientific research. We do not have 100% control over the operation of the fleet. In an expedition of ultra-long distance and ultra-long time, the crisis is not only external."

"We must admit that cryogenic technology is of great significance and will inevitably bring about dramatic changes to our civilization structure. The empire outside is a big society, and our fleet also has more than 100 million people, and it is obvious that it will exceed 200 million in the near future."

"Eight hundred years ago, an unknown fleet with a population of 200 million was considered an unknown country. Although we are small, we have everything. So, there will definitely be some changes in the future. These changes may be good or may cause problems."

Zhou Donglai: "Teacher, but we now have a high proportion of soldiers. We are an army built on the basis of an empire, which is different from the narrow concept of the country, right?"

Qin Guang smiled, "I appreciate your proactive thinking, but you overlooked a point I just mentioned." "

What?"

"Distance and time will change a lot of things. Especially when more and more older people choose to hibernate to prolong their lifespan, this change will gradually magnify. Therefore, for us, human cryonics is a double-edged sword. If used well, it can change the fate of our expedition mission. If used poorly, it will also bring destruction to us."

Zhou Donglai: "Then teacher, do you still support cryonics?"

Qin Guang laughed, "Tong Ling learned the gambling nature of the ancient philosophers, how can I be any better? No matter how we gamble, the ultimate goal is always to increase the success rate of the mission."

"I understand."

Zhou Donglai finally understood what Qin Guang meant.

"However, although I can't sleep, others can. I will review this first list, but I can't ask about everything in the future. Let the evaluation team make the decision. Wait for another two years. When the time is right, Donglai, you can also try intermittent freezing."

"Okay, teacher."

...

Time passed year after year, and Emerson Cobert chose to sleep in 2845.

At this time, he had upgraded the fleet's refrigeration technology dozens of times, becoming more and more reliable, and the accident rate when awakened was getting lower and lower. The safety factor is just about equal to that of civil aviation flights in the 21st century.

Yes, there are still risks, but the risks are not so great that they need to be scrapped due to choking.

Great changes have taken place within the fleet in the past 25 years.

In 2825, the fleet received a data package from the Empire.

In addition to the usual technology sharing content and current affairs briefings, this data package also includes a rotation guide analysis system for the dormant era, referred to as the rotation system.

The system was carefully created by the mastermind Fanxing after collecting a large amount of data. It first regarded the Morning Wind Empire as a whole, then divided it into star fields, and comprehensively considered the resource balance and material and personnel exchanges in different star fields. It proposed a set of systems that can maintain the creativity of civilization and maximize the degree of optimization of the allocation of human resources in the time span.

At the same time, the system can also reduce the scope of application, from a prosperous star region with a population of 10 trillion to a space research institute with only tens of thousands of people.

After comprehensive analysis through the rotation system, the best rotation plan and resource allocation plan can be given.

The total population of the Nameless Fleet has just reached 180 million, and the guidance of the rotation system is also applicable to the fleet evaluation team, which has reduced a lot of work.

However, Qin Guang did not use it right away, but asked the evaluation team to spend more than half a year to adjust the strategy model in the rotation system in a targeted manner to achieve a rotation plan that meets the characteristics of the Nameless Fleet and began to implement it.

By 2845, as more and more newcomers passed the professional level assessment and were able to take over the work of the older generation, a large number of manual positions began to switch from long-term duty mode to rotation mode.

At the same time, since the new freezer has a stable structure and a small size, it is convenient for centralized placement. After a large number of people are put into a frozen state, the living space in the fleet becomes much richer, which further speeds up the training of a new generation of long-distance sailors.

There are even radicals in the fleet leadership who suggest that if this trend continues, the fleet can use the surplus productivity of large ships to manufacture more modular, spliced ​​spaceships that only store freezers, further expand the population scale that the fleet can accommodate, and strengthen the number and performance of energy absorbers that absorb real energy particles from curvature space. Then, by the time they reach the galactic center, the original 150 million people will expand into a 10 billion-man army! By then, each of these 10 billion   soldiers will have an armored unit.

Regardless of the performance, just thinking about the number is enough to excite people. With hundreds of billions of armored units and hundreds of billions or even trillions of intelligent combat units, this expeditionary force will become a mighty main force that can break the river with a whip.   It must be said that the future described by this radical is very tempting, and Qin Guang almost moved.   But Qin Guang thought about it again and again, and decided to temporarily suppress the radical's proposal on the grounds that the quality of soldiers is not the number, and only agreed to appropriately accelerate the scale of population expansion of the new human beings.

In 2850, a total of 70 million people have entered the freezer, most of whom are the older generation who first boarded the fleet.

A small number of them include new top warriors, super scientists, genius captains and other emerging talents.

At the same time, Qin Guang and Emerson, who had reawakened three years ago, jointly passed a new bill.

In order to meet the material needs of manufacturing and maintaining more freezers, and also to prepare for the Silver Heart War in advance, the fleet will shut down the gravity simulators in most non-scientific laboratory areas, one is to allow the existing population to gradually adapt to zero-gravity life, and the other is to train a new generation of space warriors under zero-gravity conditions.

Giving up gravity does not mean giving up physical fitness. The fleet will strengthen physical training under zero-gravity conditions to achieve the effect of everyone being a soldier at critical moments.

With the original physique of earthlings, under zero-gravity conditions, the physiological functions are not adapted to the space environment. It is difficult for platelets to accurately locate damaged blood vessels. Some minor internal bleeding can easily spread into serious injuries.

Although personal medical assistants can appropriately restrain this phenomenon, if the human body lacks the ability to self-regulate, once the energy supply is insufficient or enters a fierce state, this slight difference will greatly suppress the combat power.

