The degassing process lasted twelve minutes. Within the tiny space of the alchemy furnace, humans had created the thinnest atmosphere ever recorded, exceeding the standard of an extremely high vacuum, with an average of only two to three nitrogen or oxygen molecules per cubic meter. In such an empty space, any substance capable of remaining in liquid form at room temperature would boil. Therefore, during this time, the three of them could often hear the sound of fine bubbles emanating from the surface of their exoskeletons.
However, this is not enough. A vacuum is only "empty," not "nothing." Leaving aside the intractable gas, those places where no physical particles exist are still a Dirac sea filled with energy—the light illuminating the three people is one of them, as is the thermal radiation produced by the three living people.
For light, we can still rely on the precisely adjusted first-wall mirror material, but for other things we can only use clumsy methods.
Fortunately, the "alchemy furnace" wasn't a traditional alchemy furnace. It couldn't be heated in any way. Instead, it could be cooled at will, approaching absolute zero. The cooling system wrapped around it was operating steadily, liquid nitrogen circulating rapidly through the pipes like blood, continuously removing heat absorbed by the first wall. At this moment, the furnace had become a large snowball. The ultra-low temperature caused the outside air to condense on its surface, forming beautiful blue snowflakes, unlike water ice. Just a few meters away, the heat radiated by the mobile substation had already pushed its heat dissipation casing to the brink of destruction—this was extremely energy-intensive, requiring the entire power supply system of the Steel Atom to operate.
While waiting for the furnace to preheat as planned, the three heard a message from the command center on the encrypted channel:
"This is newly unsealed top-secret information. Listen carefully to me. I only have time for one explanation... The exterior looks like a pot of hot, thick soup, mixed with a variety of ingredients. Those ingredients are fragments of other universes. Do not touch them, or you will never be able to return. The laws of physics in other universes may differ from ours, and annihilation may occur. Furthermore, the soup is highly corrosive. The thickness of your specialized exoskeleton armor is only enough to provide about five minutes of movement, so don't stray too far from the cave."
Jiang Ling stretched his six limbs slightly while hiding in the exoskeleton and asked casually, "Is there any information about Unit 1? Why did it explode? Can it be overcome?"
"Yes, but it was just an accident, and there is no solution."
"What accident?" Jiang Ling asked Lin Yi, "Just because they can't solve it doesn't mean I can't."
"Even if you encountered them!" the command center said, "They were unlucky. As soon as they left, they collided with a cosmic debris with a mass exceeding that of the visible universe. The 'apparent volume' of that debris was only a tiny fraction. You wouldn't have had time to react."
"How did it do that?" Jiang Ling intuitively thought that it might be some kind of weapon. Although there was no evidence to prove it, for the sake of her own life, she still raised the question.
"Uh, are you asking about the process?" Someone at the command center must have understood what she meant, but unfortunately, they didn't answer directly. "The debris hit the rear of the manned submersible and caused an annihilation reaction. The hole was crushed by the huge energy generated, but the submersible crew survived."
"It sounds like the external matter absorbs most of the energy." Jiang Ling nodded. "But how are we supposed to move in such a dense place? Could it be that the external matter also follows Newton's first law?"
"Don't worry about this. We have already tried it with detectors. Some of the external substances are like asphalt with extremely high viscosity. You just need to push away the substance in front of you, and the substance in other places will push you over by themselves. You can try it yourself, but if you don't carry enough energy, you will not be able to move forward." The command center replied.
"The probe you launched... is alive, right?" Jiang Ling thought of a not-so-good possibility.
"We wish they hadn't, but this is an unavoidable sacrifice," the Command Center said. "We're only just beginning to understand the outside world. Just like any applied science, in the beginning, no matter how thorough the preparations, there will always be loopholes. We will always remember them."
"I understand your determination." Jiang Ling nodded. "But let me be clear, I prefer practicality. Don't try to fool me with useless things like merits and medals after this is over. I won't buy that." She paused. "Some people need them more than I do."
"You really haven't changed at all! Don't worry, the credit isn't yours, but you definitely deserve it. We'll all remember it! We'll finally be able to decipher it someday." The command center smiled. "Alright, the XW index is almost reaching the target, so it's time to cut off our quantum communications. It's best not to use it between you two. Although the quantum channel's interference with spacetime stretching is minimal, it will still be noticeable in the final stages."
"Wait, how are we supposed to contact each other once we get outside?"
"All known means of communication are ineffective, but your psychic abilities are. There are external detectors for relaying. Each of them can only be used once. There are a total of 16,384 of them. You must be frugal."
“How much does one communication cost?”
"It's hard to say, but the farther the 'appearance distance', the more there are. Using hundreds at a time was normal in the past."
"Fuck, you guys are really treating human lives as firewood!"
"It's much better now," the command center said. "Before, just to get them to complete their mission, we had to pay more than eleven times the casualties."
The Iron Atom's communication with the mothership ended, and the interior of the alchemy furnace fell silent. Jiang Ling gazed at the two people before her, using her psychic powers to sense their rhythmic breathing, heartbeats, intestinal movements, and blood circulation. In her eyes, these two flesh and blood bodies were flesh and blood separated from her own. Even though they possessed different minds and souls, they were living, complete human beings. Having long associated with nonhumans, she could not indifferently regard them as mere tools.
What is the definition of a human being? Different people will have different answers at different times.
Now Jiang Ling gave his own answer.
In order to safeguard the basic interests of the people, the community has been fighting for thirteen consecutive millennia, devoting all its efforts to building immigration motherships as quickly as possible, taking as many people as possible and the fruits of human civilization away from the mother planet, embarking on a nearly eternal expedition.
Along the way, human civilization has realized that the universe is accelerating towards death, and it no longer has time to accommodate the slow development of civilization. If it continues to stay where it is, human civilization will only become a lonely ruin.
Time is not on the side of humans, but humans are still lucky because the protagonist is on their side.
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