According to Emerson's estimate, the remaining 150 years are enough for the older generation's human bodies to adapt to the weightless conditions in rapid evolution. The human brain will record new information and become a more sophisticated machine than a personal medical assistant, and a new enzyme will be produced in the human body.

Once the human body senses internal bleeding, the body's tissue cells will quickly secrete new enzymes without the need for the brain to make a judgment. This new enzyme does not need gravity to help it locate, but will follow the guidance of chemical bonds, like electrons flowing from the negative pole to the positive pole in a battery, quickly rushing to the wound, and combining with red blood cells, causing an expansion reaction, and then settling and coagulating, quickly sealing the wound to achieve the effect of self-first aid.

The mechanism of this new type of thrombin is just one of the directions of evolution of astronauts who have been flying in the gravity-free curvature space for a long time.

Thousands of enzymes that are not present in the gravity state will be born in the human body. The relationship between cell tissues, the arrangement structure of neurons, and even the transmission method of nerve signals will undergo fundamental changes.

Huge changes are everywhere, just like the huge difference in structure between inland ships and ocean-going ships of the same displacement.

In the year 2870, when the second generation of newcomers in the gravity-free environment gradually became adults, the size difference of the three generations of humans appeared.

The first generation of humans, who came from different galaxies and relied on the stellar stable quantum constant, were relatively short.

The second generation of new humans who were born in space and grew up under gravity were slightly taller.

However, the third generation showed a clear polarization. The tall people easily exceeded three meters in height, while the short ones were only 0.5 meters.

Different body shape tendencies represent the differences in talent of this generation. Generally, tall people have large brains and higher scientific potential.

Short people have higher bone density and muscle compactness. Most of the talent in their relatively small brains is allocated to combat ability. These people are natural armored warriors, and their talents are slightly better than those of the original steel warriors.

At this time, the total population of the three generations of humans has exceeded 400 million.

Among them, 70 million first-generation humans are sleeping, and another 70 million first-generation humans hold important positions in various departments, and are basically waiting for their turn.

The number of second-generation humans is 140 million, and the third generation is 160 million.

Qin Guang sat in his office, holding a top-secret report in his hand.

This report gave him a slight headache.

After years of observation and analysis by the star sub-bodies carried by the fleet, it was found that some problems had arisen among the three generations of humans.

At this time, the fleet is more than 9,000 light years away from the border of the Empire. Although it has been in the curvature space for a long time, it is more or less connected to the rules of the universe constants in the original three-dimensional space outside. The sense of distance and the sense of time dislocation caused by long-term voyages, as well as the continuous changes in the enzyme environment in the human body, have affected the way people think about problems, and ultimately caused some people to have problems in their thinking.

The new generation gradually lost their sense of identity with the mother planet and the Empire, and the unified will to sacrifice for the whole race was gradually impacted.

This problem is particularly obvious among the third generation of space humans.

Some people began to question whether it was really meaningful to travel so long to penetrate the enemy's hinterland.

They began to think about whether this expedition was really possible to succeed.

If they would die if they went, why not send more people to the outer galaxies while the fleet was far above the ecliptic plane of the Milky Way, so as to leave more seeds for civilization outside.

Some people were dissatisfied with the fact that the first generation of humans had priority in the allocation of rotating resources.

Some people thought they were capable, but they were always suppressed by the old guys, and they were dissatisfied with this.

Of course, the Imperial Planning Department had considered this phenomenon long before the departure.

However, humans did not have human body freezing technology at that time, and the initial plan was to kill everyone if their will was shaken, and use iron-blooded military control methods to preserve combat effectiveness as much as possible.

But now the situation has changed. With the help of cryogenic technology, some of the older generation are sleeping, which can preserve their strength until they reach their destination. At the same time, many newcomers have been able to take up their positions and display their talents.

Now the comprehensive strength of the Nameless Fleet has increased by more than dozens of times compared to when it set out, purely from a numerical perspective.

If the situation can be controlled well, the chances of winning after arrival will be greater.

But if it can't be controlled, it will be a mess.

The current situation is that most people hide all these little thoughts in their hearts because they are afraid of the ubiquitous artificial intelligence surveillance, but Qin Guang knows that with the passage of time, quantitative changes will inevitably lead to qualitative changes, and a major power shock is likely to occur within the fleet.

Although he can give an order and order the artificial intelligence to instantly eliminate all the wavering inside.

But these people are not guilty of capital punishment, and most of the wavering people still consider the issue from the perspective of continuing human existence, but everyone has different ideas.

In addition, Qin Guang is reluctant to give up the talents of this new generation of human beings.

These are all precious resources.

Qin Guang began to think for a long time. He had to come up with a solution as soon as possible before the situation continued to deteriorate.

He knew that it was time for him to face a real test.

If things were so simple, he could just sneak over and fight a battle, and the Empire would not have appointed him as the commander-in-chief.

While Qin Guang was thinking hard, the chief scientist Emerson, who had awakened again, knocked on his door.

"Two pieces of news. One good and one bad. Which one do you want to hear first?"

"Okay."

"The good news is that the training department has just successfully cultivated a new baby. The baby's genes come from a male top warrior and a female S-class warrior respectively. It is preliminarily determined that this baby has potential similar to that of Chief Instructor Tong Ling. We can give birth to another super warrior."

Qin Guang nodded, "Good, what about the bad news?"

"This baby is reproductively isolated from humans."

Qin Guang stood up in shock, his eyes wide open, "What! Impossible!"

"I don't think this is possible, but it did happen."

Emerson shrugged.